Participating in the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge Early on when I started this blog (2010), I often wrote about the importance of telling your story. I said if you don’t, your words will die with you. I still feel that way, only more so. Since I retired from teaching nursing in 2000, I’ve met many writers in various workshops. Some were writing fiction, but most were writing memoir. As we work shopped each participant’s story in class, I heard life stories of all kinds and saw many smiles, as well as tears. I’ve seen how cathartic writing has been. And then found out for myself as I to ..read more

Imagine my shock when I found this rant! I remembered writing one for an assignment at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, but didn’t remember when, so I searched. Then I discovered I’d written this twenty years ago. My, how time flies! A rant is a bunch of fun–just go wild with whatever is on your mind. Sit back and have a laugh today. See you Monday with the letter S. July 30, 2004 Dear Mr. Descartes, I’ve wanted to write you for a long time, but I didn’t know it until just now at four in the morning. I awoke suddenly, my head thrashing with thoughts, and I began to think why I was thinking ..read more

After posting a few quotes on Life this past week that are newly meaningful to me, I naturally thought of using Quote for the letter Q. That brought me to a favorite Biblical quote that also refers to our lives. Background: In my graduate research, I studied the meaning of leisure for older persons. I was attracted to attend a conference on Christianity and leisure to learn the connection. I’d read literature from several disciplines about leisure and wanted to hear what the presenters at this conference would have to share. I soon learned that the word “leisure” is not used in the Bible. And ..read more

Frederick Buechner is well known for many of his quotes. Perhaps you’ve heard this one but didn’t know where it came from. It relates well to my posts of the last few days on LIFE. “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” I don’t think I have thought about my nursing career in this way. I simply know that the career choices in my home when I was growing up in the 1950s were to be a teacher or a nurse. I became a nurse because I didn’t like grading papers with my teacher mother, and I liked the cap my nurse sister wore. Not very though ..read more

I’ve rarely been able to understand poetry–the mystery of the meaning of the words and their fragmentary arrangements. But I’ve learned in several classes since I retired, that I don’t have to understand every word. That sometimes reading for the feel, sounds, and rhythm is enough. For someone like me who is left-brained, logical and organized, the idea of just going with the flow like that makes me want to impose order and make the words readable and understandable for all. Then, six years ago, a friend recommended poems by Mary Oliver. She said her poems were accessible, which in my nurse-la ..read more

Nothing. When I woke up yesterday, I decided to do nothing. After a packed and scheduled week, I rationalized that I owed it to myself to do nothing. I almost succeeded. To do nothing, I soon found out, I had to do something. I could not just lie in bed with my eyes shut. Keeping my eyes shut was doing something. They naturally open when I’m awake. And my ceiling is a usual boring ceiling, so to try to do nothing doesn’t work when your mind automatically tries to find patterns in a patternless ceiling. Beside me on the bed, lay reading material I’d purchased last week at the Calvin Faith & ..read more

Who or what else could M be for? None other than my late husband. Especially since I’m writing this at O’Hare on my layover home from Michigan. It’s about a 3000-step walk from where we landed to the distant concourse and gate that will take me home to SD. I’ve picked out just three of the photos I’ve taken along the way that reminded me of Marv. When we lived downtown Chicago, we’d take the pedway under our building to catch the Blue Line (el) to O’Hare. We often traveled United so we’d first encounter the psychedelic moving walkway above. I’d take the walkway and Marv would walk alongside a ..read more

Spending three session-packed days at the Calvin Festival of Faith & Writing has left my body buzzing as though I’ve eaten an entire chocolate cake and washed it down with a pot of caffeinated coffee. From this sentence, how would you describe what this conference was like for me? Dull? Boring? Waste of time? Or energizing? Stimulating? A heady overload? Anthony (Tony) Doerr, author All the Light We Cannot See, wound up the Festival tonight talking about how smilies and metaphors can enrich our writing and enlarge our stories. Since these don’t come easily to me, I’ll attempt to explain m ..read more

Being back in Grand Rapids, MI, this week elicits several feelings of kinship–an appreciation of similar origins. Like visiting my sister-in-law, Kay, yesterday. We are the oldest and youngest of my sibling clan, and the other eight have passed away. So a special visit for sure. Then stopping at my parents’ cemetery yesterday brought tears. And driving around my old neighborhood in a south suburb, remembering friends, neighbors, and classmates. I have no extra time to see them this time, but just a drive around tugged at my heart. I even landed on the street of the home of my first date! Don’t ..read more

Here I am with two of my sisters, Rose and Esther, during happier times. They have both passed away. It was Rose, as an experienced widow, who told me when Marv died that I must find joy in my life every day. She said Joy would not come looking for me. I must look for it myself and not just when I felt like it, but every day. That was good advice, Even on a down day, I’ve always been able to find something to be happy about. Or thankful for! Yesterday, my joy was visiting my parents’ gravesites in MI and my one remaining sibling–my sister-in-law, Kay, (I’d add those photos but don’t know how w ..read more