A few days ago I shared a tradition with some of my colleagues at work. On New Year’s Eve German television broadcasts a show called “Dinner for One”. It was first aired in 1963 and has been shown every year I can remember. Everybody at home basically knows it whereas unsurprisingly no one in Canada ...

Today I spent some time on the website of the Make a Wish foundation. They have recently received some major press coverage with some of their wishes, in particular BatKid. We know a couple of families who benefited from their services as well and I wanted to learn more about them. A few hours later ...

Apparently I keep coming back to the same topic again and again. I have written two posts already about meaning and purpose of life. When I received a newsletter from Stanford University that mentioned research about the millennial generation I did not expect it to cover this topic as well. The researchers published an opinion ...

Recently I read about PTSD in a UBC press release titled “Healing an invisible wound“. It mentioned a veterans transition program that was created to support military people who suffer from traumatic stress symptoms. When I read the article everything that was described sounded very familiar. It occured to me that a support group of ...

Today is Remembrance Day and I am thinking back a few years and notice that my perception of the day has changed. Previously I was aware about the day and what it stood for, remembering the service and sacrifice of men and women to protect freedom. But I wasn’t entirely allowing myself to really consider ...

My last post Meaninglessness was about the meaning of life and how one’s basic belief system and/or religious views might get challenged after tragedy strikes. Why did it happen at all, why did it happen to my family, how will we get through this? The reality is that bad things happen to a lot of ...

I just came across a few images on my computer that I saved a while ago when I read “The year of Magical Thinking” by Joan Didion. I took a picture of two pages that resonated with me. Now that I read them again, I thought I should share them: “Grief turns out to be ...

Seven years ago we received the phone call in the middle of the night that my father had died. Pong. My mind has just send me back through time and it feels like I just woke up with my mother standing in the door telling me the terrible news. But seven years have passed. Pong, ...

The Huffington Post ran an article on September 10 by Erin Santos with the great title of “Awareness… What a Bullsh*t Word“. It challenges everyone to go beyond noticing tragedies to taking action. “Action saves lives, awareness does not.” The comments are very interesting as well. How do we get people to take action? It ...