Articles about overcoming crisis, grief and resilience and using pain and loss as a catalyst for renewal.
Is your work making you sick? A majority of people who come to see me are on burnout leave from their work. They are stressed out, literally sick from work and don't know where to turn. The stats are appalling: 50% of people across industries experience burnout. This is not a sustainable way to work, but there is another way.
Bronnie Ware spent years along-side people who were dying in palliative care. She spoke with them about what they wished they had done differently. She revealed several themes in her ground-breaking book, Regrets of the Dying. The number one regret was the wish to have had the courage to live the life they knew they were meant to live.
Tune in now as I speak with my friend and mindfulness advisor, Doris Schöneberg, about our feelings, reactions and personal approaches to healing after this week's elections in the US.
This morning, a phone call woke me up before dawn. As I stumbled in the dark half asleep trying to reach my cell, the call went to voicemail. When I listened to the message it dawned on me that this was not a random call, but rather a well played message from the beyond.
“My heart is drenched in wine, you will be on my mind forever” Norah Jones Loss. It is all-consuming. We see it all around us. The media is filled with its images and the Haiti earthquake is a painful reminder to us all that loss can strike at any moment. When loss hits close to home, it cuts deep, leaving us with a sense that it will be with us forever. But the point is that we are not meant to escape from its heartbreaking grip. We are meant to work through our pain and loss, because it is through loss that the most incredible opportunities for growth and renewal occur. […]
Watching the movie Groundhog Day again, I was surprised to realize it was filled with metaphors about life, love and conscious evolution. The motivation and reward for the main character's conscious awakening was love. Often romantic love, parental or other love bonds can help propel the soul to evolve. I experienced this in my own life with my husband, Bob, who died over a year ago.
History has proven time and time again that the resilient nature of the human spirit will ultimately triumph when faced with adversity. Although challenges present themselves in a variety of ways, few of us are untouched by adversity. When we find ourselves in difficult times we must refrain from seeing ourselves as the Captain of a sinking ship but rather at the helm of a vessel that is riding a wave. The waters will be calm again for such is the natural ebb and flow of life.
We need not shy away from darkness, nor do we need to suppress our journeying through darkness. To ensure that we don’t get stuck in a state of emergency, but rather continue in a state of emergence, we need to bring in the light of wisdom, discernment and inner knowing. This Light combined with the loving energy of creativity, passion, service to others, and joy will help complete our metamorphosis.
Shock, Assessment, Plan, Support, Rebuild I wrote this article in January, 2009, over a year and a half ago. According to my web stats, it is one of my most read posts. I remember when I was writing it, our family was going through a person crisis, as my husband battled cancer. At the time, I considered titling the post, “What fighting cancer has taught me about coping with the current economic crisis”. I decided not to, because I didn’t feel it was appropriate to bring in my personal story and experiences into a public blog (have my perceptions of social media ever changed since!). Yet, as I was writing it, I realized how much the coping mechanisms for any crisis (whether personal, professional, global or local) have many of the same aspects when it comes to how they affect us and how we react to them. I am sharing this post again here today, because I hope it will help anyone who is trying to cope with a difficult crisis in their lives – [...]
“The world we knew as children is still buried within our minds. Our childlike self is the deepest level of our being. It is who we really are, and what is real doesn’t go away.” Marianne Williamson Life never ceases to amaze me. I constantly experience synchronicity. And with each experience, I receive transformative healing and awakening. Last Sunday, I was feeling alone in my silent reverie, reflecting back nine months to the day when my husband passed away. Just at that moment, the door burst open and the sounds of excited young boys filled the room. “Mom, we have a mouse. He is almost dead,” states my 10 year old son. “It looks like Spirit (our cat) got him.” When I looked into the faces of my two sons and their friend, I saw such immense compassion and eagerness to help this little injured animal, it took my breath away. I stifled the deeply domesticated voice inside me that wanted to scream, “Get that thing out of my house!” and instead, I asked the [...]
