With the rest of the world, I have watched the videos and news accounts of tragedy in Japan.  As if the earthquake and tsunami weren’t enough, the nuclear reactor explosions and subsequent meltdown are creating an industrialized disaster of unprecedented proportions. (more…)

One of the most striking features of soap operas is that the characters never seem to be scarred by their tragedies. They live through illnesses, miscarriages, adultery, multiple divorces, and deaths but, the next year, they move on seemingly unscathed. We’re willing to suspend disbelief because the fiction is so satisfying, so comforting, so unlike real life. (more…)

They come to the site broken by life, hearts crushed by emotional pain.  They have lost siblings, spouses, children, parents, best friends and lovers.  They come seeking support, assurance that they are not alone in their unbearable grief. (more…)

I gaze out my window and I see only snow . . . a wall of winter white . . . and the world shut down.  Schools and airports are closed.  Doctors and dentists have nothing but cancellations.  Retailers hibernate.

And once the storm has passed, we are launched into work:  snow blowing, shoveling, salting, and plowing.  I’m reminded that snow days, like grief, require a persistent energy. (more…)

My creative energies have been directed toward a lecture that I’m giving this week in South Carolina.  So I’m leaving you with one of my first blogs, but one that many of my readers have found touching . . . 

Harold is waiting to die.  There were six of us at his bedside in the county nursing home, leaning toward him singing softly, “Amazing grace . . . how sweet the sound . . . “  Tears in his eyes, he shook each of our hands saying, “Thank you, you don’t know how much that meant to me.”  Little did he know how much it had meant to us . . . ..how much he meant to me. (more…)