It’s been an interesting experience, speaking so often and so publicly about my breasts. They’ve always been a fairly intimate and private part of my body, but that’s changed. I guess breast cancer does that. I didn’t do regular self exams, but if I did, I would likely have caught this lump earlier. I think…
I’ve been thinking about how healing happens, and I’m curious to hear people’s experiences about “miraculous” or “inexplicable” healings. At one level, there’s the Newtonian approach to healing, in which _things_ move around, changing shape, or quality, or relationship with each other. A broken leg heals when the bones knit back together. An infection heals…
Here’s a huge gratitude-filled update for all of you who have been sending love and healing to me through my prayer crystals. I’ve taken the crystals with me everywhere, and I sleep with them each night. They bring me great comfort, and I feel a strong connection to all of you who love and support…
It’s been a week now since I’ve shared publicly about my cancer diagnosis, and I’m moved beyond words at the wonderful love and support I’ve received. In this update, I talk about how I discovered the tumor, and why I’ve decided to delay surgery for a bit, so that all the different parts of me…
I got some big health news this week and I want to share it with you. It’s easier to talk about it than to type, so I’ve made a video to explain what’s happened. Thanks for listening
An urn is a ritual object, and the more the rituals around a death reflect the person who’s died, the more meaningful, and the more soul-healing those rituals are.
Grief is an energy, and it has a watery-ness to it. We know the feeling of overwhelming grief; it can feel like being flooded, we get more than we can handle, we drown in it.
What does a dead person look like?German photographer Walter Schels and his partner, journalist Beate Lakotta, documented people before and after their death. The work reveals much about dying – and about living.
Anger around a death is natural, and it’s powerful to allow anger into a grieving space, and to learn tools for moving it, and skills for meeting it effectively.
“I’m doing really well!” “I’m staying strong.” “I’m staying positive.” is often code for, “I’m not letting myself be sad. I’m not crying, I’m not allowing myself to grieve.”
My beloved cat, Luna, was killed by a car. The shock and grief were enormous, and here’s the story of her death and our ritual responses to it.
This interview explores a yogic perspective on the different types of death, how to prepare for death, and
the journey the soul takes as we leave the physical body.
We are not our bodies. We’re our souls. Our souls live in our bodies. Our souls can experience healing whether we’re in our bodies or not.
Perhaps one of the purposes of death is that it helps us release love. Big loss and big grief show us how much we really love each other.
Marnie wanted to find peace with the miscarriages, and to clear the family field of any blockages they may have created. She and her husband wanted a clean, clear, welcoming space into which to invite another child.
In the heightened emotion around a death, not having to make decisions about disposition can be a relief. It might also leave things hanging, ritually speaking.
Just as it does at a birth, the veil between the worlds thins during a death, and the other side of the river can become more visible.
The problem with trying to have a happy funeral is, that when someone we love dies, we aren’t happy, we’re sad. There can be parts of a funeral that have happiness. But when someone we care about dies, the normal and natural
