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No one wants to see a kid hurting but the truth is, life brings bumps and bruises and loss … and kids get hurt just like adults do.

Unfortunately, too many of us grew up in homes where children’s losses and children’s hurts were mocked and minimized.  We were told that we’d know what real hurt felt like when we grew up…  If that’s what you were told, you may never have seen healthy examples of how to heal, or even how to express your hurts appropriately.

So how do you help your kids when they’re hurting now?

How do you do better than your parents did?

The truth is, you can’t help your kids if you don’t know how to help yourself because kids learn by watching us.    

Grief Recovery teaches adults the steps to take to heal from disappointment, heartbreak and loss, so that parents, teachers and grandparents can show their kids how to live healthy lives and help them heal when life delivers it’s inevitable bumps, bruises and heartbreaking losses. 

      xoxoxox

Sometimes you learn a thing late in life and when the impact of it hits you, all you can think of is how different your life world have been, if you’d known this new thing way back when…

You think about the years lost believing things that you now know to be untrue… and you feel angry at the people who taught you the untruths.    And then you feel angry at yourself for believing the untruths and for trusting the people who told them.

It’s easy to become lost in a cycle of anger, grief, regret, shame and could’a, would’a, should’as…

That’s where grief recovery comes in, it takes you through the steps of untangling the anger, blame, shame and the could’a, would’a, should’as.

Grief Recovery teaches adults how heal their hearts and move on after loss.

Life is a continuous string of learning curves.  Just as you get a handle on one thing, life pushes you into the next.  

When our babies graduate out of a stage and into something bigger, whether it is kindergarten or college, many of us grieve.  In that moment, we know that whatever comes next, parenting will never be the same again and we feel a loss…

Right now some kids are sad because their vacation is over…  and some adults are too!    Some kids are sad because they’ve been separated from their best friends at school.   (and many parents are worried because their kids are back with friends who seem like bad influences… ).       Some are sad because the youngest child has finally moved out and the house feels quiet as a tomb.     (and some college students are sad because mom has already turned their old bedroom into a crafting space!)

Parents and students alike can feel overwhelmed by the coming crush of to-do’s that will lead us into the end of the year.   

No matter who is grieving, or what they are grieving, it all matters.

Sometimes change feels great but not always…

Sometimes there is warning… but not always.  

Almost always, the feelings that hit us hardest, come without warning.

September is a big month for change.

Be gentle with yourself. 

  xox

We all know that nothing is forever, life changes and everything ends.   Yet time and again, we are surprised when it happens. 

A new friend of mine was offered his dream job recently.   He is taking his chance and moving away to pursue his dream.  And I feel heartbroken.

As happy as I am that he has found a foot-hold into the work he has dreamed of, I am bereft at the loss of him in my life.   Because while he was here, he changed me.

With patience, knowledge and kindness he opened my eyes to information that I had never understood before and it changed my life.

He taught, I listened and learned… He explained and I made changes.   In a few short weeks I came to rely on and look forward to his support.  … and now it’s gone.

Sometimes a person comes into your life for one brief flashing moment and makes more impact than some who have been there from Day One.  

We can never predict who will make a big impact.

      … when we lose someone who has changed us, we grieve.   xox

Every season has its own triggers and traps for grievers… even the sunny summertime.

When you’re grieving it can feel like everyone else’s life is full of sunshine, picnics and patio fun…  and all you can see is what you’ve lost.   The pressure to “have fun” in the sunshine just makes life harder.

This summer, please accept invitations if they appeal to you but also be brave enough to say no just as often…

There will be other summers.

Be gentle with yourself. 

      xoxoxox

I know I’m not the only one who feels like a snail, going ever so slowly in a world that constantly tells me to go faster and accomplish more. 

Even when I feel frustrated with myself at this pace…  I always want others to be understanding of my need for slowness.

I used to sprint forward in life, I used to push through exhaustion… I used to … a lot of things.   But after two big moves and covid and all that has happened in the last 6 years, I now know that those endless sprints cost me… and I remember how broken and exhausted I felt after pushing through, while my body was telling me to stop and rest.

It’s not a popular pace, this snail’s pace… but it’s a sane one.

… and it’s a healthy one for me, right now.

It’s surprisingly hard to go slow.  To stop, to rest…

But sometimes we have to slow down to a snail’s pace, in order to heal and grow.

If you are one of the millions, who has had more than your share of hard days these last few years…

Please slow down… take a breath… and be gentle with yourself.   xox

I’m not talking about the catastrophic losses.  

I’m talking about the threads of grief that so often get called guilt and which seem to come woven into the cloak of Motherhood.  The Could’a, Would’a, Shoulda’s of Mothering…

When your child gets hurt, whether physically or emotionally.    Or when you learn something late in life, that now seems like it would have saved your children grief and pain in their younger years if you’d only known it then.  When you flat out, don’t have the energy to be nice, or polite or to say the loving thing when your child needed it…   When for whatever reasons, you look back and see that you were mean… or thoughtless.

These are the things that all good Mothers Grieve.   

We do the best we can, with what we know in every moment of every day… 

… and yet, because this job can never be done perfectly,

… and because we are not perfect anyway…

We grieve the moments when our children hurt… 

… when we feel like we should have, could have protected them better…. if we’d only known how.

Or maybe you grieve that you held your child a little too close… and you think you should have let them get a little bit muddier….

No matter which way you cut it, Mother’s grieve.

This month, as Mother’s Day approaches, accept credit for the moments when you mothered well and forgive yourself for the moments when you fell short of being the perfect mother of your dreams.    xox

Sometimes life hits us with a one-two punch.

… and sometimes, life just keeps on punching.

Sometimes life has knocked us down so often, that we lose hope that the pain will ever stop.   And if you listen to someone who has been hurt enough, they may tell you that grief never ends and that you just have to learn to live with it.  

Don’t listen to them.   They’re wrong.  

If you listen to people who don’t know how to heal, you may begin to believe that living with pain is your only choice.   But it isn’t. 

Grief Recovery teaches adults what to Do Differently, in order to heal your broken heart.   No matter what caused the heartbreak or how long ago it happened.     I don’t just throw information at you and tell you to go fix yourself, I walk through the steps with you, listening to what happened in your life and guiding you to the light at the end of your own personal tunnel of heartbreak.

You won’t forget your loved ones, or forget what happened, instead you’ll be able to Remember without the pain.

If you can believe, even for one moment, that a chapter can close and that with the right tools and the right help, you can heal… that’s when hope blooms, like flowers in spring. 

We have always needed each other but in times of quiet certainty, we can forget how much.

A quiet, stable life depends on honest human interactions and support.   Unfortunately our neighbours to the south have elected a president who isn’t interested in friendly interactions with us, nor in mutual support.  Many Canadians are feeling our quiet, stable way of life, being shaken…

For more than 200 years we have lived quietly, trusting that our neighbours to the south would act in a neighbourly fashion and now they’re not.   So we grieve.    We grieve the peaceful coexistence  and the peace-of-mind that seems lost to us right now.

Grievers need people who will listen without shushing them or painting a sunny face on things and they need to stay away from those who would add outrage and fear to the load that they are already struggling with.  

Right now we are all grieving the uncertainty of living next to the USA.

Right now we all need good listeners.

We need each other.

xox

This week the news was full of stories…

… stories of a schoolyard bully with too much power …

and the air was filled with the uproar of people debating how to deal with the bully.

For many, his bullying behaviour and the ripples from it will have brought up memories of other bullies… and other abuses and the frustrating feeling of powerlessness that comes with abuse. 

If this week has brought up painful memories for you, please be gentle with yourself.     xox