Dear Reader:

Don’t we (or at least) we know of… people who spend so much of their lives…talking about how ‘one day they are going to do this or that’ or “change their life…if  they ever can find the time.’

Behind each similar familiar statement… that is some times simply shrugged off as a trivial thought or ‘another life’ dream….one recognizes a profound sense of loneliness and sadness. People seem to realize that their life is quickly passing them by…but they have yet to find the courage to change.

Enter Covid 19! To date is has more profoundly changed people’s lives than any other historical incident in quite some time. Yet with it…has, also, come unique opportunities of taking “the road less traveled” and finding that passion within all of us that has waited patiently …for the opportunity to present itself.

My two passions, that began post-retirement, starting the blog in 2010 and a garden in 2013, came about under different circumstances. The blog came together so quickly after discovering what  a “blog”was… that I never had time to second-guess my decision to start it… because it was started and now it was up to me to continue it….and to my own surprise I loved it and continue to do so….sharing my simple life with so many other exciting readers’s lives.

The garden idea took longer. In the days before all the teaching retirement paperwork was ‘signed, sealed, and delivered‘  friends were asking me what I would do. I didn’t know but I also knew for my health  (mental and physical) it was time for a change, to let go of ‘dead-lines.’ I remember in my own personal visualization of retirement,  I was planting a garden. The thought surprised even me. I knew absolutely nothing about how to even begin to create a garden..

It took me a few years, however, to finally completely release the rope I had been tethered to for years-the comfortable known area of my life-education…I became an adjunct professor at the College of Charleston and Charleston Southern, I continued to do workshops with my Berkeley friend, Carol Poole, since we always had so much fun on our ‘adventures’ together in bringing storytelling into the social studies curriculum.

And then came “little c” diagnosis in 2008..It turned my life completely around. I was no longer lost with what I would do with the rest of my life…instead I was enveloped with the feeling that I had so much I wanted to do…and I couldn’t let breast cancer deny me my recently realized dreams of a new life.

I never looked back from that point on…what I had been searching for was an appetite for life again...zest and exuberance! With my life in the balance suddenly it became so precious…Joi devivre...as the French would say…”the love of life.” I wanted it…before it was too late.

After reading an article by writer, Brenda Ueland, I realized I had to re-awaken my imagination. It needed “moodling-long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling, and puttering… to flourish. The secret is to find your life aspiration…the things that fulfills your “being” and turn it all into play. That way you will never work again.

Life changed for me with a “harmonious lilt” that brings so much daily happiness. I was ‘lost but now I am found.” Thanks “little c.”

So until tomorrow….

Have a beautiful day today!

***A BIG SHOUT-OUT and HAPPY BIRTHDAY to  my Big Bro Ben! We grew close after losing our youngest brother, David at 21, to Marfan’s Syndrome… leaving just the two of us.

We have each had our health scares but that is what makes every birthday now even more special. Love you Ben…Happy Happy Birthday!

And a second SHOUT-OUT to my beautiful niece, Vikki, Lee’s wife and Rhode’s mom. They have “escaped quarantine” for a birthday trip to Florida to see Vikki’s family. Have fun everyone and Happy Happy Birthday Vikki!

Have a safe trip to Florida and enjoy the precious time away with family….