Making Love Sustainable Tagged "grief"

Courage Becomes Grace

September 27, 2018

I used to think I knew about courage. I would often write and talk about it as a defining attribute that allowed you to explore and wonder about your life. And referred to it as the backbone of what gives relationships the strength to evolve. Those things are true, but in a more fundamental way for more people than I probably ever recognized before this massive loss, our capacity for courage is actually proportional to our will to keep living.

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Losing Ian

September 13, 2018

I lost my son Ian and life has become a deep haze of grief. Time is meaningless except for the vast swaths of the future that is lost to us. All the plans, all that was saved and counted on dissolving like salt in a watery broth of tears. And the inability to reconcile reality – the immediacy and permanence of death seems impossible for my beautiful 26-year-old boy.

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Suffering’s Sweetness

November 20, 2015

“You take it all in. You let the pain of the world touch your heart and your turn it into compassion.” -Gyalwa Karmapa

Part of the daily Buddhist meditation that is known the world over is “May you be free from suffering…” The tradition teaches that suffering is as much part of life is as love and joy, certainly you don’t have to dive too deep into world current events or even probably the...

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The Price We Pay For Love

October 30, 2015

“The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them….how much sorrow can I hold- that’s how much gratitude I can give.” -Francis Weller

I have been crying a lot lately. Negotiating my new empty nest and learning how to live in the silence and space created by my kids’ departure has brought me to a new relationship with grief....

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Why Stay

April 13, 2015

“For love is patient….”

I am redesigning my blog again and have opted to let go of the whole Daily concept in favor of my primary voice here at Making Love Sustainable. As my creative director and I have been going back and forth about the look and feel of these words, saying no to curly cursive, no to all caps in varying shades of bold, I found myself explaining how these words “making love...

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Time Foolery

April 10, 2015

“How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?” -Dr Seuss

The one thing that makes everything else real is our time. In fact, what we do with our time is our life. Time is the only resource, which we are allotted in equal measure, and often the one we squander mindlessly. We...

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Positivity Again: Grief’s Hold On Regret

March 18, 2015

I can see it up close right now- how my overwhelming grief over the loss of my dear dog companion, Coco, brings me to despair with regret. Last night, I was awake again in the middle of the night, my hot flashes are always worse when I am exhausted and emotional and I lay in the darkness in the deafening silence of Coco’s absence. She had become a louder sleeper over the last many months of her...

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Saying Goodbye to Coco

March 18, 2015

“Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” -Khalil Gibran

It is always when we land on the last day that we realize any regular day has the potential to be the one that includes our last goodbye. Dogs are not only the most faithful and loyal of friends to us, but they are also our most gentle teachers about life’s cycle. Our beloved Rhodesian Ridgeback, Coco, has lived with us...

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Reuniting Leaving and Left

December 01, 2014

“Waking up every day and loving someone who may or may not love us back, whose safety we can’t ensure, who may stay in our lives or may leave without a moment’s notice, who may be loyal to the day they die or betray us tomorrow – that’s vulnerability.” -Brene Brown

At the end of almost all relationships there are two roles, the one who is leaving and the one who is left. Optimally, yet I think...

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Befriending Demons, Ghosts and Death

October 31, 2014

moonresized It was the Celtic civilization that first celebrated the magical time of year that is Halloween. They considered this time, the Samhain, as the most significant turning point of the year, when things change most deeply, when connections to the dead open up… The souls that have gone through the ultimate turning from life to death. They believed that this was the time of year that the world of the...

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Engaging Our Breakthroughs

August 22, 2014

“…Having breakthroughs isn’t the point. Living them is. Seeing in a new way is only the beginning.” -Martha Beck

I find myself sobbing in a bathroom stall in the Chicago airport on my way to a meeting across the country, thinking “has it really come to this?” Grief catches up to us in unexpected places and times. The airport bathroom scene was triggered by sitting near a young family with four...

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Positivity Again: Framing Memories

June 09, 2014

I have spent the weekend putting old photos in frames. Some of the photos are images of people I have never met, pictures that I found while cleaning out my dad’s apartment after his death. There are images of him as a baby being bathed by his mother in 1933, and as a toddler and as a young boy riding a bike. I see a resemblance to my own son as I pick and choose among the moments of his life long...

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