Words from the Heart

  Gray Winter Garden January 2007   Seven years ago this past January, I began this blog as part of a teacher training I was taking.  Looking back over the past seven years, so much has happened.  Reading the first blog entry I ever created made me smile, especially after this VERY snowy winter.  In spite of that, it seems that there is still much truth in what I wrote.  Let me share it with you, again.   After living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I never thought I would be depressed because it hasn't snowed! The lack of white stuff here in New England is so disheartening. What is it about snow that makes most people feel good? Could it be that the sparkling flakes create a fantasy world in the sunshine or moonlight? Or, is it that the child in us longs to run headlong into a snow drift rolling over, arms waving madly, to create a snow angel? It is gray out at the moment. It feels as if the world is in limbo. Nature isn't dea...

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." - Martin Luther King, Jr.   Image by dave and rose via Flickr Ten years ago, I worked as a wellness specialist in York Hospital in Maine.  I had arrived at work a bit early, the sun just starting to peak into the basement window of the Wellness Clinic situated in the bottom of the doctor's building across the driveway from the main hospital building.  I remember looking up at the tiny rectangle of a window, thinking what a lovely fall day it was going to be.  The phone rang and life changed forever. My oldest daughter was on the line hysterically crying.  I couldn't understand what she was saying, so my first action was to calm her. "Honey, breathe, I can't understand you.  What is wrong?"   Finally, after a long sob, I was able to make out that a plane had crashed into a building in New York.  As she w...