Monday’s Random Thought: Grief is a Rainbow

Attending a funeral on Saturday I was struck once again by all the different ways to grieve. Grief isn’t one color and it doesn’t have to be black. Grief doesn’t have a beginning and an end, it’s a continuous circle.

In the pain of our grief the desire to stuff the hurt and bury the evidence is common. When we walk hand and hand with our suffering we discover so much beauty, so much life worth celebrating. The grief still hurts but the light it offers is transformational.

Jenny Gwinn McGlothern is a Certified Transformational Master Life Coach, Retreat Leader and Writer. She is also a co-facilitator at Seattle Life Coach Training (www.seattlelifecoachtraining.com) You can find her on FaceBook, http://www.FaceBook.com/MamaNeedsARefill or visit her website: http://www.mamaneedsarefill.com

Monday’s Random Thought: Seeing Through Childlike Eyes

My children and I found a way to honor my almost 13 year old daughter’s wish yesterday. She stated at the beginning of October that she wanted to go to a Pumpkin Patch this year. Something she hasn’t done since a preschool field trip. With sports activities, birthday parties and all the other busyness that falls on the weekend, I didn’t see it happening. I too loved the idea, but adding one more thing felt heavy and not likely.

Turns out her late afternoon soccer game was out in the “country” near a pumpkin patch. I learned this information on the side lines during half time. So guess what we were going to do after the game?

Seeing both of my kids hunt the wide open pumpkin patch for their perfect pumpkins made my heart smile. They probably enjoyed it more at ages 10 and nearly 13 then they did as toddlers. This time they may even remember the experience as they both want to come back next year.

Holiday traditions bring out the kid in all of us as we do simple activities that bring us joy.

Age doesn’t have to mean goodbye to traditons that typically happen when you are younger. Instead it can mean hello to a new way to experience, through young eyes. And we should never get too busy to do that.

Jenny Gwinn McGlothern is a Certified Transformational Master Life Coach, Retreat Leader and Writer. She is also a co-facilitator at Seattle Life Coach Training (www.seattlelifecoachtraining.com) You can find her on FaceBook, http://www.FaceBook.com/MamaNeedsARefill or visit her website: http://www.mamaneedsarefill.com

Monday’s Random Thought: Pave the Way

Here it is, a new day. A new week. Your opportunity to pave the way with positive thoughts or negative ones. You can choose thoughts and words that support, motivate, encourage, guide, lead and lift you up. The alternative leaves you stuck in one spot scratching your head asking, Why, why, why me?

Instead, why not you? Why not have thoughts and words come out of your head, anchored by your heart on to the tip of your tongue that speak positively?

Will you say, I am not enough, and stay put in the pit of discouragement? Or will you say, I am enough, and fly high down your path of possibility. Your thoughts and words have power, choose wisely, choose with love.

Jenny Gwinn McGlothern is a Certified Transformational Master Life Coach, Retreat Leader and Writer. She is also a co-facilitator at Seattle Life Coach Training (www.seattlelifecoachtraining.com) You can find her on FaceBook, http://www.FaceBook.com/MamaNeedsARefill or visit her website: http://www.mamaneedsarefill.com)

Monday’s Random Thought: To Love is to Live

This is a tale of woe, this is a tale of sorrow, a love denied, a love restored to live beyond tomorrow. Lest we think silence is the place to hide a heavy heart, remember to love and be loved is life itself, without which we are naught.

The above lines spoken at the end of a play acted out in the movie The Invisible Woman. The story of the affair between Charles Dickens and his mistress Ellen Ternan. Throughout the film we are shown flashbacks between the present and years earlier when Dickens, portrayed by Ralph Fiennes and Ternan carry on a secret romance. It is clear the character, played by Felicity Jones, is harboring furtive thoughts that leave her disconnected from her present day life. Until finally, she confides her long held secret to another. It is after shedding this secret and shinning light on her past that she frees her heart and soul. She starts living grounded to her present life rather than running from a past she tried to keep hidden for so long.

It is as if in the exposing of her affair with Charles Dickens to another person she comes out of her shell and breaks free from the angst suffocating her soul. In doing so there was no shame, at least expressed in the movie, but rather a beauty unveiled in the story of love.

In the words of Charles Dickens, Lest we think silence is the place to hide a heavy heart, remember to love and be loved is life itself, without which we are naught.

And isn’t that the tale we are here to live? To love. To touch another’s heart with a love that goes beyond anything we can define, explain or always understand.

Jenny Gwinn McGlothern is a Certified Transformational Master Life Coach, Retreat Leader and Writer. As founder of Mama Needs A Refill, LLC, she is passionate about all people, not just mamas, receiving an authentic physical, mental, emotional, spiritual refill. She is also co-facilitator at Seattle Life Coach Training (www.seattlelifecoachtraining.com) You can find her on FaceBook, http://www.FaceBook.com/MamaNeedsARefill or visit her website: http://www.mamaneedsarefill.com)