Dealing with Grief and Fears

My Mom, who had been diagnosed with dementia, was leaning up against the sink in the bathroom. Her soapy hands were under running water. I was reaching around her trying to gently use a nail brush to clean under her nails…

For weeks now, I had a feeling of foreboding. I felt stuck. I was burdening my friends with the same old rants. I was ruminating too much. I couldn’t forgive things from my past. I was filled with fears around the future. Could it be I needed to “talk to someone?”

This morning I am very much alive. I’m getting in my morning run, doing a little strength work and planning my next travel ventures. Still, that mental nudge comes every now and then. It says, “Be kind to your family. Make those decisions about burial, the remains of your days.”

Have you ever taken a cue from the ostrich to bury your head in the sand? Today that’s exactly what I’m doing. No TV news, no phone news feed alerting me of the political scene that is such a quagmire, no discussion with others on the latest atrocity…

Five years ago, we had a group of friends, most of whom were high achievers, over for dinner. Amongst our guests was a client, who had returned to Canada after working as a director at a hospice in California. I thought to tie in our dinner discussion…

Perhaps because my late husband was a pastor, some people thought they were helpful after Tom’s death to tell me, “God needed another angel in heaven.” (Wrong! I needed that angel beside me, not gone away.) Or they said, “I know exactly how you feel…

One of the songs I have always loved is When I Go by Dave Carter and Tracy Grammar, written two years before Dave’s untimely death at age 49. We all have different beliefs about what happens after we die. We also have different ideas…

Reading today’s title, you might want to throw your wine glass at me, but I assure you, there’s a method to my madness. I found it while considering a speech that many of us have heard, or read, from Nelson Mandela, as written by Marianne Williamson in 1992…

My mother passed away during the pandemic. She didn’t die from Covid-19. But because she died during the height of last year’s lockdown, we could not pay proper tribute to her life in the days and weeks following her death. One year on, we are finally…

Losing a spouse is one of life’s greatest challenges and an inevitability that many people will face. The ensuing grief from the trauma makes it critically important to have a clear approach towards financial decision making. Losing a spouse poses…