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Posts tagged with “death”

Dealing with Loss: 3 Uplifting Truths About Death and Grief

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“Don’t be afraid of death; be afraid of an unlived life. You don’t have to live forever; you just have to live.” ~Natalie Babbitt

I stared at my reflection in the mirror as my face contorted into a painful grimace, tears streaming down my cheeks. My throat constricted to keep the sobbing at bay. My grandmother was dying, and this is how I coped with death: by falling apart.

I was lucky; this is the way death is “supposed” to go. Grammy was 96 and had lived out her old age in comfort.

While I knew I would miss …

What Makes Life Worth Living: Create Tiny Epic Moments

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“One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching.” ~Unknown

What do you think you’ll see as you lie dying?

Upon first reading this quote, I thought “Unknown” was talking about living life large. Filling days with great achievements and big moments. Going for it. Having no regrets.

I lived much of my life to create those major moments.

And maybe that is what “Unknown” was talking about.

But it’s no longer what I’m talking about when I think about the worth of my life.

High school English teacher Monique Cassidy wrote about a short …

How Feeling My Pain Made Me Feel More Alive

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“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.” ~Kenji Miyazawa

I used to run from pain.

My father died suddenly when I was six. For years I stuffed it down, never letting anyone know my emotions, how I was feeling, and I ran from situations that could cause me to lose, to feel pain.

My heart would jump and feel fear every time I received bad news or a “bad” email from a boss. I only wanted to feel good things. I stayed out of relationships for fear of the eventual loss and bad feelings, …

Be the Hero of Your Story: Make Your Life Count

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“Bad things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most precious gift I have—life itself.” ~Walter Anderson

Flying. I love flying.

No, I’m not some sick person who likes getting strip-searched by TSA, or waiting several hours to board a flight that should have arrived at my destination already. I hate that part, but I love the part when the plane …

Finding Life Through Death: How Loss Teaches Us to Appreciate More

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“If you learn from a loss you have not lost.” ~Austin O’Malley

The police officer walked toward me, leaving the multi-car accident behind him as he placed a bloody wallet in my hand. He asked me to open it up and verify that this property was indeed my best friend’s, who also happened to be my only brother.

At that very moment, the world I had so carefully crafted around me shattered, and became an unfamiliar and unwelcoming place for me. My parents divorced within months of him dying, and I used his loss and their separation as an excuse …

Letting Go of Fear and Living in Peace

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“Peace cannot be kept by force.  It can only be achieved by understanding.”  ~Albert Einstein

I sat in the waiting room of the dermatologist’s office waiting to be seen. For years I have had skin problems, from fungal infections to dermatitis. But when my dentist noticed an indentation the size of a mosquito bite on my upper lip that had not healed in the five weeks since I had seen her, she sent an urgent message to my primary care physician.

The next day, I was seen by my primary care physician and referred immediately to a dermatologist. The medical …

5 Lessons from Death to Help You Create Joy, Passion, and Meaning

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“One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching.” ~Unknown.

Death is something many of us fear. Perhaps not so much our own death, but the mere thought of losing a loved one can be heartbreaking.

On Sunday May 5th, my grandma had a large stroke. She’d baked her last cake, shared her final story, and within the blink of an eye, she was gone. Six days later her life ended, in a hospital bed, surrounded by her loved ones.

She was not only my grandmother, but also the grandmother to five others, …

Forgiving People Who Show No Remorse: Have You Suffered Enough?

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“That which I do not forgive in you, lies unforgiven within myself.” ~Buddhist Proverb

When I decided to forgive the driver that killed my nine-year-old son, I struggled to believe I could or should.

In the beginning of my grief I had so much anger toward her, and because she was not showing remorse, I wanted to find ways to punish her so that she would be in the same pain that I was.

She did not come forward to say she was sorry or try to meet up with me after the accident, and this was hard for …

How Death Teaches Us to Live Fully: 7 Enlightening Lessons

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“We meet but briefly in life, if we touch each other with stardust, that is everything.”  ~Unknown

We had baked chicken and mashed potatoes with gravy that evening. It was the kind of hearty meal that warms you up on a damp March night.

As I said goodnight, I couldn’t have imagined that in just a few hours I would return to my parents’ house and everything would be changed forever.

But so it goes. Nothing in life is permanent.

I’ll never forget that phone call. I felt everything drain out of me and then it seemed as though …

Let Go and Experience Life: 8 Ways to Stop Living in Crisis Mode

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“I vow to let go of all worries and anxiety in order to be light and free.” ~Thich Nhat Han

My dad had been ill, in and out of the hospital for a couple of weeks, when my mother called with news that he had been airlifted from their local hospital to a larger regional medical center. My dad suffered from Crohn’s Disease for nearly fifty years at that point and was experiencing severe abdominal pain believed to be from a perforation of his bowel.

We would learn over the next few hours that even surgery to remove a malignant …

How to Bounce Back from a Hard Time and Come Out Stronger

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“How we remember, what we remember, and why we remember, form the most personal map of our individuality.” ~Christina Baldwin

Look in the mirror. Who returns your gaze?

Is the face looking back at you a fulfilled being, or a mere shell of longing for something better?

If you would’ve asked me these questions a year ago, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you.

Fresh out of college and on a mission to convince my ego of its importance, I began down a path that, unbeknownst to me at the time, would teach me more about myself than I’d …

Make Sure You’ll Smile When You Look Back on Your Life

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“The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.” ~Carl Rogers

I had just gotten settled into my hospital bed after two hours of preparation. I had 32 electrodes taped to my bandage-wrapped skull, plugged into a machine that monitored my brainwaves, with just enough room to go from the bed to the bathroom.

After two ambulance rides and multiple seizures, I needed to find out what was going on with my brain.

The full diagnosis of my disease was still unknown then. The doctors told me it could be serious …

Dealing with Loss and Grief: Be Good to Yourself While You Heal

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“To be happy with yourself, you’ve got to lose yourself now and then.” ~Bob Genovesi

At a holiday party last December, I ran into a friend from college who I hadn’t seen in twenty years.

“What’s going on with you? You look great!”

“Oh, well… My mother passed away and my husband and I divorced.”

“Oh Jeez! I’m so sorry,” he said. “That’s a lot! So, why do you look so great?”

Perhaps it wasn’t the greatest party conversation, but I did with it smile.

“It was the hardest year of my life, but I’m getting through it and that …

How to Find Happiness Through Gratitude When Life Gets Hard

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“In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.” ~Brother David Steindl-Rast

In the summer of 1993, my father was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor.

He was only fifty-eight. Still just a kid.

This was a devastating development, to say the least. Things had already been challenging for my family for several years before this blow.

Dad had lost his corporate banking job in Boston—quite unjustly, in our view—kicking off a nearly three-year-long bout of unemployment.

This was not an easy time for our family, but we …

Brushes with Mortality: 5 Lessons On Dealing with Hard Times

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“When we come close to those things that break us down, we touch those things that also break us open. And in that breaking open, we uncover our true nature.” ~Wayne Muller

As someone with a serious chronic medical condition, I have danced with mortality. Many times. It wasn’t until our most recent pas de deux, however, that I truly understood just how much this dance could impact me.

Nowhere was this more apparent than in my work as a hospice volunteer.

The mission of the San Francisco-based Zen Hospice Project—a Buddhist-inspired organization where I have volunteered for five …

Moving Beyond the Pain of Losing Someone You Love

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“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”  ~Rumi

Our son Nathan was nine years old when a car hit him. He had massive head injuries as a result of his accident. Doctors told us that …

A Lesson About Love Learned from Both Joy and Tragedy

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“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” ~Albert Einstein

A couple of months ago, I had one of the best and worst weekends in a very long time.

My best friend for the last 15 years was getting married, and I was in the wedding party. We spent most of the weekend eating, drinking, laughing, and reminiscing, and above all celebrating a beautiful love story of two very wonderful people.

It was particularly special to me, as earlier this year my …

5 Tips to Help You Embrace Extreme Change

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“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance” ~Alan Watts

My obsession at an early age became to follow my heart—a life’s search for meaning, adventure, and enlightenment.

This search has been remarkable, a journey that has brought me to fascinating places for extended stays (Japan, the UK, Australia, you name the place) and has led me to relationships with some of the most interesting, loving people from around the globe.

As exhilarating the feeling of following your heart can be, it’s not always the yellow brick …

The Ultimate Letting Go: Release Your Fear and Be Free

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“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.” ~Norman Cousins

It seems on some level we must know that nothing lasts forever. That knowledge must be built into our DNA; surely our cells know their own mortality, that entropy is an unavoidable fact of life.

So why do we fight the inevitable? Why do we crave security and consistency? Illusion that it is, we look for promises where it’s not possible for them to be made.

We buy all kinds of insurance, telling ourselves that if we spend that …

Death and Grieving: Breathing Through the Feeling of Loss

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“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” ~Dr. Seuss

The color brown has special significance to me; it’s the color of the robes that my teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh and the monastics wear. It’s the color of my children’s eyes. It’s the color of the soil I like to dig in and plant things. It’s the color of my dog, Jake’s, paws and eyes and eyebrows

My husband came home today with a chocolaty brown gift bag. I could practically smell chocolate just looking at it. I find the color brown to be so comforting, so…grounding—and sometimes so …