Having traveled around the sun over 70 times, I've had a variety of wonderful and challenging experiences. Many brought joy. Others dropped me to my knees.

In 2006, during an initial visit to a therapist, I rambled on about three significant losses I had experienced in the last three months. My grief was complicated and tangled. My grandson had been born at 24 weeks, weighing 1 pound, 12 ounces, to my daughter whose adoption trauma and autism prevented her from parenting. My mother died while I was on a cruise. My sisters and I had to move my father to assisted living and my 14 year romantic relationship ended. I didn't know what I was grieving, just that I was dying inside.

The therapist handed me The Grief Recovery Handbook, and invited me to read the first page. Tears streamed down my cheeks when I read the first sentence. "If you are reading this book, there is a high probability that your heart is broken." My heart not only felt broken, but I could see no way to put the pieces back together. The therapist asked if I might like to join her next 8-week Grief Recovery Method Group; I jumped on the chance to begin healing from the pain that was keeping me from fully living.

During the class on graphing relationship losses, it was clear I first needed to work through the grief of losing my mother. Throughout the years, however, I addressed the others losses, using the same method. Amazingly, when I thought of the losses, I no longer felt sad. Instead, I could put my hand over my heart, breathe in gratitude and let go. Wanting to gift this to others, I did the Certification Training to be a Grief Recovery Method Specialist.

And then I took a break from teaching The Grief Recovery Method, to do life!

After 30 years of teaching and 15 years as a Unit Coordinator of a Hospice Inpatient Care Center, watching my oldest grandkids go off to college, getting certified as a Grief Group Facilitator at Hospice and certified as a Level 1 Yoga Teacher, and finishing my memoir, I am now fully retired and anxious to once again offer the GRM as an online course. I hope to see you there.