Tag archives: grief

On a lark, Michael and Gabriella Salsbury walked into Madame Rosinka’s fortune-telling shopfront on Stearns Wharf in Santa Barbara. Rudderless and adrift on the open ocean of unspeakable parental sorrow, the couple were emphatically not looking to Madame Rosinka for the answers that had otherwise so eluded them. The Salsburys were not seekers after the […]

I recently had an email exchange with a man who was interested in renting our vacation home for a stay with his grown sons. His wife had died the week before and as she loved the beach, he felt it would be a wonderful way to honor her. I offered what I hoped were words […]

Shortly after I got married, my 64-year-old mother lost her battle with breast cancer. Seven years later my father joined her. The loss isn’t any less painful just because you are a grown-up. I was 39 and an orphan.  It sounds strange to say it that way, but that was how it felt. “Untethered,” was […]

In hard times, delivering comfort in a pan is a family tradition When death comes knocking, my Italian family goes to the kitchen. As early as I can remember, whenever a family member was infirm or passed away, an imaginary bell would ring and someone – usually a family elder – would go into the […]

A Lesson in Loss It’s important to tell those we love how much they mean to us – don’t wait. It was another death along the train tracks in Montecito as we waited anxiously for further details and circumstances. Then we heard it was a local hair stylist. That was upsetting. And then the unfathomable […]

In the Times of Dis-Ease I am generally described as a cheerful person who tends toward optimism. But lately I find myself lingering over any mention of grief or fear or loss. Rather than turning away and protecting myself… I find that I am, in the face of this pandemic, turning toward the dark, unpleasant […]

By his own admission, Dave Mochel was a victim of restlessness, boredom, frustration, anxiety, fear, and anger and suffered such debilitating anxiety in his mid-20s that he could barely leave the house. Now he runs Applied Attention, a Carpinteria-based mindfulness consulting company that teaches people simple and powerful practices to focus thoughts in ways that […]

Attending this weekend’s Nonviolent Communication Conference at SBCC School of Extended Learning’s Wake Center won’t make you an expert in personal development nor a perfect practitioner of the method of relating designed to create connection instead of conflict. But the immersive three-day conference is chock full of lectures and workshops where participants will have plenty […]

Jodie Hollander grew up in a musical family, and that is a largish understatement. Concert pianist father, cellist mother, two sibs each with the gift of drawing effortless gossamer from the violin; dinner conversation ran to the rhapsodic. Now imagine Jodie – a young girl whose double helix would later reveal itself as a ladder […]

It might be obvious to state that Thanksgiving week could be the perfect time to launch a gratitude practice. The holiday stress can be greatly reduced by remembering all that we are grateful for in our lives. But research and plenty of anocdotal evidence has indicated that a daily practice of not only taking note […]

Grief is a given in this life and a natural part of the human experience, but many people refuse to allow themselves to dive fully into their sadness, and definitely not in public. Yet many other cultures throughout time have processed grief in community; its expression is a casualty of our modern times. Alexis Slutzky […]

It takes nine months for humans to gestate in the womb from conception to birth. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the same period has elapsed since the Santa Barbara Consciousness Network events went on hiatus as founder Forrest Leichtberg began to incubate a new format for the gatherings. Complications with logistics combined with a desire […]