Oakland Press columns
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How to manage holiday grief and loss
“The holiest of all holidays are those kept by ourselves in silence and apart; the secret anniversaries of the heart.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The winter holidays are in full swing. But if you’re grieving a loss, the festivities only amplify your pain and shine a light on the empty chair or chairs around your table. My column today in The Sunday Oakland Press offers tips on how to get through the holiday when you don’t feel like celebrating. I invited several therapists and grief counselors to share advice for everyone who’s mourning a loss this season. The column — “Empty Chairs at Christmas” — runs in the Homefront section…
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Unwrapping the stress of holiday giving
“Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.” ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Gift-giving can be an emotionally loaded topic, along with other social pressures of the Christmas season. If you’re on a tight budget, for instance, you might be focusing on how much you can spend — rather than the meaning or quality of the gifts you intend to give. What if you don’t have time to shop? What if you bought a gift for someone who doesn’t have one for you? Or what if you decide to stop giving holiday gifts this year? My feature article on handling the stress (and protocol) of holiday…
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List-en to yourself
“We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.” ~Jane Austen, Mansfield Park Did you know that the root of list actually means listen to? When we get quiet and listen to ourselves, we often discover the answers we’ve been seeking. List-making can be a life-changing tool for continuing this inner dialogue. Next Wednesday (Oct.5), I’ll be leading a free community workshop on list-making in the Friends Auditorium at the Royal Oak Public Library. (We’ll have some fun writing a variety of lists in the class.) Meanwhile, I wrote a new article on the benefits of list-making, and you can…
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Labor Day weekend
“Summer nearly does me in every year. It’s too hot and the light is unforgiving and the days go on way too long.” ~Anne Lamott, humorist and author Sure, we complain about summer’s heat and humidity, but who really wants to see it end? We tend to think of Labor Day weekend as summer’s farewell — but the season isn’t officially over until the autumnal equinox on September 22. So let’s not rush things. For the next three weeks, I plan to savor every day of summer that’s left. I’ll spend more time outside, for starters, knowing it won’t be long before my garden is buried under fallen leaves. A…
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School supplies for Mom
“I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way — things I had no words for.” ~Georgia O’Keeffe Shopping for brand-new supplies was a favorite back-to-school ritual when my son was a child. Is there anything more fun than browsing through aisles of colorful pens, markers, crayons, and notebooks? Even if you’re an empty nester, you can recapture the fresh thrill of back-to-school shopping — and maybe discover a new craft or hobby of your own. That’s the topic of my new Oakland Press column. You can read it in the Sunday print edition (August 14) or look for it online here.…
