As a gift, I received from my daughter a little book called, What I Love About Mom. The book sets up a sentence and she filled in the blanks. I had a good chuckle over a few of them. If you were a scent, you’d be Warm OceanBreeze. But one of her responses took my breath…
Tag: Encouragement
Motivation, hope, beating blues, defeating depression, taking a pause, lifting up
Kicking Fear to the Curb
Since I’ve actively begun rooting out fears and staring them down, I’ve learned I’m not alone in this endeavor. As much as we desire to be fearless, it seems many of us battle with some fear. Speaking in public, catching a deadly illness, or meeting new people are just a few. Those things that make…
Measuring the Cost
My husband is dangerously close to running out of peanut butter, our car needs gas and I need to replace various items in my wardrobe. For me, hopping into a vehicle and running to the store, popping by a station to fill my tank and a brief detour to Kohl’s pretty much satisfies all those…
Busyness vs. Rest
I like to keep busy. Over the course of my life, I’ve held several jobs simultaneously and once it was up to four. The reasons are the same two for most people: debt and bills. Even when my main focus was homeschooling my daughter, I worked odd jobs and threw pots in my ceramics studio….
Feeling the Heat
I hope your summer is going better than planned. With longer days, the workload has been ramping up here – but that isn’t a complaint. With extended hours of daylight, I’m inclined to go out and enjoy the company of others. Last week I overheard someone say that though it’s just now July, for them,…
The Astounding Effect of Little Changes
As bored summer kids in Sterling, Ohio, my brother and I used to set pennies on the railroad tracks. The train came by with dozens of cars which flattened and stretched them. The grownups who learned of our adventure discouraged us because of the possibility that anything on a track — even a penny — could…
One Tiny Brave Step
I had a lot of fun writing a short story that went in unexpected directions. With good feedback from my beta readers I made some of their suggested corrections, found a fitting publication, uploaded the piece and hit “send.” And then, I forgot about it. Life continued. I wrote books and networked over many mugs…
Shattering Fear #1
My palms were already sweating when the first lady began speaking in front of a group of men and women in sales. The speaker, an ever-smiling chatterbox who clearly loved the limelight, had asked four of us to speak. This really was beyond my comfort level and I don’t know why I said yes. The…
End Wilderness Wandering
Have you been wandering around in circles trying to figure out your next move? How great would it be for someone to lead you straight to the place you need to be? Last week kicked off with Passover followed by Feast of Matzo. This was a daily reminder of how Moshe led the Israelites to…
True North
What happens when the beliefs we’ve carried around our whole lives turn out to be untrue?
A Life of Choice
The baseball game blared from a portable television and everything in my apartment reeked of cigarette smoke: courtesy of a roommate for whom I didn’t harbor good feelings. I woke up one day to an iteration of my life that wasn’t pretty. Not much food in the pantry, all of my socks had holes in them,…
Juli Ocean 