When it all becomes too much
“There is sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep...
View ArticleIn the heart of grief, there is no grace
“And this evening when I close my eyes against the darkness and think about her, I’ll imagine iridescent wings fluttering, if only for a moment, against cloudless blue skies.” ― Nancy Stephan, The...
View ArticleMay my existence be the reason for an outline of bullets
It’s not like I didn’t know I’d turn 54 someday. Well, hopefully I’d hit 54, unless I got hit by a bus or lightning first. “Hit” is truly how this birthday felt, like hurtling face-first into cement....
View ArticleGod’s little weirdos help ease my grief
Shawn Taylor By SHAWN TAYLOR Like most things that begin this way, I’d hoped, even then, that it would have a more romantic ending. While a trendy resurgence in the breed’s popularity has them...
View ArticleGrieving like a child was my path to healing
You said move on, where do I go? Katy Perry When my brother, my only sibling, was taken by AIDS on March 10, 1994 at the age of 35 and I miscarried my long-awaited, desparately wanted unborn son just...
View ArticleLetters to my father
The morning I was born you held my hand. The morning you died I held your hand. What’s left to forgive? – Peggy Shumaker You went into hospice nine days after your 64th birthday. We didn’t know that...
View ArticleA holy thing
What a fearful What a holy What an achingly beautiful thing– To love. There is no falling in. It is an uprising, A rebellion of breathtaking glory. We are lifted Up. And yet we fall Again– And yet...
View ArticleTwenty three
And so I will lay you down In a field of grass, Sere and grey, Bending gracefully with the wind, And shadowing a hidden, twisted path That leads nowhere– Or everywhere. Back, Forever back, Until I...
View ArticleLaying Theo to rest
On November 9, 2013, early Saturday morning I was sitting next to my bed as my Beagle, Theo, lay dying. His breathing came out in rapid puffs with him gagging every so often. We had planned to take him...
View ArticleFaith enough
Over the course of a handful or so of years not too long ago, I managed to lose a little bit of everything – stuff, people, things of inestimable value to me – one thing after the next, again and...
View ArticleSwerving into traffic
Sherry Amatenstein, LCSW By SHERRY AMATENSTEIN, LCSW I sat pressed between my sister Barb and cousin Susan at Temple Beth-El in Great Neck, New York, fingers twisted around a Kleenex. I wondered if...
View ArticleHow will I react as death comes creeping in?
I can’t escape it. Everywhere I turn, it’s in my face. Whether it’s online, a friend, a book I’m in the middle of, or, as of recent in my own life, death is all around me. It’s not something I like to...
View ArticleAnd now I grieve for them all
Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life’s search for love and wisdom. Rumi I thought I knew...
View ArticleDips and waves — reaching for the life preserver again
The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God! Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment In the past two and a half months, my father died, I lost a precious...
View ArticleHead of Christ?
This past weekend, I had about an hour and a half of uninterrupted television time. It’s Easter season and I was trying to get in that cheery, “mob kills a man who then comes back from the dead to save...
View ArticleOne small hominid under an eclipsing moon and our perpetual reason for hope
“Hope” is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul And sings the tune without the words And never stops – at all Emily Dickinson Lunar eclipse — Credit: Steve Baroch — April 14, 2010 —...
View ArticleRemembering my friend
Last week I took a trip up to where two rivers (the Klamath and the Trinity) merge into one near the small town of Weitchepec, California. There are people up there that I love dearly, inlaws you see,...
View ArticleFor me, loss is like gunshot to a veteran
I watched West Wing, Season 2, Episode 10, on Netflix where Josh Lyman blows up at everyone because he relives the trauma of being shot. The trigger was the brass quintet that he “heard” as sirens. He...
View ArticleThe journey of adoption – lost and found, part one
If you do it right, children know they’re adopted from their earliest memory. Since I remember being 16 months old, I quite clearly remember the moment I was told I was adopted. It was before things...
View ArticleFirst-withouts – the ongoing anguish of grief
Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal. From a headstone in Ireland My Rob father and my Oliver father — both my REAL fathers. I get to define what is real....
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