Category: inspiration

The Next 100,000 Miles

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“There’s a sunrise and a sunset every single day, and they’re absolutely free. Don’t miss so many of them.” – Joe Walton

This is a post I originally published on 2/8/2023. Heads up – you have have already read this.

When we celebrated our car turning 100,000 miles in December, we made the car a cake. After blowing out the candles, my seven-year-old daughter turned to ask me, “Are you going to be alive when this happens to me?”

I stalled for time by asking if she was talking about getting her own car to 100k. When she nodded “yes,” I replied “I hope so.”

My engineering brain wanted to calculate how many miles we drive a day while factoring in variables based on the future of transportation. But my existential brain kicked in and reminded me that I don’t know how many miles I have left in me. I just know what kind of miles I want to put in.

The Destinations

Get togethers with friends, adventures to find new ones, crossing bridges to help anyone who needs it are all on my priority list of destinations.

I want to use a good portion of the miles I have left to drive to trailheads and view points. And speaking of miles, I’ve put a lot of them on my knees and hips so the amount of hiking and climbing, if I ever get back to it, might be limited. But if we are driving to be among trees and mountains, I hope I can be happy no matter the activity.

Gathering supplies for silly things like car cakes that help us celebrate any and every milestone together, or just even a good day, seems worth doing. But overall, I want to spend my miles going on vacation together and fewer miles to IKEA to get more stuff.

When I can opt out of driving these miles in a car and instead travel them in an ecofriendly manner that gives our environment and world a healthier and longer life, I’m happy to change vehicles.

The Route

I want to set my internal GPS towards spontaneous miles finding love and purpose and away from those routine destinations ticking the box for obligation. And I want to heed that directional voice as it gives me help me find places that unlock the sense of adventure and possibility, instead of spinning wheels in the muck and mire. If given the option, I’d eliminate miles to to-do list meetings, corporate bullshit, and fruitless gatherings with ineffective leadership or heart.

If learning and laughter is part of where we are going, I’ll be happy to detour from any well-traveled road. I want to drive proactive miles to the things that keep us healthy and NO miles to the emergency room.

The Atmosphere

I want to put in connected miles, ones where we talk, laugh, or sit in companionable silence and gaze at the same scenery. I don’t want to put in disconnected miles where we zone out on attached devices. I understand that this will soon be out of my control, and that I’m part of the problem already when I encourage them to do it on mornings we have trouble getting into the car. But even when they choose their devices, I want my kids to know that I’d prefer to talk and listen to them.

Traveler’s Log

I know that regardless of the intentions I’ve put into the list, I get to control very few of these things except to choose to lean in when I take a “wrong” turn. Also, when lost, reconnecting to a desire to make meaning out of the detours.

I’d like to spend my remaining miles trying not to be locked in conflict or with my heart hardened towards people that have pissed me off. I want to stop avoiding my anger, sadness, or suffering but instead moving to approach all of the emotions of this amazing journey with empathy, awe & curiosity.

I hope to take fewer trips to regret. I’d like to be more readily willing to reroute to repair, apology, and appreciation of the unexpected path of life.

While I recognize I need to spend less time in overdrive and more time in idle, I also want to pass these miles not metaphorically (or actually) asleep at the wheel wondering how I got here but instead marveling at the scenery with gratitude.

When we reach our destination, I hope to remember, more often than not, to say a prayer of gratitude for safe travel.

I don’t know if I’ll be here when my daughter gets a car to 100,000 miles. If it takes til she’s my age (53), I’d be 99-years-old and the odds are slim. But if we are driving an open road between our hearts for any good portion of those miles, I’ll call it good.

I written a related post on the Wise & Shine blog about a road trip and making meaning from our experiences: The Universal You.

An Adventure

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“Jobs fill your pocket, adventures fill your soul.” – Jaime Lyn Beatty

Last weekend I took my kids to IKEA. I had to borrow my brother’s truck to do it. When the kids and I joined up with our family and friends later that day, and were sitting out on the stern of my brother’s boat to watch the Blue Angels, my sister-in-law commented that she couldn’t believe I took my kids with me. She said she gets stressed just going on her own. My friend, Eric, chimed in with a good-natured smirk, “She thinks of it as an adventure.”

Bahaha (I’ve gotten that laugh in writing from the delightful blogger and Cheryl Oreglia). But hey, he might have a point. I had the itinerary completely mapped, and packed a snack for each break. There were even ropes involved. It might not be a mountain climb, but it had some of the same elements.

I don’t know you all, but there isn’t anything like a project from IKEA to make me feel completely stupid. I say that even though I really love putting things together. But that first page, the one where you have to start assembling, and are looking at a wordless page indicating three or four parts from the dozens strewn around, and six or more screws, bolts, barrels, and dowels from the hundreds? Well, ugh!

Invariably, I do something wrong. Usually right out of the gate. This time it was to put those short wooden dowels in the wrong holes. And because I often get am racing to “completion,” I like to do it systemically, and did it for all the boards on the page. Then to make sure I was extra diligent, I hammered them in. Only to find out on wordless page number two that was wrong.

There was no way I found to get the dowels out, not pulling, or using pliers, or trying to make them cold in case the wood would contract. I had to drill them out. As I sat on the floor of Miss O’s bedroom with sweat running down my face and her loft bed still in pieces around me, I had to face that I was already on the wrong path, and had to go back to step one.

Huh, not entirely unlike a mountain climb after all.

Eric’s remark, even though delivered smirk, might have been right on the mark. It’s reminded me that of the adventures I’ve been on, they have all come with hard moments – and also learning and growth. The other thing they’ve all had, whether I’ve made it to the top or not, laughter, the satisfaction that comes with trying, and joy.

Last weekend I took my kids to IKEA. We got a loft bed with a side of adventure. Not a bad deal….

If you have a moment, please check out my Heart of the Matter blog post today about happiness versus joy: Good Mood of the Soul.

Sharing Wisdom

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“Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant with the weak and wrong. Sometime in your life, you will have been all of these.” – Buddha

This is something I posted on 1/26/2022. Heads up – you may have already read this.

In March of 2001, I trekked to Everest Base Camp with my friends Phil and Sue who were attempting to summit Mt. Everest that year. They had invited a few of their friends to join them on the 30 mile trek in and we’d assembled in Katmandu, Nepal to gather our last few supplies before flying in to the starting point of the trek.

It was on a rickshaw trip around the city, that one of my fellow trekkers that I’d just met, a 59-year-old man told me “Life begins at 40.” Given that I was only 31-years-old at the time, this particular piece of wisdom irked me. Taken literally, it implied that I should just waste the next 9 years.

Over the next few weeks as we were trekking, I found out his back story. He had been married in his early 20’s, had two kids but that marriage had broken down and he was divorced by the time he was in his mid-30’s. It was a contentious divorce and his relationship with his sons suffered.

By the time he was in his 40’s, he’d found success as a business owner, gotten remarried to a woman he adored, and shaped his life to look more or less like the balance of freedom and love he’d always wanted. Hence his statement that life begins at 40.

Why is it so hard to pass wisdom from one human to another? We have to pack it up in a suitcase so that it’s portable and then the recipient needs to have some hooks to hang it on when they unpack it.

In this case, I didn’t think much about the wisdom he’d offered me until I was about to turn 40-years-old. It was a tough time in my life – I’d recently been told of my husband’s infidelities, and I was struggling with the idea of failing at marriage while trying to hold it all together.

While I believe the age was just a coincidence, when I thought back to my fellow trekker’s story, it held a lot of comfort for me. Because it represented an example that life can rebuild itself even better after it’s all fallen apart. The wisdom, when I distilled it for me, was that we can have multiple chapters in our lives that still add up to a glorious story.

Isn’t that why we share our wisdom and stories? So that someone else can take them, draw strength from them when needed and they repackage them in a way that’s meaningful?

On that trip in 2001 to Everest Base Camp, after we’d been trekking for a few days, I woke up one morning a couple of hours before anyone else was up. I was so excited to be in the Himalayas, I decided to hike around to see if I could see Everest in the first light of the day. After about 40 minutes, I finally found a place to sit and watch the sunrise illuminate one of the most distinctive mountains in the world.

When I’d finally hiked back 40 minutes, everyone else was up. One of our guides said, “Does anyone want to get a first look at Everest?” and I joined the group. About a 5 minute walk from our campsite, in the opposite direction I’d gone, was a magnificent view of Everest.

Packaging up this story, I’d pass along this wisdom. “You will take some wrong turns in life, go down the wrong path and expend a lot of extra energy. But even in that case, enjoy the view, laugh about how you got there. Whether you go the short way or whether you go the long way, always look out for the presence of Wonder.”

What’s a piece of wisdom you share?

I’ve posted a related piece about wisdom gleaned during my podcast conversation with playwright and author Jack Canfora in a story about Laurence Olivier on the Wise & Shine blog: Do It Again: The Gift of Having to Repeat Ourselves

(featured photo is mine – a view of Mt. Everest from the Tengboche Monastery. Everest is the one with the snow plume caused by winds from the jet stream.)

Let’s Be Unreasonable

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“Life is full of surprises and serendipity. Being open to unexpected turns in the road is an important part of success. If you try to plan every step, you may miss those wonderful twists and turns. Just find your next adventure-do it well, enjoy it-and then, not now, think about what comes next.” Condeleeza Rice

When Miss O was about six months old, I went out to dinner with a couple of business acquaintances that had kids were teenagers and young twenty-somethings. As I was enjoying fantastic Chinese food in the dark atmosphere of a fancy downtown Seattle Asian fusion restaurant, one of the women slipped in an aside that has stuck with me for all these years. It was something like, “You can’t reason with kids that are 2 ½ to 4 years old.” Wide-eyed with new motherhood, I wondered what holy hell that would be.

Now that Mr D is about to turn four years old, I’ve gone through the window that the woman mentioned twice. That’s enough to realize that it isn’t as precise as I took her comment to be at the time. And also enough to find some interesting lessons about what lies underneath “reasonableness.”

I consider myself to be a pretty reasonable person. This is a perfect spot to insert some joke about whether others in my life would say the same. But more or less, I think they would. There may be an exception about my propensity to bite off a lot but as I wrote in my Being a Yes-Sayer post, I’ve got Shonda Rhimes on my side on that one.

But watching the small examples of humanity I see in my children has made me realize three things:

Routine: When reason doesn’t work, routine often does. I’m guessing this is how most parents of small children manage to make things happen. But looking at my life I see how much I do simply by routine – yoga, meditation, writing, showering, making breakfast to name just one routine that I do every morning. And it flows because I don’t question it. Also, when it’s interrupted, I’m very unsettled.

Override: There’s a lot of things little kids don’t want to do. I’m thinking specifically about inserting a stick with bristles and flavored paste in their mouths to scrub all sides of every surface, and then go to bed. But when some parental influence is exerted, it usually happens.

Cue to the end of the night when I’m sitting in my chair reading. Guess what? I often don’t feel like getting out of the chair, brushing my teeth, putting on face creams (there’s a lot more these days), and going to bed. But I do it. Watching kids makes me think about how many things we do in a day that we don’t really want to do – eat vegetables, go to school/work, brush our teeth, wash our hands. I’m sure the list varies for everyone but to one degree or another we are doing a ton of things that we don’t “feel” like doing. I think we all deserve some recognition and applause.

Delight: Reason is not a pre-requisite for delight. In fact, my observation is that reason might hinder delight when we are too focused on the above routines and overrides. Mr. D was riding his training wheeled bike in a bike lane along a well-traveled route the other day when he got off to crouch down and point out the ants he saw also commuting down the road. He was fascinated by the activity and direction and wanted me to join in on his delight. I, however, was almost too preoccupied by trying to get us out of the lane of bike traffic even though no one was coming.

It’s a scene that plays out over and over with my kids. There are a myriad of wonders up, down, and around, and these beautiful young minds around me point them out to me. Only then do I notice, and when left on my own I only tune into a FRACTION of what they see.

Maybe this is why I feel a little sad leaving this “window of unreasonableness” as coined by my colleague. Sure, we’ll get a lot more done – but I’d like to keep the congratulations and delight.

The Changes We Choose

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“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” – Rumi

The other day I watched from the back door as almost 8-year-old Miss O walked up to my mom as she was gardening in my back yard in the late afternoon glow, and announced, “We have some news. We are growing our family.”

I could have done a spit-take on the micro-expression that crossed my mom’s face. I’m 99% certain she knows that I’m not going to have any more children, but there might have been a fleeting second that my mom wasn’t sure. And then Miss O saved her by explaining we are getting a puppy in three weeks.

Which in many ways is nuts. I love order and getting things done. I’m pretty clear that a puppy isn’t going to tip the balance in that direction. But here’s my counter argument – doesn’t change usually feel like it’s nuts? Of course, I’m speaking of the changes we choose. I think often the changes we don’t choose feel to me like grief.

But there’s another thing I’m noticing as we prepare to “grow our family.” Now that we’ve decided, it’s already started mixing up the patterns we have at home.

I’ve told Miss O and Mr. D that I can’t be one person taking care of three creatures. Miss O has picked up on that and calls it five creatures because she’s including the cat and me. Whatever the number, it’s caused her to step up her game – get her own breakfast, learn how to do the dishes, and follow me around asking, “what can I do to help?”

It’s forcing me to accept the help and start expecting more of my children. For me to see all that they are capable of, and break the patterns started in toddlerhood where I just did things because it’s faster (and usually not as messy).

My requirement for a puppy was that Mr. D had to be potty trained – and he mastered that months ago. But there’s still a little porta-potty sitting in the corner of the family room that has to go away when the puppy comes. Not to mention, that the beloved stuffy Bun Bun will be at great risk if Mr D continues to carry him around, and sometimes leave behind randomly, so there’s another opportunity to step up to more thoughtful patterns.

Yes, we are growing our family. But as I watch in anticipation of this change, I see that we are also “growing-up” our family. Maybe that’s what every change we choose offers us the opportunity to do.

(featured photo is my last dog, Biscuit, as a puppy)

Use Your Words

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“Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” – Rumi

Last Friday my almost four-year-old Mr. D responded to me when I told him that the next day we were going to Olympia for a hike, “Mine Bumblebees and me hate that place.” [Bumblebees is the name of his pre-school classroom so he was going for the group effect, I guess.] I had to laugh. Olympia is about 60 miles south of Seattle and Mr. D has never been there. What’s more – he loves hiking!

I also understand from the lead teacher at his school that the usually affable Mr. D has been recently trying out the phrase, “If you don’t let me, my mom will be mad at you.” Another gem since expressing anger is something I’m woefully bad at.

But I can relate the desire to attach to the most powerful presence I can find and try to borrow some influence. I remember seeing a sign in my neighborhood when I was going through my divorce that said something like, “We don’t want you to park here…” And I felt a mournful tug that I wasn’t no longer a part of a “we” I could hide behind.

Here’s how I unpack it for me. When I feel vulnerable, I’d like to borrow the biggest shield I can find instead of baring my naked underbelly for all to see. I think there’s more than just a little instinctual resistance to leaning in to the things that make me feel exposed. I have a well-guarded list of my weaknesses, fears, and the things I love so much that I regularly worry about losing them.

I come from a long line of smart women whose agency and power were in large part conferred upon them by the men in their life. In that system, their judgment was the sharpest tool they could wield. And I don’t mean judgment as in discernment but instead judgment of others.

But I want to live in curiosity instead of judgment, so I’ve worked hard to break that pattern. That has meant reaching deep inside me to stoke my own fire. I’ve noticed that when I borrow power from someone else, I forget to believe in my own.

I don’t have the worldly power to affect change, command resources, or make people listen but I’ve found that the most important person that needs to believe in my voice is me. When I don’t believe that I, by myself, have anything to say, it suddenly becomes true. I stop in my tracks trying to work for change in my own life.

And when I remember that I do have power to decide and make things happen in my own life, often a curious thing happens – I find helpers. Not people who I need to borrow influence from but others who are swimming the same direction and we can draft off each other.

So I come back to the thing I often say to my kids when they are upset. “Use YOUR words.” It works as advice on many levels for all ages.

(featured photo from Pexels)

Being a Yes-Sayer

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“Surrender to what is. Say ‘yes’ to life — and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.” – Eckhard Tolle

[I almost titled this post “Being a Yay-Sayer” as a joke for anyone that has read about the spelling mistake that I made at Everest Base Camp. Featured photo is from there. If you haven’t, here’s the post on HoTM: Yay, Yeah, Whatever.]

One of the most transformative books that I’ve ever read was Year of Yes by Shondra Rhimes. I remember being pregnant with Mr. D and sitting in a Mexican restaurant eating chips and salsa as I read. So I clearly was at least on speaking terms with “yes,” if getting pregnant with my second child by IVF as a single person was any indication.

Shondra Rhimes, the creator of hit shows such as Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal to name just two of her many accomplishments, sets up the book as a response to something one of her sisters says to her. It was something like, “You never say yes to anything.” So she sets out to say “yes” to all of life’s invitations for a year, even things that terrified her. Public speaking – yes. Media appearances – yes.

Here’s how it was transformative for me. My natural response to life is mostly a “yes.” But somewhere down the line I began to think that it was cool and discerning to say, “no.” Like it indicated that I was a busy person in demand and that showed a level of sophistication. It was a subtle thing when I switched from telling people what I couldn’t do instead of what I could do.

[An aside here: I’m not talking about drawing healthy boundaries and maintaining a line of separation between what are my responsibilities to take care of versus someone else’s responsibilities. I’m not advocating contorting myself to make everything fit, I’m focusing on saying yes/no to adventures and opportunities.]

That small change meant that when someone asked if I could meet them for lunch on Wednesday, I’d respond with something like, “No, I can’t. I have back-to-back meetings that day” instead of “I can’t meet Wednesday but I can meet Tuesday or Friday.”

So reading Shonda’s book reminded me that there is an openness when you face life with “yes” in mind. Not only that, it fits better with my natural way of being. It’s an approach that defaults to a response that starts with “here’s what I can do.” It engenders a flexibility to other ideas, opportunities, and adventures that I might not think of myself.

I am sometimes accused of doing too much by the people in my life. But I’m not sure they are accounting for the euphoria and joy that comes with being aligned with that openness that feeds me in so many ways. And when I’m sick, my “yes” pretty quickly turns to “no.” It feels like that is as it should be as well.

This isn’t about giving up discernment as Shondra demonstrates so well in the book when she says “yes” to herself and ends her engagement. She also shows us it takes practice. But in the end, it’s about opening to all the opportunities that come our way with the deep knowing that we can try and see what happens.

Speaking of saying “yes,” Vicki and I were able to get Mark Petruska to come back on the Sharing the Heart of the Matter podcast to talk about personal anthems and resiliency. It is a great episode about using songs that energize and motivate us during the tough times in life. You can search for Sharing the Heart of the Matter on Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Pocketcasts or play it from the web here: Episode 26: Eye of the Tiger with Mark Petruska

(featured photo is mine)

Giving Lift

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“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” – Booker T. Washington

Yesterday afternoon my kids and I had two hours left of a six hour road trip when we came across a man walking down the interstate with his son, who looked to be about two or three years old. The man was carrying a gas can in one hand and holding his son’s hand in the other.

The mood in my car at the time we happened upon these time was best described as stable. Six hours is a long time for me, not to mention Miss O and Mr D, at almost 8 and 4-years-old respectively. We were tired after a great weekend of playing at the lake cabin of my best friend’s family, a little sad to be on our way home, but also heartened by the fun of being together and with our incredibly fun, generous, and delightful friends.

So I polled my kids as to whether we should stop and help the man and little boy. They asked great questions – were we going to give them a ride? how much longer would it take? – and I told them we’d just take the gas can, fill it up, and return it to them. It would probably add 20 minutes to our trip but save them two or three hours of dangerous walking. The decision was unanimous that we should help them.

By the time we found a gas station, looped back far enough to find their car and then figured out how to turn around to be going in our original direction, it was a good 20 minutes. In that time, the mood in my car had lifted exponentially. Mr. D had grand plans that he was going to hop out and deliver the gasoline himself, and Miss O was mapping out her strategy to find out all that she could about them. When I delivered the news that there was no way I was letting them out of the car on the highway, they were disappointed, but so buoyant by the fun helping adventure that even a little disappointment couldn’t dent the mood.

And why did I do it? It was clear how I could help and seemed low risk. And I had benefitted greatly from the weekend with the fun and relaxing time with our amazing and thoughtful friends. But probably mostly, because the weekend away had given me a glimpse of the long view of life. (For more on that final point, The Long View is my post on the Heart of the Matter blog today).

I only exchanged about a dozen words with the man and his boy during our quest for more gasoline, but the whole thing carried us safely and happily home for the remaining two hours. It reminded me of the quote from Booker T. Washington at the top of this post – there truly is great lift that comes from helping others.

(featured photo from Pexels)

Scaling the Walls of Our Dreams

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“The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The meaning of life is to give your gift away.” – David Viscott

This is a repost of something I published on 5/11/2022. Heads up – you may have already read this.

I was talking with some friends the other day about the movie Free Solo. One of my friends breezily remarked that Alex Honnold was crazy for climbing El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, a nearly 3,000 foot ascent without ropes, anchors or any other protective gear. Before I watched the movie, I would have agreed. After all, the first time I climbed a rock face, I was only three feet off the ground when my leg start shaking, a condition so common it has a name – sewing machine leg.

But when you watch the movie, you see how impeccably he prepared for the challenge. Alex climbed each section over and over again with protective gear, until every move was automatic and if not easy, than at least anticipated.

For me the crux moment is when the film crew assembles to film his free solo attempt and he starts but then calls it off because he knows it’s not the right day. In that willingness under the pressure of expectation and respect for everyone else’s time and with the knowledge that they won’t be able to try again until the next year, he shows how incredibly brave he is.

For me this isn’t a movie about a climber ascending a famous wall at Yosemite. It’s an allegory for all of us about the call to recognize and commit to our gifts. It is about accepting our paths, the unique reason we are all on the planet, and then walking that path.

It contains both the vision piece – and execution piece, the incredibly hard work that we have to do to hone our gift once we accept it. It shows that purpose and practice go hand in hand.

And it speaks to how vital it is to listen to the quiet Divine voice within us. So that if the day, the conditions or the circumstances aren’t right, we are willing to honor the voice within that says “Don’t do it” no matter how silly it could make us look. We can listen, withdraw and wait for the right day.

When my daughter was 2-years-old and we were watching The Sound of Music, she asked why the characters at the convent were wearing habits and wimples. When I told her they were nuns, she repeated back to me, “They are nuts?”

Yes, sometimes when we follow our calling, we might seem like we are nuts. It is hard to get quiet enough to listen to the small voice within. Even harder to put our gifts on display for the world to see and put in enough practice to bring them to bear in an audacious way.

But when we do scale that wall of gifts and dreams, when we stand on top and celebrate that unity of purpose, preparation and performance, we set the world on fire. As Howard Thurman said so well, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people that come alive.”

I’ve posted a related piece The Archetypes of Story on the Wise & Shine blog. If you have time, hop over there to check it out.

(featured photo from Pexels)

Our Gratefuls

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“Wear gratitude like a cloak and it will feed every corner of your life.” – Rumi

At bedtime after we’ve read books and told stories, I’ve been asking the kids what they are grateful for and how they helped that day. The latter is a question I got from Vicki early on in our blog buddy relationship. If I remember correctly, it was a question that her mom asked her sister Lisa on a regular basis.

The other night Mr. D answered that he was grateful for being grateful. It could be a three-year-old’s version of passing on the question, but he seemed to mean it.

While I sometimes envy the simplicity and directness of the animal life around, I wonder if there’s any other creature that feels gratitude. This started me down the rabbit hole of doing research on the Internet and as I encountered AI along the way, delved into Scientific American, and hopped over to the Greater Good Lab at UC Berkeley. My summary:

  1. There are a lot of cute animal article and videos on the Internet that can eat all your free time.
  2. No one knows if animals feel gratitude.
  3. Gratitude is a complex emotion that has components of reminiscence and reflection.

In her book, Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown quotes Robert Emmons, professor of psychology at University of California, Davis and one of the world’s leading gratitude experts:

I think gratitude allows us to participate more in life. We notice the positives more, and that magnifies the pleasure you get from life. Instead of adapting to goodness, we celebrate goodness. We spend so much time watching things – movies, computer screens, sports – but with gratitude we become greater participants in our lives as opposed to spectators.

Roberts Emmons

Now who doesn’t want to become a greater participant in life? I’m grateful for my kid’s answers the other night. Mr. D. who’s grateful for being grateful and Miss O who added, “I’m grateful for family and that we are a unit, even though we sometimes fight.” Right – ditto what they said!

For a snapshot of a small moment of gratitude, I’ve written about one that I particularly enjoyed on the Heart of the Matter blog, A Brief Moment in Time.