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Saying Good-bye to My Mother--With Help From the Tibetan Book of the Dead
By Janis Jennings, Ph.D.
Mother has been the riddle of my life. She always seemed to love and hate me equally, and I never understood her, though I desperately wanted to. Even today I feel as though if I just tried hard enough I could find the magic key to make contact, and we would have a real conversation and would understand each other at last. But I know that’s impossible...
Chance Encounters
By Dr. Bradley Olson
The events of that day so long ago which I thought to be miraculous were not, and the seemingly everyday, conversational leave-takings of my family, which I naively believed to be merely ordinary, were truly extraordinary. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t think of my grandmother or her legacy and in some way or another, however briefly, I miss her with all the conviction a 10-year-old heart can conjure…
Family Therapy with Families Facing Catastrophic Illness--Building Internal and External Resources
By Ellen Pulleyblank Coffey, Ph.D.
When crises become the norm of life, durational time sets in. This is time without past or future and with a recurring experience of a disturbing present that is difficult to organize, express or forget...Often we and the people around us expect our grief to last for a prescribed length of time. Depending on the level of stress during an illness, this experience can last for much longer than we would expect.
Sailing in the Wind's Eye: Charting My Mother's Bipolar Journey
By Christine McKenna Leigh, Ph.D. (ABD)
Manic depression swept a broad path across my childhood. The halcyon grace of my mother's early mania inevitably deteriorated into days, or weeks, of fierce and relentless incoherence; of smashed dishes; of neglected animals, plants and children. My mother is an absent presence to me now--like the space between the notes on a musical score, or the stillness in the breath between cycles of inspiration and expiration...
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