“Everything you have done until now has prepared you for what is next.” When I heard that message shortly after Leah died, I had no idea that it meant EVERYTHING; every little thing that I have ever gone through in my entire life. I came to that realization after a week of book events [...]
I’ve been receiving the following message in my morning meditation: “Show up unapologetically as yourself in everything that you do.” There was a time when that would have sent me down a rabbit hole or into a tailspin. What if “they” don’t like the fullness of who I am? (Who is this mythical “they” [...]
I took some time during the past week to do some deeper reflection on the past year and everything it brought up for me. There is no doubt that 2020 held many difficulties for all of us. What I noticed for me is the disruption of pandemic affected me on a personal energetic level. [...]
We marked the 20-year anniversary of Leah’s death earlier this month. 20 years. That fact is enough to stop me in my tracks. 20 years is a long time. That’s what I thought when I first began to mark 20-year milestones; 20 years since I graduated grade school and high school, my 20-year wedding anniversary, [...]
Is it possible to find small moments of joy when we are grieving, or when we are living through a pandemic? Each year when I enter into the portal of Leah’s death, it always takes me back to November of 2000. I remember how I felt when the police came into my office to [...]
On July 24, 2020, I became a grandmother for the first time! I’ve known this was going to happen for a while, yet I wasn’t fully prepared for the flood of emotion that arrived upon the sight of my granddaughter’s face at 3 AM on a Saturday morning. It rocked my world like few [...]
Here we are in the middle of a year that was supposed to be big. At the end of 2019 and at the beginning of this year, we all read things like this: This is going to be the year that……. (fill in our own blank) It is a year of change to be [...]
On November 8, 2000 my world changed forever. That was the day that my 17 year old daughter Leah died. My life was shattered. I had no idea how I was going to go on living without Leah’s presence in my day-to-day life. I wanted to completely isolate myself. I couldn’t get out of [...]
Today I’ve been thinking a lot about my journey, not only my grief journey but the entirety of my journey here on earth. While Leah’s death and my subsequent journey to find meaning and purpose in my life again is the single most profound event in my life, what I recognize is that the [...]
Last week I invited friends and colleagues to share some of their new holiday traditions they started, after the death of family members. I've received many great re-imagined traditions as families search for new meaning celebrating the holidays without their loved ones present. My good friend Nancy Ruffner shared the following. When I [...]
