by Amy Lindner-Lesser | May 17, 2023 | Newsletter
I hope the weather and the calendar are synching better for you than for me here in New York State!
I awoke this morning to temperatures in the low 40s, I looked at my watch to confirm the date and it said it was May 17!
Could this be true? Last night I received FEMA warnings for frost for the next two days!
I want it to feel like spring again! One of my favorite things to do is sit on my porch taking in the warmth from the sun and watching the almost constant parade of birds to the feeders and the antics of the groundhogs and bunnies. Hershey loves it too!
I just released a new podcast episode. It is a little different from the others. In this one, I have a conversation with my friend and animal communicator, Marybeth Decker. We had a great discussion about animals’ roles in our lives, handling their final days and deaths, and learning to communicate with them to understand what they are telling us. I was sad to end our chat so we continued after the recording ended! Please watch it here and let me know what you think.
As always, I would love your suggestions for future episodes. Email me!
I’m excited to tell you that I have completed my first chapter in a book to be released this coming fall. The book, Life Shifts, is an anthology of 22 chapters from different women about a transformational shift in their life. We also will each have a free offer to download. In my chapter, Coming Full Circle from Loss to Joy, I talk about my experience in Mexico which led me to navigate through my losses and to a life now filled with joy.
I can’t wait to share it with you!
Until the next time, I love you and appreciate you,
Amy
Amy Lindner-Lesser
by Amy Lindner-Lesser | May 3, 2023 | Newsletter
Each and every one of us is unique, not completely though. We all have skin, blood and organs, and . . . mothers. While not all of us have fathers, and we may or may not have living mothers, we all had a mother who brought us into this world.
No matter the relationship with your mother, be she living or, as my friend Victoria says, more than alive, that relationship comes with a lot of emotion. You may have more than one mother as in a birth mother and an adoptive mother, a mother and a stepmother, two mothers, or another configuration of mothers. She or they might be actively involved in your life or totally absent.
No matter the number or type of mother, next weekend’s Hallmark holiday, Mother’s Day, tends to bring a lot of emotions to the surface.
When I worked as the director of a home healthcare agency, finding employees to cover patient care on Mother’s Day was close to impossible. I argued that we needed to consider paying overtime just to have people (women and men) work because everyone was either a mother or had a mother and wanted time to celebrate or commemorate her life.
In my newest podcast episode, I talk about Mother’s Day and provide some ideas for coping with an emotionally charged day, especially if your mother has passed away or is absent from your life. How do you feel about Mother’s Day? Do you have any special traditions?
Please watch, or listen, to the podcast and let me know what you think. If you have ideas for guests and/or topics around life transitions, loss, or grief, please reach out!
I wish you a happy Mother’s Day whether you are a mother through birth, adoption, foster care, or marriage, have a mother, or mother an animal, pet, scout troop, plant, or anyone or anything else. We are all mothers in some way and help nourish a soul or our world.
This week I am celebrating the life of my stepsister, Laurie Gilbert, who passed away this week after a valiant battle with pancreatic cancer. Laurie was the person who was instrumental in making sure her dad (and my other 3 stepisters’ dad) and my mother got together. Without her prodding, they would not have spent their last years happily in love. She was the first of my four stepsisters I met when I became the “baby” of the family in 1996 (our “parentals” didn’t marry until 2002). We didn’t exactly get along smoothly that first time, however, I am very happy to say that we did become close and a cohesive unit in caring for our aging parents. Laurie led a colorful life including travel, working in the television industry with John Ritter and Bil Cosby, and as a paralegal later in life. She was a collector of friends and maintained connections with friends and family members across the world. I will miss her laughter, honesty, and our conversations.
I am also remembering my dog, Migo, whom you might have met at The Rookwood Inn. He passed away a year ago yesterday and was a loving and faithful companion of mine for most of his short nine years.
Yesterday, a friend and I accompanied another friend to Utica, NY for the unveiling of her mother’s headstone. In the Jewish religion, it is customary for a gravestone to be “unveiled” at the one-year anniversary (yahrtzeit) of death. It was an honor to support her in this – something I don’t feel anyone should have to do alone.
Are you remembering someone special this month? What practices have you put into place to keep their memory(ies) alive?
Until the next time, remember I love and appreciate you,
Amy
Amy Lindner-Lesser
by Amy Lindner-Lesser | Apr 5, 2023 | Newsletter
Hello Amy,
No matter what we do, time keeps marching on…
I just returned from a visit with my older daughter, Nina, and her family. It was my oldest grandchild, Hunter’s birthday. He turned 7! I can’t quite wrap my head around that. It seems like it was just yesterday when I received the call that Nina was in labor, a month early, in Florida, and on her own as her husband was deployed somewhere in the middle east by the Navy. With a lot of finagling, I was able to change plane tickets, and Maya and I got to Florida in time for Hunter’s birth!
This visit was to see them, celebrate Hunter’s birthday, spend some special Hunter/Grandma time with animals (we now have a tradition of going to a cat cafe to play with cats and kittens since his mom is allergic), and spend some time with my youngest grandchild, Luna, who is now almost 9 months old! It has been almost 8 months since I last saw Luna and OMG what a change there has been! This rolly-polly baby is sitting up, eating real food, holding her bottle, crawling, laughing, and has learned to clap her hands on command (just last weekend when I was there!).
You might be wondering why I’m sharing all this about my grandchildren and time passing. Well, I just released a new podcast episode which is an interview with Holly Strelzick who is an end-of-life doula. She works with individuals and their families to assist those who are dying in having their last wishes and comfort maximized.
Holly has also started an organization called, the Center for the Heart whose mission is to provide compassionate end-of-life and grief support to all in need, regardless of ability to pay or past actions.
Please watch, or listen, to the podcast and let me know what you think. If you have ideas for guests and/or topics around life transitions, loss, and grief, please reach out!
Since Earth Day is around the bend, it seems appropriate that this edition talks about life and its cycles. I remember the first Earth Day. I was in junior high school and a group of us got involved in the celebration in NYC. I remember being stationed on West 14th Street and giving directions to the events happening and adding, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the pollution” to everyone I spoke with.
This calls to mind Mother Nature and the four seasons. In my way of thinking, the first season is spring. We re-emerge from our winter of cocooning and begin to see color in our trees once again; bulbs spring forth from the ground and give us a very showy display of bright, primary colors. Summer is like our youth, with lots of energy, a bravado showing off strength and beauty. Then comes fall when leaves begin to change color, still bursting with bright color and energy; a second career, perhaps, as we age. And then it is winter, the leaves have fallen, and the color of the landscape, at least here in the northeast, is stark, black and white. In winter, Mother Nature reminds us of the need to go dormant – to rest. And then, just when we have had all the rest we need and are beginning to get stir-crazy, spring is back. and so is the circle of our lives.
Time continues to pass. We continue to move through the seasons of our lives. I am reminded with the change of each season to be more appreciative and grateful for the gifts of each day – to remember that life is fragile and that change is the only constant in our world.
For whom and what are you grateful? I hope you’ll respond and tell me! I am grateful for my family, friends, pets, and of course, you! I am grateful for each day and each experience I get to have. I am grateful for a long career in innkeeping and now as a life coach helping people navigate through life’s transitions.
Until the next time, I love you and appreciate you,
Amy
Amy Lindner-Lesser
by Amy Lindner-Lesser | Jan 22, 2023 | Newsletter
Hi, Amy!
It’s been a while since you’ve heard from me. Actually, almost two years! I’m curious, what’s been going on in your life?
I hope you’re curious about me too!
After selling the Inn, I moved to Saratoga County, New York, where I am only a few miles from my daughter, Maya, and her family. She and her husband, Scott, have a two-year-old, Camilla, who is learning so much every day. Nina and her husband, Greg, and their family are now in the Norfolk, VA area and welcomed their second child, Luna, this past July. Hunter is now in first grade, enjoying school and being a big brother. (Photos below.) All their parents are doing well too!
I love my new home and am slowly getting to know my community. I am visited by wildlife daily including birds, groundhogs, foxes, coyotes, raccoons, and deer.
This past August my best friend of 44 years (graduate school) passed away. I had been trying to establish a business coaching and consulting with innkeepers to try to help them find more joy in their lives and extend their time as innkeepers. When Liz died I realized that there was more I was meant to do with my life.
As you may know (or may not), I have a master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania. During Covid, when the inn was forced to close, I studied for and earned a life coach certification. Before coming to the Inn, I had worked in health care, geriatrics, oncology, hospice as well as women’s health and adoption as a social worker and health educator/trainer.
It hit me that with all the losses I had experienced in my life:
losing my grandfather at age 6,
my great-grandmother at 11,
my dad’s death less than a year after my wedding,
infertility and the loss of being able to be a biological parent,
moving to Lenox, MA, and leaving our home and friends in PA,
Steve’s death a mere 2.5 years later,
then my step-father’s death in 2017 followed three months later by my mother,
my dog, Migo’s passing this past May
and then my best friend this past August),
I have a lot of knowledge and experience with loss and grief.
I realize I am meant to help others navigate from grief to growth and loss to living. So, I have rebirthed INNtrospection and am focusing on providing coaching services to individuals who are experiencing loss from a myriad of stressful life circumstances.
Since you know, and hopefully like and trust me, and you are familiar with me, I am reaching out to ask that you share what I’m doing with those you feel might benefit from my services. That person may be you, a friend, a colleague, or a family member.
Follow me on Facebook (Amy Lindner-Lesser & INNtrospection | Navigating Grief to Growth) and on Instagram where I have been sharing my insights and resources on this journey.
You’re reading this letter because you’re special to me. Not all of my former guests are receiving this! Please reply to this and let me know how you are doing. I have missed our interactions through the Inn.
I hope it isn’t too late to wish you and those you hold dear, a very joyful, healthy, abundant, and peaceful 2023!
Hugs and quiches,
Amy
