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Paper Layers Excavation: Mid-Project Review

Contemplation in Action, Estate Management, Healing Grief & Loss, Reflection, Survivor's Mission, Trauma Recovery & Renewal

Today we have completed nine of eighteen 3-hour organizing sessions in this “Paper Layers Excavation” project phase of my larger “Harmony at Home” estate-management program started January 15 of this year (2014). Last week we joyfully reached a project milestone that involved home personal paper files (personal interests, letters, family photos, 2012 wedding vendor contracts, […]

Still Living the Long-Term Effects of Long-Term Care

Contemplation in Action, Healing Grief & Loss, Reflection, Survivor's Mission, Trauma Recovery & Renewal

Using a kitchen table for active sorting, and two futons for category classification (work and home), the paper-trail-of-tears began to tell its story. As is a common outcome of taking-time-for-review, I saw with a new appreciation and overview the many help-the-caregivers-services I piloted over four years. I took the time to group the service-related paperwork […]

Org Development while Caregiving? Please…

Contemplation in Action, Healing Grief & Loss, Reflection, Survivor's Mission, Trauma Recovery & Renewal

Please bear with me as I focus on the topic: organizational development. For the last seven years I have chosen not to earn a generous salary as a user-experience design consultant for big businesses in the Boston area. Since 2010, I’ve become an unpaid founder and CEO of this social enterprise, Marymac Missions, which is […]

Paper Layers Excavation: week 1 of 9

Contemplation in Action, Estate Management, Healing Grief & Loss, Reflection, Survivor's Mission, Trauma Recovery & Renewal

“Paper Layers” is the second phase of the larger “Harmony at Home” project (started in January 2014 in response to the contents of my family home being moved to my current home). For now, we’ve shut the door on the material goods, and we are focusing only on papers. I had a thirty-day respite in […]

Rowing the Ocean with Toothpicks

Contemplation in Action, Healing Grief & Loss, Reflection, Survivor's Mission, Trauma Recovery & Renewal

A friend at church on Sunday asked me how I was doing. She asked how my aunt was doing (her husband passed in September). I shared the yang (many positives and energizers) and the yin (the negatives and energy-sappers). The biggest yin at this time is the estate-management project that feels unending… like rowing the […]

Writing Your Grief & Loss

Contemplation in Action, Healing Grief & Loss, Reflection, Survivor's Mission, Trauma Recovery & Renewal

My father’s one-year death anniversary came (5/24) and went with me still deep in the trenches of estate-management. I was grateful that a friend mentioned a local workshop on the topic, “Writing Your Grief and Loss.” It seemed a perfect event for me given that the one-year anniversary had been a difficult few weeks. I […]

More Love, Less Fear: 3 take-aways from MA/NH Alz Assoc Conference 5/21

Conference Take-Aways, Contemplation in Action, Healing Grief & Loss, Reflection, Survivor's Mission, Trauma Recovery & Renewal

Dear Friends, I attended the MA/NH Alzheimer’s Association “Map Through the Maze: Conference for Professionals” this past Wednesday, 5/21. It was one of the hardest things I’ve done since my mom passed away from Frontotemporal Degeneration almost six years ago. The event was held in Marlboro, MA, where I worked as a professional user-experience design […]

Bunny Enjoys a Carrot

Required Respite: 30 of 43 Days

Contemplation in Action, Reflection, Survivor's Mission, Trauma Recovery & Renewal

A ten-day respite in the Southwest has restored my body-mind-spirit. While not visiting with a dear friend, I spent four days and three nights at a desert hermitage completely free of schedules, to-dos, technology, and distractions. The sunrise and sunset, sunlight and shade, my hunger and thirst, deep rest and movement, singing and silence were […]

Transforming, Becoming Whole: 26 of 43 Days

Contemplation in Action, Reflection, Survivor's Mission, Trauma Recovery & Renewal

In the past six scheduled organizing days (scheduled over two weeks), we worked on organizing just twice – on the 23rd and the 26th day. We rested from this project on the other four days, as it has sapped our strength (physically, mentally, and emotionally). On the 23rd day I shared my overwhelm and fatigue […]