Dealing with Grief and Fears

Most of us carried a picture for years without realizing it. In the picture, our grown children live within driving distance. Sunday dinners are loud and crowded. The grandchildren sleep over on Fridays. Holidays come with arguments over who brings the pie, not over who isn’t speaking to whom…

The call comes and everything stops. My mother has been in the hospital twice in six weeks. Sepsis both times. I live far away, and I have been doing what I suspect many of you do. I have been future-tripping. Running through every possible scenario. Trying to think my way to an outcome I cannot control…

There’s a kind of grief we don’t talk about very much because, frankly, it can sound a little ungrateful. Nothing terrible has happened. No one has died. There’s been no diagnosis, no catastrophe, no dramatic ending. Your life may look perfectly fine from the outside. It may even be a life you worked very hard to create…

If you’ve fallen for a widower and can’t tell whether he’s ready, or you’re a widow thinking about dating again, most dating advice skips right over you. Grief keeps no schedule, and love won’t wait for it to finish. Here’s what 20 years of coaching has taught me about telling the two apart…

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…