Yesterday I hiked up to Misery Ridge and sat for a while, doing absolutely nothing. Well, except for munching fistfuls of nuts, and crunching on fruit, and slugging back cool, refreshing water.
All photos: Marlys
Category: blog Page 23 of 53
A browse through a local Farmer’s Market yesterday gave me a fresh appreciation for living in the United States — we who rarely miss a meal and if we do, it isn’t from lack of food. (Let me just say that if your hometown doesn’t have a Farmer’s Market, you might want to consider relocating.)
All photos: Marlys
Psychologist Angela Lee Duckworth—author of Grit: the Power of Passion and Perseverance—defines grit as:
Not just resilience in the face of failure, but also having deep commitments that you remain loyal to over many years.
Photo by Andreas Fidler on Unsplash
An email arrived recently from a friend — her grandfather died, and a week and a half later, her grandmother was diagnosed with late stage cancer.
“My grandma went through such a long, rough time being a caregiver for my grandpa,” wrote this young woman, “… and now this.”
Photo by Jake Thacker on Unsplash
Being a caregiver was one of the most challenging and sweetest roles I’ve ever held. The challenging part was in the beginning, when terminal cancer was dropped on us from a high-flying bomber we didn’t see coming.
A year later—after my husband, Gary, finally admitted his fears and feelings of failure as a man—we sorted things out, determined to live more fully, found ways to give back, and made more fun and memories. That was the thunderous, sweet, majestic part.
If given the assignment to share tips from my cancer caregiving years, and if the assignment required an alphabetized list …
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Author Anthony Doerr spent a year in Rome on a writing fellowship. One of the things this ancient, spellbinding city taught him was how dangerous habit can be when it causes the spectacular to become routine:
Imagine if we only got to see a cumulonimbus cloud or Cassiopeia or a snowfall once a century: there’d be pandemonium in the streets. People would lie by the thousands in the fields on their backs.
Photo by Cédric Dhaenens on Unsplash
I live in a beautiful little guest house on the side of a hill overlooking a valley to tall mountains across the way. The guest house is not my own place, but it is home.
Photo: Marlys
In honor of National Nurses Week, this quote from Vincent Van Gogh reminds me of all the nurses who interacted with us through the ten years my husband, Gary, lived with late-stage cancer:
Your profession is not what brings home your paycheck. Your profession is what you were put on earth to do with such passion and such intensity that it becomes spiritual in calling.
Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash
This is my last week at the Idaho cabin. Today’s trek took me off the beaten path, through a green gate, around a couple of bends, across a small creek, and then uphill where the deep prints left by elk in the soft spring mud have now hardened into pitted landscape.
Photo: Marlys