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What’s the Meaning of the Dash Between Born & Died on an Obituary
What’s the Meaning of the Dash Between Born & Died on an Obituary?
5 Steps To Writing A Baby Blessing
5 Steps to Writing a Baby Blessing: Writing a baby blessing prompts a sense of loving gratitude for the new addition to the family. As they grow older, even the wee little ones will express appreciation for the baby blessing that celebrates their worth to the family....
How To Write Wedding Vows
Declaring your love and devotion to the love of your life on your wedding day reveals the depth of the sentiments your heart holds before all who know and love you. Wedding vows are a serious matter. How to write wedding vows? Writing your wedding vows is a deeply...
Tell Your Own Story
Tell Your Own Story Like the Delaney Sisters' book, Having Our Say, The First 100 Years suggest: Tell your own story. Consider the advantage of telling your truth about yourself in the manner that best suits you. What would happen if each of us took ownership of our...
Falling In Love While Grieving: What Do We Do?
Falling in love while grieving: What do we do? What will become of us while suffocating beneath the weight of pain, anguish, and loss? Life will never again resemble our life before the love of our life got snatched away into eternity. Yet, amid the throes of sorrow,...
How To Celebrate Someone Who Has Everything
One of the most challenging decisions is how to celebrate someone who has everything. Every idea that crosses our mind gets halted by "She has that already" or "He did that last year." We struggle with how to express our love and affection for these beloved...
What Happens When Our Team Gets Redefined
What happens when our team gets redefined? Change isn't easy, especially when it's forced upon us. We don't appreciate when our control is ripped from our hands or pried from our grasp. It's a painful reality that change is unavoidable. What we become in the midst of...
How To Bloom Where We Are Planted
What does it mean when someone encourages us on how to bloom where we are planted? So many of us wish we worked somewhere else, lived somewhere else, or had a position that seemed better suited for our skill set or liking. Unfortunately, we are stuck in our current...
How to Remain Thankful After the Death of a Loved One
How to remain thankful after the death of a loved one: Realizing that we must purposely shift our perspective to focus on thanksgiving, we find that there's yet so much remaining in our lives that spark gratitude and appreciation. It's so easy to allow the loss of a...
Who To Choose As A Beneficiary?
Whenever we think of preparing for our end-of-life, an insurance policy comes to mind. However, few consider, “Who to choose as a beneficiary?”
When is the right time to pack up loved ones’ belongings after they pass away?
When is the right time to pack up loved ones' belongings after they pass away? To keep or not to keep is the pressing question. In all sincerity, there's really no subscribed time frame allotted for addressing what to do with a loved one's things. You decide when it's...
Live Your Best Life and Prepare For End of Life Too
Did you know that it's totally okay to live your best life here and now and still prepare for the end of life too? It's typical for most people to lean toward one of two directions: They live as though there's no cut-off date of their mortality, or they live with a...
Miracle of An Extraordinarily Ordinary Day
The miracle of an extraordinarily ordinary day occurs every time we notice some small wonder in a loved one's smile or when a fragrance or an aroma sweeps us away into a moment in time that warms our hearts. It's ordinary yet so extraordinary. We don't often consider...
Heartache Changes Us For Better or Bitter
Heartache changes us for the better or the bitter. Life delivers a fair share of disappointment, loss, and pain. It's unavoidable. No matter how hard we try to skirt discomfort, into each life, a little heartache will fall. We run the gauntlet facing a myriad of...
Make It a Page-Turner
Life brings with it spins and turns and unexpected hiccups along the way. No matter what life serves us, we face the challenge of making the most of it. In the midst of it all, we retain opportunity. Regardless of what we think about our current condition or...
What Happens To A Dream Deferred?
What happens to a dream deferred? What happens when our dream doesn't come in the time that we had hoped? Do we resolve that nothing shall come of it and give up, or do we determine that hope safeguards us against disbelief, so we keep believing? The beauty of this...
Protect the Sanctity of Life–Compassion Matters
Protect the Sanctity of Life--Compassion Matters Life matters: Consider the wonder of birth, the joy of growing up, and the satisfaction of serving and helping one another along this life journey. No man or woman or boy or girl is a lone island. Make your life story...
7 Lessons Kids Learn From Us After the Loss of Love Ones
Grief overwhelms our emotions, and the pain is too burdensome. How do children cope? Children process what they see and feel differently than adults. They learn to value the cycle of life, which includes a healthy understanding of death, from what they see and hear...
Despise Not Small Beginnings–Thrive
Love lost a life interrupted, and the axis of our world ceases to spin. We gaze upon the shards that used to represent our broken lives. Now, we must gather these shattered pieces of our lives after the death of our loved ones and harness the strength to begin again....
Each Day Matters
If we knew today was the last time we would have our vision, how much longer would we take time to capture every detail of our day and the expressions of the people around us. How much more would we slow down for the moments that happened today? Tomorrow holds hope...
Thriving In The Midst of Grief
Grief can take the joy of life away from us, and if we're not careful, indefinitely. Part of our heart goes into the grave with the person we love. We experience waves of emotion--highs, lows, and oh, so lows. In our logical minds, we know that we need to move...
6 Creative Ways to Honor a Loved One’s Remains
Today, there are myriad ways, but we will share 6 creative ways to honor a loved one's remains. Cremation as a means of burial has become more popular and acceptable over the past twenty or so years. However, the days of housing a loved one's remains solely in an urn...
What To Do With Feelings of Anger After Losing a Loved One
Why? This all-consuming question pounds its way into every corner of our mind after the death of a loved one, especially if that death is sudden. Exhausting sorrow and overwhelming anger become the bitter gall in our gut. We can't sleep. We can't eat. We sit holding a...
3 Tips For Living Beyond Grief
Three Tips for Living Beyond Grief Many of us anticipated and even braised ourselves for the worst Christmas ever this year. Our loved one is missing from the annual Christmas gathering, and this sobering reality makes us sad and angry. I want to share with you what I...
Two Numbers To Remember When In Distress
There are two numbers we must remember when in distress. In the hustle and bustle of living and planning our days, we appreciate and make use of all the modern technologies that serve to ease our endeavors. Under the umbrella of "work smarter, not harder," we rely on...
3 Things People Forget To Do Before Dying
It's a certainty that we each have a date with eternity, and if we're wise, we make arrangements to prepare for this often unwelcomed day. Most of us establish life insurance, and some of us may purchase a burial plot or crypt. Some of us discuss our last wishes with...
Handle With Care Those We Love: Life Has An Expiration Date
A package arrives, and it's stamped "Handle with care." How do we retrieve the contents of that package? With mindful care, right? We find ourselves even handling the box that contains the fragile item carefully. If we hold such regard for these tangibles, how do we...
Make Connection With Loved Ones, Not Separation (Part 1)
Make Connection With Loved Ones, Not Separation It's so important to make connection with loved ones, not separation. When brought into the world, we're born into a family that has immediate and extended family. Based on your family's tradition, you're taught the...
What To Do When A Loved One Wants No Funeral Or Memorial, Yet You Want to Express Gratitude
What To Do When A Loved One Wants No Funeral? Grief – – a sense of absence, loss, and longing. The unavoidable experience and sensation. If we aim to love and be free in our expression of that love, we are destined to experience grief. Amid this chaotic and...
How to Keep the Memory of a Loved One Alive
I never met my great-grandparents, but I know them. They're just as real to me as my grandparents, who've since gone on into the great beyond. One of our greatest fears--forgetting those we hold dear to our hearts. Even more, terrifying is the possibility of being...
Grief–Living the “New Normal”
"I'm numb." "I'm in a cloud so thick that I can't navigate my way through to the light." "This feels like a dream that I can't wake up from." After losing someone we love, beginning again leaves us feeling all of these emotions, and sometimes, these paralyzing...
Give Me My Flowers While I Still Can Smell Them
So often, we hear elders lament, "Give me my flowers while I can still smell them," but what does that really mean? What are they requesting for us to do? Simply put--show them our love and tell them what they mean to us, now. Why wait? Tomorrow isn't promised to us....
The Right Time to Prepare for End-of-Life
Car insurance. Home insurance. Renters' insurance. Medical insurance. Life insurance. Most of us responsibly prepare for the 'what ifs...of life. And then, from many years of negligence or inability to reimburse, the government insists that if we own a vehicle, it...
Facing the Final Cycle of Life
In the Lion King, the theme song The "Circle of Life" reminds us that life presents unexpected challenges and difficulties. Yet, it also offers opportunities for great hope and optimism, so be happy. Don't worry. Live life to the fullest. We're encouraged to celebrate...
Bucket List
I wish I woulda coulda shoulda done this or that. If I had more time, I would have.... Phrases like these dog the tracks of those who postpone and put off doing or experiencing life as they've envisioned it. But why? Why do we sometimes resign ourselves to living life...
Contact List or Contactless
Depending on your age, you may or may not know what it means to keep a hardcopy telephone book. If you recall those personal address books, you may envision smudged inked pages from so much use or remember earmarked pages or even certain worn-out alphabets hanging on...
Cross Your T’s & Dot Your I’s
One of the most challenging and stressful moments in life shows up when we come face-to-face with a mountainous task that looms over us. What makes for stress? What pounces upon us like a hungry lion in the bush? What overwhelms? Simply put--life circumstances coupled...
To Cremate or Not to Cremate–That Is The Question
In the not-so-distant past, our western culture frowned on cremation, but times are a-changing. What say you, "To cremate or not to cremate, that is the question"? Cremation seemed taboo growing up around Christian communities. When making arrangements with funeral...
Good Grief
"Gone, but not forgotten" may sound cliche, but reminiscing comforts us in ways that nothing else could dare to accomplish. Laughter and sorrow, memories of good times, keep us through all those lonely tomorrows. The reality of grief gnaws into every fiber of our...
Icy Cold & Rock Solid
What comes to mind when you hear, "She's cold as ice"? What image do you envision when someone says, "He's deaf to my pleas." When it comes to survival, I think we all have our way of handling disappointment and pain. Hardening ourselves for the next impending sucker...