After your parent dies, you have an opportunity to think about your parent and yourself in a different light and resolve your relationship with them—an opportunity to come into your own, to grow into full adulthood and take responsibility for your own character and mature choices. You are nobody’s child…and your parent can no longer […]

Thanks for passing this story on to me, Ken. Their marriage was good, their dreams focused. Their best friends lived barely a wave away. I can see them now, Dad in trousers, tee shirt and a hat and Mom in a house dress; lawn mower in his hand, and dish-towel in hers. It was the […]

Ken, thanks for passing this story, with its words of wisdom, on to me: A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of […]

Just before she died, an extraordinary woman who had cancer told me you can never really know what dying is about until it is happening to you in a way that you know it is happening to you. Melanie Hack Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend Read an excerpt now TV Shows and […]

Death is not a problem to be solved or overcome, but rather a time for sharing meaning—an experience of awakening to the value of life. Melanie Hack Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend Read an excerpt now TV Shows and Clips about the Death of Cindy James

Those who study the effects of stress on marriages report that the death of a parent can put a great strain on a good marriage (if there is an inability or unwillingness to communicate feelings, one partner is left feeling excluded from the life of the other), so pay particular attention to your spouse. Go […]

Lately I’ve posted Blogs about being with the dying, changes in a dying person, signs of death and death of a parent. I’ve had many responses. Among them is one from a woman named Ellen, who has a daughter of her own. One thing that surprised Ellen was the difference between losing her father and […]

Imagine helping a friend on a journey to a remote monastery perched on top of a mountain. As you begin your trip, the path is fairly clearly marked and the goal easily seen in the distance. But as you approach, the tops of trees in the forests through which you pass often obscure the monastery. […]

During my walk this morning I was preoccupied with thoughts…sorrow over the sudden recent death of my aunt (my Mom’s delightful younger sister who, at age 86, passed away yesterday—like my mother, my aunt has Alzheimer’s but sadly Auntie would get very confused and panicky and couldn’t take it any more so she stopped eating), […]

Communication is: Reaching out to yourself in others, And allowing them to reach out to themselves in you. It is daring to share, And caring enough to be real. There is no Us against Them. There is only you and I and all that we can give one another. We are not here to be […]