When Death Opens Doors

A door open a crack.

My world turned upside down when my mother died. She was too young. I was too young. And my sister was way too young

But lose her we did, and it changed the entire trajectory of my life.

It led me to therapy school (M.A. in Counseling Psychology). Not a particularly practical degree for hospice work but it was the right one for me, and it did lead me to hospice. 

The good stuff really started happening after that. Training in transpersonal psychology for which my personal definition is shifting one’s primary identity from ego (small “s” self) to Soul (big “S” Self).  

It led me to my spiritual teacher and the idea we are all our own works of art, constantly in the process of creating ourselves. And all acts of creation involve a process of destruction.  

I spent 18 years in practice as a transpersonal psychotherapist. When I encountered coaching, I struggled with how that fit into the therapy until I realized I had actually been coaching all along.  

So in the end I’ve turned out to be an exceptionally well-trained coach who has worked with the grieving in one form or another for most of my career.  What has emerged out of that work is a cluster of creative people, not all artists, but creative nonetheless. 

Creativity is one of the first qualities to emerge as people begin to heal. Though some of my clients have become artists or more prolific artists, all now bring a more nimble imagination to the challenges they encounter in life. 

Death and the grief that follows, are some of the most challenging experiences we can have as human beings.  

Grief leads us into deep wells of despair and periods of fallowness that seem to have no end, and ultimately to a place of immense creativity as we begin to put the pieces of our lives and our identity back together again.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay 

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