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Navigating 5 Life Changes: Adrift at Sea

Posted on December 4, 2020 - by Mary Lou Meddaugh

This is an excerpt from Navigating 5 Life Changes: An Odyssey of Resiliency and Hope, available at: https://www.creativecoachingmethods.com/ “We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” — Joseph Campbell The year of yearning, learning and finding my way again began on September 11, 2011, the day my son and I drove in two cars from Western New York to Western Massachusetts, fourteen months after my husband’s death. The first year after losing my husband is all a foggy haze – I yearned for my “old […]

Navigating 5 Life Changes: A Major Loss

Posted on December 1, 2020 - by Mary Lou Meddaugh

This is an excerpt from Navigating 5 Life Changes: An Odyssey of Resiliency and Hope, which is available at: https://www.creativecoachingmethods.com/ “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson My life changed course on a sunny Saturday afternoon in May 2010. I was spending the day with my cousin visiting from Greece and had spoken to my husband on the phone mid-afternoon about dinner plans that evening. When I walked in the door, a little before 6:00, I called out his name, “I’m home, hon” – no […]

Navigating 5 Life Changes: Love, Loss and Renewal

Posted on November 28, 2020 - by Mary Lou Meddaugh

This is an excerpt from Navigating 5 Life Changes: An Odyssey of Resiliency and Hope, which is available on my website: https://www.creativecoachingmethods.com/ When we hear the word odyssey what images come to mind? A trip to a faraway place, a search for something, being gone for an extended period of time, a wandering as the Greek warrior Odysseus? (By definition an odyssey is oftentimes a long, excruciating and exhilarating journey, any extended wandering.) The odyssey metaphor seems like the perfect one for me because I felt I was “away” for a long time. The sudden death of my husband was […]

A Decade of Celebration of Sisters

Posted on November 27, 2020 - by Judy Lipson

November 1 would have marked a decade, the Grand Finale of Celebration of Sisters, an annual ice skating event to benefit Massachusetts General Hospital to commemorate the lives and memories of my beloved sisters Margie and Jane. Due to COVID-19 the event will be postponed until November 7, 2021. The time and energy put into the event, a void, a gap in my time, my emotions needed to channel my grief for my sisters whose birthdays come on November 6th and 8th, and the anniversary of the death of my sister Jane on November 7th. For the past nine years, […]

Navigating 5 Life Changes: An Odyssey of Resiliency and Hope

Posted on November 25, 2020 - by Mary Lou Meddaugh

This is an excerpt from Navigating 5 Life Changes, An Odyssey of Resiliency and Hope, which is available at https://www.creativecoachingmethods.com/ Preface to the Book A major life change has “an effect that is strong enough to change someone’s life.” (Cambridge dictionary). I have experienced five major life changes in a five-year period and all changed my life in ways I could not have imagined. First was the sudden death of my husband; second the selling of our home; third a corporate downsizing; fourth relocating to a new state, and fifth being diagnosed with a major life illness – cancer. These […]

No Freeway Between the Mind and the Heart

Posted on November 23, 2020 - by Greg Adams

Sometimes I come upon a passage in a book that on its own feels worth the price of the book. Here is that passage in That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour by palliative care physician, Sunita Puri: “There is no freeway between the mind and the heart; a statement of medical facts didn’t lead easily to acceptance. Acceptance is a small, quiet room, Cheryl Strayed wrote in an essay that I read and reread somewhere around the start of fellowship.” No freeway between the mind and the heart. That feels so true. The mind takes in […]

What to Look for in a Grief Companion

Posted on November 23, 2020 - by Dr. Beth Hewett

By Beth L. Hewett, PhD, CT When we’re grieving and want support from a grief companion, it’s important to choose helpers who understand grief, purposeful mourning, soulful and spiritual work, and grief facilitation. The following are a few things to consider when seeking such support. Guidance They can walk with us but not carry us or tell us where and how to go about our mourning work. They can make us aware of potholes in the road, and if we fall into the holes anyway, they can help us get back out to begin journeying again. They can host light […]

Navigating 5 Life Changes: Overview

Posted on November 23, 2020 - by Mary Lou Meddaugh

This is an excerpt from “Navigating 5 Life Changes,” An Odyssey of Resiliency and Hope” which is available on my website: https://www.creativecoachingmethods.com/ All Rights Reserved. First Edition. Copyright 2018 by Mary Lou Meddaugh My Odyssey is an inspirational self-help book in a memoir format. It is a personal story of love, loss and renewal through five major life changes and culminates in my coming home to the person I feel I am meant to be – my authentic self. My journey originates with the sudden loss of the love of my life, my husband. Over a period spanning 5 years, […]

The Spiritual Woman Arises From Daughter’s Death

Posted on October 30, 2020 - by Harriet Hodgson

The Spiritual Woman grew from life experience. On a snowy Friday night in February of 2007, my daughter died from the injuries she received in a car crash. Surgeons operated on her for 20 hours, but they were unable to save her life. On Sunday my father-in-law succumbed to pneumonia. His death was expected and, painful as it was, I could accept it. My daughter’s death brought me to my knees. Children are not supposed to die before their parents; it is against the laws of nature. Life is so unfair, I thought, and wondered if I would survive such tragedy. […]

Grieving Dads: Therapists and Other Resources

Posted on October 28, 2020 - by Kelly Farley

This is an excerpt from Grieving Dads: To the Brink and Back, which is available at Amazon. A grieving dad must face many hard truths after the death of a child, but for me, perhaps the most sobering one is the fact that I received more help from strangers than I did from people I knew. Maybe that’s why psychiatrists make so much money. After all, many of us are more comfortable talking about our problems to strangers than we are talking to friends or relatives. Alcoholics and gamblers, when you think about it, often find more real help in […]