I have carried a couple of buckets with me for the last twenty years. They are my props when I am talking about what helps people with their grief. I ask someone to hold one of the buckets and tell them to imagine they have just lost a loved one. The bucket represents their feelings and I asked them to express what feelings they think would be in their bucket. I ask the audience to join in and words like pain, fear, grief, loneliness, empty, anger, guilt and sometimes relief. I then ask what thoughts
Read MoreOver fifty years ago I read the two books that changed my life. John W. Drakeford wrote The Awesome Power of The Listening Ear, and Taylor Caldwell wrote The Listener.
Drakeford’s book helped me discover that helping people begins in what they say, not what I know or say. The most powerful and healing part of the human body is the ear. The tongue comes in third after hugging arms.
Caldwell’s book showed me how it works. The book is about a fictional character who sets up a room in a downtown building with a sign that simply says, “The Man Who Listens.” Each chapter is the story of a person she called a soul, entering the room which is curtained across the end. They feel the presence of someone behind the curtain but he or she never says a word.
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