Main image by Ali Elliott on Unsplash I love maps and I love metaphors. I love maps, orienteering maps in particular, though ones of mountainous areas and other rough terrain will do. I like maps that use colours, and the larger the scale, the more detail of the terrain shown, the better. I also love […]
Multiple Losses
My New Favourite Grief Model(s)
Image by Олександр on Unsplash This week is the Climate Coaching Alliance Festival – from 3-8 March 2022. I’ve joined it for the third year running. I joined it in part because coaching with the climate and our planet’s well-being in mind is increasingly part of how I work. I joined it because coaching – […]
The Shape of Her in Her
Photos my own this week from the shores of Lake Geneva One of my favourite writing prompts in Megan Devine’s 30-day Writing Your Grief programme comes on Day 28. So close to the end, when much excavation of one’s ever-changing emotions, thoughts, feelings and sensations has already gone on. The prompt starts with a brief […]
The Grief Guard
Terrible things happen to people every single day but not everyone experiences terrible things. Some get to float through life without fear, loss or a bigger view of the world. Lucky maybe? However, true gratitude often comes from true grief. There’s a mindset now that any inconvenience is a huge struggle and so many are […]
Sometimes…
Sometimes when I come to reflect on what to write about each week, I just know. I know – yes – THIS is the incident, the thought, the feeling, the reflection, the conversation, the insight, the piece of wisdom that LANDED in my marrow. THIS is the poem, the quote, the text. THIS is the […]
Stains of the Heart
There have been moments this week where I’ve caught myself thinking more and more about the loss of my dad and Clayton. I had a friend from work pass away after being in the hospital. All I could think about was what his surviving wife was going through. Another coworker sadly lost his mother and […]
Creating the Community I Crave
Image from Soaring Spirits – Gordon, Michelle and me – Camp Widow, Toronto, November 2018 Back in the early days of widowing, as I heard the likes of Megan Devine talk about the importance of community, my reaction was something along the lines of “Hrrrmph”. I didn’t get it. I didn’t quite see how hanging […]
Throwing out decades of memories
Main image by Susan Q Yin on Unsplash Our house has long needed a lick of paint, new staining and varnish on wooden floors and stairs, mouldy patches on bathroom ceilings scraped off and refreshed with white paint, new lights/lighting, new curtains sewn so that they match better with whatever is around… And that […]
Choosing Love
Image by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash Writing inspired by January’s Monthly Prompt from Megan Devine & Refuge in Grief for Grieflings who have been through her 30-day Writing your Grief Programme https://refugeingrief.com/writing-your-grief/ “For decades, my parents have said they wouldn’t get new dogs or cats when the ones they had died. Their last dog died […]
If Only….
Photo our own – with our eldest child, Ben. I have many terrible dreams. Night-time dreams, I mean. My day-time dreams are much more enjoyable, pleasant, inspiring, life-giving. I am a light sleeper, which, I think, also means I dream a lot. Or I wake up a lot from my dreams, as I am having […]
2022 is the year of….Lovely Work
Image by Jen Theodore on Unsplash We are far enough into January now to no longer be seeing quite so many stories of New Year’s Resolutions. What a relief. I can better tolerate stories of New Year’s Intentions – which seem to be more flexible, more humane. Intentions seem to offer more malleability, more wiggle […]
“Go Get Yourself A Bigger Problem”
Photos by my friend Jane del Pozo Back in the early 1990s, I worked for a couple of years post-Masters, in a small consulting firm of organisational psychologists in Cambridge. One of my colleagues – let’s call her Terri – was a bullish, no-nonsense Aussie, who has stayed in my mind all these decades, despite […]