My Site

Category: Events

  • Reflections on World Sorrows

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    Reflections on World Sorrow

    Francis Weller, in his book The Wild Edge of Sorrow, talks of the Sorrow of the World.  By acknowledging the losses in the world around us, we begin to understand how our personal loss seems insurmountable due to our accumulated experiences of loss that we witness in the world. These are not the natural disasters that we respond to with volunteering and supporting donations but, living day to day in response to man’s inhumanity to man. Events like; war in Ukraine, drive-by or school shootings, violence against women, children, immigrants or people of a different race, creed or culture, sexual persuasion are not events we know how to genuinely and compassionately respond to. 

    While the sorrows of the world cannot be assuaged as individuals. We can acknowledge them in community and come to understand what Weller describes as the “anima-mundi.’  Defined as, that intrinsic connection between all living things. To consider the world as “a living organism and we as creatures who inhabit this Living Planet” has been a concept since antiquity. To consider any damage to the planet as a wound or scar is to begin to acknowledge that the immense repercussions of how we as inhabitants of this Earth have profound impact on our environment and the very “liveliness” of earth.

    My wife, Nancy often speaks about alchemy and grief. The transformation that is possible when grief undergoes a change that results in an opening of our souls. This grief of the world registers in our bodies and lacking resources to heal the pain it accumulates, stagnates and manifests as illness, depression, loneliness and despair. When we incorporate our loss, into our being, it results in the experience of growth. The alchemy transforms us.

    Grief Work and Ritual offer opportunity to experience the communal cup of loss. To express our kinship to one another based not on a comparison of loss but of honoring the loss because each loss is unique and profoundly felt. In our sacred complex world, the alchemy that grief allows us to turn our losses into the gold of what might yet be.

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  • What’s a Death Cafe?

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    What’s a Death Cafe?

    Another format for having those heart to heart conversations that are difficult to start can occur in the most unlikely places. There is another organization that we are affiliated with that has a funny name but does a great community service. Death Cafe seems like an unlikely name for almost anything, but how about a place serving up real information about death and everything that goes along with it?

    In another attempt to reach out to people, we came across this organization that was in the Raleigh, North Carolina area. In fact, it was started in England as a place to share information about options and resources available to the public. Things that you might know about or think about until the death of a loved one is right on top of you. That is not the best time to make decisions and so born out of the intention to provide valuable information, Death Cafe was started.

    Seems like a practical yet unconventional idea. Share what you have learned about the facts of dying? We are all going to do it one day.  So, let’s get the mystery out of it and talk with experts who have become familiar with the process.

    This included many experts from a variety of fields who attend including: funeral directors, estate planners, medicare advisors, nurses, advocates for alternative burial methods, hospice workers, death doula’s and grief support folks like us. The attendees are from all walks of life and all ages. Some looking into alternative means, some offering niche ideas and some who have recently experienced a death in the family and are looking for comfort and a place to talk about their loved one. 

    At the Raleigh, Death Cafe held at the Renaissance Funeral Home on Six Folks Road. This family business hosts the monthly meeting opening their doors for the conversations. 40-50 people will regularly attend depending on the monthly topic or featured speaker. Over the years it has become a community for people in the industry to gather and offer support to one another. Some months their will be a featured film or documentary to watch then a discussion will follow.

    One of the best features of this particular group is that they don’t take the subject of death with formality and stuffiness. These are real people that are not trying to sell you anything, are there because they want you to make informed decisions and have a wealth of knowledge to share. Keeping the flow light and lively can be a challenge when you are in the middle of a grief situation. Being mindful and respectful always goes along way to making everyone feel comfortable.

    There are Death Cafes across the united states and while each is probably unique in the way they present their material the idea goes a very long way to make certain that people have the information they need to make informed decisions and have the resource they need before they are confronted with decisions they are not prepared for. If you hesitate to explore this topic, you may be missing out on an interesting discussion and a chance to meet people that have dedicated their own time to making the process of death more understandable, relatable and less mysterious.

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  • My Book

    My Book

    After I began helping others to navigate their grief, I thought to myself,

    “This is the life I was meant to live”;

    referencing the message I heard shortly after Leah died that said, Losing Leah is too high a price to pay to not live the life you were meant to live.

    About this time, I begin to hear that it was time to write my book.  I resisted writing it for all kinds of reasons. I told myself,:

    I’m not an author,

    I can’t write,

    I don’t want my vulnerable story out there for anyone to read, and on and on.

    I resisted writing my book until it was easier to just write the darn thing!

    I began a writing boot camp to see if I had a book to write.  I still doubted myself, and I thought if I wrote a book at all it would be an ebook, and it would live where ebooks live, thereby not being a “real” book because I couldn’t hold in my hand.

    The boot camp consisted of writing 1000 words for 10 days, and then sending them each day to my writing coach.  After the ten days, we had a phone conversation. He told me, not only did I have a book, my book needed to be a physical book I could put in someone’s hands. There went my ebook idea.

    I spent the next 3 months writing my first draft, and then sent it back to him.  We had a 2-hour conversation, going over the book chapter by chapter.  He helped me to format it so it was cohesive, and gave me ideas on how to flush out each chapter.

    I wrote for another 3 months, everyday, writing and editing, again and again. When it felt complete, I found someone to help me edit and self-publish it.  This was really happening!

    While it was being edited, I did a lot of work to release old beliefs about my value and worth so that I cold talk about my story when my book was ready to publish.

    That first year, I took my book on the road and did over a dozen events in Raleigh, where I lived at the time, as well as Chicago and Boulder. After that year, I claimed the fact that I am an author as well as a speaker.

    Today, when I pick up my book and read a portion of it, sometimes I wonder who wrote it. In some ways it felt like it came through me.  While I was writing it the words flowed easily. I find that is true most of the time when I am writing. I am able to touch a place where my words describe what I am feeling, sometimes before I even know that I am feeling a certain way.

     

    Writing my book was another step in saying yes to the life I am meant to live.

    You can find my book here.

     

     

  • Everything I Have Done…..

    Everything I Have Done…..

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    “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 in Chicago shortly after my book launched. I kept going back to experiences from my childhood. Things like the difficulties I had with some of the kids in the neighborhood, the hard time I had fitting in at school, the mixed messages I got at home, and the fact that I had a severe stutter.

    I would find myself saying after remembering each memory, “Surely not this too?” And then I would receive the gift of that difficult experience; every, single, time.  It became so that I stopped questioning the events of my life, I knew almost as soon as something came into my awareness what it was there to teach me how it had prepared me for what’s next.

    Does this sound daunting to you?

    It did to me too when I first heard the message.  I wanted it to mean that only the helpful things were what I needed to prepare me for my next. Things like courses I had taken or practices that brought me joy.  I wanted only the “good things” to be my helpers.  If the “bad” things were also there to assist me, that would mean that I would have to pay attention to them, and I didn’t want to do that, any more than you want to do that.  I came to see that “good” and “bad” are labels that we put on our experiences. Yes, some may be more pleasurable, some more difficult, but they are all there to be in service to our awakening; our saying yes to stepping into the fullness of who we are in any given moment.

    One thing that helped me tremendously in navigating my “everythings” was presence.  When I can be present to the feelings that arise in this moment about difficult experiences I can begin to unravel the sticky stories that my head continues to spin about those experiences. Bringing the feelings to my heart to be shifted, further understood, and eventually transmuted. This is the process that I use when I work with grief clients, and it is also the process that I use with every client who is following the breadcrumbs of their “everything” in order to reclaim their lives and live an engaged life. The life you’ve always dreamed of living.

    I’m often asked to describe presence, and I can spend a lot of time talking about what it is. I’ve written a lot about it and have done several videos about it.  Because presence is a direct experience practice, until you experience it for yourself, you will not really know what it is.

    I am offering a Zoom call for you to experience presence. You can register here.

    I will guide you in the present moment awareness practice that I teach my clients and use in my daily life.  Yes, it’s helpful for  grief AND for everything else. (There’s that word again!)

    If you would like to experience presence for yourself and learn how you can begin to incorporate it into your daily life, I invite you to join me on Friday, April 16, 2021 at 1:00 PM Central Time.

    Let me know if you have any questions.

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  • Getting Ready for Surgery

    Here is a picture of my new chair.

    There was a time when I would have told you that I would never own a recliner. I don’t like them and I never have. So why do I now have one in my bedroom? Next week I am going to have shoulder replacement surgery. When I first found out about the need for surgery I was in denial, mostly because I had no idea that it was even possible to replace a shoulder joint.

    I left that appointment in a daze.

    At that point, I had been working on regaining full mobility in my shoulder for over two years. In addition to physical therapy I’ve tried massage, acupuncture, chiropractic, an anti-inflammatory diet, supplements, strength training, exercise, yoga, emotional release, and probably a few more. Sometime during the summer I reached a plateau, I was no longer making progress.

    My PT wanted to get an x-ray to determine if I had a bone spur that was inhibiting movement. The x-ray showed that I did have a bone spur, and I made an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon. In anticipation of this appointment I was preparing for the removal of a bone spur. All of the research I had done told me that it was fairly easy as far as surgery is concerned with a relatively short recovery period. Instead, the surgeon walked into the room and told me I needed a shoulder replacement.

    The day before that appointment my arm was in a lot of pain, and I asked to be shown what would be the right answer for me to restore my range of motion and alleviate the pain. Shoulder replacement was NOT the answer I wanted.

    I’ve learned though that the answer to our prayers is not always the answer we want.

    After that initial appointment I did a lot more research. I had an MRI. I had a second consult. I got a second opinion. This time I asked more questions.

    How about stem cell or cortisone?

    Can you just take off the bone spur?

    Is there ANYTHING else I can do to avoid surgery?

    The answers were again not what I wanted to hear. I have no more cartilage in my shoulder joint. Any of those fixes might alleviate pain for a time, but my cartilage would still be gone. I know that shoulder replacement surgery is the right thing for me. I know this mostly because of the timing of the answer to my prayer. There was a part of me that knew this even then, in spite of the denial.

    So what does the chair have to do with any of this? In my research I found a lot of advice, lots of it conflicting. The only consistent piece of advice was the need for a recliner to sleep in for the first few months; again; not what I wanted to hear, so I tried to debunk that one too. But that didn’t work, so I have my chair on the advice of many trusted friends and sources. I still don’t like it, just like I don’t like the fact that I’m having surgery. I can know that something is the right thing for me and not like it at the same

    time. Think about that. How does that change the way you show up for what you know is the right choice for you?

     

  • Saturday, August 4, 2018: Intro to Self-Samyama Workshop

    Saturday, August 4, 2018: Intro to Self-Samyama Workshop

    Saturday, August 4, 2018
    10:00 am – 12:00 pm

    Are you ready to stop agonizing about your life and why you aren’t accomplishing what you tell yourself you will accomplish when wake up every Monday morning?

    Are you ready to heal your old emotional wounds, the past, and everything that is keeping you stuck where you are? Are you ready to live from love rather than fear?

    Do you want to be in touch with your deepest wisdom and your intuition without the endless mind trip?

    If you answered yes to even one of these questions, then Self-Samyama is for you!

    In this Introduction to Self-Samyama you will:

    • Learn the 3 levels of awareness of Samyama.
    • Learn how to bring awareness to your heart.
    • Be led in several guided Samyama meditations so that you can begin to practice Self-Samyama on your own.

     

    Space is limited:

    Click here to register.