Katherine Ingram

KATHERINE INGRAM, M.A., is a writer and soul coach living in Southern Oregon. She received her B.A. from Northwestern University, an M.A. in Counseling Psychology from the University of San Francisco, and did doctoral work in depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara. For almost two decades she has actively studied Jungian psychology, Taoism, metaphysics, and Native American spiritual traditions. She consults clients from all over the United States, writes a monthly newspaper column, “Soul Matters,” and is a contributing writer to a numerous on-line journals. Her first book, Washing the Bones: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Transformation, is now available on Amazon.com.

Articles:

Meaningful Suffering

“No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.” ~C.G. Jung I don’t know if it’s the time of year, phase of life, or just my peculiar vantage point, but almost everyone I know is going through some serious suffering. I’m not […]

Good Grief: The Holiday Edition

Grief and the holidays are a tough combo. They go together about as well as peanut butter and pickles. Awful. Mourning a loss during this season of joyful celebration is an exercise in endurance and suffering. I know of what I speak: I lost my father, husband, aunt, and step-brother all in December—three in the same December. For a couple of decades, the advent of winter left me in a pall of bleak emotionality. I would have been perfectly happy if I could have skipped directly from Halloween to Easter. I would just as soon forgotten Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s […]

Washing the Bones: Grieving a Spouse-Loss

When I was first widowed, my overriding thought was that I couldn’t survive it, and I did not wish to. But the thought that I couldn’t go on without him was simply not true: it felt true, but it wasn’t. I had gone on without Andrew, to my dismay and surprise. Losing him hurt beyond any sort of pain I had ever felt or could have imagined. I hated it, but it did not end my life; it ended that particular chapter of my life, a chapter I liked a great deal, a chapter I thought would be the whole […]

Tips for Those Who are Grieving

November is the month of gratitude, and so I wish to express my love and gratitude for my companion and teacher, Bentley, who died in my arms October 2nd. Bentley was a Lhasa Apso who came to me at a profoundly difficult time in my life and journeyed with me through an amazing thirteen years. I’m no stranger to grief: I lost father, brother, husband, stepfather, uncle, grandparents, friends and pets all by the age of 32. But Bentley’s passing reminded me yet again of just how difficult grief is. What makes it worse is that there is no social […]

A Guide to Helping Others Who are Grieving

How ‘Doing Nothing’ Can Be the Way to Survive a Loss

When I was a little girl, I loved searching for caterpillars on the milkweed plants that grew in abundance around our house. I would pluck one from the underside of a leaf and place it in my hand, stroking its smooth body with a tentative finger, carefully carrying it home in cupped hands to be re-homed in a mayonnaise jar, along with a stick and some leaves. I’d poke holes in the lid and then run out to the garage every day and check to see if the black and yellow striped creature had cocooned itself. When at last it […]