Life Lessons from a Prison Inmate
Invaluable life lessons come to us from a myriad of sources. Even from unexpected places like a state correctional facility and an inmate sentenced to life without parole. For the past four years I have been communicating with a “lifer” prisoner via occasional phone...
10 Best Gifts FROM Mom
If you do an online search for “Mother’s Day gifts,” you’ll find at least 459,000,000 (459 million!) different gift ideas for dear Mom from chocolate-drizzled strawberries and fresh floral arrangements to crossbody bags and spa gift cards. But instead of sharing the...
Why Interruptions Are Good for You
Tap. Rap-tap. Tap. For the past several weeks I’ve heard the slight knock at my front door around 7:40 every weekday morning. My 11-year-old neighbor five houses up stops by now to greet Posie, my new collie girl who was a littermate to my Ayrabelle. Bit by bit, I am...
Two Words Worth Remembering
Some words are worth remembering. America boasts some of the best two-word combos on the planet. Mashed potatoes. Fried chicken. Amazon Prime. Apple Inc. Walt Disney. In chapter one of my Two Days Longer book, I tell of an elderly widowed farmwife who quizzes me on...
How to Get Out of a Rut
Sometimes we just get a bit stuck. Stuck in the same ole routines. The same foods, the same drive to work, the same debate with a spouse, the same TV shows, the same thought patterns. And then we meet someone like Wendy, a seventeen-year-old student from Vietnam...
The Things We Take for Granted
There’s nothing like washing clothes in a laundromat to jostle our perspective on the things we take for granted. Things like dumping your clothes everywhere to sort them, not searching for coins to feed the washer AND dryer, and not having to hang around a public...
Spot the Benefits of Pruning
Move over winter. Our new season of spring is the headlining news this week, but many of us are not quite ready to pack away our heavy coats and mittens. We know better in states with snow, but we get a bit giddy when the daytime temps push over 60. Wooo hooo! The...
One Woman Who Will Lift Your Spirits
You just never know when your life may turn on a dime. Almost 19-year-old Amberley Snyder didn’t when she glanced down at her road map and lost control of her truck. In an instant she broke her back and faced starting life again from a wheelchair. I was honored last...
