Published Articles
2018 - June - CDT - Learning to Live - Honoring Life
Honoring Life
Before I began to work with Koch Funeral Home, I thought their work was about death. What I have learned since then is just the opposite. Their work is about honoring life. They hono...
Sunday, June 24, 2018
2018 - May - Gazette - Nurturing. Where do you begin?
Nurturing, Where Do You Begin?
The patriarch of a family I know recently died. He had been in declining health for a couple of years and near the end, his family courageously chose to bring him ho...
Thursday, May 3, 2018
2018 - March - CDT - Helping Hands - Healing with Nature
Healing with Nature
Losses come in all shapes and sizes as does the healing that follows from them. One result of a loss is often a future you hadn’t expected. A few years ago, I was grievin...
Wednesday, March 21, 2018
2018 - February - Gazette - Make it Matter
Make it Matter
My husband and I attended the visitation for a family friend a few years ago. As we were greeting the family in the receiving line, I was struck by my interaction with our friend’s ...
Thursday, February 22, 2018
2018 - February - Gazette - Remembering with Love
Remembering with Love
Love. For yesterday’s celebration of Valentine’s Day, love was at its core. The Greeks had at least six different words to describe love:
Agape – love extended to all
Eros –...
Thursday, February 15, 2018
Previous Posts
2023 - November - Gazette - Dare! Silence
A lot goes on in the silence.” These are words I often share because silence is a big part of my work. For example, I ask for moments of silence when officiating at memorial and funeral services. D...
2023 - Nov - CDT - Helping Hands - Healing Through the Holidays
Healing through the Holidays
Author, poet, and civil rights activist, Maya Angelou, wrote, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” I witness this every day in my work ...
2023 - October - Gazette - Memories Become Treasures
Memories Become Treasures
I was visiting with my mom and dad a couple of weeks ago and we started talking about my dad’s parents, who I lovingly called Grandma and Grandad. My mom shared two memor...
2023 - September - Centered - Arriving Where I Started
I love the T.S. Eliot quote, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets:
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for t...
2023 - September - Gazette - Existing Elsewhere
A few years ago I sat with a handful of adults’s in a grief gathering and listened as one mother shared her story. She told us about the moments before and after her young child’s unexpected and su...
2023 - September - Town & Gown - End-of-Life Doulas, Graveside Journaling, and Sponsoring Memorials from Afar
We hope you read the September Town & Gown article by Holly Riddle featuring End-of-Life Doula Jackie Naginey Hook.
2023 - August - Gazette - Surrender Your Soul
Surrender Your Soul
A couple of weeks ago, I stepped onto the deck of our cabin at Emerald Lake in Yoho National Park, British Columbia. It was early morning and the sun had just risen from behind...
Find Us:
