16 years ago, today, I got that call. The one where the doctor says, "I'm sorry, it's cancer." That was the moment that turned my life upside down. Standing outside a coffee shop with the phone pressed against one ear, and my finger plugging the other ear because of traffic noise, I asked her to [...]
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A conversation with my daughter about the grandfather she never met helped us both heal.
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I love watching kids create. They naturally come up with these little tricks to supercharge creativity, and they don't even know they're doing it. We just returned from a Washington Coast getaway with family, and as usual, the kids taught me a thing or two about creativity. Really, I think we can learn a lot [...]
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She wanted to talk to me about cancer, but she hesitated. She was worried because she thought her cancer wasn't as bad as mine. When I finally realized the reason for the hesitation, for the trepidation in her voice, my heart dropped. She had just apologized because she thought her cancer wasn't bad enough. No [...]
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Why is it so easy to say the wrong thing when someone is grieving? Death is universal. It happens everywhere, and eventually, to everyone. Why are we not taught, from childhood, how to respond when someone experiences a loss? It's such a challenge, and for the most part, we really don't know how to deal [...]
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