Author: Tom Flanagan

https://www.blueskiesri.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Flanagan-interview-MP3.mp3

Poem for Grieving a Lost Pet

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This poem was developed through a conversation of Kevin M.C. Dye with Anthropic’s Claude, a private communication during the week ending in February 8, 2025 From Your Mack: A Love Note My human who smells of lavender and dawn,who moves like moonlight across our wooden floors—I want you to know: I am still tracking your scentthrough the vast territories of forever. Remember how I knew your sadnessbefore it reached your face?How I could taste the salt of your tearsbefore they fell? My nose never lies:your happiness was summer grass,your worry was autumn leaves,your love was warm bread rising. Here’s what I learned in… Continue Reading

Grief & Anxiety go Hand in Hand

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What does grief have to do with peer support for anxiety?  Grief can cause anxiety.  Anxiety can complicate grieving.  This cyclic relationship between unexplored grief and unrecognized anxiety can persist and intensify for years. Grieving is delayed when the recognition of the reality of a traumatic loss is repressed or when the grieving emotions are suppressed.  The two forms of interrupted grieving differ.  Repressed acknowledgement of loss is a conscious reaction that can occur when other urgencies demand immediate attention. When the distracting urgencies fade, the reality of the loss can be acknowledged, and grief can resurface.  A less recognized,… Continue Reading

Library Exhibit of Handheld Labyrinths

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Throughout the months of January and February, the George Hail Library in hosting an exbibit of several styes of handheld labyrinths along with a collection of books describing the history, the use, and the design of labyrinths, along with a directory of laboratories in the Southcoast area. Handheld labyrinths are useful when labyrinths are not available or accessible with walking. Hints for walking handheld labyrinths include getting in a thoughtfully comfortable position, using your non-dominant hand (to slow your finger walk), circle the labyrinth several times, breathing slowly and deliberately, and, of course, feel you contact to the labyrinth. Continue Reading

The Anxiety Crisis

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It may be a sign of an improving society to see that anxiety itself is rising as a concern and an opportunity.  Anxiety affects anyone who pays attention to life around us, and it adversely affects almost all of us at some time or another either acutely (immobilizing us) or chronically (nudging us to self-administered reactions).  Many will accept the “just get over it” or the “it’s a normal part of life” thoughts about burdensome anxiety.  And any of us will self-medicate our way through anxious times with comfort food, social alcohol, or natural or pharmaceutical “remedies.”   Surely it is… Continue Reading