Posted by: Ms. Daryl Wood | August 25, 2025

Get Back Up

“If you have made mistakes, even serious mistakes, you may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call “failure” is not the falling down, but the staying down.” Mary Pickford

And so today, I choose to get up again. In spite of or maybe because of the real or perceived ‘failures’ of the past, I am not staying down. Today is a fresh start. For me. For you. For every one of us who is willing to choose to get back up.

Sending love and appreciation to everyone who is starting over … again … today.

Posted by: Ms. Daryl Wood | August 14, 2025

Grief at 3 A.M.

I so didn’t want my life to be so much about grief. I worked hard yesterday at grounding myself and being intentional about what I was doing. I focused on positive and hopeful thoughts and actions. I accomplished things and meditated and journalled and did Heart Math exercises. I reviewed my book club reading (The Wild Edge of Sorrow) so it would be fresh for my Friday call. I followed up on the commitments I made for spiritual practice and study with a mentor/friend.

When the grief waves began, I rode my ebike. And I rode again. And then again. And again. It took me away from the reminders of my Doug that are in every corner of my home. It took me away from the happy families enjoying the lake around me. It took me away from the tasks of maintaining a property I love so much and struggle to keep up. It took me away from having to make decisions and finding ways to fill the emptiness.

But it couldn’t take me away from the aching loneliness. I woke up at 3 a.m. crying and not being able to stop. It was how we sometimes intertwined our fingers before we fell asleep. I couldn’t stop my fingers from pulling at each other to find the feel of his big hands. I couldn’t understand how he could still be gone these 21 months later. I strained to hear his slippers coming down the hall or the sound of his breathing beside me.

And it was hearing about friends’ excitement for their anniversary cruise. It was not knowing who to ask for help with things he would have done so easily. It was missing dinner again because eating was so hard around Doug when he couldn’t eat. It was talking to one of his best buddies and him asking for some small item of Doug’s to keep close as a memento of their friendship. It was being fearful of the stretches of time coming up when no one will be visiting and I will ache for companionship. It was trying to keep my mind from spinning through the difficult conversations with people I love over the last two weeks.

And it was knowing that this is what my life will look like. These moments are temporary and there are lovely times of connecting and laughter and resilience. Two grocery store staff giving me sincere, unsolicited hugs. A friend offering to build a planter box I need. The thoughtful invitation from a friend and an encouraging email from another. I am grateful over and over again every day for my home and community and support people. Balancing between these joyful interactions and the devastating dips is so very hard. And it’s getting harder and harder to know who can handle these crushing moments when it seems like the whole world is suffering.

I didn’t want my life to be so much about grief. But we don’t get to choose. This is what I got. And all the training I’ve done as a Retreat Facilitator, Life Coach and 3VQ/TED* Practitioner could be so helpful in pulling me through this darkness. Some say I should ‘walk my talk’. Sometimes I do and it brings comfort and healing to myself and others. And I, like all the other widows crying in the night, know it’s pretty academic until it is your own heart that is breaking and you wake up crying at 3 a.m.

Posted by: Ms. Daryl Wood | August 6, 2025

Finding Faith Again

My retreat women often heard me say ‘things always work out, always’. With almost three decades of consciousness studies, personal growth, spiritual learning I knew that inevitably things would work out and that they would work out for the highest good of everyone. Even when it didn’t at first make sense why something happened, eventually I saw the deeper meaning and the greater lessons.

And then this morning as I struggled to quiet my mind I realized that my faith was shaken to the core when Doug died. I worked tirelessly for six years to support his health and the last 12 weeks were so extreme. The physical and emotional toll was only bearable because I had strong faith that I was doing the right thing, fighting fiercely for his life. And in the end, it wasn’t enough. Things didn’t work out the way I wanted them to or the way I thought they would or should.

Now, and very pointedly today, after nearly 21 months of living this nightmare of loss I am asking myself how this could have been for my highest good. Things did work out and yet the way they have worked out continues to be so painful. I am encouraged by kind friends to find the gift of this experience. In my calmer, quiet, reflective moments I do that. Those moments are gentle and in stark contrast to the aching moments of ‘why’.

I would never want Doug to suffer the way he did in the end or during his five years on a feeding tube saddled with daily burdens.

And when I step back, I know that impermanence is real and acceptance of change is a pathway to peace.

And for all those beautiful souls who want me to find my way back to my faith and to help me heal I can only say that I live in both worlds now. One where leaning into my faith that this world is loving and purposeful and everything does work out for the highest good of all and one where crushing loss can still cast doubt on everything I believe.

Posted by: Ms. Daryl Wood | August 1, 2025

To Love A Person

‘To love a person is to learn the song that is in their heart and to sing it to them when they have forgotten.’

Arne Garborg

Posted by: Ms. Daryl Wood | July 31, 2025

The Collateral Damage of Grief

Much has been written about the way life changes for people who lose someone they love, someone they are deeply connected to such as my beloved Doug. I’ve read stories about how people suffered and survived and reshaped their lives but the lens I look through now is so different. When a friend’s husband died five years ago I gave her Sheryl Sandberg’s book Option B. I had read it with intrigue and loved the messages that she and Adam Grant shared using my typical sticky notes to mark meaningful passages. I especially like the concept that ‘things could always be worse’ and it played well into how I taught TED* (The Empowerment Dynamic) and coached people. And then my dear Doug died and I began the journey of wondering how could things have been worse.

And as hard as it was to wrap my head around, honestly they could have been much worse. For sure. What I gleaned from that book and the wonderful books by Dr. Alan Wolfelt of The Center for Loss and Life Transition was that things change. Change is inevitable. It’s so obvious to me that every aspect of my life has been upended and trying to find ‘normal’ isn’t possible when the foundation, the north star, the grounding place of my life is missing. Impermanence is so basic to Buddhism and a concept I work at embracing on a daily basis.

And then there is the collateral damage of relationships. I don’t know how to be with people anymore and lots of them don’t know how to be with me. I’m not behaving, acting, talking, thinking or showing up the same way I did before. There are glimmers of the old me and people jump on that right away as if to grasp something stable in an unstable situation. But when I am not the accepting, available, supportive woman they knew, it is so hard for them to keep up the relationship we had. I’m still a work in progress and who knows, maybe they will like me better when I show up in a new way.

I still have all the wisdom and experience I had before but now it has been reorganized into different parts of my heart and mind. Sometimes I can’t retrieve what I counted on to cope with life on a routine day. And, surprisingly, I am not willing to have as many conversations with the multitude of amazing people that populated my life. I stopped working when Doug became seriously ill and other than random exchanges I have ultimately retired from a career I loved. Along with that, is the loss of the people I shared so much growth and learning with. We had something so satisfying.

I started 2025 rebuilding with a shift into hope and possibility. I was on my way to discovering who I am and how I would use these precious days of my life. And then, after weeks of desperate phone calls and increasing illness, my older brother died on February 10. A new round of grief descended on me and I’m still not sure I have fully understood what happened. It was intense. Grief is intense.

And there is more collateral damage. More relationships that fell apart and others that are just now falling apart these 20 months on.

And to be clear, there are more relationships that emerged and strengthened and flourished. More relationships that brought joy, comfort, enthusiasm and opportunity. While the collateral damage is evident there is also collateral improvement. The goodness that can come from grief can be missed in the despair of loss. I’m not sure anything can replace what I had with my beloved Doug and yet I can’t overlook the extraordinary kindness and meaningful relationships that now fill my life every day.

Posted by: Ms. Daryl Wood | July 30, 2025

Building Self-Esteem … Again

Decades ago when I trudged up and down Eagle Road in the early morning hours I listened to one of my favourite ‘teachers’ Caroline Myss’ audio series ‘Self-Esteem: Your Fundamental Power’. I still pop it into my car to periodically hear a message that is always timely. And one of the lines I remember so well has come to settle into my mind these past few days. That is, “You build self-esteem by honouring the commitments you make to yourself.’ Oh boy.

If I was as thorough at honouring the commitments I make to myself as I was at the ones I make to others I am guessing I’d be more accomplished in the areas of my life where I feel somewhat lacking in focus. And yes, grieving the loss of my beloved Doug probably has something to do with my inability to follow through on my personal commitments. But I know that the truth is, I wasn’t great at it before so no surprise here.

AND I led dozens of Women’s Wisdom Retreats and coached even dozens more women (and the occasional brave man) to believe in themselves enough that they would honour themselves with actions as simple as doing for themselves what they said they would. I believed it was possible and I did it. I’ve never been good at teaching what I don’t live. I have too much integrity to live by a ‘do what I say, not what I do’ mindset.

But there are areas of my life that I know I need to keep recommitting to in order to not only make changes but to also build back up the self-esteem that has been badly bruised in this period of deep mourning. In the early days, if I got my bed made and fed myself it was considered a triumph and I gave myself the requisite acknowledgements for just surviving. Now, all these months later (I can’t believe I’m saying months) I see where it requires more than just a few simple tasks to pull me up to my full height.

What is showing up for me in my meditations and journalling is how I make commitments to myself over and over again and then ignore them. It feels a bit like letting myself off the hook or making excuses. And I can be very persuasive in showing how I ‘did something else that was good’ or offering up pretty solid evidence of why something I committed to didn’t happen.

The contrast I see and have shared with a trusted friend is that if I had made a commitment that supported Doug … and there were so many of those over the six years of his cancer journey and especially in his final weeks of suffering … it was immovable. It happened regardless of sleepless nights, grueling schedules, lack of resources, etc. I simply would not allow myself to not do what I committed to except in the most extreme cases where I did everything humanly possible.

So here I sit heading to my evening journalling with a mind overrun with things I did today that don’t fall within the container of commitments I have made over and over again to myself. What happened? What ‘legitimate’ reason do I have for treating myself with less regard than my dear Doug? And what is the impact on my self-esteem of being let down again?

The harsh reality I face is that in the past, Doug would give me a boost with his ever present love and acceptance. Now, as much as I wish it were different, I am left to do that for myself. This is new territory. I have loads of examples where I have indeed honoured the commitments I’ve made to myself. Perhaps in the days ahead I will find a way to add just one more of those old commitments to my to-do list and actually get it done. We’ll see.

Posted by: Ms. Daryl Wood | July 11, 2025

Finding Holiness in a Kayak

Several years ago I wrote a post called Halfway Between The Sun and The Moon. It was a longer than usual post so I don’t know how many people read the whole thing. I did this morning and it still holds as an anchor to so much of what my life has been and is on Eagle Harbour. Today, in the early morning hours in my kayak I hadn’t even realized there was a full moon until I floated in the big water waiting for the sun to come up. I drifted around looking at the beautiful colours of the sky when I saw her – the full moon slowly peeping out from a band of clouds. She was low in the western sky and eventually fully exposed. It got me thinking.

She was there even if I couldn’t see her. As was the sun that I was waiting for. What else was and is ‘there’ even if I can’t see it/them? And how opportune to have the clear reminder of that morning in 2021 when I had first found myself on a remarkably still Lake Huron halfway between the sun and the moon. How different life was then.

Sitting in the stillness I wondered if I could ‘hold’ all this beauty and reverence. I didn’t have anything to take a picture with and no one with me to share the experience. It would just be me and the wonder I was seeing and feeling. I knew I would come home and write about it because I write about things that touch me deeply. And I wondered if that’s why people are so active on social media (I am non existent there). Perhaps they long to be seen, heard and belong. And I know that my aching loneliness for my beloved Doug is a catalyst for some of what I do – writing, talking, sharing, connecting. It is that longing to belong and share the full range of what this amazing world has to offer. It is seeing and feeling such profound emotion in these early hours that feels too much for one heart to embrace. In a strange coincidence that’s how the painful grief feels – too much. If I can hold one, can I hold the other?

So I wrote and waited to see if I wanted to share. In my 2021 Halfway post I noted that the retelling of the story diluted it in some way. What I know for sure right now is that I soaked up the holiness of that time this morning when the lake was sacred still and I was breathing in life halfway between the sun and the moon.

Posted by: Ms. Daryl Wood | June 28, 2025

A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

Living on Lake Huron this is an obvious statement. But it means so much more than that for me. And today was a clear example of this phrase.

Early this morning I saw a notice that a local police constable was leading a bicycle ride to raise money for cancer. On the 45th anniversary of Terry Fox’s attempt to run across Canada with a prosthetic leg to raise money for cancer, his brother and others set out to bring in donations and awareness. A small group of riders would be coming off of the ferry from Manitoulin Island and go through the village of Tobermory to continue on their journey. Eighteen years ago Doug and visited the memorials to Terry in Victoria, B.C. and where his ride ended in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Doug was very moved and thought of Terry when he himself was diagnosed with cancer in 2017.

So, I sent out a last minute message this morning and rounded up 17 of us to stand along the highway in front of the local grocery store and wave and cheer as they rode by with an extensive police escort. They slowed down and waved back as our enthusiasm was contagious. It was an exciting few moments.

What really touched me was how much each of the people who joined me expressed their gratitude for being part of something that felt historic. Besides the many smiles and engaging conversations they felt so uplifted being part of something so special. And so … the rising tide of goodwill, lifted each little ‘boat’ who waved a flag, their arms and clapped their hands and shouted good wishes. And then we realized that many shoppers and the store owner had come out to see what the fuss was about. Many of them had big smiles and commented on our gesture.

So it is that we don’t often realize how doing something to recognize or acknowledge others can give back so much more to so many. Let’s keep the tide of kindness and compassion rising. There are many little boats waiting for a high tide.

Posted by: Ms. Daryl Wood | June 27, 2025

Where Are You Putting Your Focus?

That’s the First Vital Question in The Empowerment Dynamic work that I loved and taught for ten years. The principle is so simple. Really. Just notice if you are focusing on problems, inconveniences, disappointments, difficulties, annoyances, and drama – big drama and little drama. Just notice. The first step in changing our behaviour is recognizing it and the second step is an honest acknowledgement of the facts as we know them. If what we are focused on makes us anxious, angry, sad, frustrated or numb then we can decide if that’s what we want to focus on. And even those of us who know this have sometimes had a hard time taking back our power by simply telling ourselves the truth. It all sounds a little like magical thinking in a world where distractions are at what feels like an all time high. But that too is a focus that limits our ability for hope.

And somewhere between noticing and acknowledging there is space, if we choose, for a pause. Space for breathing and ‘being with’ whatever rises from within. I feel this when I suddenly realize my beloved Doug is no more on the physical earth. He doesn’t live in my house as he once did and some people in my life will never know his funny, kind ways. When the noticing comes, I feel emotions racing to the surface and sometimes, when I can, I pause. I pause long enough to feel what this is like for me before I reluctantly sigh and acknowledge the truth. Even in those few moments there is time for a pause. After the acknowledgement I can quietly decide where I will put my focus.

I’ve been told repeatedly by well-meaning, loving supporters that if I focus on the blessings of my life with Doug and the blessings I have now, I will feel more ease. 18 long months in, I know, and really have known all along, they are right. Until now, it has been an almost impossible task to see anything but the void that his passing has left in my life. I say almost because with the kindness of my friends and colleagues I have dipped my toe into shifting my perspective off and on. None of us is perfect at anything and I give myself and others credit for the times we override our impulses to bring ourselves more peace.

And I am committed to feeling my feelings so I know that noticing and acknowledging don’t guarantee I will want to move out of grief. Sometimes it seems to keep me close to my much loved Doug and I am not ready to ‘give up’ that connection. And when I am ready, I stand by the lake or in woods or the grocery store or wherever I am and breathe into a place that lifts my spirits knowing I am humbled to have had such a devoted partner and years of heartfelt memories.

Where I put my focus is a powerful tool I’ve taught others. For these many months of mourning I have been ambushed so often I rarely had the capacity to change where I put my focus. I’m doing it now, as best I can, as I ease into my new life.

Posted by: Ms. Daryl Wood | June 23, 2025

Grief Brings Us Together

My grieving has moved me into deeper, much deeper connections with people that until now, I have had more superficial relationships with – local people, neighbours, friends, even family. They have been witness to my soul, my authenticity in a way that is not about the spiritual language of authenticity, more of the sacred, holiness of my soul that has no language for what it is, no framework – it is simply and beautifully my soul – a space, an energy, a feeling.

And they have seen it, felt it, and perhaps not even been able to describe or put it into any context other than what we as a culture, as a community, as people in the throws of ordinary lives, suddenly and almost violently thrust into communications with my despair can grasp. They could not look away in the moment anymore than I could, and most of them didn’t. They stood still, wept, held their breath, hugged, spoke, remained silent, tried to find an opening to understand, to be of help, to do something, anything.

Sometimes though – not at first – sometimes my grief drew them into that soul space within themselves where we knew each other, where we were so fully connected. And my grieving – openly, honestly, vulnerably – gave us the chance to face that moment together and maybe, maybe unite, to be one with each other, to be holy together.

And what else besides grief, besides raw suffering in grief can take us there, at such a depth. Maybe love. Maybe. But with so many of us, how hard is it to love the full way that my grief has brought us together.

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