Posts Tagged: support

Kris Carr’s Golden Ticket

November 19th, 2013
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I recently wrote about some of the good things I learned about surviving a personal trauma in the ten years after my husband’s death (No Lifeguard On Duty http://crylaughheal.com/no-lifeguard-on-duty/).  After that post was published, many people told me they found it helpful to know how things feel ten years after a loss.

No matter how crazy and afraid you feel after a loss, it’s essential to keep trying to find the support you need until you discover a different way to live.  Even though change is the last thing you want to do, change is possible.  It feels as … Read More

Holiday Mash-Up

November 18th, 2013
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In music, mashups are when a performer or group combines the instrumentals of one song with the vocals of another song and then the mashup, or blending if you will, is played as a new song.  Sometimes it works and sometimes it flops. In retail, this is the time of year for practicing what I think of as a huge marketing mash-up.  Stores no longer wait for one holiday to almost happen and then stock the shelves with the decorations or products for the next holiday.  There is no longer any retail restraint with regard to holidays; it’s just throw… Read More

No Lifeguard On Duty

November 14th, 2013
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If you had told me ten years ago that it would take me this long to navigate my conflicting feelings of loss and truly come to grips with the fact that my husband died, he’s not coming back and I’ll never see him again, I would have thought you were smoking something and totally out there. In the beginning, I was just trying to survive which meant working a full-time job and raising a thirteen-year-old boy by myself.  I honestly didn’t think beyond the day I was in.  That’s all I could manage.  I constantly told myself that other women… Read More

Changing It Up

November 4th, 2013
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It is never too late to make changes in your life. You can be 22, 42, 62 or even 92 and suddenly decide it’s time for a change.  But you have to want it.  You can’t do it just because others want you to.  You need to make changes and take care of yourself for yourself. I was thinking about this because a wonderful friend of mine was discharged from the hospital this past Saturday after having her gall bladder removed on Friday.  It all happened very quickly and it was scary for a short time because we weren’t sure… Read More

Taxi Dad

November 1st, 2013
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Today’s post is a shout out to all of the men out there who have lost their wives or partners and are working hard to juggle the never ending responsibilities of working a paying job while raising their precious children. I think that women in this situation tend to receive more attention than men due to the sheer numbers of women who find themselves widowed with young children.  But men are also out there too doing their part and running around — as all parents do — trying to keep all the plates in the air. I was reminded of… Read More

Compassionate Action

October 30th, 2013
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Courtesy of Dave Allen Photography Thought For The Day “Tuning in to the needs and feelings of another person is a prerequisite to empathy which in turn can lead to understanding, concern and, if the circumstances are right, compassionate action,” according to Daniel Goleman, an author, psychologist and science journalist. I read this quote recently in a story about empathy in The New York Times and it caught my attention. Compassionate action. It reminds me of the Jesuit concept of social justice, which is acting on something you may see or feel that is happening to another person and then… Read More

The Great Possession Debate

October 4th, 2013
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Sometimes you find help in the most unpredictable places. Yesterday morning I was reading a column in The Washington Post called Home Front and came across a question from a reader that I thought was timely, on point and more importantly, one that we all probably will have to face at some point or another in our lives. The questioner wanted to know what to do with the possessions that once belonged to a loved one.  Specifically, the things that belonged to her father, who had recently died.  Inheriting a lifetime of someone else’s possessions can be overwhelming and increase… Read More

Dear Sugar. . . You Make It So Much Better!

September 25th, 2013
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Cheryl Strayed is one of my favorite authors.  I discovered her when I received her New York Times best seller, Wild, as a present this past Christmas.  From the first page, I was all in and couldn’t stop reading and definitely didn’t want her journey in Wild to end. I was totally drawn into every aspect of her memoir and in reading Wild, came to respect the amount of introspection and hard work she put herself through to bring that compelling story out of herself. No other writer that I know of delivers the goods about life and loss the… Read More

Never Look Away

September 19th, 2013
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When you consider the amount of emotional baggage we all carry around with us, it is amazing that we find love. Wounded though our hearts may be, we cannot fight the attraction and pull of another person who catches our fancy. Maybe you have been lucky and found love more than once. I found love with a small l a few times, but found love with a capital L only once.  It’s an amazing, powerful, crazy thing this love emotion that takes us over and keeps us going and truly defines our lives.  It is not to be treated lightly,… Read More