Celebrating the Release of The Art of Reassembly!
Most often, the journey of writing a book and bringing it out into the world is excruciatingly long. There’s early scribbling or journaling, then ugly first drafts followed by rewrites, revisions, copy edits, proofreading—and more. It can take years, and sometimes, decades. In my case there was another step that [...]
How to Stepparent Grieving Children
Four years after my mom died of cancer, my dad got remarried. Right after the wedding his new wife, Aggie—my stepmother—moved into our family’s home. In truth, my siblings and I barely knew her. I wish they had known how to stepparent grieving children. Changes in Routine Quickly, with my [...]
Recognize That Somebody is Grieving—Even if They Don’t
Can you recognize the signs of grieving in this scene? One day when the youngest of my three children, Christian, was a baby, I placed him in his Pack’n Play and asked his older brother to keep an eye on him for a few minutes while I ran downstairs to [...]
Meeting Grief with Grace after Early Loss
After Casey Mulligan Walsh and I met in an online writers group, I wanted to hear her early mother loss story, but I soon discovered her familiarity with grief goes far beyond our shared experience, as does her wisdom. She became an orphan at age 12, lost her only sibling [...]
Connect the Maternal Line on Motherless Mother’s Day
I wrote this post on what would have been my mom's 80th birthday in 2013. She had died in 1970 at age 37, more than half of an 80-year life span earlier. As the date approached, I found myself wanting to mark it somehow but lacking any specific ideas. Finally, [...]
Breast Cancer Risk: A Long-Term Relationship
Breast cancer risk has defined my life in key ways, starting with my mom’s death from the disease when I was seven years old. While I was in high school years, my stepmother took the then-unusual step of having a preventive double mastectomy because of numerous breast cancer cases over [...]
No Joke: Gritty Truth about Mother Loss
Dixie Perkinson is an actor, comedian, storyteller, and writer in Los Angeles. The basic facts of her mother loss story sound like a movie script, but her telling of it is completely real. She and I met last year at a Motherless Daughters retreat, and I’ve been following her blog [...]
Mary Poppins Shines Light on Grieving Children
If you missed the Mary Poppins Returns movie back in December, it's now available on DVD and via streaming on Amazon. Like the original, the new version creates a magical world of imagination, but this time childhood loss and grief drive the plot. As the movie opens, the adult Michael [...]
Telling Your Grief Story: A Playful Approach
Digital bread crumbs occasionally do lay a rewarding path, and I’m delighted to share such good fortune with you here. Clicking links recently from an article on Grief Diaries led me into the grief story of writer, artist and teacher Ann Petroliunas, a Chicago native now residing in Portland OR. [...]
Ripples of Grief Guest Post: Suriani Bakri
Reader Suriani Bakri submitted this heartfelt reflection in response to the Ripples of Grief e-course that I offered in 2018. Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash What Happened It was November 11, 1986, and I was 15 years old. I had just come home from school. My grandma [...]
Children’s Grief Awareness Day
When a child's parent or other loved one dies, they often feel somehow different from their peers as a result, set apart by their loss. I remember this happening for me very soon after my mom died. At her funeral at the Catholic parish where I attended second grade, walking [...]
A Grieving Child for Life
Prince Harry’s recent revelation that he’s been in therapy to address long unprocessed grief about his mother’s death startled the world with its frankness on this vulnerable topic, especially from a member of Britain’s royal family. He described how in his late 20s, he began to have chaotic emotions, especially [...]
Library Love
National Library Week On a weekend away with several high school friends, around the outdoor fire pit one night somehow we began sharing stories of our early experiences with libraries. I thought I was just weird in my heartfelt devotion to these sacred spaces, but it [...]
A Daughter Turns 20
Already in 2013 I have marked on this blog the day my mother would have been 80, the day I turned 50, and now today we celebrate our daughter’s 20th birthday. I rather like the symmetry of those 30-year intervals. They suggest a connecting pattern between the three of us [...]
Who Taught You About Love?
Preaching on the topic of love, our pastor once related his experience of a scripture discussion group during which the participants contemplated who had taught them about love. It’s interesting to notice your first, intuitive response to that question: Who taught you about love? Who pops to mind? For me, [...]
All the Saints
The custom of remembering the dead during November as the leaves turn and the light fades, continues to resonate from my Catholic background. To observe this time of year, my husband and I like to recollect our personal saints through a pilgrimage to local cemeteries where our relatives are buried, [...]