Anne Richardson

February 12, 2023

Ambiguous Loss, Community, Connection, Gratitude, Grief, Grief and Loss, Hope, Intangible Loss, My Mentor Grief, Poetry, Seasons, spiriutal companionship, disenfranchised grief

Coastal Language of Ambiguous Loss & Disenfranchised Grief

Anne Richardson

February 12, 2023

Ambiguous Loss, Community, Connection, Gratitude, Grief, Grief and Loss, Hope, Intangible Loss, My Mentor Grief, Poetry, Seasons, spiriutal companionship, disenfranchised grief

I can sense the relief in my interactions with others these days. It is FINALLY light after 5:30pm! Yes! Folks are smiling again. Hope in the form of longer days in the Northern Hemisphere has arrived. We passed the midpoint of winter February 1st and “suddenly” first light crests the horizon well before 7am and daylight lingers longer. Last Tuesday at 6pm when I set out on my Mazama Street Ramble, there was still a vague hint of light in the west as stars started to bud. A clear night blossoming after a day of steady rain.

Nature takes the seasonal shifts in stride. If I look back through my camera roll, there are photos of daffodil tips poking through the soil in February from years past. Already the hellebore are blooming and if I draw a dogwood twig close to my eyes I can see the beginnings of budding. From a distance the deciduous trees appear to still be slumbering, but beneath their exterior they are awakening. It all feels predictable…or at least variations on a theme. And humans, for the most part, we like predictable.

Anne Richardson

May 7, 2020

Covid-19, My Mentor Grief, spiritual journey, Belonging, Beauty, Thresholds, awakening, Grief

Lesson From My Mentor, Grief: Sitting With Discomfort While Embracing Beauty

Anne Richardson

May 7, 2020

Covid-19, My Mentor Grief, spiritual journey, Belonging, Beauty, Thresholds, awakening, Grief

Tulips began erupting from their sleek oval bulbs in April. Long stems hugged by thick winged leaves, one flower per stem. Colors the pastel pink of tongues, the vibrant red of heartbeats, the cream of moonbeams, the yellow of lemon drops held in cupped hands. Tulips surpassing their daffodil bulbed relations with a flourish by month’s end. One completing their laborious cycle, having awakened in late winter with tips barely gracing the earth to now drooping in browned petaled demise, waiting to fall back into dormancy. The other, as their cycle nears completion, throws open their petals with wild abandon, tossing them to the ground one-by-one leaving the stem bewildered, naked for all to see. Daffodils, my heart flower, resonates with the steadfastness that is the root of me. And yet, in slowing my pace during this pandemic time, the allure of tulips is calling to the wild in me. A wild that keeps bobbing to the surface with greater frequency with each passing year.

Anne Richardson

January 22, 2020

Ancestral Journey, Gratitude, Grief Journey, Healing, Life Transitions, My Mentor Grief, Sojourn, writing

Grief: On Keening, Honesty, Healing, and even a bit of Whimsy

Anne Richardson

January 22, 2020

Ancestral Journey, Gratitude, Grief Journey, Healing, Life Transitions, My Mentor Grief, Sojourn, writing

The rain has settled in for the day as I settle into the beige velvet chair of my hotel room—laptop open, journals in piles, scattered papers, and iPhone camera roll close at hand. I have returned to my favorite retreat during the winter months—the Oregon Coast. Cannon Beach. I have come to write. Take time to focus on what is becoming a persistent poke at my heart. Actually, it is more akin to having several toddlers gathered around my ankles all vying for my attention. “Write me!” “No, work on me!” Poems. Non-fiction prose. Blog posts. That book about my spiritual sojourn and weaving it into the journey through my mother’s Alzheimer’s. How grief became my mentor through that journey. That area where from my training and experience I am an expert, so I have something to offer, right? They are all clamoring for my attention.

Anne Richardson

September 19, 2019

Grief, Grief Journey, Life Transitions, spiritual journey

Sneaker Waves-Opening Boxes, Finding Grief

Anne Richardson

September 19, 2019

Grief, Grief Journey, Life Transitions, spiritual journey

“Never turn your back on the ocean.” A teaching offered to me as a youngster. Living close to the Oregon Coast where sleeper waves can heave logs on to shore or wash an unsuspecting walker out to sea in an eye-blink, it is a sound piece of wisdom. Even as I connect in my being to the sea as “Mother Ocean,” I was reminded of this on a recent visit when I was knee deep in water seconds after noting the waves were a good 20 feet out and seemed to be biding their time, lapping more than galloping. She wanted my attention—“Daughter, something is stirring.” Something is stirring.

Anne Richardson

November 24, 2017

Honoring All Grief and Loss During the Holidays

Anne Richardson

November 24, 2017

I’ll be honest, Thanksgiving was not easy this year. Oh, it ended on an upbeat note as I enjoyed dinner with my daughter and her boyfriend at his extended family’s home, but it began with the ever present reminder that my ninety-year old mother is declining and any expectations need to be set aside in order to meet her where she is in any given moment. I am on my own grief journey with her through Alzheimer’s and what a holiday looked like last year, or the year before, or a decade ago, can not be reproduced in 2017 like a Facebook memory.

Anne Richardson

December 18, 2016

Swimming with Grief

Anne Richardson

December 18, 2016

December 17th, my father’s birthday. My dad would have turned 93 this year if he had lived so long. He lived to 63, barely. Funny how grief can linger submerged for a decade or two or even close to three and then bob to the surface for no apparent reason. Or maybe there is a reason—a mother with Alzheimer’s who, as she drifts farther out in a sea of old memories, brings my father up a lot, stirring my own recollections. She still gets peeved with him for “leaving” so long ago, knowing it wasn’t a choice.

Anne Richardson

August 13, 2016

Unexpected Gifts in Letting Go

Anne Richardson

August 13, 2016

Funny how old memories will resurface at unexpected times. Maybe it is the sweetness of the blackberries this summer that stirred my recollection of these unfolding memories two years ago. Spring of 2014 blossomed into a summer of unanticipated challenges.

Anne Richardson, M.A. is a Board Certified Chaplain, Certified Veriditas Labyrinth Facilitator, Certified Spiritual Director and poet. Read more...

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Coastal Language of Ambiguous Loss & Disenfranchised Grief

Lesson From My Mentor, Grief: Sitting With Discomfort While Embracing Beauty

Grief: On Keening, Honesty, Healing, and even a bit of Whimsy

Sneaker Waves-Opening Boxes, Finding Grief

Honoring All Grief and Loss During the Holidays

Swimming with Grief

Unexpected Gifts in Letting Go

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