Featured
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How to manage holiday grief and loss
“The holiest of all holidays are those kept by ourselves in silence and apart; the secret anniversaries of the heart.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow If you’re grieving a loss, holiday festivities can feel especially painful and alienating. Last year I wrote a column on managing grief and loss during the holidays for The Sunday Oakland Press. For those who don’t subscribe to the newspaper and can’t open the article links, I’m reposting the column below. EMPTY CHAIRS AT CHRISTMAS, by Cindy La Ferle for The Oakland Press My mother died three months before Christmas eight years ago. Since my father had passed several years earlier, my first Christmas season without Mom…
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Meeting grace
“I do not understand the mystery of grace — only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.” ~Anne Lamott After I shared a post about preparing for a biopsy on Friday, several of you emailed to offer words of support and encouragement. One of those messages arrived when I was in the waiting room prior to the procedure, lifting my spirits and boosting my courage. In Friday’s post, I shared a quote I’d found on a teabag, which read, “The unknown is where all outcomes are possible; enter it with grace.” On the morning of the biopsy, I found myself repeating…
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Unexpected joy
“Joy is not made to be a crumb.” ~Mary Oliver Suddenly, everyone’s talking about “joy” — a word that’s typically reserved for holiday greeting cards. When was the last time you felt joy? Joy is unbridled optimism and unabashed positivity, which can be hard to feel if you’re mired in the habit of negative thinking. Dark energy, after all, is both pervasive and contagious. So, who doesn’t want to experience joy for a change? Mary Oliver’s poetry always resonates. And when a dear friend shared “Don’t Hesitate” in an email last week, the word “joy” jumped off the screen and lifted me from the funk I was in. It was…
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Writing a newspaper column
Last week, I posted a column I wrote about my son’s boyhood career as a newspaper carrier. This week, I heard from a fellow newspaper columnist who happened to spot a feature article I wrote for Writer’s Digest on how to snag your own newspaper column. Until my friend contacted me, I wasn’t aware that the archived piece (from 2008) is now available to read online. Though it’s not as easy to land a column today, it’s not impossible if your area of specialty isn’t well represented yet. To read my article in Writer’s Digest, click here.
