Luellen Hoffman

Luellen Hoffman was an adjunct professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia and has a successful career in the Washington, DC area. She has won top awards and recognitions from, VNU/Nielsen Business Media for her outstanding people and communication skills. Hoffman is a feature writer of a children’s column with a Chicago based magazine for over fifteen years and is a feature writer for "The New Barker" magazine in Tampa, Florida. She also created an equestrian scholarship at Dartmouth College in 2002. Her husband Michael died unexpectedly in 1994 which led her to write the book “Special Dream” and share her experience of a Special Dream in hope of reaching out to others who may be have had this same unique experience. She has two sons, enjoys art, music, and sports. Luellen appeared on the radio show “Healing the Grieving Heart” with Dr. Gloria & Dr. Heidi Horsley to discuss “Continuing Bonds Through Albums and Stories.”

Articles:

Love and Grief: When Loss Enters Marriage

Like most family-oriented guys, my friend Chris searched and searched for his true partner and soul mate.  I watched on the sideline as he spent months, lamenting on how he wanted to find a special woman to love, especially after two previously failed marriages.  He still believed in love, and despite all the pain it had caused him in the past, he wanted to be married again. His first marriage took place when he was very young and did not last a year.  His second attempt at marriage didn’t work out much better due to the abuse he suffered at […]

Read More

Homesick This Summer: Widows Miss Their Men

  A few days ago, I boarded a flight to St. Louis to visit my son who had recently moved there for his job.  As I sat in my seat, a white-haired lady walked down the aisle of the plane, and she had a big smile on her face, like she was glad to see me.  Her shirt was a light denim blue and it had little rhinestones in vertical lines, like sparkly tear drops, and her slacks were summer white.  She reminded me of a family friend. She sat down next to me and told me her name was […]

Read More
Open to  hope

Dream After Husband’s Suicide Reassures Wife

Reprinted from the book, Special Dream, by Luellen Hoffman, following the death of Robin Williams Introduction: My husband suffered from what is now recognized as an obsessive-compulsive bipolar disorder. Greg committed suicide in 1987, when he was thirty-two years old. In his unfortunate brilliance, he was able to hide his problems from the psychiatrists with whom he worked at a well-known university hospital. Greg’s inner turmoil was tragic. It was during the year after his death that the following dream gave me much reassurance. The Special Dream: I am sitting at our old oak table in the dining room area. […]

Read More
Open to  hope

Remembering Mom on the Occasion of her 90th Birthday

It is hard to believe that my mother would have turned 90 years old this month.  I was thinking about my mom today and had so many great memories of her and here are a few of my favorite. 1. I remember when our family lived in Bethesda, Maryland in the early 60s, sometimes she would do a little tap dance in the kitchen on the linoleum floor, while making dinner and she was good. She just seemed happy like that. At 20 she had studied ballet in New York and was accepted into the “Rockettes” before she met my […]

Read More
Open to  hope

Open to Hope Writer Publishes New Edition of ‘Special Dream’

The passing of a loved one can mark a difficult crossroads. Those of us left behind often feel confused, fearful, sad, and even incomplete. In the midst of this grief, some experience dreams where a loved one appears to us, correctly predicting their own death, urging us to carry a message to a relative or simply offering us healing and the chance to say goodbye. Now comes a new edition of Open to Hope writer Luellen Hoffman’s book, Special Dream: Personal Accounts After the Death of a Loved One (Crossroad, an imprint of The Crossroad Publishing Company, September 2009). It’s […]

Read More
Open to  hope

‘Tiny Memories’ of Mother Magnified This Time of Year

By Luellen Hoffman My mind is confused about my mother being gone, even though it’s been a couple years since she died.  I feel like I can’t fathom the fact that she is not only gone, but “gone forever”.  I try to understand what that forever part means, and logically I get it and I talk to my brother Michael about it, but for some reason I just can’t put my intellectual reasoning around it yet.  This concept of “forever” is too big for me conceive. Little things remind me of her, like pansies.  She loved pansies and would always […]

Read More
Open to  hope

Words of Wisdom: ‘Hold On!’

By Luellen Hoffman — His cell phone call came to me at 7:00 am and I knew right away something was wrong. My son had just driven up to Detroit with his girlfriend to attend the NCAA Final Four basketball games and was driving back Tuesday morning when they hit bad weather — snow and ice on the Penn Turnpike. His girlfriend was driving the car and they weren’t speeding, 64 mph when they hit ice and she lost control of the car.  My son had been asleep, in the passenger seat, when he awoke to her screams and the […]

Read More
Open to  hope

Dog Returns in a Dream and Comforts Owner

By Luellen Hoffman — Recently while doing research for my book, Special Dream, I asked people if they ever had someone close to them die and then appear to them in an unusual dream. Over three hundred people responded and out of that group, five people wrote to tell me their dog had died and then appeared to them in a dream. I couldn’t use their stories in my book, but when I saw the web site about the death of pets, I knew this would be a wonderful place to share their heart-warming story. Here is one story, related […]

Read More
Open to  hope

Dreams of the Deceased

Writer Luellen Hoffman explains why she began studying those who dream about their deceased loved ones

Read More