“TREES” the trees call to me they know me by name they weep spilling their leaves and pods over the earth their hearts are heavy with the knowledge that destruction surrounds their planet i whisper, “i don’t know what to do; i don’t know how to stop it” the trees call to me they know […]
Category Archives: Living Intentionally
Awareness greets me each morning. She asks, “what will you do with today?” Almost always, I answer boldly, listing what I’d like to accomplish; knowing how I desire to make a difference in the next 24 hours. But, every once in a while, I whisper, “I have no idea”. My tank is already close to empty […]
I woke up, brushed my teeth, threw on a t-shirt and pair of yoga pants and headed out for a walk with Vero, my little rescue dog. It was 6:50 on an absolutely perfect Sunday morning. Vero scampered as we trekked up the hill (yep, he actually scampers); him stopping often to smell something, me […]
Did you ever play hopscotch as a child? It was one of those activities that required very little: a piece of chalk, a flat stone and a couple of other “ready to play a game” children. 1. First, we’d draw the blocks (“the court”) with a piece of chalk, and number the squares. 2. Next, […]
During a flight to Florida, I sat between two women. The one on my left was 77 years old. She and her husband were traveling from Quebec. She asked to borrow my wrap because she was cold (she also had her right arm pretty much on my lap the entire time) and she told me about her […]
Four years ago, when our granddaughter Lauren was nine, we were driving to a soccer tournament when she asked, from the backseat, if we wanted to use her “future telling app”. Of course, we said yes. After all, who can resist a future telling app? Lauren proceeded to ask for dates in the future. We […]
What beliefs, which you hold in your core, seek expression? Are you willing to give voice to them? It’s okay if that voice starts as a barely audible whisper….really it is. When you make a decision to connect with yourself on a soul level, you are making this BIG statement: “I do matter— even if […]
When I was in my late twenties, I was the assistant controller in a successful company. One day, the owner shared this with me: “There are givers and takers in this world. My wife is a giver. I am a taker. And, you, Kay, are a giver.” I recall the words clearly because they were […]
Loneliness is on the rise, and the impact can be staggering. Feelings of social isolation are real, in spite of the fact that we live on a planet with more than seven billion humans and have a myriad of ways to connect with each other. It’s rare to find several generations of family members living together. We […]
Self can represent your physicality, your qualities, your psyche, your individuality, or the character of who you are. From a philosophical perspective self is the ego, the core of us, the soul or spirit that unites all of our experiences. The Creation of Self The process of “the creation of self” is what we continually […]
Today—having lived 21,915 days on our planet—marks the end of my first six decades in this life. This morning, I woke up to a beautiful card from Larry. I had breakfast with one of my dear friends. My grandchildren and daughter called to proclaim “Happy 60th Birthday!”, and I’ve received beautiful serenades left on my […]
A woman, standing in a checkout line on the Friday after Thanksgiving, is mumbling about how “ridiculous these lines are”. By the time she gets to the register, she’s yelling at the (likely) minimum wage person moving as quickly as he can. The young man stops (just for a moment) and tries to regroup. He […]
On Friday, I went to the funeral of Arlene—a woman I never had the pleasure of personally meeting in this life, but knew of because of my friend: her daughter, Carol. I’ve been to many viewings and funerals, but this one was filled with more joy than almost any I’ve experienced. (Another one was for […]
The doorknob—that the little girl was noticing for the first time—was brass. She was far too young to realize that she would, one day, think of that as her earliest memory. It wouldn’t be like the memories backlit by aged photographs, or the ones told, and retold, for decades. No, this one would be hers […]
A boy drops a glass of water and his mother yells, “You are always so clumsy!” The husband works for hours, on a special dinner for his wife, and the response is, “I don’t know why you even bother cooking.” The little girl hears, “I just gave you a rosary last week. How could you […]
The sun has just set and it’s that “ in between” time—not bright and not completely dark. I sit on a rocking chair, alone on the front porch. As I listen to the wind come up the mountain, I begin to study the different trees and shrubs around me. They each remind me of people […]
I woke up around 5am, made my tea, and went outside to write by candlelight. At 6:40 a rooster began crowing, then as the low, somewhat mournful, sound of the train whistle bellowed down in The Valley, a full choir of birds joined their voices in “The Song of The Morning”. Through the branches of the […]
A few weeks ago, I used this word to define how I was feeling: weary. I have never (at least as far as I can remember) ever used that word to describe myself before. Weary feels sad to me. It feels defeated. It feels worn out. After a couple of weeks of significant prayer and […]
A while ago, I was at a seminar with a group of women I didn’t know. One of them immigrated to The United States several years earlier. She said that her “English isn’t good enough“, and that she feels “defeated and less than”. She wasn’t finding other women who wanted to build a relationship with […]
Today, I want to tell you a story about a little girl who was born in Wales, Great Britain in the 1930s. She lived with her family in a thatch-roofed cottage on a rocky shoreline, where they had a very simple life—moving through each day the same as the one before. There were seven children and […]
Many years ago I had the wonderful privilege of being with people who are—on the surface only of course—different from me. I was in La Entrada, Honduras on a mission trip with others from my faith community. It was a time that was rich with emotion and learning. In spite of speaking mostly through an […]
Feeling Alone Last week my daughter Erin—a clinical trials & research nurse—sent me a very dismal report about loneliness. Then, I stumbled upon a piece on the same subject while researching something else. And, in the past few weeks, I’ve talked to at least four people about loneliness. When there’s a recurring theme, it’s a […]
Many of us run through life, like a child in a proverbial candy store—grabbing this and that experience, not really tasting all the “flavors”—simply consuming life. When we’re racing through experiences, we aren’t fully participating in them. We’re simply snapping screen shots as we jump from one thing to another. Because there’s so much going […]
I woke up this morning acutely aware of the amazing freedom and abundance I have. I could choose to lie in my bed as long as I want on this work-free morning, get up and brush my teeth with clean water running through a faucet in one of my bathrooms (while in a third of our […]
wholeness—complete and harmonious unity; a synergy of body, mind and spirit How often do you actually experience a sense of wholeness? Or, is that never part of your reality because you feel like a piece of you is missing—that you aren’t able to complete the puzzle because you’re somehow incomplete? The concept of “feeling whole” won’t […]
peace full home®—intentional living 