I am writing this from our family home away from home in Ikaria, Greece. This is a beautiful and simple place chock-full of memory which also, on occasion, makes it beautifully hard to be here, and yet, we have freely returned here summer after summer for nearly 20 years (I’ll get back to the beautifully hard part in a moment).

I am here with my 3 sons, young and strong gentlemen, their loving girlfriends, other beloved friends and relatives and their children; all of us adventurous and sea-loving, together for the sojourn to this soul-soaked ancestral home of ours.

Before I ever knew him, my late husband, Johnny Vassilaros and I visited this island as kids (my grandmother and grandfather and his father, grandfather and grandmother were all born and raised here, just a few villages apart). Our family tree is full of criss-crossing 1st, 2nd and 3rd cousins, and we even discovered, well after we were married, that we shared the same great great great grandfather, Stefanos Vassilaros (“Stefanos” which in Ancient Greek means the laurel wreath used as a blessing for honor to or fulfillment of the circle of life).

Ikaria is often advertised as one of the world’s 5 “blue zones” where its native inhabitants live vital lives well into their nineties. But mercifully, that does not make it a popular destination for tourists, so there are no resorts or fancy places to stay, shop or eat in. Every morning we wake up to the sounds of thrumming cicadas, hopeful stray cats and the Aegean sea lapping effortlessly against the rough pebbled shoreline.

When my family and I come here, we are part of a relational tribe, each of us full-blooded and time-worn members of generations of ancestors. It feels sacred here, wholly relaxing, slow, delicious and fun.

But even as I relish this potent spot I am also susceptible to the sudden onset of grief and deep memory. The weather of it is undeniable and a downpour might be upon me, making tears or even sobs inevitable. If I try to stuff it or muscle it away, it lasts longer and I get kind of weird and contorted, inwardly and outwardly. But if I simply allow grief to come, to move through me, it also seems to pass in the most natural way. And so the phrase, “it comes to pass” seems to apply, figuratively and literally. The less I resist, the more the deep ache that disappearance can bring, moves in, and then, moves out.

In this village and on this island, the deaths and stark absence fact of the loss of my beloved Greek grandmother, my mother, my husband, and more recently my aunt, grabs at my heart and breath. But almost as quickly, I’ll whisper this phrase to myself, now a reassuring mantra; “It’s come to pass, it’s come - to pass.” The grief, almost in the form of an unexpected visit with each of them, will not stay, but has, once again, come... to pass.

Sometimes threaded brightly into all those feelings is the fact of my own mortality, reminding me that all of us love and suffer, come and go, live and die - but what doesn’t disappear is the living depth and breadth of love, given and received, reliable and vehement as Ikaria’s tumble of mountainous rock.

~

“Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love…” - Rilke

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Upcoming Workshops:

Moving From Loss to Found: An Online Writing-for-Healing Workshop in partnership with New York Zen Center

Wednesdays, October 7th - November 4th 2026

Register: https://www.zencare.org/events/make-meaning-workshop

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Upcoming Groups:

I LOVE YOU BUT… A Monthly Writing Group Exploring Heartache

First Monday of every month

Register: https://luma.com/user/makemeaningwork

Care for Caregivers: A support group for professionals and non-professionals coping with the complexity and stress of caring for others.

Every First & Third Thursday of the Month

Register here: https://zencare.org/care-for-caregivers-support-group

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For more information about Make Meaning Workshop, resources and upcoming workshops and writing groups, please visit makemeaningworkshop.com

https://www.instagram.com/makemeaningworkshop/

In my mid 20s, several people entered my life to help me rescue myself from a very destructive relationship. There was abuse of all kinds but I kept minimizing and bargaining against my eager, young self, determined to make a twisted relationship “work” at any cost. I didn’t know at the time that my obsessive attachment would be the cause of a lot of pain AND the catalyst of much transformation and self-discovery (along with the merciful appearance of wise helpers to guide me along the way).

During the worst trials and struggles one new friend, a dynamic writer and playwright and poet, saw that I was suffering, blurred and confused. She opened her heart and home to me, fed me, talked with me for hours, days, weeks. She was patient and compassionate. She knew not to dispense facile advice about what I should or shouldn’t do - which I would have resisted anyway. She used language that helped me discover and relate to my humanness, my vulnerabilities, my tendency to self-erasure. I didn’t know it at the time, but like many people I wanted to be explored, not “fixed.” She leaned in and listened, asked a lot of questions and gave me books and poetry to nourish and inspire me as I discovered “better” words that fit the ache inside me.

Her honesty, constancy and ability to communicate soulfully became a mighty grace that invited me out of the shadows of unrelenting embarrassment and isolating shame.

She encouraged me to write every day and I did. I leaned in and listened to myself. I read what I wrote aloud so I wouldn’t forget what I was beginning to bring into focus. I gave myself full permission to write freely, without the constraint of having to write well or astutely or even in full sentences. I wrote anything I wanted to write; scrawls across the page, fragments, half-poems, drawings, lyrics, lists, words I collected that brought me alive - all an essential part of how I became a reliable and engaged participant in my own LIFE.

All the things I wanted from “HIM” or “THEM” were now a vital part of what I was capable of offering myself. There was a lot more going on under my surfaces than I ever imagined. How could I know or even be interested in what was going on inside me when I was so unconsciously compelled to spend my time and energy hovering, interpreting, managing, manipulating, cajoling, suffering and staring at another person, all in the name of LOVE! Finally I found a practical way to begin to move forward honestly, step by step, page by page.

I felt relieved just taking time each day to hear me, take me seriously... take me to heart.

I LOVE YOU BUT BE ELSEWHERE is a creative, experiential writing workshop that invites participants to come into focus, as they practice the art of self-return.

I founded the MAKE MEANING WORKSHOP to demonstrate how beautifully a simple writing practice in community with others can tenderize and grow us in essential and meaningful ways.

If you have any questions about this workshop, don’t hesitate to reach out to me at: alex@makemeaningworkshop.com

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Upcoming Groups:

I LOVE YOU BUT… A Monthly Writing Group Exploring Heartache

First Monday of every month

Register here: https://luma.com/user/makemeaningwork

____________

For more information about Make Meaning Workshop, resources and upcoming workshops and writing groups, please visit makemeaningworkshop.com

https://www.instagram.com/makemeaningworkshop/

There’s a place in the body that knows when it hasn’t been heard — long before the mind catches up. A small rupture. A quiet disappointment. A missed connection we’re not even fully aware of, yet somehow still feel. Who can count the times this has happened — the times we didn’t feel heard, or the times the people we love most didn’t feel heard by us, especially in the throes of an emotionally charged conversation or conflict.

I remember a disagreement with my youngest son, who was nearly 16 at the time. I complained that he hadn’t devoted enough time to studying for an upcoming exam. It was not even 2 months after Johnny, my husband and his father, died after a three-year struggle with colon cancer. We were both still flailing in the atmosphere of deep heartache and disappearance, barely touching ground. He was awkwardly trying to get used to daily life without his hero-Dad, and his two older brothers had just departed for universities far away from New York. So, within a couple of months, we went from a family of five to just the two of us. He was stretching out of adolescence into young man-ness, and I was eagerly and fiercely — often too fiercely — trying to parent without my husband. It felt as though my sons and I had been thrown out of our former life and hurled into a new life full of chasms and spasms of disorientation and raw grief.

Our loss felt so estranging, even alienating us to one another — to the ways we used to fit together and suddenly didn’t.

During the argument I was insisting he should study more and he was pushing back, telling me he was prepared enough and to stop nagging him. The speed and intensity of our needing to make our points hijacked our ability to hear one another completely and at some point in the push-pull of it all I noticed the distress in my son’s face - his expression seemed to crack and contort in anguish.

I remember telling myself, “stop talking, be quiet, Alex.” And when I did, sudden tears and gulping sadness poured out of my son. And just as suddenly my “sensible” arguments didn’t seem sensible at all. Witnessing him did. Noticing all of him, without needing anything to be different. He stuttered over the same word, over and over, barely able to put words to his thoughts. He wasn’t only jumbled and flooded with feeling; the words genuinely weren’t there. Clearly he wasn’t upset about studying or not studying — there was so much more moving under the surface, a whole ocean of feeling and by muscling to win that small argument I had nearly missed all of it. All of him. All of our potential to be a connected mother and son, when both of us needed it most. It taught me something I have carried with me ever since: that to be deeply listened to is its own kind of deep relief, deep release.

I try to offer participants at the Make Meaning Workshop what I finally gave my son that night — the presence and willingness to witness someone where they actually are. Not where you think they should be. And what I’ve seen, over and over again, is that participants become astonishingly honest and revealing on paper - without trying, without fear, without the feeling they have to accomplish or achieve a particular goal. They are simply writing to discover more about themselves on paper. The noisy inner critic— the one that always has a noisy opinion — gets a merciful rest. Participants are asked not to comment, interrupt or offer feedback after people read what they’ve written. No flying heart emojis on the zoom screen and no one telling you your share was beautiful. Not because it wasn’t, but because, in this context, a compliment given or withheld shifts the room’s attention toward pleasing rather than discovering.

It’s so moving to watch a room full of people discover how much original insight they have within them.

After my husband died, I realized that what I longed for wasn’t advice or well-meaning reassurance — it was vital community with people who also understood that loss is full of sorrow and anguish and simultaneously filled with wisdom, mystery, and love. The Irish poet John O’Donohue wrote potently about Anam Cara, the “soul friend” who accompanies you without trying to fix or explain you. Not finding quite enough of that, I set about creating a place where listening becomes a loving practice. When we truly lean in and listen to someone, we often discover something about them we didn’t know was there, even as they discover something in themselves they hadn’t yet found words for. In this gentle way our relationship with ourselves and others deepens as we become more curious, more connected and more alive.

In the eight years since I founded the Make Meaning Workshop, I’ve learned to be a better listener — with friends, with family and with my grown sons, who would surely say: “Can you believe Mom thinks she’s a good listener?” Well, certainly not always, but reminding myself to listen settles me and plants me in the moment I am actually in.

My youngest son is grown now — no more pacing the room while I sit on the floor and watch worriedly. But I often think of what he said to me that day: I don’t… I don’t have… I don’t have the words, Ma.

I believe most of us are carrying some version of that plaintive admission too, hoping to be given the time and space to be heard and seen. Isn’t that what compassion is made of?

Thank you for listening,

Alexandra

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Upcoming Workshops:

Moving From Loss to Found: An Online Writing-for-Healing Workshop in partnership with New York Zen Center

Wednesdays, October 7th - November 4th 2026

Register: https://www.zencare.org/events/make-meaning-workshop

____________

Upcoming Groups:

I LOVE YOU BUT… A Monthly Writing Group Exploring Heartache

First Monday of every month

Register: https://luma.com/user/makemeaningwork

Care for Caregivers: A support group for professionals and non-professionals coping with the complexity and stress of caring for others.

Every First & Third Thursday of the Month

Register here: https://zencare.org/care-for-caregivers-support-group

____________

For more information about Make Meaning Workshop, resources and upcoming workshops and writing groups, please visit makemeaningworkshop.com

https://www.instagram.com/makemeaningworkshop/