My Writing

Happy Anniversary to the Elisabeth Kubler Ross Foundation and Mission Hospice for 6 years of virtual death cafes! It has been my honor to be the facilitator of these sweet and supportive conversations about death and dying, grief and loss, for all this time, along with powerhouse Susan Barber. We used to do it every week after the pandemic began and we kept that up for about two years. Then Susan moved on and I became the host with her subbing for me at times. Slowly we went

"Kiss the joy as it flies..." This is a line from a famous poem titled "Eternity" by William Blake. Someone in my Death Cafe today said she always hated that line in the poem because she wants to hold on to the joy. She wants to keep it close to her. She wants to hold it so tight that it can't leave her. But she also said she knows that isn't how joy works. That it is by nature ephemeral. That it is fleeting. That it can't be restrained or tied down or it will surely die. Tha

“I would say that happiness is the sweetness of desiring what you have, fully aware of its fragility, its brevity and its limits. Happiness isn’t the absence of sadness, but the capacity to hold reality without needing it to be otherwise.” This quote by Stephen Grosz makes my heart happy. I have always felt that the word 'contentment' captures the sweetness of desiring what I have. Likewise, I have always felt that the word 'acceptance' means to hold reality without needing