Posts Tagged: resilience

Re-Shuffle Please

June 8th, 2012
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Alex Katz Painting
The amazing thing about grieving is that it blows all the unimportant stuff right out of the water.

When it happened to me, the contradictory feelings of grief immediately rearranged my priorities and what I once thought was important wasn’t anymore.  New stuff appeared at the top of my priorities list after my loss.  Things I thought were important suddenly didn’t matter, and other things I didn’t seem to have time for before, I now made time to do.

Life dramatically changed, life tragically changed and everything mixed together and changed its order.  Life re-shuffled.  I now

… Read More

Finding Joy

May 30th, 2012
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Fear less, hope more; Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more; Hate less, love more; And all good things are yours.… Read More

Vice President Joe Biden’s Grief Journey

May 29th, 2012
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Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, at an event organized by Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS) Vice President Joe Biden emotionally extended a helping hand to military families last Friday by sharing how he endured the death of his wife and daughter and revealed that at that time his grief took him to a place where he understood for the first time how people can consider suicide to be a viable option. Whether you agree with Biden’s politics or not, his remarks were striking and intimate. Grief and how it feels is not a subject you expect… Read More

Call Me Maybe — Girls on 9 Edition

May 7th, 2012
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Put your shades on and wear something fun today!! It’s Musical Monday and the first full week in the Magical Month of May! It’s also almost Summer and when summer is right around the corner, that means it’s almost time to bring on the BEACH! For me, every summer has a signature song and I know this song below will be playing on A LOT of iPods at the beach.  The daughter of one of my very good friends made this video and I thought it would be a great way to start the week because it’s so upbeat and… Read More

Never Lose Hope

May 3rd, 2012
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I am always searching for ways to simplify my life and focusing my outlook on the positive. When I read this quote from Pulitzer Prize winner Tomas Transtromer, the beauty of his message struck me immediately and brought to mind the flittering and lightness of butterflies. As we read Transtromer’s quote, may we think of ourselves today as butterflies, circling through the air with our friends and family, full of the knowledge that in time we can create a new future and develop new meaning from a personal loss. “The caterpillar feet were gone, the wings unfolded.   One should never… Read More

Taylor Swift — Why Ya Gotta Be So Mean?

April 23rd, 2012
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It’s the beginning of a new work week and I’m going to be singing this Taylor Swift song to myself all day long. There’s something about this song that helps to keep me chugging along.  Instead of getting worked up and reacting to situations I can’t do anything about, I’m going to be humming this song to myself and staying mentally cool, calm and collected. At least that’s the plan for now!  So Monday, bring it on and let’s get goin’:… Read More

The Slip Slide of Time

April 19th, 2012
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Time just seems to slip slide away when you find yourself navigating a loss. I’m not talking about how quickly time can seem to go while living our lives.  I’m talking about the strange sensation that where time seem to go back and forth between the past and present while trying to recover from a loss or a trauma.  It seems to slip slide all over the place.  When I feel this happening to me, I take it as a sign that my life needs to slow down a bit and be experienced in smaller increments.  Thinking about the future… Read More

Looking For Serenity

April 16th, 2012
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Resilience is having the ability to bend with change and when I am working on building emotional resilience within myself, I am reminded of Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous serenity prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. I have found it best to start in small ways.  Almost every day, I try to examine what has happened and why.  Not in an overly analytical way, but in a way that makes me more aware of my responses and behaviors.  One way… Read More