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Category: My Book

  • Opening Your Heart

    Opening Your Heart

    At the time of Leah’s death, Samyama had been a part of my life for seven years.

    It wasn’t a practice that I turned to daily; it was there when I needed a little more assistance contacting to my feelings.

    I didn’t realize at the time that Samyama would be my lifeline as I began meeting my grief.

    Even though I did not have a daily Samyama practice over 20 years ago, I did know the power of the practice. Samyama helped me to begin to shift anger for the first time. I grew up pushing anger down. It wasn’t allowed in my family. My anger would erupt in rage when it could no longer be contained. These eruptions happened when I least expected them and at inopportune moments.

    I have done lots of work with anger over the years, with limited results. Samyama allowed me to meet anger for the first time in a safe space. From this safe space I was able to fully feel my anger and allow it to begin to shift. After a few months, I got to the root of my anger. As my heart held all those old feelings, the anger was gradually transmuted, shifted, and released.

    These days when I feel anger it is about something that occurred in the last few days, or weeks, not 30 or 40 years ago. I now know how to meet anger, (and all my feelings) and they aren’t pushed down until they can no longer be contained.

    What a relief I felt when anger and rage were no longer controlling my life. This experience with anger showed me the subtle power of Samyama.

    When I was ready to begin to meet the painful feelings of grief, I was instinctively drawn to Samyama. I began working with my own Samyama Practitioner. She was able to hold space for me to go deep into my feelings.

    I began to unravel the stories that were intertwined with my feelings; the stories that kept spinning in my head and wouldn’tlet me sleep or rest. The stories that threatened to devour me and keep my heart locked tight, so I didn’t have to feel the pain of my daughter’s death.

    As I began to open my heart to my feelings, I discovered that it could hold all of them.

    Even today, I can’t wrap my head around the fact that Leah is no longer here physically. It’s only when I bring my feeling to my heart and allow it to hold whatever shows up in each moment that I can get a glimmer of peace. As that glimmer grows, it eventually spreads from my heart to every cell of my body, and I’m once again reconnected to my soul’s purpose. I’m once again connected to myself, and my reason for being here in this lifetime.

    Another gift of my grief journey was showing me the power of Samyama, and how it can help with daily disappointments or concerns. Today I do have a daily Samyama practice. Samyama not only helps with difficult feelings, but it also helps me meet whatever arises in each moment, the full spectrum of all my feelings.

    I bring everything to my heart, and my heart never fails me.

  • Grieving Uniquely

    Grieving Uniquely

    This chapter foreshadows the birth of my work with clients.

    As I read about my experience of early grief, I get a sense of going through that time with blinders on. From where I am today, I can see a bigger picture. Back then I felt lost in a maze, not knowing which way to turn, or where it would lead.

    Around each turn, I met many facets of grief: shock, denial, fear, panic, hopelessness, and isolation, to name a few. I was unsure of where to turn in the confusing landscape. Yet even through my confusion I was aware that I was meeting grief in my own way, a testament to my radical nature from the previous chapter.

    Each of us grieves in our own unique way, and often when we face grief, we don’t know what our way is to grieve.

    It gets even more complicated in a family. We may be grieving for the same person, yet our experiences of grief and how we grieve are completely different from each other. One reason is our unique relationship with the person we are grieving. We grieve from our own perspective.

    In my own family, Dan, Peter, and I all had to meet our grief in our own way. We couldn’t help each other until we reached a certain point in our own grief journeys. If this is the case for you, give yourself the time and grace needed to allow everyone to process in their own way.

    We haven’t been taught how to grieve by our parents, or by society. Or maybe we were shown that by denying our feelings long enough, they will go away, and we won’t have to face them.

    Grief can also be a catalyst for change.

    In my own experience, Leah’s death exposed all the places in my life, including my marriage, which needed attention. I had a huge decision to make; did I want to do the work necessary to see if those places could be healed or did I want to use distraction to help them go underground not knowing when or how they would show up in my life?

    None of these decisions were easy, yet they were made more urgent by my commitment to honor Leah and her message to me about living the life I was meant to live.

    Sometimes giving yourself permission to grieve in a way that makes sense to you is all you need to begin that trek in your own  life.

    What do you need permission to do?

  • Radical Grief

    Radical Grief

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    This was a hard chapter to read, and as I recall it was a hard one to write.

    It tells the story of my relationship with Leah and some of the struggles we had as she was growing up.

    I remember when I was writing it that I wanted to be true to the story without sugar coating our struggles. I could feel the dynamic between us back then streaming off the page, as well as how much I wanted to understand what Leah was going through at the time so I could help her make good decisions.

    From where I am now, I can more fully see how my own upbringing influenced my approach to mothering, and how it defined what I called my radical nature. To help Leah accept who she was, I needed to accept who I was; the connections between our stories are undeniable.

    As I came to own the way I approached life, my radical nature; I also saw that it was the way I approached grief.

    Always feeling like I didn’t fit in as I was growing up served me well as I entered mygrief journey. I felt like I was different from everyone else because my daughter was no longer present in my life. The feeling of being different was a familiar one to me, and maybe that’s why grieving for my daughter felt different than I thought it would too. Even as I write those words, I’m not exactly surewhat I mean; maybe I mean that I was more comfortable finding my own way to grieve, which led me to understand that we all grieve in our own unique way.

    One of the topics that I frequently talk about with colleagues and clients is the ability to prepare for grief.

    We like to be prepared for all things in our life, yet when an unexpected tragedy occurs, we may feel ill prepared to cope with it.

    I certainly felt like I wasn’t prepared to face life without Leah’s physical presence in it. At the time I didn’t fully understand what that meant. If I had, I’m not sure what I would have done. I think that’s part of the grace that I received; the complete story of what life would look like would only be revealed as time passed, and I was ready for the next layer. I feel like that is a blessing of the journey, that I was not plunged headfirst into the deep pool of grief with all the stuff all at once, it’s revealed only when I’m ready to meet it. Being ready to meet it also means doing the necessary work during that time.

    It’s one of the reasons that grief is a life-long journey.

    It’s only after a time that I can acknowledge that I was better prepared than I thought I was. Claiming my radical nature helped me to realize that. I also think that it’s possible to cultivate practices that can help us navigate difficult feelings and experiences when we encounter them.

    What has helped prepare you for difficult experiences that you may not have considered helpful until you go through a challenging time in your life?

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  • Holding On to Who You Are – Chapter 3

    Holding On to Who You Are – Chapter 3

    As I reread this chapter, I immediately saw the roots of my intuition playing out in my life.

    I saw the tentative way that I mothered my children, and the fledgling awareness of my inner voice making itself known to me as I faced the so many losses.

    My inner knowing was strong, yet it wasn’t quite ready to lead.

    I was sad about that at first because it feels like I’ve wasted so much time not being myself. As I sit with those feelings, I realize that all the experience, all the paths with their twists and turns and all the messiness of my life, were, and are, a part of the journey to love all the parts of myself, even the parts that aren’t always so easy to love.

    This chapter brought me to tears as I read about my resolve to be the best mother I could be, even though I felt like I was failing. I was the best mother I could be at that time. By staying true to that calling, being the best mother I could be, has led me to be the best person I can be, and to continue to excavate the parts of myself that need more love.

    The person that I was holding on to as I traveled those early days of grief, the essence of who I am, was always present. Some days it was easier to feel her presence and other days it felt like I had been abandoned.

    Leah now has a stronger place in my life. She is always present as a sacred witness to my continued unfolding. These days the unfolding has a different quality to it. My life has an ease and flow to it like it never has before. I used to struggle to be myself, now I allow myself to unfold. The struggle would always lead to self-doubt and self-recrimination. The harder I tried to beat that struggle, the tighter hold it would have on my life.

    It wasn’t until I learned, through my grief journey, the necessity of letting go.

    I learned to let go of the need to control every aspect of my life. I’ve learned to allow what is here to be here, and that by doing that, I give it voice, and expression.

    Rereading my book is giving me gifts that I would not have noticed if I had not returned to these pages to shed a light on the totality and value of my grief journey thus far. The fullness of those gifts is yet to be revealed. I can feel them beginning to coalesce.

    I’m once again humbled and grateful for this journey I am on.

     

  • Chapter 2 ~ Early Grief

    Chapter 2 ~ Early Grief

    I find the juxtaposition of early grief and 21-year grief startling.

    As I went through this latest date marking Leah’s death, it felt more difficult than other years.  Maybe it always does, and I forget that it does. The date of the death shines a glaring light on the event that changed the course of my life.

    Revisiting the time of early grief in this chapter shows me the passage of time in an almost surreal way.  This chapter plunges me into the unknown territory of life without Leah’s physical presence. My feelings were raw and unformed back then. I was reminded of the terror I felt as I faced what was to come, not feeling like I had anywhere near the skills or capacity to do so.

    How does one continue to live after the death of a child?

    All those thoughts were coursing through my body at that time, sending me deeper into my own shell, isolating me from my deepest fear.

    This year as I sat with my feelings, I noticed them circling around me, waiting for their turn. It’s almost like they trust me now, so they can wait quietly until I am ready for them. I invited them in, one at a time, feeling them deeper than I have allowed myself before now. It feels to me that as I continue this journey, that is what happens, each year I am able to go deeper into my feelings, and when I do, they shift a little more, and show me their wisdom.

    It’s always a relief when that day is over, it’s intensity, even now is not somewhere I want to live every day.

    I do take with me the blessings and grace that always show up when I am with my feelings as they arise in each moment.The blessings and grace that allow me to continue this path, to walk with others on their grief journeys and teach them how to tend to their hearts after a loss so deep.

    I always emerge from this time with gratitude.

    Gratitude that I met my grief journey the way I did; by doing that I am able to live my life fully. And that means being able to feel the full spectrum of all my feelings, even when they are painful.

  • Chapter 1 ~ You’re Never Prepared

    Chapter 1 ~ You’re Never Prepared

    In this chapter we find out that Leah has been in a car accident on her way to school.

    She hit a tree, the only one in the middle of a cornfield.

    As I reread my words and remember the feelings, I was struck by just how much I wasn’t prepared to learn what had happened. I describe it as being in a country without knowing the language or customs, and I’ll add here, I didn’t want to learn the language.

    During this time Leah was in surgery and we didn’t know her prognosis. Both Dan and I were going over our last conversations with her, trying to figure out where we could have made a change that would have altered the outcome; that would have prevented her accident.

    We were sitting with the “what ifs,” and the “if onlies.”

    We were praying for her to emerge from surgery with a smirk on her face, and her familiar eye roll. We were sure that our lives would once again return to the way they were before, a normalcy with a few lessons from this experience. I didn’t realize at the time how much I was clinging to that gossamer thread. I could consider no other outcome. We were going to laugh about all this someday.

    We were in the unknown.

    We are always in the unknown, yet this experience, being driven to the hospital without knowing what had happened, waiting at the hospital while she was in surgery, not knowing what challenges she would have when she was out of surgery, introduced us to a level of the unknown that we had never experienced before.

    I had forgotten that Dan and I each had different thoughts about those early days.

    We could barely share our feelings with each other. We had to be strong, for each other; for Peter, our son; for Leah. I could not even allow the thought that Leah may die enter my consciousness. I couldn’t comprehend anything other than the four of us leaving the hospital together, arguing about whether we were going to get pizza or tacos for dinner.

    I wanted another chance to be a better mother for her, for me, and our family.

    I wanted it all back. And it wasn’t to be. I didn’t yet know what was going to be asked of me in the next fewdays. I often wonder if the five days in the hospital were for me and us to prepare in whatever ways we could for what we would be soon facing.

  • The Prologue ~ A Time Between Realities

    The Prologue ~ A Time Between Realities

    When I said yes to beginning this project of revisiting my book and sharing insights from where I am today, I didn’t consciously know that I would be rereading my words.

    I am sure I knew it on some level, and if those thoughts had made it to the surface, I may not have said yes to this project.

    As I reread the Prologue, I was taken back to who I was over 20 years ago; a mother who was trying her best to help prepare her teenage daughter for college. A daughter who tested every limit she was given. A mother who wanted more for her daughter than she had at that age. A woman who was not yet the person she was meant to be in this world.

    I saw myself in that in between time when I knew something had happened, yet I didn’t know the impact it would have on our lives. During that time, I was angry with Leah because I thought this was another instance of limits testing. I was frustrated because sometimes it seemed like I couldn’t get through to her.

    One of the biggest challenges after her death was separating the normal mother/daughter teenage angst from the feelings of pain, loss, and regret. In time I was able to work through those feelings, yet at that moment in time I felt like I was floundering.

    Reading these words this morning took me back to the sheer terror I felt before I knew what had happened. It seemed like a cruel joke that I had to sit with dread and trepidation all the way from my place of work to the hospital, in the back of a police car no less.

    I imagined the worst, yet the reality was far worse than I ever could have imagined.

    I remembered how alone I felt sitting in the car by myself, while Dan was in another car, and we were both traveling too fast down the expressway.

    Looking back now, I still don’t understand why I wasn’t told more about what had happened. I can see the courage and strength that was still lying underground in my being; the courage and strength that I would draw on in the days, weeks, and months to follow. I realize now that I had been preparing all my life for the part of my journey that was just before me. It was a journey that I didn’t want to go on.

    Sitting where I am today, I am grateful for so many things.

    I am grateful that I wrote about what I was going through in those early days even though I had no intention of sharing them in a book.

    I am grateful for the opportunity to be Leah’s mother, she taught me so much. The lessons I learned from her blessed me on my journey and helped me in ways that I still can’t completely comprehend.

    I am grateful for the opportunity to revisit where I was back then.

    Each time I do I receive so many new insights. Insights that help me where I am; and insights that help me to be a better guide for my clients.

    I’m grateful that you are reading my words now, and hope that you will receive blessing and grace toassist you on your grief journey, wherever you may be on that journey.

  • 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.

     

     

  • Reclaiming My Voice Through My Grief Journey

    Reclaiming My Voice Through My Grief Journey

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    One of the biggest changes I’ve experienced as I traveled along my grief journey is speaking up; I’ve reclaimed my voice.

    As I prepared to bring my book into the world I needed to cultivate the capacity to tell my story in the way I was being called to tell it.

    This was very daunting for me. I grew up with a severe stutter. I avoided speaking (not just speaking to an audience) at all costs. I felt shame, and was sure something was deeply wrong with me. Yet, by this time, I recognized my inner guidance. I knew what it felt like in my body, and I was being called to tell my story.

    I prepared for this calling in several ways.

    I worked with an Embodied Movement coach to cultivate the space in my body to hold my story. I found that even after all the inner work I had done through my life, my body was still holding on to remnants of old stuff that needed to be released. I was able to free up space in my body so that I could embody my story. This work was so powerful that when my coach offered her work to other professionals to learn how to incorporate it into their own work with clients, I took it, and now am able to use Embodied Movement Practices with my own clients to help them to move old feelings through, and make space for where life is calling them now.

    I joined Toastmasters, Video Mojo Toastmasters, specifically. Here I was able to not only learn how to speak in from of an audience, I learned how to create good quality videos, as well as how to create a You Tube Channel.

    I also worked with a voice and messaging coach. She helped me to speak with emotion in my voice without breaking down. Up until that time, I could tell my story, yet there was no emotion in my voice or face. It was one of the ways I protected myself from completely losing my composure. Learning how to tell my story with emotion, with vulnerability helps me to connect with my audiences.

    One of the myths of grief is that time heals all wounds.

    It’s a myth because it’s not just the time that heals; it’s what you do with that time.  Similarly, finding my voice, there were things I needed to do to use it effectively.  I learned how to embody my story, so I could tell it with vulnerability, confidence, and grace.

    Finding my voice not only assisted my to tell my story, it also helps me in my everyday life. I now speak up when I am compelled to speak. I’ve discovered that when I speak from my heart, I do not stutter.

    I’ve dismantled the shame.

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  • There’s More Than One Way to Get to the Park

    There’s More Than One Way to Get to the Park

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    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” anyway?) What if that’s not really who I am and I am really a fake?  What do you mean you found gifts in your grief journey!!???

    Have you ever had similar thoughts?  What I realized is that those thoughts are just that – thoughts or stories. In the past those stories have kept me from showing up fully as myself. I’ve done a lot of inner work to untangle those stories.  One thing I discovered is that;

    I needed to accept myself fully,

    I needed to accept the gifts that I received on my grief journey,

    I needed to sit with all of those questions that threatened to dismantle me before I felt comfortable bringing the fullness of who I am into my work and into every aspect of my life.

    As I write this I am reminded that there are many ways to achieve our goals, many roads to enlightenment.

    My grief journey was one of those roads for me.  I started down that road a long time ago as I worked to untangle and deconstruct old wounds and learn to live more authentically.  It was my grief journey that provided exactly what I needed when I needed it to continue on that road and step more fully into who I am.

    That reminds me of a story about Leah that I included in my book; There’s More Than One Way to Get to the Park. I’ll share it here for context.

    More Than One Way to Get to the Park

    When Leah was a child, she often did things her own way. When she was reprimanded in school, or compared to others, I didn’t want that to be a damaging experience for her. I wanted to show her that everyone’s experience is valid. She loved to go to the park near our house. The fastest way was a straight shot down 145th street. One day on our way there I took a different route. We started out in the opposite direction and went up and down streets on our way there. Leah kept asking me where we were going, and I said, “To the park.”

    “This is not the way,” she said.

    “Let’s see what happens,” I replied.

    We continued on our way, and soon we arrived at the park. She looked at me with excitement and ran to play. The next few times we went to the park, we took a different route each time. Sometimes it took longer, and we saw things we may not have seen going another way.

    The next time she complained that she was not doing things the way other people were, I told her that just as there was more than one way to get to the park, there was more than one way to learn math, or spelling, or even to get dressed. Then we’d search for a way that worked for her. That seemed to calm her fears that she was different than other people. She eventually learned to embrace her differences, and I am thankful that I was able to help her do it in such a simple way.

    I continue to use this lesson myself. Whenever I question my path, I always remind myself there is more than one way to get to the park and each path is valid.

    When you are questioning your own path, I offer you this wisdom from Leah and me.

    There’s more than one way to get to the park.

    When you take a look at your own life, what are some of the opportunities you have followed as you learned the lessons you needed to learn to become the person you were meant to be?

    Have you ever considered that everything you have experienced in your life have been important to your growth?  I didn’t either until I received the message shortly after Leah died that

    “Everything I experienced up until that point had prepared me for what was coming next.”

    At the time I thought it was only helpful practices like Samyama or other practices that supported me.  As I traveled further down the path of my journey I realized that it meant EVERYTHING, even the most difficult parts of my life.

    At first, I didn’t want to accept that fact.  How could difficult parts of my life serve my growth?  The answer seems obvious to me now, at the time though, I didn’t want to let those painful and difficult parts of me in. I wanted to push them away and concentrate only on the “good” or “positive” parts of my life. What I’ve learned is that all of my experiences, throughout my entire life, contain lessons that are valid for me only, and yours are valid for you.

    In the weeks to follow I’ll be sharing some of my “everything.”  In the mean time, what is your “everything”?

    What parts of your story do you want to hide or run away from?

    What would it be like if you gave all of those parts of yourself a seat at the table and gave them a voice?

    What would they say to you?

    If this sounds scary to you, I understand.  Nothing could strike me with terror more than a part of myself that was difficult to love.  What I learned though is that all parts of ourselves need and want to be met with love.  When I began to listen to the parts of myself that I didn’t want to love because they weren’t as desirable as other parts, I began to heal those parts of myself.

    It’s easy to love yourself when you are having a good hair day.

    What about all of the other times?

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