Your surgical experience will be unique. Therefore, sift through what others tell you about their experiences, salt those accounts away, and don’t take them out of your experience cupboard unless you find them useful to your situation. There is nothing to be gained by lamenting you are doing more poorly than the rest of the …
Grief at Four Years Means a Cookie Sheet in the Bed
my caregiver daughter and photographer Every year on the anniversary of my husband’s death, I have dedicated a blog post to that event. Marv passed away four years ago on July 25, and I’ve not had a minute to mindfully think about the impact of his loss in my life. On July 25, Monday, I …
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Throwing Away My Past Life: Part 3
My past life has now been shredded. I've sorted and purged my multitude of banker's boxes and file cabinet drawers. I'm starting over with a clean slate! What is not in my memory is no longer retrievable. When Marie Kondo came out with her book, "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up," my husband and I …
Nostalgia – My Maternal Grandma (1874-1958)
finding her grave in Michigan in 2019 (findagrave.com) My maternal grandma was blind from glaucoma and deaf by the age of fifty. I met her a few times, but in those days we didn’t travel much, so the main thing I remember is a visit she made from her retirement home in Michigan to our …
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Throwing Away My Past Life: Part 2 (Hard!)
Some things from my boxes I can't throw away. Yet. I was doing fine with my purge until the final box labeled jobs/MS/PhD. In other words, my nursing career and advanced degrees in nursing. As I paged through the piles of papers I had saved, every memory came springing back. piles Job application letters, letters …
Throwing Away My Past Life
Terri Lee (worth a lot now online!) and Baby (who cries) George Burns once said, "You know you're getting old when you stoop down to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you're down there." This idea has been part of my life since late last fall when I developed hip …
My Brother: A Bit of Nostalgia
When I was born, he told the neighbors, "It's another girl." He was eleven and already had three sisters. When I was five, I rode on his handlebars to kindergarten. We crossed over a brook. I was the only kid in kindergarten that knew that water was H20. Then my brother left for college. When …
Cover Reveal of My Cancer Memoir – “Marv Taking Charge”
Today, I happily present the cover of my completed book and announce that Marv Taking Charge is scheduled to be released this fall. Marv liked red. I like script, no borders, and a metaphorical background. So that is the information I gave to my publisher Andy Carmichael at Deep River Books; DRB's cover editor, Robin …
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The day my garage door broke…
I purged my closet of twenty-seven items. Does this “first line” grab your attention? Do you want to know more? Do you wonder if there’s a correlation between these two events? Is this something you even care to read about? The goal for first lines is to keep the reader reading. Read the first lines …
Signature Dish
I'm having a miniature identity crisis and desperately need the help of a few of you readers. I was invited last week to a meet and greet on the block of my Arizona home. The hostess said we could bring a small something to share or not. I certainly didn't want to be not only …
Write Along with Me 