Kieran Kennedy Consulting

Gifts from the Dead

Halloween is only 6 weeks away. As we turn towards the fall, I am interested in knowing what it is that you want to burn in the bonfire celebrating the autumnal harvest?

The Celtic holiday of Samhain celebrates the end of the harvest season. The seed returns to the earth and dies into the darkness of winter. Halloween combines the Christian feast days of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day as a way of remembering the dead and how they are still with us. They animate our decisions, affect our feeling states, and influence the shape of our lives.

This year, I plan to create for myself a ritual in which I let go of old habits and behaviors that have held me back. In doing so, I also want to contact my ancestors who have so much to offer me. By burning off the road blocks to creativity and greater success, I am making room for new gifts to come in.

Please feel free to post here what it is that you are willing to let go of this Halloween and what ancestral strengths you would like to call in.

One of my dissertation coaching clients recently experienced a big, powerful breakthrough in our work together. She stepped into a more confident ownership of her project. She took the risk of making herself available to receive some feedback from a preeminent expert in her field who is known to be an exacting critic. As a result of facing her fear of this critic who loomed monstrously large in her imagination, she was able to see how to resolve a central structural problem that has for a long time stood between her and the completion of her project.

I am reminded of some of Robert Bly's words on "The Human Shadow": "Every part of our personality that we do not love will become hostile to us." So, in my opinion, in order to complete a project that has haunted me for the longest time, I must face the deepest monstrous creatures that lurk within me and learn to love these holy terrors. Only through choosing this path of love, can I truly become free of my own inner shadow.

I am looking to develop relationships with academics who mentor graduate students in doctoral programs. I am available to step in and help their doctoral students who are in need of additional support and guidance to complete their doctoral theses.

Compelling story from the NY Times of a life spent "All But Dissertation."

A Curious Case of Writer's Block Could I help the patient with his problem in just a single session?

Hope for those who despair of ever reaching a wider audience with their academic writing project.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/thesis-project/

The Thesis Project Big News on The Thesis Project. Includes blogs, news, and community conversations about The Thesis Project.

Awesome workshop today at UCLA. Getting graduate students together to support each other and hold each other accountable is the way to minimize the pain of finishing a dissertation.

Workshops - UCLA Graduate Writing Center The Graduate Writing Center offers a wide variety of writing workshops, ranging from general to more specialized topics, such as academic genres, writing in certain disciplinary areas, or writing English as a Second Language. We also provide information on workshops and services from other campus of…