Goodbyes are universally difficult. This is especially true when they involve someone who has played a key role in our lives. Some ensuing sadness is normal. However, what if we experience more than that? What if each time we have to say a goodbye or separate from someone, we feel like something traumatic is happening and find ourselves overwhelmed with grief? This often means that something else is happening. Today’s podcast answers a question that involves this struggle. Discussion focuses on what often lies under the surface when this occurs and how to resolve it.

Today’s podcast offers a message to start our healing work and spiritual life off on the right foot in the new year. The pace and spirit in which we move through our spiritual lives and the healing work are critical and often imbalanced. Today’s podcast covers key points to help maintain balance.

Today’s podcast answers the question of what are some concrete steps someone can follow in grieving a disenfranchised loss such as the loss of a normal childhood.

The submitter of the question is feeling stuck in the healing work and don’t know if they have even started grieving. Sometimes when we have started grieving, we might feel disoriented and not quite sure where we are in the process. Today’s podcast discusses finding the beginning and the end of this process and making sure certain steps are worked towards and accomplished.

Today’s podcast answers a question from somebody struggling over whether to go to a family function. The source of the struggle is that the family of origin is profoundly dysfunctional and unhealthy. Today’s podcast focuses on discerning between healthy avoidance and unhealthy avoidance and knowing precisely when it’s okay to not go to something.

When doing the healing work, we can often find ourselves in a different space than many people we have been used to spending time with. We can find ourselves in uncharted waters as we begin to see life through a different lens. Knowing how to handle changes in dynamics and friendships as a result of our growth can be challenging. Today’s podcast speaks to this. It also answers a second question about when saying no in a parish setting becomes difficult.

Today’s podcast speaks on a valuable resource that is in short supply, and that is empathy. Each day as we set out into the world we are in the spiritual space of the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. The wounded of today are suffering from the wounds of not being loved fully or enough and being starved of attention, understanding, and compassion. The medicine of the ancient world was wine and oil but today it is empathy and love.

Today’s podcast answers two questions. The first is about if we can heal from painful prenatal experiences that are stored in implicit memory. The second question pertains to whether or not there are appropriate situations were complete cut off from a family member is okay.

Today’s podcast offers three brief reflections. We find ourselves in the midst of a season of great change. Rather than feel helpless in the face of all the change around us, we could choose to be deliberate with the time that God has given us. If we can be good stewards of the time that God has given us, gratitude will be easier to come by. Gratitude and self-acceptance open the doors to the peace of Christ.

Today’s podcast speaks about a deep and gnawing fear that many people struggle with, and that is the fear of not being good enough. When we live with this fear we find ourselves trapped in a never ending quest to seek affirmation, please others, and be successful.

Our life can be spent in the never-ending act of treading water by trying to keep our heads above the emotional waterline between being good enough and shame.

Today’s podcast answers a question from someone whose spouse has been suffering from untreated mental illness which is exacting a heavy toll on the submitter of the question. Both the husband and the wife have a responsibility to look out for each other, protect each other, and play a role in carrying each other‘s crosses. If one member of the marriage believes it’s all on them to carry the load alone, it will lead to burn out, and to the very thing they are trying to avoid.