transition

My Latest Painting: I Am Nothing, I Am Everything, All At Once

Today I want to share with you the latest painting I just painted. You can probably tell from some of my recent blog posts that I’ve been thinking a lot about the preciousness of our fleeting time on this earth.  About how our bodies reflect God’s divine design, and about the beauty that is inherent in the death transition.     So I wanted to paint it.   To somehow capture that moment when your physical body releases your energetic body and the dissolution of the tangible flows into the intangible.  How must that feel? I think how it must feel …

My Latest Painting: I Am Nothing, I Am Everything, All At Once Read More »

Let Me Help You Move Through (& Release) Difficult Emotions

    A few years ago I became a Death Doula. You would think as a physician we would be taught in detail about the death and dying process in medical school, but we weren’t.  Not at all. We were taught how to pronounce someone dead, how to perform advanced life support to try to stave off death, how to sign a death certificate… but never about the intricacies of it: what the body feels and experiences as the soul prepares to leave it what the dying process looks like what order the organ systems shut down in and how …

Let Me Help You Move Through (& Release) Difficult Emotions Read More »

Reflections On The Death Transition: What I’ve Seen, What I Feel

        As a physician, I’ve had quite a few experiences with patients who were dying, as well as patients who had near death experiences and told me about them. In medical school, I had an attending physician who had a heart transplant. He said as they removed his heart on the operating table, he went somewhere totally different than earth. After putting his new heart in, the surgeon shocked it to get it to start beating again. He says he felt that shock and felt himself feeling pulled back into his physical body and when he woke …

Reflections On The Death Transition: What I’ve Seen, What I Feel Read More »

Your Essential Fall Checklist

September has begun, and that means fall is just around the corner. And for so many of us… …shorter days and longer nights means a dip in our mood.     Fortunately, there are lots of great things to do to get prepared as the seasons change.   Of course there are things like pulling out your sweaters and boots and knitting a scarf or two and planting a winter garden and getting the fireplace cleaned. But I want to share with you today my annual fall post — a collection of 10 personal things that I do to prepare …

Your Essential Fall Checklist Read More »

7 Ways To Feel Hopeful Even Under Incredible Stress

    Mid-winter is the perfect time to post these tips, as often it is in the darkest of winter, post-holidays, that we can feel most bleak.   It doesn’t have to be that way. Here is how to remain hopeful even during times of immense stress and darkness.     To retain hope increases resiliency, and is one of the best ways to persevere through any type of adversary in life, whether that be a personal tragedy, a health crisis or a series of financial stressors (or all three, as they often travel together.)   As I recently blogged …

7 Ways To Feel Hopeful Even Under Incredible Stress Read More »

The Healing Process of Grief

2013 was a huge year of transition for me. And, to be frank, it was a year of loss. But also a year of growth. A year of survival and a year of strength.   I’ve learned a lot first hand about loss, grief and healing… and I can contrast it quite vividly to what I *learned* about grief and healing during my medical training.   I still remember being in medical school and learning all about the classic model of the grief process, set forth by the amazing and brave Elisabeth Kubler-Ross: DABDA (I’m sure many of my readers, …

The Healing Process of Grief Read More »

Nurturing Your Own Health Through Difficult Times

I am going to re-post a great article I wrote last year… 10 ways to nurture your body and soul right in this very moment. It’s a blog post I’ve needed to go back and re-read to remember how to nurture my own soul as I travel through some difficult and dark times.   As I said on my Facebook Page: “A few weeks ago, I would have said the purpose in life is to soak in every second of it, enjoy it, laugh as much as possible, have fun, smile, and fill your heart with gratitude as much as …

Nurturing Your Own Health Through Difficult Times Read More »