How Did SevenPonds Come to Be?

A summer at SevenPonds

It’s been two years at SevenPonds since we launched our first blog post and it’s hard to believe we have arrived at our second anniversary already! What a wild ride it has been. I cannot begin to express how heartwarming it is to have been received so welcomingly by end-of-life industry experts.  For those of you who are not familiar with how SevenPonds came to be or where our name originated, I repost my very first “Sharing Suzette” once again as follows:

 “Both my inspiration for SevenPonds.com and my progressive views about the end of life originate at the Seven Ponds lakes, where my grandparents’ ashes are scattered.”

While this marks the first entry into the SevenPonds blog, this is not the very beginning. The beginning was all the summers I spent with my Swiss-born grandparents, Otto and Ida Gilomen, at their home on the shores of Seven Ponds, a group of seven small glacier-cut lakes in Metamora, Michigan. The person I am today is greatly shaped by the time I spent with my grandparents and my heartfelt memories of Seven Ponds. Both my inspiration for SevenPonds.com and my progressive views about the end of life originate at the Seven Ponds lakes, where my grandparents’ ashes are scattered.

Life is an amazing process full of intense experiences all culminating to an inevitable end. How that end comes about is a completely different experience for each of us. The end of life should be treated as an important occasion, just as every day of our life should be.

After recently going through the experience of losing someone very close to me, I was impacted in such a way that everything was put into slow motion. While it may have been my way of coping, I mentally slowed the train of life. I wanted to feel every possible second, as if I was desperately reaching out to feel and see everything about that person I loved so much, no matter how painful. In a way, this numbing pain I felt actually enhanced my ability to grasp each and every second of my own life. On the surface, nothing may seem positive about the end of a loved one’s life, but life endings can offer amazing lessons to the living.

This blog is the beginning for a place to discuss and share contemporary views about the personal journey of death that we will all encounter at some point in our lives. SevenPonds provides an exclusive place for like minds seeking cremation or natural burial to exchange, reflect, learn, and heal. No matter how death may impact you, only you know how it feels. I welcome all of your thoughts and comments, and, monthly, I offer my thoughts. Together, we will build an ongoing dialogue. I also offer a warm shoulder, an open ear and occasional soft tears. Seven Ponds is a wonderful place I have always loved, and I’d love to share it with you. Welcome and thank you for visiting.

Suzette Sherman, Founder