It is with such deep sadness that I write this post. Today a local teen has passed away from a car accident and his two friends, also in the accident, are in critical condition. And for them, grad was only a few months away. I am a mother of two teens…and this tragedy has struck […]

The following story caught my eye because the woman was intensely fearful of the water…just like my sister, Cindy—who also died mysteriously. Natalie Wood (the actress) died in 1981, by ‘accidental’ drowning, while boating off Catalina Island near the California coast. She was found wearing a long nightgown, socks and a jacket. I always thought […]

“Have somebody rip your heart out and hold it in front of your face and just have them squeeze the life out of it. That’s the only way I can express that kind of a pain. Like…it’s torturous,” thirty-eight-year-old Tammy Marquardt said today when asked about how it felt to be wrongly convicted of murdering […]

Sometimes, in the aftermath of a natural disaster, there just isn’t time to properly grieve…like right now in Japan where there are too many bodies (or unidentified bodies left unclaimed, or no declarations of death because over twelve thousand missing persons haven’t been found) because of the recent earthquake and tsunami. Typically, Japanese tradition includes […]

As Martha Hickman explains: “One bright summer afternoon, while our family was on vacation in the Colorado Mountains, my daughter, who by now had grown into a beautiful young woman of almost seventeen, fell from a horse and died.” In the following excerpt from Martha’s writings, Martha talks about herself in the third person as […]

There ARE stories of survival in Haiti (after Tuesday’s earthquake): …The thirteen-year-old girl named Bea who heard cheers of joy when she was pulled from the rubble (sadly the bodies of four members of her family lay nearby). …A trapped security worker pulled from beneath the rubble of the United Nations compound after a 15-member […]

I didn’t know Simone but my heart and prayers go out to her family and friends. I’ve heard such wonderful stories about her—she sounds like she was an amazing and outgoing person with a beautiful smile! My daughter is in the same high school (although three grades below Simone) and I’ve heard how difficult it […]

What I read in the newspaper headline wasn’t that alarming: “Toddler wiggled out of Mom’s arms” it said. But it was the story that made me cry because, as a mother having teenagers, I could relate to when my children were young—to imagine holding my 15-month-old infant and have him wiggle out of my grasp […]

Whether an anticipated death like that of Farrah Fawcett who’s battle with cancer was shared with millions of people on May 15, 2009 in a two-hour documentary called Farrah’s Story, or the personal battle of a close family member, or a sudden death like Cindy’s or Larry’s, or the grief of something intangible, none are […]

Asa Hill, a 7-year-old boy who loved to sing and dance, wanted his parents to marry. This past Monday that wish came true…in a service with 1,100 people and with hundreds more overflowing onto the church lawn where sound systems were set up so they could hear the service. Monday also happened to be the […]