Your Grief

Grief From Darkness to Light

Monday, May 4, 2020

dark to light

Grief impacts all of us in different ways. But, one of the best ways to visualize it is to see grief and the movement through grief to healing is going from darkness into light. With the dark, foreboding feeling that COVID-19 has caused everyone, including those already dealing with grief, it is important to talk about how we can deal with this sense of loss and be open to hope again. On our Facebook Live discussion today, Heidi and I were joined by Dr. Joanne Cacciatore, the founder of the MISS Foundation and the Selah Carefarm. She is a professor at Arizona […]

Open to Hope

Death of Husband Led Her to Stop Fearing Life

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

The word “fear”. Take a moment to think about what fear means to you. To me, the word brings up a million different images. To most, it means that they are afraid of something: afraid to speak in public, or scared and nervous to try something new, which is often actually a fear of failure. To me, fear means that I am not stepping outside of my comfort zone and I am not taking healthy chances. All changes, all goals and all life choices are the result of looking fear in the face. Fear causes people not to live. That […]

Death of a Parent, Open to Hope, Your Grief

Good Grief: The Holiday Edition

Monday, December 9, 2013

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 […]

Death of a Spouse, Your Grief

Finding Space After Spouse Loss

Friday, July 13, 2012

When my husband passed away unexpectedly in his sleep one night in February of 2009, my life was turned up-side-down in an instant. Chaos ensued for the next few weeks like never before. When I came out of the fog and looked around, it felt like I was so alone. I was a widow at 39 years old. I didn’t know anyone who was a widow at my age. It was mind-numbing looking toward the future without my husband. Over the next few months, and now years, I rebuilt a life with my two young children that fit us. We […]