restorARTively

The following article, written by a grieving member of The Compassionate Friends, sheds light on how Mother's Day came about and who it was designed to honor. This article does not mention, however, that the mother of Anna Jarvis (mentioned below) was actually trying to start a Mother's Day with the help of a friend in the 1870's - in the wake of the Civil War with thousands of freshly grieving mothers needing comfort. This is still quite timely as the United States has the worst infant mortality rate among industrialzied countries. At the same time, our sons and daughters have been fighting at least two wars on foreign soil for the past eight and a half years. "Mother's Day Revisited" Many of us in TCF do not look forward to Mother's Day. On this holiday, when the whole nation is celebrating the joys of parenthood, grieving parents often feel a special anguish. Mother's Day this year looms as particularly difficult milestone for me. Sunday, May 10, 19...

Week 1 down - many more to go The first week of the hundredth time I gave up refined sugar is Easter week. Planning continues to be a challenge in my fourth decade. Exercise was consistent all week. It consistently woke up the muscles I didn't know I still had in areas I can't see under the flab. This time is not the same. Reforming my health is about more than the extra poundage I have accumulated. It's about how it got there, why I hold onto it, and the biggest challenge in getting rid of it. Forgiveness. My Facebook status on Easter Sunday mentioned my prayers "that I can forgive". Forgive myself that is. I forgave the doctors, nurses, hospital, and health system that were party in James's wrongful death. I cannot forget and I may not agree with most of them on most everything. I do forgive them though; which is what has made it possible for me to seek post-verdict conversations with a couple of them. Forgiving myself is much harder. How do you forgive a mo...

A few recent developments have set me off balance: The WSJ OpEd piece, a collection of health risk managers, and a group of fellow heart moms who successfully diminished the impact of my son's loss and the work I did in seven years to understand his death and offer compassion to his medical providers. I am reminded that the health care system has known about the life-threatening issues within its profession for well over ten years. They know them so well the common comparison is made to air travel. The amount of deaths each year to preventable medical errors is equal to a jumbo jet crashing every day leaving no survivors. This brought memory of the words of Susan Cohen. Her daughter, Theo, was one of the passengers killed on Pan Am Flight 103 in 1998. "There was the grief group therapist who told me she was worried about my anger, that I should open my heart. .... It was an open, bleeding wound......I didn't need anyone telling me there was something wrong with my enorm...