Thoughts and stories, by Pal

  Patterns in Stories of Lasting Healing From Depression By  Jacob Z. Hess  · January 26, 2023 This is a longer post, but is very much worth reading! The following first appeared  on Public Square Magazine .  What can we learn from people who find sustainable healing from depression?  This has been a question burning under my fingernails ever since learning about a remarkable researcher named Kelly Turner. Dr. Kelly Turner noticed  something usual in her early studies at the University of California at Berkeley. Across the 1,000+ cases of “spontaneous” or “radical” remission from cancer (where someone heals in a statistically unlikely way after conventional medicine has failed), very few questions were asked of the survivors themselves. So, she set about doing just that—conducting interviews with initially just 20 people and ultimately gathering many hundreds of stories all around the world. Her findings are summarized in the bestseller,  Rad...

  Dealing with the Collateral Damage of Divorce   By  Jeff Teichert  · May 31, 2022 As you may know by now, we released our long-awaited book, “Intentional Courtship: a Mid-Singles Guide to Peace, Progress, and Pairing up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” on November 5 th  2021, just over six months ago. Intentional Courtship contains a lot of counsel and information about coping with loss and recovery from pain and trauma through the power of intention. One of the most unanticipated and difficult consequences of divorce is the impact it has on our relationships with in-laws and mutual friends. Some families and friends handle this well, but most do not. In the church, we have such a dim view of divorce that we tend to subconsciously believe that giving compassion or support to someone getting divorced is condoning divorce. Often this motivates people to stay away or to try to determine who was at fault in the divorce and then take the ot...

This is a touching story about the distraught teen age son of a woman who died of cancer, and how he was comforted. TOPICS POPULAR MORMON REPORT LESSON HELPS How Meeting 8 Apostles and the Prophet in One Day Answered a Young Man's Desperate Questions by M. Russell Ballard, adapted from "When Thou Art Converted: Continuing Our Search for Happiness"  | Aug. 11, 2018 Makes You Think Mormon Life Comments Some years ago there was a rather serious tragedy in our ward. A great woman, the wife of our former bishop and a woman beloved and respected in our ward family, contracted cancer of the worst kind. This was a vivacious, effervescent woman who lifted and inspired everyone she met. As the disease became worse, I gave her blessings. Other General Authorities gave her blessings. One of the blessings I gave was in the presence of her seventeen-year-old son. Another blessing was given to her when her son was e...