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Self-Care during the COVID-19 Pandemic
These are very challenging times we are living in right now. The last three months have been difficult, to say the least, with everyone on lockdown due to COVID-19 … the invisible enemy.
Men in Grief: Self-Care is for You Too!
While grief styles may shift for both men and women, exploring our own style of grieving can provide insight into how we as individuals need to work through the messy part and feel supported. How we care for ourselves as grievers can also give focus and attention to what we need to do for self-care.
Un-planning Self-Care
Have you ever asked yourself ‘what does good self-care really look like?’ I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that most people don’t exactly know what self-care is to them. To be honest though, it doesn’t really matter if you haven’t figured it all out yet!...
The 3 Ingredients in Restorative Self-Care
When was the last time you were stressed out? Maybe when you were paying bills, watching the news, attempting to make sense of COVID-19 or processing paperwork as a result of the loss of your loved one. Your heart starts racing, your palms get sweaty, your stomach jumps into your throat. We experience these feelings so often we don’t even recognize that we are stressed, and that our physical and mental health is compromised.
Up to the Challenge: Steps for Life Team Challenge 2020 Winners
…And the envelope please! The winners in our annual Steps for Life Team Challenge have been declared. The Steps for Life Team Challenge is a fun and friendly competition for those who want to demonstrate their commitment to health and safety. This year’s winners...
A single thread of hope is powerful
Hope has an important role to play in health and healing. Threads of Life families demonstrate this truth.
Threads of Life letter by letter
Together making a difference…
Our Why: Our Champions, Our Heroes
We would like to thank you for being our CHAMPIONS, our HEROES. So far 2020 is nothing like any of us had planned – COVID-19 put a halt to that. In March, in just a matter of days, everything changed for home, work and play. Nothing was untouched, including Steps for Life. Now that May has come to an end, and we have time to reflect, it is truly remarkable what was accomplished in such a short period of time.
Learning the Workings of a Family Changed Forever
September of 2014, I had been a critical care nurse in a busy neuro-trauma intensive care unit for 22 years. I had been with many families over the years whose loved one was going to have life-altering injuries or was going to die from their injuries/illnesses. Being relatively naive and uneducated on the long-term effects of grief, I just assumed that they would be sad for a while but eventually their lives would return to normal. I have learned that karma has a nasty way of showing you reality and on September 26th, 2014 I got the hardest lesson of my life when my 17-year-old son Adam was tragically killed at the end of his first week as a co-op student in an auto recycling facility.
What if … ? {Poem on healing from grief}
Poem on healing from grief … meant to be read slowly with reflection
International Nurses’ Day: Putting the “Personal” in PPE
One of my sons works as a registered nurse in the emergency room of a hospital in Ottawa. In the past, when I thought about the risks of his job, infectious disease didn’t really enter my picture, but it sure has now.
Memory Lane: Each sign tells a story
In a normal Steps for Life year, Memory Lane is one of the most meaningful parts of the event. It looks a little different in every community, but this is one of the ways Steps for Life-Walking for Families of Workplace Tragedy can introduce the faces behind the workplace tragedy statistics. Each sign tells a story, even though we know that the few sentences on that sign are just a tiny fraction of the life of the individual and the family it represents.
