Online Continuing Loving Bonds Story Sharing Circles are my favourite volunteer work during this season of my life. Each circle is a small and beautiful gathering of 6 to 10 resilient people who know that that when death comes, our loving relationships continue. We support each other to learn and grow by sharing experiences continuing our loving bonds with loved ones who have died. There is no cost to participate in exploring diverse ways of continuing our bonds with our loved ones.
Dates: Weekly circles will begin again in January 2026.
Dates to be announced.
Place: Online. You will receive a zoom link after you register
If you are from another time zone, you will be able to use this Time Zone Converter to convert Pacific Time to your own Time Zone: Time Zone Converter.
Participants are welcome to participate once, occasionally or regularly. Pre-registration is required. To register, fill in the form below. I will send you a confirmation email and then will email you once we have the dates and times for our Winter 2026 circles.
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WHAT IS A CONTINUING LOVING BONDS STORY SHARING CIRCLE?
By listening and sharing in safe, compassionate settings, we are learning together, practicing together and empowering each other to cultivate and continue loving bonds in all our relationships. As we share, we are supporting each other to explore some important questions about end-of-life accompaniment, death care and bereavement. A few of these questions are:
How does loving beyond death impact grieving, life beyond grief and carrying out legacies?
How does continuing loving bonds with beloved people who have died affect our relationships with those we love who are living?
How does continuing loving bonds support and enrich our efforts to live meaningful, purposeful and joy-filled lives?
One of my reasons for facilitating these story sharing circles is because I wish John and I had known about Continuing Loving Bonds before he died.
Sometimes I think, What if I had missed this?
I feel fortunate that our reciprocal tangible and spiritual bonds transformed my off-kilter journey through grief into a heroic odyssey of what I have come to call “re-orbiting” around love and happiness.
I want to share my stories and listen to other’s stories of continuing our loving bonds.
Thirty years ago, the researchers and authors of Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief hoped that their work researching and developing a model for resolving grief by focusing on love would become well known and well loved. In the final chapter of their 1996 book, two of the authors, Phyllis Silverman and Steven Nickman wrote, “We are not sure what form a new model of the resolution of grief will take . . . . We are sure, however, that any new model that emerges will understand the centrality of the connection in the human family to others, both living and dead. We look forward to the conversations among the bereaved, researchers, and clinicians in which the new model will take shape.” Although thirty years has gone by, I think Klass et al’s model is timeless. I want to be part of helping these conversations continue.
I have spent my career – as a psychologist, researcher and educator – facilitating meaningful conversations amongst diverse groups of people. With the help of my memoir and this website, I am now bringing people together to explore Continuing Loving Bonds.
Sharing our stories about the impact of Continuing Loving Bonds on end-of-life accompaniment, death care, bereavement is meaningful and helpful for everyone involved.
I also facilitate Continuing Loving Bonds presentations and circles for groups, organizations and events. I will do my best to say yes to your invitations.
Facilitate means creating ease. I look forward to creatively and easily facilitating meaningful mutual learning about Continuing Loving Bonds.
Each sharing circle, presentation, discussion group or other event will explore one or more of these Discussion Questions from the end of my book, Together Still: Love Beyond Death. Click here to read reviews of my memoir and my story sharing circles
Chapter 1: Destiny is the story of how John and I began cultivating our loving bonds. Remembering, celebrating, and honouring the origins of our love is at the heart of continuing loving bonds beyond death. I invite you to remember your love stories and share them with others.
Chapter 2: Our Finest Hour shares stories of learning and practicing skills for developing our humanity and our spirituality. What are your inspirational stories of you and your loved ones finding the strength to respond to suffering with kindness, compassion, generosity, gratitude, awe, inspiration and unconditional love and hope?
In Chapter 3: Seeking Guidance, John and I reached out for the spiritual and human support and guidance needed to lovingly accompany each other through his transition from life to death. What are your stories of responding to life and death situations by seeking, finding, and accepting spiritual and human support and guidance?
Chapter 4: Pan to the Trees is, to me, the most sacred story in this book. I invite you to honour someone you love by applying John’s metaphor of a movie director panning to the trees to your story of witnessing a sacred transition from life to death.
Chapter 5: Two Selves is about dancing between two worlds. As Tom Zuba wrote, “When she takes her last breath. When he leaves his body. We leave. Too. This physical plane. For a time. To be with them. Where they are now. And the dance begins. Between both worlds. Where all things are possible” (Zuba, 2014). What is a story from your sacred times of dancing between two worlds?
Chapter 6: Messages describes John’s communication with me through visions, visitations, dreams, spiritual messages, and messengers in nature. What are your experiences, understandings, and insights into the impact of what is known as after-death communication on journeys through grief?
Chapter 7: How to Have Happiness is about my fierce determination to grieve as mindfully, adventurously, and joyfully as John and I had done our best to live. What is your experience with travelling through grief along paths leading to healing, health, and joyful living?
Chapter 8: Holding Grief in the Light shares some of my stories of continuing my loving bonds with John by creatively and mindfully studying light. Most faith communities and most spiritual people associate light with hope and transformation. What does spiritual light mean to you? What does it mean to you to hold grief in the light?
Chapter 9: Re-Orbiting describes my decision to attempt to bring my off-kilter life back into balance by physically travelling the world to reunite with the people and places I love. What are your true stories about pilgrimages, voyages of discovery, or other lived experiences that have helped you re-balance your life after the death of a loved one?
Chapter 10: Requiem expands the concept of Continuing Loving Bonds to include our relationships with our beloved Earth community as well as our human family. What are your experiences with and insights into continuing loving bonds with places, wildlife, pets, and other “more than human” sentient beings?
Chapter 11: Let Your Love Flow is about bringing my life into balance by finding a new orbit around John’s spiritual presence and re-orbiting around the unconditional love I gave to and received from all the people, places, and living beings in my circles of love. What are your understandings and insights into love as the gravity for our hearts, souls, and consciousness? How does love hold everything in your life together?
Chapter 12: Love Can Build a Bridge is a retelling of my journey through grief in the form of a heroic odyssey. I invite you to consider your stories of accompaniment, death care, and bereavement as the heroic journeys they have been. Perhaps you could retell one or more of your true stories in the form of a heroic odyssey.
Afterword: Cautionary Tales highlights the reality that bereavement is a time of extreme vulnerability. We all need to be cautious, skeptical, and aware of the scoundrels in our midst. What are your cautionary tales that may help us keep our minds, hearts, and spirits open while building a healthy protective shield of strong, skeptical (but not cynical) boundaries?
CONTINUING LOVING BONDS 