Arlington Cemetary Allows Personal Mementos

October 18th, 2013
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Arlington National Cemetery has a heart.
Officials at the cemetery recently talked to families about their months long practice of leaving personal items on soldier’s headstones and Arlington is now compromising on its policies about leaving the personal mementos at gravesites.
Today’s post is an update of a story I  wrote about on October 3 discussing how staff at Arlington National Cemetery were collecting and discarding personal mementos left in Section 60 of the cemetery an area where soldiers who lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan are buried.  This area of the cemetery is where each visitor’s grief is … Read More

Amazing You!

September 26th, 2013
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A significant and ongoing part of the grieving process is learning what to do with the confusing feelings you experience. What am I supposed to do with the sad, angry, and surreal emotions I have inside me about the person who used to be in my life?  That person who was here yesterday, but is not here today, and won’t ever be here for a lot more todays in the future.  How can I turn those sad, angry, surreal feelings into constructive feelings so that I can make a future for myself? Acceptance of my new life and my new… Read More

It’s All About Our Stuff

September 5th, 2013
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Earlier this week I wrote about finding my deceased husband’s tweed jacket in the back of a guest room closet and what it felt like to discover it. Now, unfortunately, it’s time to say good-bye to his Irish wool jacket.  It doesn’t fit my son and the jacket doesn’t really hold any special meaning for him.  Even though it once belonged to my husband, I have arrived at that point in my life where I know I can’t save everything that holds meaning for me.  Some things you just have to set free into the universe. In my head, I … Read More

Insight From Grey’s Anatomy

September 3rd, 2013
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I was clicking around on Pinterest (which is truly a guilty pleasure!!!) yesterday and found this insightful and timely quote on one of my niece’s boards. How true! Grief is unpredictable!  And that’s why people don’t like to talk about it, or acknowledge it, and hope, hope, hope, that it will go away all on its own. But Cry, Laugh, Heal is all about having an honest dialogue about grief and resilience and sharing what helped me after my husband sadly died nine years ago.  I have found that time and support from friends and family have helped me but … Read More

Newtown On Labor Day

September 2nd, 2013
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Today is Labor Day and I have the day off from work.  YEAH!!! I hope you do too! Maybe you are planning to go to a friend’s house for a special holiday meal or you are going to cook for your family.  Or maybe you’re just hangin’ at your own house catching up on personal projects.  Or maybe you’re going to go to an afternoon picnic or watch a community parade. In Newtown, Connecticut today, there will be a parade.  A parade of love and community and healing. It will be same parade that thousands of residents have watched and… Read More

Tweeting A Mother’s Life

August 12th, 2013
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Over 340 million tweets are sent and read each day. In the midst of all those competing thoughts, messages and trending topics, Scott Simon posted a large number of tweets late last month that broke through the rush of chatter and caught the attention of  a large part of Twitter’s world wide audience. Simon, National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Saturday host, was sitting beside his mother’s hospital bed and relaying intimate, tender and immediate thoughts about his precious time with his mother in the last days of her life.   I can’t imagine having the clarity of mind to tweet… Read More

Within The Morning Light

August 8th, 2013
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I am an early riser.  I find the morning to be peaceful and so quiet.  I use my morning time to collect my thoughts about what I think is going to happen during that particular day and pray for other things that I hope will happen. So the morning is when a lot happens for me.  With my trusty cups of hot tea, I appreciate the solitude of the wee early hours of the day.  Quiet allows me to think and to breathe and pull myself together. I am always writing down blog ideas and collecting different points of view… Read More

Widow Chick

July 16th, 2013
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I don’t know the woman who writes the amazing blog called “Widow Chick” but I feel as if I do. She (aka Catherine) is to-the-core honest and humorous in writing about her daily travels as a widow and a woman who is trying to be Mom and Dad to three young children.  I regularly read her blog and it always gives me a boost! Widow Chick’s Husband Yesterday she wrote a particularly touching post about an important anniversary in her life and I would like to share it with you because she is right on point in expressing her thoughts… Read More

The Uncertain Path of Newtown’s Mourning Parents

June 10th, 2013
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It is rare for a national newspaper to begin a story on its Sunday front page that continues to run for five pages of with lots of pictures and is dedicated to the subject of grief. But that is just what The Washington Post did yesterday and Eli Saslow, who wrote and reported the devastating story, and Linda Davidson, who photographed the compelling pictures for the story, deserve a standing ovation for bringing much needed attention to what life is now like for the Barden family of Newtown, Connecticut, a family in the throes of raw, searingly painful grief as… Read More