What the lorgnette is to glasses, THE HUMAN JOURNEY is to listening. Not only do we help families listen to each other at a moments of intense change due to serious illness, end of life, bereavement, or other major life transition, but we help family members perceive that they are being heard.
These were some of the many “hats” that staff at a special education district identified a few weeks ago as ones they had adopted during the pandemic, when I returned there after a pandemic hiatus to conduct a professional development workshop.
We’re ready for ya. All handy in its front pocket, THE HUMAN JOURNEY® has all the ways to meet family members right where they are. We have a way to meet people who don’t want to talk about feelings. We have a way to meet people who would rather express something silently, with a facial expression, a gesture, or a stance, than with telling or sharing.
So, Who’s the Father?” isn’t exactly what a person who’s expecting wants to hear. It can feel like an accusation, like an invasion of privacy, or like a completely irrelevant question, depending on one’s method of conception, key relationships, or plan for childrearing. Even in days when there were fewer methods for conceiving a child or for avenues for getting one to adulthood, Emily Post might have advised just to stick with a hearty congratulations.
Learn to pronounce ostranenie and impress your friends with your accent as well as with this cool word. And what a concept … to learn to re-see, as if with new eyes, those things our eyes think they know so well, they no longer see them at all. To learn anew about the people we think we know best.
This is it our “Creature Comforts Checklist.” It’s an odd name, we know.
We called it that, recognizing that grief is a very physical thing and that sometimes what grievers most need (aside from not being asked if they need anything) is not to talk but to be. Just a creature.
When you’re grieving, you miss the physical presence of the person you lost …
You’ve seen it a thousand times on television. Just a bit of momentary drama to set the stage. It’s a medical show. Someone is having an anxiety attack. Maybe he’s hyperventilating.The medical professional or first responder fixes her eyes on this (typically) mouth breather and says emphatically and slowly, “Follow me. Breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth.”
Perhaps “bad” and “painful” sound the same at first, but the distinction matters. When we label an event objectively bad, we resist and harden against it. That of course doesn’t change the event and it may contribute to making it even harder to bear! But when we label it in terms of its effect on us (“hard to bear,” etc.), we acknowledge our difficulty without resisting what is happening,
I’m an avid reader of Twitter for its political and epidemiological news, which often appear prior to (and prove more informative than) what can be made available under the rubric of conventional media. I continue to be struck by a story that Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nadja Drost shared on Twitter — moving in part because of what it says about the power of witnessing another’s struggle.
Even though our relationships might seem like the least quantifiable things we have in our lives, that doesn’t seem to stop people from thinking of them as sums. I’ve seen that play out a few ways. I’ve met people who talked about their “A” list and their “B” lists of friends.
Losing someone you love brings with it a kind of wistful mystery: who was my loved one … really? What do I wish I knew about them that I didn’t even think to ask them while I could? What would I give up chocolate for the rest of my life to know? (Granted, that would have to be a really, really important question.)
The marmalade sandwiches started piling up at Buckingham Palace, and at neighboring Green Park, during the first few days after Queen Elizabeth II died. Likely, they were a reference to the Queen’s charming comedy sketch with beloved British storybook character Paddington Bear, a surprise (even for her
How do you both love someone and grieve them while they’re still here, either physically or mentally (or both)? This is the paradox of anticipatory grief, what you feel when: You know your child is going to die at some point of the illness with which
The number of those jumping a plane for a far-off continent, rather than just write the sympathy card, is anyone’s guess. Tasks that come readily to those who enjoy tooling around with the written word may be terrifying and paralyzing to those who … don’t.
THE HUMAN JOURNEY® seems like less of a lift at first for women than for men. It’s a truism that, among our participants, the women of the family, typically the matriarchs, are the ones who get the process of gathering the family to take part
It’s stunning, what creating a special time, place, and occasion can do to help people focus. In the held space of a THJ Experience, participants seem primed to pay particular attention. A single line can shine a prism on the whole world of a relationship
You likely care about someone who is, or will be, grieving. I’d like you to give you some thoughts about how to help. Please have a look at this note a school librarian found outside her front door or slipped underneath. Whose day wouldn’t a letter like that make? Reginae’s
Painting by Alice Pike Barney, n.d. The Child Gets the Adults Into Shape Eleven-year-old Oliver had seen it all: the terse words exchanged by his mother and his adult stepbrother Lucas, who seemed to haplessly back himself into one fix after another. There were the experiments with drugs,
When my father died two weeks ago, on February 23rd, in addition to his human grandchildren and a couple of “grand-dogs,” he also left a “grand-invention,” THE HUMAN JOURNEY®, his daughter’s progeny. I’ve never thought to give him credit for it in public. Instead, in podcast
It’s a truism that the pandemic has had people dealing with loss, bereavement, and fear of loss in a mass—and massive—way. What may be surprising is how many young people are now thinking about their own and others’ mortality, sometimes outstripping their elders’ focus on
Life coaches tend to focus on the positive and on the future, on where their clients want to go from here. Coaches may want to see a client through a career change, a nutritional goal, or a commitment to becoming a better girl- or boyfriend.
Once you complete any death doula training you need, and you hang out your shingle to offer your services to the public, you begin to realize that what you call yourself matters. You may have noticed the array of names for how providers in your
Christians might call those who visit families going through grief or life challenges their pastoral care team or visitation ministry. Jewish congregations might call their congregational practice of visiting the sick or in need Bikur Cholim. Compassionate members of congregations and spiritual groups across Islam,
As a pastor, assisting the bereaved offers an important means to touch the lives of those experiencing the loss of a loved one. Indeed, regardless of denomination, this can often be one of the most essential roles that religious institutions can play in the lives
Tools of Comfort An end-of-life doula is more than just a giver of care, but a provider of comfort. A death doula should carry things that help ease the dying person’s transition and keep the dying person and the family grounded. Tools of comfort such
Labyrinths give insight and perspective. You follow a path that may have lots of crooks along the way but which has no tricks, only the trek Labyrinths render concrete that experience of surrendering yourself to the possibility of re-seeing. They are willingness embodied in earth
There is nothing so wise as a circle. What is the power of sitting in a circle, of breaking our very Western demand that one person be the focus of all the others? From insisting that all the kids face the teacher, kindergarten classrooms have
You may, as I have, noticed lately lots and lots of people connecting what they do with the “Hero’s Journey,” that famous archetypal story structure made famous by Joseph Campbell. In the past week alone, I’ve seen people hooking the Hero’s Journey up with everything
Hearken back to the 1994 Woody Allen film Bullets Over Broadway, set in the glamorous world of 1920s films (cigarette holder and all). Late-career leading lady Helen (played by Dianne Wiest, who won an Oscar for this role) seduces the main character, a young playwright played by
Late in her life, my mother suddenly developed an interest in baseball. Yes, she rooted for the San Diego Padres, but what started to emerge was a substantial interest in the baseball players themselves. “Isn’t he cute?” She gestured toward the TV screen. I hadn’t
“Your breath is a testimony,” tweeted Joél Leon, a Brooklyn-based poet a few days ago. It’s one of those lines that hits, and hits deep. Especially when a lot is happening. Just by living, by having a beating heart and a lifting breath, we are
With THE HUMAN JOURNEY® Experience, we try to make listening easier. To things that one family member saw one way, and another … well, another way. To beliefs and values that are different … but worthy of respect. To unspeakables. Our process teaches that kinda through
If you haven’t seen this video making the rounds already, I think you’d be glad you did. It’s of ballerina Marta C. González, who suffered from Alzheimer’s. (Rather than stay suspended in blissful reverie afterward, though, please come on back.) (Ok, thanks.) Shot in
That’s what’s been on my mind since we’ve been quarantining. The front door isn’t exactly open. But recently I’ve noticed something different in the public sphere, and it’s made me think about a broader form of hospitality. Many more public figures I follow on social media
One of the (gulp) many books I’ve wished I’d written myself is a little book of thought experiments called Astonish Yourself! by Roger-Pol Droit, whose playful activities expand our perception beyond the habitual. In a period in which many of us are all too familiar with the four