Tag: grief
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From Pain to Purpose
She sits across from me – at a sushi restaurant, a coffee shop, in a living room. We tell each other stories – about our kids, our travels, our days. We laugh…until we don’t. Her face and tone change. She opens up about the abuse or the assault years ago – at the hands of…
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A New Norm
The phrase we have all grown to despise since COVID lockdowns busted onto the scene and mask mandates were commonplace. This is not a blog in support or opposing certain political views about public response to a virus, but I think we can all agree that whatever we believe about that time, it was hard…
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Drowning in Sorrow
There is a part in a book by Lewis Carroll called “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” where the main character, Alice, is so distraught, she begins to cry. Her adventures have been too taxing, too bizarre, too isolating, too frightful, too difficult to bear that the tears well up in her eyes and spill over, splashing…
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If Only…
While walking through the highs and lows of processing difficult trauma, I hit a stage of grief that many call bargaining. But since I know I can’t rewrite the past, I don’t like to call it that. Bargaining suggests that I have some leveraging power to change my situation through negotiation. In the aftermath of…
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This Imperfect Life
I was watching Moulin Rouge with my husband on Saturday night. I’ve seen this movie countless times before and appreciated it for its artistic approach to storytelling. I have never had an issue with this movie, so I immediately chose it when it popped up as an option. The movie started as usual. There are…
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Rage Hurts; Words Heal
In the aftermath of experiencing a traumatic event, survivors go through stages akin to the grieving process. Trauma leads to anguish and grief because it almost always stems from a loss – of autonomy, innocence, or health, to name just a few – and so, grief sets in. The grieving process is chaotic. The stages…
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Living Half a Life
Well after I encountered trauma, about the time my children came into my life, I began to have a recurring dream. From the very beginning, the dream would always make it clear to me that my life was blessed. The house in my dream was always perfect on the outside and impeccably decorated within. My…
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Dead Inside
Unless you are the luckiest duck to ever walk this Earth, at some point, life rears its ugly head and backhands you hard enough to make your head spin in a way that forever changes who you are. Trauma. It comes in similar veins, but the details are different for every victim. Perhaps abused or…
Wisdom from the Trenches 