is something that will happen to all of us, death surrounds us every day either personally or in the news, death is as normal an event in our lives as birth when you think about it. Yet as a society we find it hard to speak about it, we feel uncomfortable, I know often I feel as though I will be portrayed as morbid blogging about it!
I often wonder why this natural part of the life cycle is so taboo?

Is it because we reject pain as human beings?
Is it because it feels unnatural as we believe somehow we should …read more

As time goes by from the death the memories I find become more and more intangible. One thing I have found is that if you can keep those memories alive, if you can keep those memories part of your life then it helps.
I have found that doing two things have helped me. I helped build a memorial in a garden, one that people could enjoy and reflected his life. For my dad I started blogging and podcasting about his ideas.
Somehow this kept the memories alive, it created a sense that they were still here helping the world as they would …read more

A blogging friend requires our help and I know what a fantastic community we all are at Widows Quest.
Marijke who writes the wonderful Help My Hurt blog and as part of another site called Seniors Support has “designed a survey on living wills that I have a very ambitious goal for – 1000 responses. I have a little over 100 now …. I’m trying to get responses from all sorts of groups, from seniors themselves to gen x-ers, to the so-called sandwich generation and just about anyone else.
I wonder whether some of your readers would help me achieve my goal  …read more

Blogging and indeed having all your wonderful comments, really shows me that no matter what culture, how the grief has occurred – the feeling of loss is the same worldwide. Blogging has been a great comfort to me to know that I am not alone, that I am not daft because at times I haven’t coped very well.
Grief really is a universal feeling, one that brings all people together. Blogging is like that too….some things that I have learned about the grief process over the last couple of weeks

Nothing is like receiving comforting words from people who care and who …read more

Blogger Galba Bright passed away this week – here is my post on his death in which I say
“Galba sleep tight, we will miss you hugely and thank you for leaving such wonderful emotional footprints all over the world”
 Galba was a wonderful, giving man.. what is strange is that I never met him, yet called him a friend. Isn’t that a strange part of social media, blogging, podcasting etc. I had interviewed him for my podcast about emotional intelligence only a couple of weeks ago…despite the thousands of miles between us, social media brought us together.
It also made me think …read more

I believe in community and yesterday I talked about how a cancer patient has built a community around blogging. A comment from a reader lead me to   another blog that helps people come to terms with grief, death and bereavement.
I love bringing tips and help to you all and if you know of a site that can help widows, widowers or people that have lost a long term partner then let me know. I believe the more we share, the more we understand our feelings, the more we think about how to move forward into a scary future then …read more

Towards the end of last year, I started to use a service called Twitter which is what they call a micro blogging tool. I really enjoy it and it means that you can have conversations all day with people across the world.
You get the chance to write in 140 characters what you are doing, you can subscribe to other peoples comments and people can subscribe to yours. So why do I like it well, I never feel alone. If you want to try and follow my thoughts here is my twitter profile
http://twitter.com/Engagingbrand

Oh dear what a Christmas – I was blue lighted into hospital last Sunday and spent all of the holiday in hospital. Today (Sat 29th) I have been allowed out for a couple of days as I won’t be having my operation until next week. It is wonderful to see family and friends.
The holiday season is normally a tough time with many memories however this year I have found a new way of coping with grief – be ill and worry about your health!
I would like to thank everyone for the wonderful thoughts they sent me, I am sure everything …read more

Do you want a little publicity from the entire Family and Relationships Channel on b5media?During the month of October, we’ll be hosting our first ever Family and Relationships Channel Blogtoberfest.
We’re planning to run this event for approximately two weeks during the month of October (or until the prizes run out). And during that two weeks, we’ll be giving away some amazing prizes.
We’ve already come up with a few prizes of our own by way of previous product reviews, public relations contacts and more to give to readers but would like to supplement them with some other prizes and gifts from …read more