All Pages (121)

Grief and Loss Experts

Legacy offers advice from leading experts on grief and loss Robbie Miller Kaplan Author and blogger, expert on how to comfort and support the bereaved Michelle Rusk Author, suicide and sibling los… View »

Breast Cancer

Each year, more than 1.5 million people around the world are diagnosed with breast cancer, and hundreds of thousands die of the disease. If someone you love has confronted breast cancer, Legac… View »

Recognizing and Coping with Mental Illness

What is mental illness? A mental illness is a disease that causes mild to severe disturbances in thought and/or behavior, resulting in an inability to cope with life’s ordinary demands and routines.&… View »

Coping After a Miscarriage

By Josie Loza When I was young, my mother took us kids to the cemetery to visit “our baby.” We’d skip past cemetery plots in “Babyland” while Mom sat near a rose-colored tombstone that read “Our bab… View »

Legacy Letter Example 2: A grandmother's letter to her grandchildren

There are several key elements in a contemporary spiritual-ethical will. First, it’s important to differentiate legacy writing from memoir or spiritual autobiography. Though the content may be simila… View »

Legacy Letter Example 1: Barack Obama to his daughters, 1-18-09

The spiritual-ethical will or "legacy letter" is a miraculous healing tool. More broadly, many of us realize that life is fragile, that we do not control the number of our days. We feel a sense… View »

The Spiritual-Ethical Will: A Legacy Letter

People resonate with the themes, but find the term “ethical will” difficult. I began to refer to this document as the “spiritual-ethical will” and more recently as “legacy letters.” There are several… View »

Dating After Death: How I Knew I was Ready

By Jennifer Hawkins I was thirty-nine years old when my husband died unexpectedly in his sleep. It was the shock of a lifetime. He was my love, my rock, a crucial part of my life and our… View »

The Ethical Will: 'The most important message I have ever written'

Let’s start at the beginning. First, what is an ethical will and where did it come from? The ethical will is an ancient document from the Judeo-Christian tradition. The original template for its use… View »

Children and Grief

Death is difficult to understand, and when a community member dies – or many do – children may struggle to make sense of a senseless situation. The death of a family member or friend can be a tramaut… View »