#MondaysMoments

November 27 2023

To close this month, please read Anne Hillman’s poem, “We Look With Uncertainty” as you notice “something new is being born in” you while making new treasured memories. We look with uncertainty be...
By Jackie Naginey Hook
Monday, November 27, 2023

November 20 2023

My favorite holidays is Thanksgiving. In terms of the meanings behind other holidays, I’m all in. But I can do without their hype and commercialization. So as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, ...
By Jackie Naginey Hook
Monday, November 20, 2023

November 13 2023

As I was writing this month’s posts about our theme of “Memories Become Treasures,” the song “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac started to play. When our youngest child went off to college, this song mad...
By Jackie Naginey Hook
Monday, November 13, 2023

November 6 2023

This month’s theme is “Memories Become Treasures.” In a recent grief education and support group I was leading we talked about looking at old photographs of deceased loved ones and how those pictur...
By Jackie Naginey Hook
Monday, November 6, 2023

October 30 2023

To close out this month, read these words of poet John O'Donohue: The dead are not distant or absent. They are alongside us. When we lose someone to death, we lose their physical image and presenc...
By Jackie Naginey Hook
Monday, October 30, 2023

October 23 2023

In the book, A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis wrote: “And suddenly at the very moment when, so far, I mourned H. least, I remembered her best. Indeed it was something (almost) better than memory; an i...
By Jackie Naginey Hook
Monday, October 23, 2023

October 16 2023

In connection with our theme, “I Am Gone but Very Near,” I’ve recently learned that in the Aramaic language, the word death means “existing elsewhere.” For some people, the death of a loved one mea...
By Jackie Naginey Hook
Monday, October 16, 2023

Previous Posts

October 9 2023

Nathasha Wagner once said, "I had to learn to have a relationship with someone who wasn’t there anymore." That can feel like an impossible feat, but grief shows us how. When listening to grief, mou...

October 2 2023

Welcome to this month’s theme of “I Am Gone but Very Near.” We all have our own beliefs about what happens after we die. Some of us believe in Heaven, others in reincarnation, still others in no af...

September 25 2023

To close out this month’s posts about “Surrendering Your Soul,” here’s a poem by Antonio Machado that answers the question, is my soul asleep? Is my soul asleep? Have those beehives that labor at ...

September 18 2023

Author Terry Patten wrote, “In truth, the heart must crack open if the soul is to become free. And you simply cannot think your way into that.” Loss cracks our hearts open and grieving is how we he...

September 11 2023

It’s impossible for me to see today’s date and not think about the horrific events that happened on this day in 2001. My family and I were living in Yardley, Pennsylvania, at the time and my husban...

September 4 2023

This month our theme is “Surrender Your Soul.” The word soul can be very intimidating. What is it? Where is it? And how do I connect with it? There are no definitive answers to those questions, but...

August 28 2023

–  I’ll share this poem as we close out our discussion of “Death Is the Memory of the Living.”  At least from my perspective, our lives are so full of dead people that any sane way of li...