Below are a few talks that your parish or group may find helpful and inspiring toward holiness and a love for our Lord, our Blessed Mother, and our beautiful Catholic faith.
I can also help you organize a grieving mothers' retreat in your local parish, diocese, or retreat center.
Eileen shares from the heart about enduring suffering, healing from it, and recognizing it as an opportunity for life-changing growth. We all suffer, but do we suffer well? This world offers many tools for numbing or distracting us from our pain, but in order to experience the redemptive benefit of suffering, we must see it as our personal fiat, recognize God’s presence with us, and be open to the lessons that it can teach us, following the examples of Christ and Our Blessed Mother. Only then can we find peace in our pain.
This talk is good for a mixed gender group or women’s groups. It is also good for groups that may be dealing with bereavement and grief.
In this talk, Eileen shares her journey from a Protestant, who struggled to understand the devotion Catholics had for Our Lady, to a Catholic who has come to know the Blessed Mother in a very personal way. Eileen shares how her difficult relationship with her own mother made it a challenge to come to know Mary in this way, but Our Lady found a way to connect with her in a loving, tender way.
This talk is suitable for women’s groups and for any group that desires to develop a deeper devotion to Our Lady.
Eileen shares St. Thomas Aquinas’ five remedies for sorrow in light of what is now known about healing and trauma. Modern psychology and understanding of emotional trauma confirm what the Angelic Doctor already knew – that these remedies enable us to process and heal from sorrow, body and soul. Eileen looks at each of the five remedies and shares how they have helped her -and many others in her retreats – to move through and process the sorrows of grief and suffering.
This talk is good for mixed gender groups or women’s groups. It is also good for groups that may be dealing with bereavement and grief.
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how your temperament affects your grieving
In this talk, Eileen unpacks the four temperaments and shares the ways each temperament shows up uniquely in grief. From the ways we honor our loved one who died to the ways we seek to process our pain, we all grieve individually. Having an understanding of our unique grieving style can help us to find compassion and patience for ourselves - and for others as they walk through the loss in their own way.
One participant said, "I just wanted to thank you again for a WONDERFUL workshop on temperaments and grief. Everything made perfect sense and I was able to have peace for the first time on aspects of my grieving style that I had been previously frustrated over. The workshop has also given me the tools to identify the grieving styles in other people and how to best support them."
This talk is good for mixed gender or women's groups, bereavement support groups, or for priests and others who offer support to the grieving.
Whether you're looking to build community or to offer practical tools for spiritual growth, these workshops are wonderful ways to help your group understand the unique design that God created them with and how they use that to recognize His calling on their lives.
Great for teens, young adults, couples, parish staff, or the whole parish, these fun Catholic workshops offer practical tools and insights that are life changing!
These workshops can be done individually or put together in a series over a few weeks. I can help you create a plan that is best for your group's needs.
A fun, creative way to manage difficult emotions
In this popular workshop, Eileen guides participants through a creative technique to help them process difficult emotions with the Lord. By inviting Jesus into our struggles and visualizing His presence with us, participants are able to create deep and lasting changes in their minds and hearts.
No special art supplies are required!
No special art skills are required!
Just a pencil and some paper are all the tools you'll need.
One participant said, "It was so amazing. I am not artistic at all, but just sitting with Jesus guiding my hand was so powerful. Sitting there with a pencil allowed me to see in a different way. Maybe this is a part of my prayer life I am missing. I can't thank you enough."
This workshop takes about one hour and is perfect for any group!
In this workshop, you will learn about your unique temperament and its associated strengths, weaknesses, motivators, and triggers. Understanding these things about ourselves can help us to grow in virtue and make us more compassionate towards others.
This workshop is very flexible and can be done in person or via Zoom. It’s great for small groups or whole parishes. Engaged couples, women’s groups, parish staff – any group can benefit from this information! Workshop time is about 90 minutes.
It can also be tailored specifically for bereavement groups to discuss how our unique temperaments show up in the ways we grieve.
In this workshop, we will learn to use an incredible tool called the reason cycle, a process by which we grow aware of our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
Once we possess this awareness, we can see how these things are impacting our lives, hold them to the light of truth, and decide how we will think going forward to live a life of greater purpose, freedom, and virtue.
Using this tool, we can learn how to "take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:5) and to "be transformed by the renewing of our minds" (Romans 12:2).
This is a meta-skill that can change the way you solve problems for the rest of your life and equip you for spiritual battle!
This workshop is best done in three 60-90 minute sessions (depending on the size of the group) with small breaks in between.
This can also be tailored specifically for bereavement groups to help them to navigate and manage the many painful thoughts that come with grief.
We were created by God with a unique purpose.
The Unique Call to Sanctity workshop helps participants gain clarity on their unique vocation and purpose.
By reflecting on areas of giftedness, passion, and mission, participants begin discerning practical ways that they can direct their yes and no towards activities and pursuits that align with God’s grace already active in their lives.
This workshop could be a follow up to - or coupled with - the temperaments workshop, since our temperaments help to give us clues about the unique design God used to create us. It could also be done in conjunction with a spiritual gifts inventory.
This workshop is best completed in two 60-90 minute sessions (depending on the size of the group) with time for a short break in between.