Dear Anxiety Let’s Talk About You
It happens in your whole beingness, deep down and within every layer of your body. It pulls from inside out, and your whole world around you spins like a maze feels, when you step into it. Your life becomes fearful. Out of control. Unlikable. This feeling overrides any goodness that comes your way. It becomes the primary experience because it is a physical manifestation of your emotions. Everyone…
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Do What Will Get You Through This Holiday Season
There is no positive way to look at the holidays after loss. I really tried. I know this is not your typical self-help talk. I can give you all the positive words and ask you to do your best, but you and I know it won’t work. You know the work we do here is about realistic expectations and real help. This is not a movie where everyone ends up with someone to love during the holidays. Sometimes it…
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Take a Really Deep Breath
There is a place deep inside of you that yearns for love and calm. This place has not been heard during the last few days during the unrest of our world. Today, I want to take you back there, where you can reclaim your calm and find your own way home. Close your eyes and take a really deep breath. The breath is one of those breaths where you let go of all that you have been holding on to. You…
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For Erin…
I was writing a different Message in a Bottle yesterday, getting it ready for you all and in the midst of it, one of our beloved members of our Life Starter community passed away very unexpectedly. I have been crying ever since. You see, Erin had come to us years ago during one of our very first classes. She had so many struggles, but no matter what was going on in her life she found the time and…
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Grieving Inside the Waiting Room vs Outside
What is the difference between grieving inside the Waiting Room vs outside? Someone in my Life Starters community asked me this question this week. So, I thought this is an answer I want all of you to have. There is an element of daring life again when we go and cry on top of a mountain. There is a roar that takes place within us when we scream under the stars. The roar gets silenced when we hide…
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Sing Along with Frank
“Well, Marianne, it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you reach mine...” wrote Canadian wordsmith Leonard Cohen in the New Yorker this week about his failing health and the love of his life passing away. I am so close behind you...that…
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A Little Bit of Cursing After Loss
This letter might shock you just a little. I am going to be using a curse word and want to warn you. Every week I share with you my own life experiences and use them to write this letter. Well, here’s what happened the last few days. All of a sudden I started using the F word in my conversations. And it is important for you to know that I don’t swear. Like I never do. I am one of those people who…
3 Comments4 Minutes
There Are Many Frontiers After Loss
Life after loss is a work of art. It takes decades of creating. It roars behind the clouds and screams at night in our souls. It is the most powerful human experience. And it always lives outside time and space. It is that strong. It can shift the human experience and take it outside of all the illusions. But because of its strength we need to be ready for when we get stuck, inside the waiting…
4 Comments4 Minutes
The Half Step…
There will always be setbacks, especially in the beginning. When I say beginning, I mean the first 2 to 3 years after loss. Sorry I didn’t say six months or one year. That is not even the beginning, that is the aftermath. So, in the first few two years it will feel as if you are not moving forward. You will be taking at least two steps back and maybe a half step forward. But that half step is…
1 Comment3 Minutes
The Walk
What if you wake up a little earlier in the morning to go for a short walk, just until the summer is over. Before the kids wake up. Before your work day begins. Before anyone needs something from you. What if you put on your running shoes, your jogging pants and walk out the door. A cup of coffee or tea at hand on your way to breathe the air, take life in. Looking for the sun, hearing the birds…
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