About

By remembering the lives and legacies of loved ones, we can take concrete steps to heal ourselves.

By remembering and celebrating how they lived, rather than how they died, we can enhance our resilience, compassion, and creativity.

During the promotional tour for her first book, The Living Memories Project: Legacies that Last. Dr. Meryl Ain saw that people grieving for loved ones, as well as professionals who work with the bereaved, needed a new approach and additional tools to help in the process of moving forward.

This determination to support others in coming to terms with the loss of a loved one led Dr. Ain to bring together resources, stories and to help professionals individuals, and bereavement groups transform grief into positive action and living legacies.

Today, The Living Memories Project has added a new, interactive journal, My Living Memories Project Journal. It provides resources that are guiding families and friends, as well as bereavement and end of life professionals, as they transform grief into positive action and living legacies.

About Dr. Meryl Ain, Ed.D

meryl-headshot2-color-diana-berrent-photography-012-1 Dr. Meryl Ain, Ed.D., The Comfort Coach, is an award-winning author, media contributor and frequent speaker who inspires people to transcend their losses by keeping alive the memories, passions, values and legacies of those they have lost.

Dr. Ain embarked on The Living Memories Project after she lost both her father and mother within a year and a half. Together with her brother Arthur M. Fischman and her husband, Stewart Ain, she thoughtfully set out to bring together interviews, anecdotes, essays, poems and photographs to provide proactive, creative, comforting and concrete ways to focus on how loved ones lived, rather than how they died.

The stories in The Living Memories Project describe encounters or occurrences in which families and friends strongly felt the loved one’s presence and highlights rituals, recipes and tangible memorials that have been established.

Following the release of the first book, Dr. Ain saw that people grieving for loved ones, as well as professionals who work with the bereaved, needed a new approach and additional tools to help in the process of moving forward. This determination to support others in coming to terms with the loss of a loved one led her to create an interactive journal that could be an invaluable tool.

Today, My Living Memories Project Journal is guiding families and friends, as well as bereavement and end of life professionals, as they transform grief into positive action and living legacies.

A former teacher and school administrator, her articles have appeared in The Huffington Post, MariaShriver.com, The New York Jewish Week, The New York Times, and Newsday.

“As I healed and comforted myself through research and writing, I sought to help others overcome their losses by inspiring them to keep memories of their loved ones alive. It’s so important for people to focus on how a loved one lived rather than how he/she died.” – Dr. Meryl Ain

Books

My Living Memories Project Journal

20 Dec 2016

My Living Memories Project Journal (published in 2016 by Little Miami Publishing Company) is a companion to My Living Memories Project: Legacies that Last, an award-winning book that features a unique collection of inspiring stories celebrating the lives and legacies of loved ones. An uplifting and unique workbook featuring a questionnaire that Dr. Ain developed as a vehicle for helping people capture memories of their loved ones, My Living Memories Project Journal was created to foster comfort, healing and hope. Quotes and questions in My Living Memories Project Journal range from the humorous to the sublime. They run the gamut...

The Living Memories Project – Legacies That Last

20 Dec 2016

The Living Memories Project, published in 2014, is an award-winning book that features a unique collection of inspiring stories that celebrate the lives and legacies of loved ones. Coauthored by Dr. Meryl Ain, her brother, Arthur Fischman, and her husband, Stewart Ain, it details through interviews, anecdotes, essays, poems, and photographs the many ways that both celebrities and others have transcended grief to incorporate the presence of their loved ones into their lives. The Living Memories Project provides numerous proactive, creative, comforting, and concrete ways to focus on how loved ones lived, rather than how they died. It was awarded...

Coauthors of The Living Memories Project Legacies That Last

meryl_headshot_color_150x150 Dr. Meryl Ain is a career educator and co-author of the award – winning 2014 book, My Living Memories Project: Legacies That Last.

During the promotional tour for the book, she saw that people grieving for loved ones – as well as professionals who work with the bereaved — needed a new approach and additional tools to help them move forward. This determination to support others in coming to terms with the loss of a loved one led her to create a companion workbook, My Living Memories Project Journal, which was published this fall.

Dr. Ain has applied her experience grappling with her own losses, as well as the research from her first book and her expertise as a teacher, school administrator and educational leader to empower and inspire others. Also known as the Comfort Coach, she has helped the bereaved gain consolation and hope from her books, blogs, presentations, workshops, media interviews and published articles.

Articles written by Dr. Ain on the subject of education, families, parenting and grief, loss, and remembrance have appeared in The Huffington Post, MariaShriver.com, The New York Jewish Week, The New York Times and Newsday.

Dr. Ain earned her Ed.D. from Hofstra University, her M.A. from Columbia University Teachers College and her B.A. from Queens College.

Arthur M. Fischman is a freelance writer whose video and interactive scripts have won numerous awards, including a Telly, an ITVA Silver Award, and a New York Festivals Bronze World Medal. He co-wrote the award-winning documentary Digital Dharma and has written radio, TV, and print ads for leading consumer product manufacturers. Arthur is a veteran speechwriter and ghostwriter, and was director of executive communications and internal communications for a Fortune 500 company. He holds a BA from Queens College and a JD from Temple Law School. He, his wife, and their two daughters live in Philadelphia, where he also writes plays and moonlights as a jazz pianist.

Stewart Ain is an award-winning journalist with more than 40 years of experience, and was a Pulitzer Prize nominee three times. He is a staff writer for the New York Jewish Week and has reported for The New York Times, New York Daily News, Long Island Business News and Lifestyles Magazine. Stewart frequently appears on television and radio, and hosts his own weekly cable TV program, Jewish Life. He is a graduate of CW Post College and holds a MA from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Both his parents died while he was working on The Living Memories Project.