Unlocking Your Affluence Code

06/30/2024

When I go see Joyce, my mother-in-law, I don't know what kind of day it will be and I brace myself for joy and heartbreak equally in advance.

Will it be a day when she tells me stories about her 101 years of life, plays the piano, and sings to me? Or a day when she has little energy and speaks so softly I can hardly hear her?

I felt the same kind of heartbreak watching the debate last Thursday, shouting at my TV. Age is a fact for all of us. Both candidates are old, white men.

We are asking the wrong questions.

It shouldn't be who gave the best performance. It should be who can govern this country best. Between the two options - the Biden/Harris team is the undisputed winner.

Performing endless lies and peddling hate is easy, nothing to remember. Getting budgets and laws passed in the face of fact-free MAGA obstructionists committed to breaking democracy is quite another.

I have been thinking a lot lately about all the heartbreaking national and global events - climate change, mental health (including the effects of loneliness), and abortion, to name just 3.

For me, values need to be at the core of policies. It's in my nature to tilt at windmills, stand for and with people who I love, and for those who need extra care.

In the US especially, our social nets have growing gaps you could drive a truck through. The challenges are endless and overwhelming.

For that reason, my latest newsletter is about how to handle grief caused by national and global events. You are not alone. Learn some ways to cope and safeguard your own wellbeing in these turbulent times.

Read, subscribe and share: https://grief.beehiiv.com/p/vulnerability-storytelling-changing-face-grief.

How to reframe your future when the world breaks your heart

05/15/2024

My latest newsletter is called "What is your 'good enough'?"

All of the expected to-bes and to-dos are incredibly stressful on our mental health.

To-bes include:
* be happy when you're sad
* be serious when you're silly
* be focused when you're distracted

To-dos include:
* work responsibilities
* household chores
* time with family and friends

Subscribe to the Life After Grief newsletter and read this issue to learn 5 strategies to cope with overwhelming expectations we can't possibly fulfill at

Essential publication twice a month for people who are grieving the death of a loved one and everyone who cares about them

05/09/2024

Do you know how to unlock your Affluence Code®? You have experienced times when everything works, as if by magic. Wanna know more?

03/21/2024

Every month, on the GRIEF BeLIEF podcast, we talk about different aspects of grief and grieving. The conversation is free-flowing and also includes Karen Hale, Kristi Anderson and sometimes a guest.

Last week's podcast, our conversation was about the unpredictability of loss and how to prepare, as best we can.

On my heart, I am grappling with how best to support the young adult sons of a friend who just had a stroke unexpectedly and is in the hospital.

I want to offer them grief resources they might need but be careful to respect their autonomy, their choices.

My biggest concern is setting up a network of people who will reach out to them periodically over the next months and years.

Fortunately, my friend has strong networks who have stepped up to help with urgent, short-term actions like finding paperwork, professional expertise and a facility for her recovery.

However, in a few months, when the crisis activities are over, their lives will go on. For her boys, they will be on two tracks - caring for their mom and trying to go on with their own lives.

Unless you've been through it (for me, 11 months while David fought to survive pancreatic cancer), few people understand the lasting effects of prolonged grief, hoping for a good outcome and fearing a bad one.

We talked about avoiding conversations about how to prepare in advance for unexpected health challenges or death, such as setting up a will, health care proxy, parent/child conversations about hard topics.

My mother-in-law one day tells me, "Today, I'm going to die." The next day, she says, " I don't want to die. I am never going to die."

I laughed and told her that dying is not optional. She does not have to be afraid. She didn't believe me, which makes me sad.

Anyway, check it out (link in 1st comment). Subscribe and share.

03/12/2024

Time is slippery.
Find out How to Center Yourself When Grief Disrupts Time.
(Link in 1st comment)

03/06/2024

When I was a child, I was shy and intuitive and smart.

I wrote poetry and stories. I watched people and learned stuff. I practiced new words on adults.

In other words, I didn't fit in. Still don't but now I don't care so much what other people think and say.

I could not understand why everybody wasn't thriving and I was determined to figure it out and fix it.

About 10 years ago, I created the Affluence Code®, a diagnostic tool for thriving in any situation.

It's about reconnecting to yourself, instead of the external factors on which many of us base our value.

Imagine being wholly yourself and acting congruent to THAT, and getting incredible results!

I think that's a life skill, especially important to harness if you are grieving. That's what the Affluence Code is all about.

I explain Affluence Code® distinctions for thriving in my latest Life After Grief newsletter called, Walk the Bridge Fro Grieving to Thriving: Unlock Your Affluence Code® with clarity and focus.

Click the link in the 1st comment below to subscribe and share. Like the butterfly below, it's time to fly.

02/19/2024

Anniversaries are filled with expectations and those shape the experience, even before it happens.

It's possible to design ways to make the experience easier, an expression of love. To support your next anniversary after a loss, my latest newsletter was called Anniversaries Suck: how to be ready for yours.

The anniversary of a loved one's passing, especially in the first 2 years, often includes overwhelming feelings, unreliable energy and disorientation on that day. It's unpredictable.

After David died in 2016
* My 1st year, I could barely get out of bed and the volatile feelings lasted close to a month before and after that day

* My 2nd year, I walked around the city to places we loved, sprinkling his ashes, and I was incredibly moody

* My 3rd through 6th years, each year the feelings were less out of control and lasted a shorter time.

* My 7th year, this last anniversary, I wasn't paying attention to what day it was when September 11th came along but I kept bursting into tears randomly. It was a relief when I remembered why. The minute after he died in my arms in 2016, 10:11 am, I was completely fine, even happy again.

By planning for the day you want, instead of dreading the day you expect to have, it can become an expression of love: self-love and love for the person who is gone.

For that reason, last Saturday's Life After Grief newsletter was called Anniversaries Suck: how to be ready for yours. (Link to read is in the 1st comment below).

02/15/2024

Joy and me - December 2023

I just got back from visiting her this afternoon. She is still sharp, engaged and loves her strawberry ice cream. We went to see the doctor for her annual checkup last week and they were amazed at how healthy she is.

However, she is always cold, especially hands and feet so I make hot water bottles every time. Today, I pulled on mittens too.

She walks around her apartment with a walker, goes out with Mary or me in the wheelchair when it's warm. Our last real expedition, I took her to get a haircut at the barbar, a mani-pedi at the salon and to McDonald's for a smoothie and apple pie.

She is weary and 100 weighs heavy on her bones, she says. She is sleeping a lot more than she used to. I don't know when the end will be.

I don't want to be selfish and cling when she is ready to go. I don't want her to doubt my love.

David, my late husband and her son, died in 2016 and I have been her primary caregiver ever since, although she needed very little support in the beginning. Over these years, we have grown to really love each other.

Now, I grieve a little in anticipation on the days when she doesn't want to stir from her bed. On the days when she just wants to sleep. Then sometimes, the next day, she is alert, singing with me and playing the piano.

I am trying to find the strength to say to her, as I did to David when he died in my arms, " Stay as long as you want. Leave when you're ready." I remember tipping my head back so my hot tears would not fall on his chest and scare him.

Anyway, because I have been thinking about this grief before death, called anticipatory grief, that's what last week's newsletter was about:

Anticipatory Grief: Does It Help or Hurt, how to avoid getting trapped in worst case scenario thinking. (Link in 1st comment.)

04/19/2022

REGISTER at

Do you long for more excitement, interactions and activities, but can't find the energy to pursue them?​Register for the upcoming Free RECONNECT workshop to:​* Clarify the cost of who and what you gave up to survive

08/28/2020

It's time to use what I learned between the day David Beynon Pena died on September 10th, 2016 and now about how to find solid ground and reclaim resilience and resourcefulness when the whole world has turned upside down in a heartbeat.

We are in that kind of moment now and I can support you to not just survive but thrive. Find out how in this video (link to learn more is in the 1st comment below.).

08/11/2020

If loss of a loved one, the pandemic, unemployment numbers and protests have turned your life upside down, you may be interested in this new program. David's dying of pancreatic cancer on September 10, 2016 was the biggest transition of my life.

In a month, on September 10, 2020, I am offering a 6-week group workshop called (W)Righting Your Way Through Transition, teaching participants to re-engage, reinvent and rebuild their lifestyle and legacy, on their own terms.

Here is the link to learn more and register yourself, if it's a fit. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/wrighting-your-way-through-transition-tickets-116842947401

03/27/2020

In coronavirus times in NYC, needless to say, the workshop will not be live and it WILL happen.

* Learn to stay resourceful in and after a crisis
* Use this forced pause to re-examine priorities
* Recalibrate your life for success on your own terms

Please get your ticket and join me on April 14th at 3 pm! Bring a friend.

I promise to share my best Bad Widow strategies to heal from feeling broken by circumstances like the death of my husband, loss of a job or a coronavirus pandemic back to thriving powerfully and peacefully.

After a loss or transition like this global coronavirus pandemic, the world shifts on its axis and our priorities change.