Oakland Press columns
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Goodbye to Mom’s house
“No matter how far we’ve come, our parents are always in us.” ~ Brad Meltzer Even after we’ve grown up and moved on, the homes of our parents still hold many of our family artifacts, memories, and stories. After your last parent dies, selling their home — and everything they accumulated — is a difficult part of the grieving process. Yet it can be therapeutic, too. As we begin to empty my mother-in-law’s home, I’m reminded of a column I wrote for The Sunday Oakland Press after reflecting on the memory of selling my mother’s home. You can read it online here. ~CL
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Thoughts for last-minute holiday shopping
“Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.” ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (This feature article was originally published 11/11/22 in The Sunday Oakland Press and online here.) Gift-giving can be as emotionally loaded as it is enjoyable — especially as we approach the Christmas season. As psychologists and etiquette experts agree, the stress of buying and exchanging gifts can dull our holiday sparkle if we don’t plan ahead. “Some people may feel social pressures to give gifts, but not in the same spirit as others,” says Irene S. Levine, PhD, psychologist and co-author of The Rules of Friendship. “If someone is depressed, for example, it…
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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 If you’re grieving a loss, holiday festivities can feel especially painful and alienating. Last year I wrote a column on managing grief and loss during the holidays for The Sunday Oakland Press. For those who don’t subscribe to the newspaper and can’t open the article links, I’m reposting the column below. EMPTY CHAIRS AT CHRISTMAS, by Cindy La Ferle for The Oakland Press My mother died three months before Christmas eight years ago. Since my father had passed several years earlier, my first Christmas season without Mom…
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Life without Facebook
“The biggest problem is that Facebook and Google are these giant feedback loops that give people what they want to hear. And when you use them in a world where your biases are constantly confirmed, you become susceptible to fake news, propaganda, and demagoguery.” ~ Franklin Foer This year I’m celebrating eight years of Facebook sobriety. Once I quit, my emotional wellbeing, social life, family relationships, and productivity all improved. I started reading more, writing more, and enjoying the simple pleasures I had overlooked while I was scrolling for social media updates. Though I wrote this Oakland Press column a couple of years ago, its message still applies today —…
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Nobody wins the waiting game
“You can’t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.” ~A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh Someone I know often complains that she rarely hears from some of her old friends and relatives. They’ve stopped calling to invite her out for lunch and other social activities. She’s sure she hasn’t “done anything” to deserve this neglect. Why have these people gone dark on her? Well, she’s right about the part where she said she hasn’t done anything. When I asked if she ever reaches out to initiate activities or simply keep in touch, she admitted that she rarely does. She…
