Jim Cogley’s Reflections: Tues 10 Feb – Mon 16 Feb 2026

Note: Upcoming Wood You Believe Healing Seminar with Jim Cogley & Luba Rodzhuk: *Edmund Rice Centre, Callan – Responding to your Call – Discovering your Purpose, Embracing your Destiny Sat 14^th Feb 10am- 4pm, cost €50 refreshments included. Bookings to Jim Maher on 086-1276649.

Note: Nearly 60 have applied for the above seminar so it is necessary to divide the group and repeat the topic on Sat March 14^th. Should some early applicants prefer the later date please contact the above.  

There are just a few places still available for the Ballyvaloo Retreat, Enniscorthy from 23-26^th Feb. Also for The Healing Power of Poetry from 2^nd-5^th March with Michael Dillon (Director).

In Ladys Island on Sat 28^th from 10-4pm there will be a Healing Seminar entitled The Hidden Journey of Life. Applications to 087-7640407. Early booking is advised.

You can tune in to live broadcasts usually daily at 10am or recordings by going to Our Ladys Island Webcam.

For ordering books at lowest prices go to jimcogley.com

Tues Feb 10^th – Child Loss

Fortunately, child loss in a family has become increasingly rare due to advances in medical science. However, it was all too common in the near distant past and many will recognize it as being part of their family story. Needless to say, it is an extremely painful issue where the natural order is reversed. Parents expect their children to bury them and not the other way round. Children are the promise of the future and a child’s loss is extremely difficult to live through. It is so difficult as to shatter fundamental convictions of the universe being kind and just, and many relationships begin to unravel after such a loss. This can be because partners may grieve in very different ways. In one case a mother looked to religion as an escape and became almost fanatical. Her husband took to the drink and buried his sorrows. A few years later they parted company with both still stranded in grief.

Note: An excellent film on this topic is Hamnet that is currently showing.

Wed Feb 11^th – The Legacy of Grief

The manner in which parents come to terms with the death of a child will determine how the legacy of loss will affect surviving members. One man was remarkably unscathed after four siblings dying before him. He remarked how his parents were always close and very supportive of each other, and had grieved their losses before he came along. Their grief was resolved and not left for him to carry. The more trapped parents are in their grief and are unable to let go their child the more deformed will be their relationship with their other children. This will be even worse if that child is alive but was a secret and given up for adoption, others will unconsciously sense a missing member among the living. In the past a cruel piece of advice given to grieving mothers was to quickly have another baby in order to heal their pain. Another baby could never be the one that had been lost.

Thurs Feb 12^th – An Impossible Role

Often the death of a child elicits guilt in the parents, and this is felt as a heavy burden in the entire family system. The child’s death is never spoken about and becomes a taboo subject. It is the next child who then becomes a living memento of the loss. This engenders an impossible role where, on one hand, they are expected to heal the wounds of loss but by their very presence can only serve to keep them open. They become the living mirror of the lost one where everything they do brings that child to mind. Since that loss is not spoken about, the hidden grief manifests as anger with the surviving child becoming the target. He or she might find himself being criticized, maltreated and unloved. They can’t do anything right, and this becomes internalized as self-criticism and self-rejection. Needless to say, this will have a detrimental effect on all his or her future relationships.

Fri Feb 13^th – Grief that impedes Bonding

It is not unusual for a child born after the death of a sibling or several siblings to suffer the ambivalence of knowing that he or she was much wanted and yet be carrying a sense of rejection and not feeling close or bonded to either parent. This is very difficult for that child to fathom and makes sense only against the backdrop of understanding the depth of the parents’ loss. Having bonded deeply with the previous child, even from the womb and for that short life span, the wound is still so raw as to not permit anyone to come as close again in case they too might die and elicit such excruciating pain. This tragically deprives the surviving child of their chance of relationship with its parents and may well give rise to a very destructive lifestyle later as an adult.

Sat Feb 14^th – Over Protection

Another all-too-common scenario is where the loss of a child leaves parents so insecure and anxious that they overprotect a remaining or subsequent sibling. Always play safe and never take risks becomes a life script. The latter will already have marinated in the grief and anxiety of the mother in the womb and will be vulnerable to over protection. Even before birth they will be burdened with a grief older than themselves. Strict constraint and excessive concern all based on fear becomes their lot. They are likely not just to be mothered but smothered where the natural process of separation in order to find their own identity becomes stymied. In fact, self-identity becomes a huge issue for the subsequent child since there is such an overlap between them and the one who went before. Such a life can be characterized by a sense of sadness and separation anxiety.

Sun Feb 15^th – Cursing & Swearing – Anger & Lust

The Gospel of today is very broad and has many strands of teaching that at first or even second sight don’t seem to link well together. To begin at the end, it speaks about swearing and making an oath. In a court of law, we still put our hand on the Bible to say we are telling the truth. Perjury is to tell lies under oath and considered a very grievous sin. A man at the door told me a serious story recently that made me suspicious, so I brought out a Bible and asked him to swear that he was telling the truth. He made the excuse that he would be afraid to do so and that it wouldn’t be right. Needless to say, I sent him away with his tail between his legs.

Closely related to swearing is cursing. Recently I came across a family who knew they had been cursed over a land dispute. Three members of the family died soon after and that was followed by a string of bad luck where everything on the farm went wrong. Should we believe in the power of a curse, or how would you feel if someone did curse you? As a family they believed they were cursed and therein lay the problem. If we believe we are cursed, even if no one has it in for us, things will begin to go drastically wrong. Such is the power of belief.

Cursing is based on superstition where it gives to something a power it doesn’t rightfully have. Had they chosen not to believe nothing would have gone wrong but unfortunately, they bought into it with tragic consequences. Some years ago, a colleague of mine got into an argument with someone at his door and the man began to curse him. My friend calmly put up his hand and held it there. Curious the man doing the cursing stopped and asked what he was doing. ‘Just giving it back’, he was told. ‘I refuse to accept your curse so be it upon your own head until you choose to lift it.’ That was enough, the bloke ran like a frightened rabbit.

Then that Bible passage speaks of being angry with someone and how we will be held accountable for our anger and the names we call someone while we are angry with them. The reality is that the anger we feel towards someone hurts us far more than the person we are angry with. Anger has been described as the punishment we inflict upon ourselves for someone else’s mistakes. In most cases if we had the courage to meet that person face to face and listen to their perspective, we would find that there was no offence whatsoever intended, that it was simply a case of misunderstanding on both sides.

The passage also speaks about the lustful eye. There are two ways we can look at beauty whether that be beauty in the flesh or otherwise. To see a beautiful body and to think only lustful thoughts is the way pornography operates. On the contrary to see a beautiful body and to give thanks for the wonder of God’s creation is quite another. That is wholesome.

The late Pope Francis spoke of a term we don’t hear used often nowadays; it was the word ‘chaste’. It’s now mostly used in relation to the Virgin Mary. What he said was that we all need to be chaste irrespective of whether we be married, single or celibate. To be chaste means to never use another human being for our own advantage or for our sexual pleasure. To use another in this way is not just to disrespect that person but it is also to demean ourselves. I had never heard it put like that before, but it made so much sense. It also put the challenge on everyone not to allow our instincts to control us and never to engage in any kind of predatory, selfish or disrespectful behaviour. In a world that has become so sexualized and where anything goes, Francis’ massage stands in such stark contrast and badly needs to be heard.

Mon Feb 16^th – Substitution

A story brought to my attention recently was of a child who died a cot death. His mother was so deranged with grief that she took the elder child who had just started school home again and put him back in the pram. He later grew up to be an adult who had an inordinate fear of death. As she was dying from cancer in her fifties a woman was asked how she felt about being named after her sister who died the same month that this lady was conceived. She immediately became fully alert and with deep hurt in her voice said, ‘I felt it was a terrible injustice’. So it had been, because until then she had lived a miserable life, never sure of her own identity. Cutting the ties, even at that late hour, enabled her to quickly gain full recovery and live contentedly for another twenty-three years.