There is a certain magic to be discovered during a walk on the beach. Somehow all of your troubles and all that is weighing on your mind and your heart is left behind. Bit by bit your troubles are wiped away by the sand with each step you take. Suddenly you feel calm and relaxed as you turn to make your return trip down the beach. Only this time you are mentally at peace. The…
Humans were never meant to be solitary creatures. But progress and innovation have made that fact easy to forget. Now a trip to the store produces food and clothing, shelter is bought not built, as is our means of getting from point a to point b. We no longer need the help of others to meet these needs. It would appear that by earning money, one can live completely independently from others. But the…
No person is perfect. As much as each of us would like to believe that we are, we are not. And making peace with this fact of life is the first step to making progress in reaching your goals in life. Granted some of us might have greater challenges which have left not just small chips or nicks on our hearts instead, there are gaping holes. But all of these flaws serve two purposes.…
I seem to have entered another time in my life when “why” is the thought of most days. And unlike in my youth when I really expected an answer, I think as an adult, when I hear myself utter this question, I know that it is time to reflect on the issue and search for my own answers. The short version of the current need for contemplation is a set of challenges for myself and…
When I tell people my story, I’m always told that I have a lot of Resilience, but I’ve never understood what it means. According to the Oxford dictionary, Resilience means “The Capacity to recover from trauma”. My life has been full of events that will challenge many and provide a whole new meaning to resilience. My story begins in 1990 at the end of Ceausescu’s reign, the Romanian dictator who took the population’s…
It can be truly amazing how much a person can love another person. And yet sadly we do not fully comprehend the depth and completeness of that love until we are faced with living without it. And when I say without it, I really mean without the earthly reminder of it when we see that person or hear their voice. This kind of love is not really limited to the short-term capabilities of the…
“Why, why am I still here.” Her question to me was so simple, and her labored words told me just how much she wanted to be done here. But I had no definitive answer for her other than these difficult words. At 87, no one more deserves freedom and peace than you. But I’m a believer- and so are you, in a higher power. And that power protects us and guides…
“I feel that my work in progress has progressed to its final page and someone has glued it to the cover because there’s no more to be written,” she said to me in one of our many, many email conversations. It took me some time to process the gravity of her eloquent words as she tried to gently prepare me for the future. I needed to find a way to translate the feelings in my…
“I am a constant editor. I shed people, I shed clothing, I shed possessions, I shed ideas. The biggest thing that I’ve shed is my own limitations and perception of who I am.” This is a quote from Jamie Lee Curtis in the October 2018 issue of Good Housekeeping. Sometimes we forget that each of us is the author of our own story, our own life. We make choices about what we would like to…
Change can be a good thing. Think of the changes you undergo on your journey as a means of honing the person who you are becoming. In my youth, I was quiet but with a well concealed wild side. I would act now and think later which often resulted in a somewhat negative outcome. In addition, I turned out to be a very slow learner when it came to learning from others. For some odd…