THINK OF SHALEEM AS A GUIDE ON YOUR JOURNEY
About Shaleem
I am a griever, a registered nurse, a mourner, a widow, an author, a poet, a nature admirer, a dog lover, a believer, a skier, a mountain biker, an evolving harpist, and a person whose life has been touched by tragedy’s blaze more than once. I am a certified grief counselor, and I live in Bentonville, AR.
Who am I? This is a big question in the Big Story of Life. I cannot answer that in a simple way, for life is rarely simple.
I can say that I have been a Registered Nurse since 1995 and worked in many areas of healthcare over my career. I only entered Grief Counseling after profound grief changed my life in a profound manner.
It started when my husband Brad died of cancer at home in our bed on the night of the biggest snowstorm in Portland, Oregon’s history. He was 48 years old, and we had been married just a year. His deathbed wish was that I scatter his ashes at Illumination Rock, on our favorite mountain, Mount Hood. And then, to scatter our black lab, Digby’s, ashes from that same place, when his time had come. I was on my way to Illumination Rock, with Digby’s ashes in my backpack, 7 years later, on a snowy glacier high above the world, when my new love, my boyfriend, Bently, had a heart attack and died in my arms, on my mountain. He was 53 years old.
After Bently’s tragic death, I wrote and published a book, written in poetry and prose, about my grief journey. I have written two more books since then, which are set to be published soon, one of which is a children’s book about grief, whose main characters are a seagull, a sea turtle, and an elephant seal.
I have also, in my course of healing from grief, read many books on the subject of grief. Suffice it to say, I have spent much of the past 8 years taking a deep dive into the world of grief. I have also spent many hours in silent contemplation, for this is what my heart and mind guided me to do. Thus, I have learned some things along the way that no book ever taught me. Some of these things perhaps, given the time and effort, you as well would discover in your own analysis of grief. But there are enough other things you will have to do on your own to come through your grief intact and ready to engage with your loss and life in a meaningful way.
So, think of me as a guide, as an encourager, as a fellow human standing in the arena of grief. Think of me as a person with insight and compassion, whose broken heart has come to reflect the light, and as a diamond in the making. Think of me as a soul that is gaining wisdom, and perhaps simply, as someone who has walked my own path of grief and found a way to find meaning in the loss.
