Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. -Melody Beattie The holiday season is never easy when you’re grieving. No matter how recent the loss, you will always wish your loved one was there. As you celebrate Thanksgiving this week, take time on Thursday to reflection onContinue reading “Monday Meditation: Gratitude & Thanksgiving”
Author Archives: ancarroll
Grief 101: How Long Does Grief Last?
Answer: As long as it needs.
Cleaning and Organizing: Clean Mama
Get your home organized with Clean Mama.
Monday Meditation: Growth is no accident
Growth is never by mere chance; it is the result of forces working together. -James Cash Penney Grief has an excessively steep learning curve. It is like no experience you have had before and one that will hopefully be repeated infrequently. Grief is an amalgamation of forces that brought about this swift and painful changeContinue reading “Monday Meditation: Growth is no accident”
Man’s Search for Meaning (Viktor Frankl)
Viktor Frankl’s memoir about his internment in concentration camps and how we can thrive despite trauma.
Monday Meditation: Make a plan & pack some courage.
All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination. -Earl Nightengale The grief journey is long and trying. To make things more difficult, grief doesn’t come with a manual. Each griever needs to find their own way and discover their own plan to move throughContinue reading “Monday Meditation: Make a plan & pack some courage.”
Practice Self-Kindness
We seem conditioned to believe that kindness is an outside offering that comes to us rather than a gift we bestow on ourselves. I was struck by how simple kindness was undervalued among some grief supporters. Kindnesses are paid during the funeral period, but after the funeral kindness slowly evaporates, perhaps as part of theContinue reading “Practice Self-Kindness”
Monday Meditation: Go ahead, have a good cry.
Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky, are best relieved by the letting of a little water. -Christopher Morley Crying is good for you. Tears reduce stress hormones from your body, the remove irritants and lubricate your eye, and tears also contain antibodies. Our emotional tears help stress leave our body and increase endorphinsContinue reading “Monday Meditation: Go ahead, have a good cry.”
This Thing Called Grief (Thomas M. Ellis)
Thomas Ellis’s book This Thing Called Grief is a wonderful and digestible book on grief. At only 132 pages, you can get through it in a day if you are inclined.
Monday Meditation: Changing Perspectives
If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. -Wayne Dyer Grief is hardly an experience in which you immediately see opportunity. Grief is awful and painful and raw and exhausting. In grief, we see everything we no longer have, we see obstacles, we see fear. What if, hidingContinue reading “Monday Meditation: Changing Perspectives”
Keep Healthy Habits
Healthy habits tend to disappear when intense stress arrives. We stop exercising, we sleep less, we eat poorly, we stop making health care appointments. Non-grief-related stressors tend to come in bursts that dissipate after a time, allowing us to resume our regular healthy living habits. Grief, on the other hand, brings long-term stress that includesContinue reading “Keep Healthy Habits”
Renew with a 7-Piece Skin So Soft collection
As your grief-related Avon Rep, I have a limited time special offer to share with grievers who are in need of a little pampering: a 7-piece Skin So Soft collection for $19.99 ($65 value).
Monday Meditation: Allow for Self-Correction
If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading. -Lao Tzu Imagine life as a highway. You’re driving along, and you realize that you are going in a direction you hadn’t intended or the way you thought you wanted to go is turning into something you had not expected. YourContinue reading “Monday Meditation: Allow for Self-Correction”
Greetings from your new Avon Lady
Dear readers, I have become an Avon Representative. Yes, that’s right: I am your new Avon Lady.
Monday Meditation: A Challenge to Change
When we are no longer able to change a situation—we are challenged to change ourselves. -Viktor Frankl In the wake of a loss, we may pray that someone we know has the ability to raise the dead. Unfortunately, no one does and death remains an unchangeable situation. Frankl, who spent time in Auschwitz, knows muchContinue reading “Monday Meditation: A Challenge to Change”
