Death of a Child

Día de Muertos: Eat, Speak, and Remember

Friday, October 28, 2016

The Oxford English dictionary defines “remember” as to “have in or be able to bring one’s mind an awareness of someone or something from the past.” I have thought a lot about remembering or memory since our son Mack died on New Year’s Eve 2012, two weeks shy of his 9th birthday. Often a memory of a moment between us will bubble up unbidden and in the early days of mourning these would pierce me as a reminder of what I had lost. As the years have unfolded, I have come to relish those moments and even invite them. Recently, […]

Death of a Child, Your Grief

Ask, Seek, and Knock Loudly on God’s Door

Friday, October 10, 2014

On the snowy night of December 30, 2012, I was reflecting on the past year in my journal. I have journaled regularly since 1990, when I lived in the bush in West Africa and had little else to occupy myself during the silent nights in my mud brick house. I wrestled for a while as to whom I was addressing my journal, but eventually I realized I was sharing my thoughts and fears with God. So, I have written thousands of “Dear Lord” entries over the years. Curled up in front of the fire after the kids were asleep, I […]

Bereavement, Open to Hope, Other Losses

Comic Yisrael Campbell on Uplifting the Dying

Saturday, August 23, 2014

comic Yisrael Campbell

How can you use your talents to make the dying feel like they’re at the center of your universe? Be a DJ on a pretend radio station with your friend’s name in the call letters: this idea and more when memory artist Nancy Gershman speaks with Yisrael Campbell (born Chris Campbell): a comedian of Irish and Italian descent, who grew up Catholic in Philadelphia and now lives with his wife and four kids as an Orthodox Jew in Israel. The star and writer behind the critically acclaimed Off Broadway show “Circumcise Me,” Yisrael brings his one-man show to The Edinburgh Fringe Festival August 2014. […]

Open to Hope

Grief Healing and the Power of Afterlife Signs

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Since 1998, during my grief support work, I have observed time and again the remarkable healing affects that take place when the bereaved receive a personal afterlife sign from their departed loved ones. Many who were deeply grieving and in a very dark place would later confide in me that the only reason they did not follow through on their thoughts of suicide was because they had received an afterlife sign. Types of Signs Some of these “signs” may be in the form of: happy and vivid dreams where you get to see, talk or hug them again; being surrounded […]

Special Topics

I Believe (poem)

Saturday, November 29, 2008

I believe I will see my loved ones again and it is that, among other things, which allows me to heal and gives me the courage to journey forward. I believe there is a profound reason for life and death, perhaps purposely beyond our understanding. I believe that moving forward is about creating opportunities for spiritual growth, and not just going through the motions of another day. I believe that life’s events are a classroom, and not some meaningless cosmic joke. I believe that love is profoundly connected to the meaning of life, and not just an empty phenomenon that rewards […]