When a spouse passes away, you lose your most intimate connection in life. It was in the home that you built together where you felt most like yourself. You were able to bare your soul -- the good, the bad and the ugly -- and still be loved and accepted. Now that he or she is gone, you may be set adrift without a tether to anchor you securely. And so you flail loosely about as you navigate the stormy sea of…

Thank you for all the love and support in the last two weeks, and especially in the last three days. Today, we buried our Baby Girl. It was rough -- and that's an understatement. But I think she would have loved the Rosary and the Mass. And she would have really, really appreciated all the love people showed her. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Timmy’s fourth birthday is a special memory.  He was an avid fan of Sesame Street, especially Elmo, the small red furry child monster Muppet on the show.  I had scheduled my summer vacation week off around his birthday so there wouldn’t be any interference by court appearances or work.  His mother and I decided to take him Sesame Place in Langhorne.  Sesame Place is a water…

 I wrote this September 12, 2001. I wrote to exorcise my demons and tribute those that sacrificed; hoping it would inspire solace all from the words of a little boy, my son Timothy.  His simple little boy wisdom was spoken from an old…

Recently, I sat at dinner with my friend Fred discussing a writing project that involved using my high school journals and the lessons I learned from my years of running competitively in cross country and track. I said something about the difficult relationship I had with my dad and how I debated including that. Fred looked puzzled and asked, “I thought you and your dad were good buddies?”



At that point, I realized that Fred didn’t know about those years with my dad, the…

Last Saturday, The Center for Grief Recovery hosted its first-ever fundraiser walk to celebrate 25 years of service to the bereavement community.  The day was hot, but there was a cool breeze off lake Michigan and the trees offered nice shade. 

A group of 60+ people attended the walk, which began with welcoming remarks, a brief history of the Center and its mission, and an invocation by the Center's KC Conway, LCSW. 

Before the walk commenced, participants…

I’m sitting here on the sofa. Alone. Earlier tonight, my daughters were sitting on the neighbor’s step and I remembered when Timmy was about Alaina’s age, maybe four or five years old. There was a different neighbor living there at the time, an elderly woman that would sometimes give Timmy taffy or a chocolate. On the storm door at the time, she had a plastic trellises style cover over the screen. Timmy had sat on her step and she had come to the door and said she would be back with a treat.…

The spotlight brightens,

We have managed somehow through his birthday and all the holidays and now in just 24hrs on June 7th it will be 1yr since my son Christian left us for Paradise.

The more I hear that time heals the more I want to scream!

I "thought" even sometimes "think" I am doing better, then Boom! Something or someone triggers it again and again and again.

My ex-husband (Christian Father) this his only son has turned to memorializing him…

On my second trip to Australia, I was in a Melbourne restaurant with several friends for dinner when one of them, an Australian, went with me to pick out a dessert. There was this gloppy mess of a cake and I asked Susan what it was. “Oh, that’s very Australian,” she said. “It’s sticky date pudding.” As she would later say, it’s mostly made up of butter and sugar (plus some dates). While looking quite like a messy cake, and obviously very sticky, it’s a wonderful dessert that I…

It's become hard to escape Father’s Day, as the holiday, like Mother's Day, has taken on a commercial spin. You’ll find restaurants touting special menus, stores producing Father’s Day catalogs, and every type of greeting card you can imagine, for dad, grandfather, son, uncle, cousin, friend, or you name it.



So if you can’t escape it, how do you take the sting out of the first, or second or third for that matter, holiday that a friend or loved one experiences without their…

I begged the nurse to take me to see him.  I begged and begged.  I was crying.

“Mister Connors, please.  They’re cleaning him up a bit for you to see him.”  The blonde nurse said.  She had tears streaming from her eyes.…

I’m sitting in the chair.  The doctor had just walked in, quietly shutting the door behind him. He was a young black doctor, light-medium complexioned.  For some reason, I thought he looked like Tiger Woods.  He had the grim look on his face.

“Mister…

With tornadoes and floods dominating the news, it’s easy to feel helpless in the wake of such personal tragedy. In this technology-driven world, we’re witnessing breaking news, reading, seeing and hearing first-hand how these disasters personally impact individuals and communities. Who can forget the faces of those interviewed after losing their loved ones, homes, schools and places of employment?

We’ve seen acts of courage, heroism and extensions of human kindness, but with…