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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KINDNESS
A few days ago in a conversation someone said something to me that was not very nice. Then I sat back and witnessed my response to that comment. I felt compassion for this person, as she could not see or hear herself and how she was showing up. I knew this comment was untrue and therefore it did not hurt me. I stood still and listened, and then planned to find a way to turn the conversation…
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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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I Want to Be Like Normal People Again
Maybe I was always like this. I can’t remember. Maybe I never really tried to be fashionable, or beautiful. Maybe it was before the loss that I was like this. But I think however it was, it got much worse after and it never went back to how it was. I am talking about the simple ability to buy nice clothes, seek fashion, cute shoes and spending time on our physical appearance. Unless I have to go…
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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…
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Don’t Sleep on It
If you have read my book or took one of my classes you have heard about how I named our fear center in our brain The survivor self. For those of you who haven’t heard of this before, The survivor self is the part of us that keeps us in the waiting room. In the place between two lives. The life we left behind and the life we have yet to live. The second firsts life. The survivor self tries really…
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You Are Enough Without the Bending
I always believed that I was someone who tells it like it is. I have been called a tough cookie more times than I can count. I am the person people come to if they want to know the truth. So, when I discovered that I have been bending over backwards in my life I was very surprised. I was shocked to be honest with you. Completely and utterly shocked. But when I looked further in I saw it…
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