Personal Stories | Sheila Collins

Dancing On Behalf of Our Grieving Selves

by Sheila Collins | Nov 9, 2023 | Art & Life, Community, Dances, Family, Gatherings, Good Will Come, Grieving, Health, Health and Wellness, History, Improvisation, Our Children, Past Events, Personal Stories, Story-telling, The Art of Grieving, Uncategorized

I spent the weekend in Oakland CA at InterPlayce, the home of the art-based improvisational system InterPlay, (an active creative approach to unlocking the wisdom of the body.) I’ve been a proponent, participant, practitioner, performer, teacher and altogether...

To Change Our World

by Sheila Collins | Nov 2, 2023 | Art & Life, book promotion, Celebrations, Community, Dances, Duality, Gatherings, Grieving, Personal Stories, Rituals, Songs, Story-telling, The Art of Grieving, Women, Girls & the Feminine, Writing

When I was in high school, I read a newspaper article about a new kind of therapy. What I knew about mental health therapy at that time was that it was an expensive individual process, often taking years, where a person worked on their own behaviors and attitudes with...

Pittsburgh Understands the Art of Grieving and Practices it Well

by Sheila Collins | Oct 26, 2023 | Art & Life, Institutional Loss, Noteworthy men, Past Events, Personal Stories, Resilience, Rituals, The Art of Grieving, Uncategorized

It was the spring of 2018. A group of leaders, educational institutions, and non-profits in Pittsburgh began working together to bring to Pittsburgh some of the 70 restored string instruments played by Jewish musicians before and during the Holocaust. They wanted...

How to Grieve War and its Atrocities

by Sheila Collins | Oct 19, 2023 | Community, Duality, Environment, Family, Gatherings, Good Will Come, Grieving, Meditations, Personal Stories, ReImagine, The Art of Grieving

Practicing the art of grieving throughout the years and using the arts to do that, has continually offered me lessons and learnings not available through any other method. A profound example are the lessons I learned in how to grieve when war was declared in Israel. ...

Another Visit From a Butterfly

by Sheila Collins | Oct 12, 2023 | Art & Life, Book Excerpts, book promotion, Celebrations, Community, Environment, Gatherings, Our Children, Past Events, Personal Stories, Women, Girls & the Feminine, Writing

I only had one assignment from my writing coach when I left Pittsburgh last week to spend 5 days in Belize at a women’s retreat. My intention was to step away and have some time for reflection, but our project is at the place where we need to establish a launch date...

Estrangements in Work and Career

by Sheila Collins | Oct 4, 2023 | Community, Duality, Environment, Grieving, Institutional Loss, Our Children, Past Events, Personal Stories, Resilience, The Art of Grieving, the Big Body

Forty percent of people will lose a job at least once in their lifetime and 23% of people will lose a job three or more times, according to data from Intoo and the Harris Poll. In being fired, laid off, or furloughed, 73% of people will experience anxiety. This easily...