Wisdom of the Wounded

By Dr. Colleen Arnold, as told to Karen Mulder As a family physician, emergency room doctor and hospice doctor, Colleen Arnold is no stranger to death and dying. But her experience took a personal turn when her husband Neil was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer at the age of 57. Colleen offers us these three […]

Just a few days after learning that our dear friend Jim had been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer, the calendar informed us that his birthday was coming up.  Larry and I wondered what kind of birthday card to send him. All the funny or sarcastic cards seemed totally inappropriate. The flowery positive-thinking cards seemed […]

My husband Larry’s best friend Jim has Stage 4 lung cancer and is under Hospice care.  After visiting Jim yesterday, Larry wrote him the following note. Dear Jim: Before I came to visit you, I read an article by Colleen Arnold, MD, entitled Living with the Dying. Dr. Arnold gave me advice on how to […]

By David Korte, as told to Karen Mulder My older brother Mick passed away unexpectedly at the age of 46. I still miss him tremendously. If you were to see him walking down the street, you probably wouldn’t have known he had a mental disability. Academically, Mick functioned at about the 4th grade level. But […]

One day I was attending a class on the Psalms, and I was running late.  So I screeched into the parking lot, slammed on my brakes, turned off the engine, jumped out, and started running toward  the door to the building where my class was about to begin. But . . . .approaching the same […]

Guest post by Brittany Bayley As much as we may be hesitant to admit it, being around others with needs different from our own can be uncomfortable. You may wonder what is appropriate to say, what questions you should avoid, and if you should jump in and help (or let them work a situation out […]

My friend Krista was in Burger King with her two sons. One son, Benjamin, has autism and was having a difficult time.  He was making loud noises and was jumping up and down and flapping his arms, as some people with autism do. A man in the next booth got up and came to our […]

What would you do to ensure that people have a clean glass of water to drink? Most of us in the United States probably don’t give a lot of thought to our access to clean water. But according to nonprofit organization Water Mission, 35% of the world’s population lives without proper sanitation, which includes lack […]

Guest post by Rodger Price, Executive Coach Have you ever noticed that you can “listen someone into” a great solution? I know the grammar of that sentence isn’t that great, but I really like that expression. It turns out that most people can find their own solutions for the issues they face. It’s also true […]

A guest post by Katie Wilson 26 years ago, the phone rang in my college apartment. I had just spent the afternoon in the library studying, and now I was enjoying a movie rental and dinner with the love of my life, my boyfriend Jay. What more could a 21-year-old ask for, right? Life was […]