Befriending Grief

Website Mentorship YouTube Circles Individual Support Dear Reader, When I think back to the many losses I’ve experienced, I’m reminded of how deeply they’ve changed me. I know I’m not alone in that. While your losses may look different from mine, every one of us encounters transition - both big and small - and every transition carries with it some form of loss and grief. The only constant through a lifetime, it seems, is change. There is often a line drawn through the big transitions of our...

Website Community YouTube Facebook Instagram Dear Reader, As October draws to a close and we move into November, we enter a season that many cultures and spiritual traditions have long recognized as a sacred time of remembrance. There is an ancient knowing that during this time of year, the veil between the living and the dead grows thinner, making it a little bit easier to feel a deeper connection with those who came before us. I've always been drawn to the mystery of this season, and...

Website Community YouTube Facebook Instagram Dear Reader, One of the things I love most about facilitating my in-person grief circles is bringing elements of nature into our gatherings. I often collect leaves, stones, branches, and other little treasures to create a nature mandala that becomes part of our shared experience. Here's one from our last circle ... I believe nature has so much to teach us about ourselves. After all, we are nature, too. Recently, while gathering oak leaves from a...

Website Community YouTube Facebook Instagram Dear Reader, As I sit writing and gazing out the window, I watch the treetops sway in the wind, their leaves in various stages of letting go. Some are still green, others brilliant shades of yellow, orange, and red, while many have already made their way back to the earth. As I move through another fall season marked by the anniversaries of my parents' deaths, I've been reflecting on the ways grief shifts and changes with each passing year. The...

Website Community YouTube Facebook Instagram Dear Reader, I just have to say ... I was overwhelmed with gratitude by the responses that I received after my last writing. I think it hits a cord when we are vulnerable enough to be honest about what we are moving through! I know that I truly appreciate hearing those stories and perspectives from others - the stuff that makes us human. As I continue to begin again, I have decided to reinvent the way that I communicate. Some of you want to read...

Dear Reader, As we approach the upcoming Mother's Day weekend, I've been thinking so much about my own mom .. as well as my role as a mom .. This time of year has a way of bringing so much to the surface - love, gratitude, longing, grief… sometimes all at once. It can feel tender in ways that are hard to put into words. If this season is touching something in you, I want you to know you don’t have to move through it alone. I’m offering a free Mother’s Day Grief Circle this Thursday, May 7th...

Dear Reader, I hope you and your heart are navigating this crazy world with as much love, compassion, and kindness as you can muster, for yourself and for your community. That really does feel like what is needed most right now. I do not have any answers for what ails the world, but I know I feel most grounded when I stay close to what is in my immediate orbit: my family, my friends, my neighbors, and my life's work. Speaking of my life's work, I have been moving through a big, sacred turning...

Website Community YouTube Facebook Instagram Dear Reader, I think it’s safe to say that the state of the world, our country, and my home state of Minnesota (okay, now Wisconsin, though after so many years in Minnesota I consider myself a “dual resident” lol) are all moving through massive transition and upheaval. To put it mildly. After weeks of trying to navigate social media and the news, with the last several days in particular being especially upsetting, I’ve been asking myself a familiar...

Website Community YouTube Facebook Instagram Dear Reader, I hope this finds you in some stage of recovery after the holiday season - so much easier said than done, right?! It's so tempting to jump right back into the grind. Grief and winter have very similar qualities. Neither asks much of us in terms of effort. Instead, they invite a slowing of pace and a turning toward subtler energies: rest, contemplation, and a way of being that values being over doing. Part of this winter “beingness” can...