Ruth Field

Ruth E. Field has always wanted to help people. Inspired by her well-respected and beloved physician father, she grew up valuing service to others. Through the years Ruth experienced the untimely deaths of many close family members and dear friends. She accompanied them through illnesses that ravaged body and mind, and she shared the trauma of sudden devastating accidents. All the while she pondered why such painful loss seemed to swirl around her. In 1999 Ruth joined with other parents to co-found the Child & Adolescent Bipolar Foundation (now the Balanced Mind Parent Network, part of the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance). It was the first internet-based not-for-profit organization, and reflected her passion to help families fight the stigma and isolation of mental health diagnoses. As the founding CABF board president, she spoke at area conferences and workshops on the family impact of early-onset mood disorders. One of her most memorable presentations was Witness to Grief: Experiencing Loss in Parenting Children and Adolescents with Bipolar Disorder. Ruth’s calling to teach resilience crystallized after the accidental death of her young adult son. Having transformed her own sorrow into a personal mission to foster post traumatic growth, she is dedicated to helping others navigate all types of adversity. Honoring her son’s legacy of hope, she blends her personal and professional wisdom to guide others from heartbreak to healing. Ruth holds a Master’s Degree in Social Work from Loyola University Chicago. She also is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in Illinois. At her private psychotherapy practice in Northfield, IL, she is honored to work with adolescents, adults, and families. In addition to writing, Ruth enjoys nature hikes, movies, and laughing with her husband Alan. She also loves sharing meals with friends and family. Her greatest joy is spending time with her grandchildren and delighting in their growth.

Articles:

Replenishing Through Grief

This is an excerpt from The 4 Facets of Grief: Heal Your Heart, Rebuild Your World, and Find New Pathways To Joy, which is available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B073ZMKKH2. Is Self-Care Selfish? Let’s look at the word “selfish.” It has a negative connotation of someone who only cares about him- or herself. But what if we thought of the Self (with a capital S) as the essential part of our being that distinguishes us from others. Pretty special, huh? I’m not advocating narcissism or not caring about others; I’m just allowing for reasonable ways to cherish and nurture the unique human that each of […]

Meaning Making

This is an excerpt from The 4 Facets of Grief: Heal Your Heart, Rebuild Your World, and Find New Pathways To Joy, which is available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B073ZMKKH2. Meaning Making When I use the term “meaning-making,” I’m talking about the process of understanding or making sense of what’s going on in our lives. Many times the meaning of an event seems obviously unquestionable. In the case of bereavement, however, we are often left feeling empty because our dear one’s death will never make sense. Finding meaning in distress can be like turning on a light bulb in a […]

Adapting to a New Reality: Taking ‘Grief Breaks’

This is an excerpt from The 4 Facets of Grief: Heal Your Heart, Rebuild Your World, and Find New Pathways To Joy, which is available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B073ZMKKH2 Keep Learning Our brains crave information and order. It’s natural to long for as much detail as possible about your particular situation, its effects, and how you’re coping. What specifics do you know about what happened? Who might be responsible? How will you go on? Could it have been avoided or prevented? If so, how? These are hard questions to ponder, and they come up whether we want them to or not. Just know this is […]

Accepting the Unacceptable

This is an excerpt from The 4 Facets of Grief: Heal Your Heart, Rebuild Your World, and Find New Pathways To Joy, which is available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B073ZMKKH2. Defining Acceptance The first step is to figure out what acceptance really means. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, acceptance is the quality or state of being accepted or acceptable, as in approval. It further adds, acceptance can mean to endure without protest or reaction; to regard as proper, normal, or inevitable; to recognize as true. When my heart is screaming “NO!” and rejecting every aspect of a situation, what would it mean if […]

Endings and Beginnings

This is an excerpt from The 4 Facets of Grief: Heal Your Heart, Rebuild Your World, and Find New Pathways To Joy, which is available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B073ZMKKH2. I used to think life was a series of beginnings. Birth is a beginning; starting school is a beginning. So is learning to drive; new love; a new home. All these firsts take us toward presumably better and more fulfilling experiences. Beginnings are filled with hope, promise, and expectation. Sometimes they’re exhilarating and scary in the most positive way. But I honestly didn’t consider the possibility that they also may follow endings. At least, not until […]

How I Transformed Grief into Growth

On a balmy summer evening in 2011, my beloved 26-year-old son David was killed instantly in a motorcycle accident and my life was forever changed. Suddenly plunged into a crazy altered reality, I wandered helplessly through disbelief, confusion, anguish, and searing pain. For a long time I felt stuck in my misery, since death is so permanent and so unarguably final. I couldn’t stop thinking about what his last moments were like for him and what his life could have been (and should have been). But as the days and weeks rolled by, I became increasingly aware of a question […]