Listen: Transformation Emerges

It was my long week of anniversaries: an adoption date, a wedding anniversary for a marriage that ended in divorce, and the eighth anniversary of my teenage son’s death by suicide. Annually, when this week cycles, I have learned to lean-in and ride the emotional wave, taking care of my…

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Five Years Later: Remembering “One Mother’s Dream”

The night before my son died, I opened mail, standing in the kitchen. My boy sat at a round table, watching. Soup heated on the stove. I had worked all day, and needed to attend a class later that evening. He had stayed home from high school, sick with the…

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A Dog Teaches Me To Trust Love, Trust Myself

Around ten pm, a few days before Christmas,  I sat cross-legged gazing through the burnished glass of a wood stove. Heat rippled toward my face. Flicking flames evoked emotions and memories: a needlepoint Santa stocking for a boy who no longer lives, the ending of a marriage I held precious,…

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We Remember. Lives In Review, 2009

November 4, 2009: Central Peninsula Hospital in Soldotna, Alaska, holds a remembrance memorial day. My contribution of spiritual care for the doctors, nurses, health care providers, staff, and families is to create “Lives In Review” — a one page snapshot of everyone who died at CHP or Heritage Place during…

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