Thoughts from Eric's practice, offering gentle guidance and perspectives on holding space.
April 10, 2026
"Pain Not Transformed is Transmitted"
As I sat in the pew on Maundy Thursday, the pastor spoke about pain and how if not transformed, is transmitted. At the end of life, this truth takes on an especially sacred weight. As the body weakens and time feels shorter, pain, whether emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical, often rises to the surface with an urgency that can no longer be avoided. For many individuals, what was postponed for decades, or even a lifetime, now asks to be witnessed.
Untransformed pain near the end of life can feel merciless. Regrets resurface. Words unsaid, love withheld, harm done or endured replay with sharp clarity. Emotionally, this pain may emerge as irritability, withdrawal, or despair. A patient may push away caregivers or loved ones, not because they no longer care, but because unresolved sorrow or fear has become overwhelming. When pain is unaddressed, even a gentle touch can feel intrusive, and connection can feel unsafe.
Intellectually, unprocessed pain often tightens into harsh inner judgments: I failed. I wasted my life. I am a burden now. These thoughts can dominate the final days, leaving little space for peace. Instead of reflection, the mind becomes a battlefield where guilt, shame, and fear fight for the last word. The dying person may feel trapped in stories that allow no forgiveness and no rest.
Spiritually, or at the level of meaning, untransformed pain can distort the end‑of‑life experience. Hope may collapse into bitterness. Trust in others, or in life itself, may erode. A person may feel abandoned by everything that once gave them grounding. Even when surrounded by care, they may feel profoundly alone, cut off from consolation and reconciliation. Questions of life’s purpose arise, and emotions can spiral when feelings of failure surface.
Physically, the body often carries what the heart and mind cannot release. Tension, agitation, shallow breathing, and restlessness can reflect more than disease alone. The body speaks what the soul still longs to say. When pain remains unacknowledged, the body bears it faithfully, but at great cost.
And yet, even at the end of life, pain can be transformed. Transformation does not mean resolution of every regret or restoration of health. It means allowing pain to be met with presence rather than resistance. It begins when a patient is given permission to tell the truth of their life, to grieve, to remember, to weep, to rage, to speak love, or to sit in silence without being rushed or corrected.
Pain begins to soften when someone listens without trying to fix it. When a story is heard. When a hand is held. When meaning is gently reconstructed, not as perfection, but as humanity. Through honest conversation, life review, forgiveness offered or received, or simply being accompanied without agenda, pain slowly changes form.
At the end of life, transformed pain often becomes clarity. Regret loosens into understanding. Fear gives way to acceptance. A life once judged harshly is seen with compassion. What remains is not the absence of pain, but the presence of peace.
This transformation is a final act of love. When pain is tended with dignity, it is no longer transmitted through tension, silence, or rupture. Instead, something quieter is passed on: truth, tenderness, reconciliation, and rest. And in that sacred space, even as life draws to a close, healing still happens.
April 2, 2026
Many People Leave this World with a Story Still Inside Them
This past weekend, while searching the basement for a tool for my son, I found myself opening boxes filled with memories. Some brought joy, others sorrow, and some stirred quiet questions within me: Did my presence matter? Was I what that moment needed? And was I faithful to the call I was given... for myself and for others?
Many people spend their lives searching for a sense of calling, that quiet, persistent question of why am I here, and what am I meant to give? Meaning is often postponed as life moves from expectation to responsibility. We tell ourselves there will be time later to complete a task, mend the relationship, speak the truth, or live more honestly. The search for purpose becomes a long journey, sometimes rich and sometimes painfully uncertain.
For some, calling feels clear and named. For many others, it is discovered slowly in small acts of care and faithfulness that never make headlines. Meaning is not always found in achievement; it is often hidden in presence, showing up, enduring quietly, loving imperfectly in unseen places. Yet even faithful lives can feel unfinished. Near the end of life, questions may surface with painful clarity: Did I matter? Did anyone really know me?
When someone feels their calling was never fully lived or their story never spoken aloud, regret can settle in alongside fear. In these moments, care calls for deep tenderness. Life’s meaning is never fully captured in a résumé or a completed dream. Calling is not a single destination, but a way of being in the world, moving toward love, truth, and connection.
At the bedside, we are reminded that stories do not end when words run out. Some stories are lived rather than told; some are revealed in resilience, in love given quietly, in losses borne with courage no one else could see. Even unshared dreams leave traces. No life is empty of contribution, even when it feels unfinished.
At end of life, there is sacred work to be done. Dignity is upheld by respectful, compassionate companionship. To hear someone’s story, even in fragments, is to affirm: Your life mattered. Your becoming mattered. You have a story to tell.
Here, presence becomes profoundly important. When time is no longer measured by productivity, the ministry of presence takes on sacred weight. End-of-Life Doulas arrive without an agenda to fix or hurry. They come simply to sit, to listen, and to bear witness.
In that quiet companionship, space opens for stories that may have waited a lifetime to be told. A memory surfaces. A regret is voiced. Sometimes the story is spoken; sometimes it is shared in silence, a held hand, or a tear. By listening without judgment, End-of-Life Doulas offer a powerful truth: your story matters exactly as it is. Through this presence, fewer people leave the world feeling unseen or unheard. Meaning does not just disappear at the end of life, it deepens.
July 12, 2022
EPIC Journeys and Mental Toughness
As I drove into work the other day, the song “A Horse With No Name” by America played on the radio. It’s one of my favorites, not only for the melodious guitar strumming, but because of its vivid references to traveling to find solace and what that experience can be like. Songwriter Dewey Bunnell said the lyrics came from memories of his childhood travels through the Arizona and New Mexico desert with his family. The title is a metaphor for a vehicle to get away from life’s confusion and into a quiet, peaceful place.
I’ve never been to the deserts in Arizona or New Mexico, but I have ridden on a camel in the Abu Dhabi desert, surrounded by nothing but sand, for as far as the eye can see. No rocks, no plants, no shelter from the sun. Just sand being blown around by the hot wind. Occasionally, mirages would appear from the blistering heat, but would soon disappear because they aren’t there in the first place. The longer one stays in the desert, the more alone and disconnected it can feel. Even seeing mountains on the horizon doesn’t give much hope since they are so distant.
In contrast to the desert experience, I have also visited a working dude ranch where I rode horses through the beautiful landscapes of Montana for seven days. One thing that made it unforgettable was traveling along paths over mountains and through prairies on the ranch grounds. Each day was a new adventure with new sights to behold. Seeing rabbits, deer, moose, grouse, running streams filled with fish, and even bears and their cubs during our rides reminded me that we are not alone, but intricately connected one to another.
Reflecting on both experiences, I have to say that these past two and a half years have been more of a desert than a dude ranch experience. Maybe you can identify with this feeling, too? There have been times when I have felt alone and didn’t know where to turn. In other instances, the end I thought to be in sight was revealed to be just a mirage. And just when I didn’t think I could take any more, something elsehappened. The longer I’m having the desert experience, the more of a toll it takes on my mental health.
Maintaining a strong mental attitude, toughness, and fortitude (or whatever you want to call it) through these stressful times has been important, and I’m always looking for new ideas or resources to draw from. A study published in Harvard Business Review talks about attributes that athletes focus on to maintain mental toughness and achieve excellence (not perfection) in their chosen sport. Similarly, I want to share some that I have found helpful and transfer well into my professional and personal life.
Concentrate on excellence. “Nobody is perfect.” How many times have we heard that, yet never really integrated it into our work? Excellence is an attempt to perform a task in the best way possible, whereas perfection is the definitive 100 percent right way of doing anything correctly every time. In striving for excellence, there’s an openness to being wrong. Perfection is having to be right… period. Striving for excellence is a realistic goal, while perfection is an unrealistic demand.
Shrug off your own failures and rebound from defeat. This is not easy to do, I know, but we need to learn how to shake off our losses and defeats easily. What would happen if tennis champion Rafael Nadal agonized over every point he lost? He probably wouldn’t have won a single Grand Slam championship, let alone 22. This is not to suggest forgetting about them; just don’t dwell on them, because there will be time to review and learn from them.
Never overly punish yourself with negative self-talk. Sometimes we are our own worst enemy because the most influential person in your life lives in your head… and boy, are they chatty. Negative self-talk is something that most of us experience and can cause excessive amounts of stress. Strategies for combatting negative self-talk include changing perspective, saying things out loud to get them out of your head, or counting to five. Many other techniques to curb negative self-talk may work for you as well.
Celebrate wins. It’s a best practice to stop and analyze the who, what, when, how, and why we are doing what we are doing. This not only lets us know where we can change and grow, but it can also point out our victories while reinforcing what we have done well. It is important to celebrate our wins and our successes. Celebrations can bring an emotional release and mark in time the growth and achievement that was made. Without it, work can become monotonous and tedious.
No matter what EPIC journey you are on right now, I hope you can find your “horse with no name” that will bring you comfort, wholeness, and a stable, healthy balanced mind.
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