A Generous Heart

August 13th, 2013
Posted By:

I saw this letter yesterday and it reminded me that a new school year will be starting soon.  With the beginning of a new school year, perhaps teachers and student will be dealing with conflicting emotions about losses or illnesses that happened over the summer.
When a friend or an acquaintance is grieving from the loss of a loved one, it is natural to want to reach out and make them feel better.  One of the greatest gifts we can give is listening.  Even if you don’t know what to say, we can always listen; listen as the person talks … Read More

Tweeting A Mother’s Life

August 12th, 2013
Posted By:

Over 340 million tweets are sent and read each day. In the midst of all those competing thoughts, messages and trending topics, Scott Simon posted a large number of tweets late last month that broke through the rush of chatter and caught the attention of  a large part of Twitter’s world wide audience. Simon, National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Saturday host, was sitting beside his mother’s hospital bed and relaying intimate, tender and immediate thoughts about his precious time with his mother in the last days of her life.   I can’t imagine having the clarity of mind to tweet… Read More

The Selling of The Washington Post

August 9th, 2013
Posted By:

There are some stories that I never expected to read in my lifetime. The selling of The Washington Post is one of them.  When I saw the first tweet about this surprising event, I thought I had read it too fast and read the words completely wrong.  I had to go back and read it again a few times before I understood that it was a real story. I just never in a million years thought the Graham family would sell the newspaper that they have owned for decades and generations.  To those of us who live here in Washington,… Read More

Within The Morning Light

August 8th, 2013
Posted By:

I am an early riser.  I find the morning to be peaceful and so quiet.  I use my morning time to collect my thoughts about what I think is going to happen during that particular day and pray for other things that I hope will happen. So the morning is when a lot happens for me.  With my trusty cups of hot tea, I appreciate the solitude of the wee early hours of the day.  Quiet allows me to think and to breathe and pull myself together. I am always writing down blog ideas and collecting different points of view… Read More

Make Each Day Meaningful

July 29th, 2013
Posted By:

Resilience is a quality we all have within us.  We can take that resilience and make it work for us and strengthen ourselves if we choose. Resilience is a tenacity of spirit; a determination to deal with adversity in our lives.  I know it doesn’t feel like it at the time we are trying to handle one of life’s stressful or sad times, but the courage and patience that we find inside ourselves as we process hardships can help us come out on the other side of it a better person. A better person, you ask?  How can that be?… Read More

So You Know You Can Dance!

July 27th, 2013
Posted By:

Everyone can dance.  And they should! For dancing gets you moving and helps you get rid of the stress and tension you are storing all over your body.  Dancing also helps you heal your soul. While listening to music, my mind momentarily stops thinking about hurt and pain and frustration as I allow my body to take over and lose itself in the rhythms and sounds of whatever is playing. Dancing is definitely therapeutic!!  And today, in Washington, DC, you can go to The Kennedy Center and dance pretty much all day to your heart’s desires.  Or you can do… Read More

Exiting The Control Lane

July 26th, 2013
Posted By:

It is Friday and I am one big burnt piece of toast! It has been a week of going to the hospital (hopefully my Dad will be discharged today), car maintenance (way too expensive) and early starts at work (hate the alarm).  But I am truly looking forward to the end of today because that is when my well-deserved vacation begins!!!!!! As hard as I try to maneuver around the built-in stress of the above situations, I am just a human being like anyone else and I do get sucked into worrying about all of these things instead of having… Read More

Sonia Sotomayor

July 25th, 2013
Posted By:

I am a big believer in the idea that when someone offers you a helping hand that you should turn around and offer your hand to help someone else. It’s the right thing to do and haven’t you also found that you always get more out of life when you become actively involved and emotionally invest in it?  I know I do! I’m guessing that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor practices this same philosophy because she recently went back to her childhood roots in the Bronx, NY and spent the day with young children from the Dream Big program… Read More

The Kindness of Nurses

July 23rd, 2013
Posted By:

Have you ever been in an emergency room at 2 am? Unfortunately, my son and I found ourselves there Sunday night because we needed to take my Dad to the hospital for medical attention to various issues that by themselves were not a big deal, but taken collectively, for a man in his 80’s, they added up to a serious situation. The doctors agreed about the seriousness of my Dad’s symptoms but didn’t decide to check him in until after midnight and then he was finally assigned a room around 2 am.  By the time we got home, it was… Read More