Helping Teens Deal with Grief

October 3, 2018 / colleen arnold / Leave a comment

Today’s post is shared on the website Wisdom of the Wounded, and is about helping teens deal with grief. Even if you don’t know a teenager who is mourning a death, you probably know one who is mourning something else: a lost relationship, a divorce, even bad grades. I think you’ll find these tips useful no matter what the loss.

https://wisdomofthewounded.com/2018/09/05/how-to-help-your-teen-cope-with-grief/

There’s also a beautiful graphic you can print out or share:

https://wisdomofthewounded.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/WOTW_Teen_Grief_PDF.pdf

If you have any other suggestions, please let me know. And as always, thanks for reading!

colleen

The Marathon Finish Line

September 19, 2018 / colleen arnold / 10 Comments

Sometimes the small accomplishments mean more than the marathon ones.

Back in the 1980s someone dared my husband to run the Shamrock marathon without any serious training or preparation. Always up for a challenge, he accepted. He didn’t set any great records, but he did finish that race. He even had the runner’s patch to prove it. Now here I was, twenty-five years later, clutching that faded patch in my hands as I searched a new generation of marathon runners for my daughter.

Six months earlier, my husband was diagnosed with cancer. Our daughter, Jacquelyn, signed up to run that year’s Shamrock Marathon in his honor. She joined the Livestrong Cancer Foundation team and raised more money than anyone on her team except for the CEO of the foundation. She was even the featured runner for the marathon’s publicity newsletter.

Sadly, she was now running the race in her Dad’s memory. Although she wasn’t quite as unprepared as he once was, her training schedule fizzled down to an occasional walk in the last weeks of her dad’s life. Continue reading →

On Being a Know-It-All

September 5, 2018 / colleen arnold / 2 Comments

I am such a know-it-all; we all are sometimes. And of course, we don’t know everything….

Neil and I were in Tuscany. The scenery was magnificent: narrow medieval streets, beautiful vistas visible from walled cities, history so alive I could feel the ancients walking the cobbled roads with us. Despite all this, the most remarkable part of the trip was my discovery of arugula.

We were seated at an outdoor café in the tiny village of Cortona (home to Betty Mayes and “Under the Tuscan Sun”). Before the waiter even took our order, he brought bread and salads. The bread was warm and fragrant, but the salad got all my attention. Simple sliced pears arranged on a bed of green leaves, and drizzled with good Italian olive oil, it was the most delicious thing I had ever tasted. But it wasn’t the perfect pears or the fine olive oil that impressed me, it was those peppery leaves. “Neil, taste this salad! The greens are amazing!”

He raised his eyebrows with a questioning look. “You mean the arugula?” Continue reading →