Moments with Mary

Over the years, I’ve compiled a list of suggestions from the internet and various books or websites that offer a variety of ways to heal the body, mind, soul and spirit during the grief journey.  For the next month, I will be sharing these suggestions with you and hope you take some of them to heart during your healing journey.    God be with you in the days ahead…. HEALING RITUALS TO COMFORT THE MIND: 1) Visit family and friends or have them visit you.  It’s good to get away for an afternoon, day, week or whatever and return home to your grief work. 2) Write each day.   Keep a journal of your grief journey experience.  You will look back and see that things are changing over the months, even if you feel stuck today. 3) Paint your emotions, your dreams and your memories – even if you’ve never painted before.  Try vibrant colors or oil pastels or watercolors.  Painting and drawing can calm the emotions.  Don’t judge your artistic me...

HEALING GRIEF IN BODY, MIND AND SPIRIT Over the years, I’ve compiled a list of suggestions from the internet and various books or websites that offer a variety of ways to heal the body, mind, soul and spirit during the grief journey.  For the next month, I will be sharing these suggestions with you and hope you take some of them to heart during your healing journey.   God be with you in the days ahead…. HEALING RITUALS TO COMFORT THE BODY: 1) Share a meal with a friend as a comfort and let the food nourish your body and your friend nourish your emptiness. 2) Make Pots of Soup.  Share it with others and freeze some for the hard days so you have comfort food on hand. 3) Find nourishing recipes that are comforting to you.  Feed yourself well and purposefully so that you avoid unhealthy snacks or eating nothing at all. 4) Make sure you drink plenty of water.  Water is the major source of life to nourish your body. 5) Go outside every day – even if it’...

 SCARS ON MY HEART Even when you feel you have recovered from the intensity of the loss of your loved one and you step closer to the end of your grief journey, there will always be a place hidden inside that will continue to feel the emptiness and loss of your loved one.  While time has been helpful in easing the pain, as you go further into the healing process, there will still be a scar etched on your heart from losing your loved one.   When we have surgery, our bodies have been hurt and we need time to heal and we’re left with a scar as a reminder of what was hurting in us, just like it takes time to heal the wounds of losing someone we love dearly that will leave  scars on our hearts.  Let that scar on your heart let you know God is with you.  Let that scar on your heart be a reminder of your loved one’s presence deep within your very being.  Let that scar on your heart also bring you a sense of deep comfort that your loved one will never be f...

THE CHOICES YOU MAKE WHEN YOU HAVE NO CHOICE  When someone we love dies or is diagnosed with a serious life-threatening medical issue or has been in an accident or suffering or victimized, we don’t have a choice about what happened to us or our loved one.  We are thrown into an abyss and the pit into uncertainty has swallowed us up as we dismally fall into it.  Our hopes and dreams and plans for the future fall into the abyss with us.  Our lives have been upended, uprooted and out of control and we can’t see anything in the future because we don’t know and are fearful about what lies ahead.  Every aspect of our lives have fallen into uncertainty and life, as we know it, has changed.   We feel so out of control because we can’t control what has happened.  We can't change what happened, but we can control how we deal with it.  We can choose to fall apart and stay apart and sink into negativity or we can face all the unknown and uncertainty by t...