Growing with gratitude for life's challenges
It snowed early that year, and those who gathered at the church hall were dressed to keep out the cold, mumbling about the weather, and helping themselves to warm beverages. Seems deaths come in threes, and this was the third of our family members we’d buried in as many months. “Where’s Uncle Charles?” I asked […]
Read MoreI thought about skipping over Hallowe’en, but who doesn’t like a good, spooky story? And I have a few…just have to shake them out of my memory bank… Meanwhile, let’s write, photograph, and have fun with the paranormal. And if that doesn’t work, then use the word veil in another context. I know you will […]
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The first rule in interpreting dream messages, is to recognize that the meaning of a symbol varies with personal experience. This is why dream dictionaries are ineffective. This week’s responses to the river prompt clearly demonstrate this principle. For me, I have always envisioned the collective unconscious as a river whose flow encompasses all – past, […]
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You can’t push the river, a teacher once told me. So true. I’ve had a lifetime of trying to outrun the river, and consequently, the shattered pieces of my efforts litter life’s banks. With illness, I have come to appreciate that it is not about flowing with the river, or keeping up, but being open. The […]
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Everyday, in the aftershock of losing a seventeen year marriage, I sought out the river. I would say a prayer, then walk off the grief and strife, until I came to a bench, where I’d sit and contemplate the message of the flowing water. “Finding my inner peace”, is what my son called it. A […]
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The distance between one Sunday and the next is always the same, time wise, and yet this week felt so much longer than most. Wednesday brought emotional upheaval, and subsequent exhaustion, and then Friday morning my 91-year-old mother was admitted to hospital, while Ric and I attended a funeral for an extended family member. Life […]
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I stuff down the cookies as if the faster I eat the more I can distance myself from the misery that has bubbled to the surface. “Write about it,” my psychologist suggests as she ushers me out of the door, our session having run past the allotted time. I told her about the weekend I […]
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Distance by Archibald Lampman To the distance! Ah, the distance! Blue and broad and dim! Peace is not in burgh or meadow, But beyond the rim. Aye, beyond it, far beyond it; Follow still my soul, Till this earth is lost in heaven, And thou feel’st the whole. How do we measure distance, between hearts […]
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The forecast for last night was a frost warning. “The rooftops were white this morning, did you see?” a neighbour asked me at our communal brunch. I hadn’t noticed, but I am feeling it in my body. Things are seizing up. We’ve had a week of get-togethers, starting with Thanksgiving. Tuesday, we drove into town […]
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It’s a long weekend for us here in Canada. Traditionally families come together, partake of a large meal and give thanks for the blessings in their lives. It is not difficult to feel blessed when family is gathered together. What else is gathering at this time of year? How does ‘gathering’ factor into your current […]
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