Dealing with Grief and Fears

In this article, I’m going to teach you how to create a Personal Life Timeline. Once you create it, you’ll see clues from your life story that will help you to make changes, empowering you to create a better future. You’ll see before you a bird’s eye view of how your past was shaped. The ability to see themes, patterns, and connections…

This past Labor Day weekend, I stood in Minnesota surrounded by my sister, my husband, all four of my daughters, my two granddaughters, three cousins, and two uncles. Together, we shared stories, laughed, cried, and sprinkled my parents’ ashes in the state they once called home…

I had several milestone events that occurred during my husband’s bout with Stage IV cancer. I turned 60 the December before he died. Many friends came together and surprised me with a beautiful party, but I missed not having my husband there…

If you’re over 60 and finding yourself grieving a relationship with your adult child that technically hasn’t ended – no fight, no falling out, just… distance – you are far from alone, and there’s a reason this particular grief is so disorienting. Most griefs we’re taught to recognize have a clear beginning: a death, a diagnosis, a divorce papers signed. This one doesn’t…

There is a particular kind of grief that doesn’t have a funeral. No one sends flowers when your favorite restaurant closes after 50 years. There is no ceremony when the beach bar where you spent a hundred perfect afternoons nails a sign on the door and goes quiet forever. My wife and I created so many memories…

After my husband Tom died in 2007, I remember how quickly the world seemed to move on. There were flowers, cards, casseroles, hugs, and kind words from people who truly cared. I was grateful for every gesture. In those early days, love often arrived in practical forms – a meal, a note, a hand on my shoulder, someone sitting quietly beside me when there were no words…

You don’t always know what will carry you through grief until you’re in it. For me, it wasn’t advice or distractions or even time – at least not at first. It was writing. In the quiet moments, when the house felt too still and the weight of loss pressed in, I found myself reaching for a pen…

If you live to be over 60, loss is inevitable. I anticipated the loss of my parents, knowing the day was looming when they would pass on as part of the natural order of life. What I didn’t prepare for was losing my sister, Linda…

By the time we reach our 60s and beyond, we’ve lived many lifetimes within one life. We’ve loved, built careers, raised families, created identities and, inevitably, we’ve also experienced loss. Some losses are visible: the death of a loved one, the end of a marriage, a career shift…

I have been interested in death for a long time. I am not a morbid person or even a pessimistic one, but I like preparing myself for what is to come. My interest started 30 years ago when I became close friends with a very reflective young man dying from AIDS. We ended up…