Category Archives: General

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Wow!

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I had the greatest experience last night! My favorite thing in the world is St Jude Children’s Research Hospital and as usual I have wonderful stories about how that happened and I may share it with you. But more importantly I want to share the hope and happiness that hospital generates to all who are involved or near it. When I retired from the Navy in 2004 and moved to San Antonio, I drove up to the hospital on my way and as i sat there out front, the aura and energy that surrounded it was breathtaking. If a building can capture the love and warmth of those inside and associated with it, this one did!

So I was very fortunate to have been selected as a participant in a virtual tour of the hospital – see the pandemic helped me out once again. The tour was given by a woman who’s daughter had osteosarcoma (bone cancer) and her heart wrenching yet heartwarming story was, I think, even more important than the tour.

The hospital does NOT look like a hospital. When you walk in, you see love, fun, joy and happiness and those qualities radiate from the walls and the staff throughout the entire facility. The staff and patients comingle and eat together in the cafeteria (obviously things have changed with the pandemic but they still do the best they can to be one big happy family).

They have made such a difference in the cure rate for childhood cancer and not just in the US but throughout the world. They have a section where they hang the flags of the countries of staff and patients. And there are “translator” phones all throughout the hospital. They have thought of everything and will continue to do so,.

Since my brother’s birthday is Friday and his wife is a big lover of St Jude I am trying to find the best birthday gift that he ever got from me – the gift of helping so many others around the world. I’m thinking of a brick or a plaque. I am pretty sure that will make his wife happy since she is a supporter.

Here’s a story (or two) about my involvement with St Jude.

I had never heard of it and one morning was driving to work and heard the music station i was listening to start talking about a “radiothon” they were starting. I was clueless but intrigued. So when i got to work, i called and donated – I was entered in some “prize” thing too but didn’t pay much attention. All I knew was that I was hooked on this hospital and listened to the radiothon for the entire two days.

A month or so later I got a call one day from someone at St Jude (?) telling me I had won the prize. It was a sky box for an Alan Jackson concert. That’s a big wow. So i rounded up my few friends and we had a great time. Not a bad intro to the hospital.

After that the regional director and I became good friends and met frequently. I am proud to say I was instrumental in helping them develop the St Jude Marathon many many years ago. That was an endeavor I really enjoyed and meant something especially when you see how much it has evolved.

My favorite story though is one that still brings tears to my eyes. When I buy concert tickets I keep trying to get the best i can. So I usually end up with several sets of tickets. Well, Shania Twain was coming to town and I wanted the best i could get. I think i ended up with 5 tickets (in different sections of course). One was for me and one for my friend. That left 3 tickets. I called my friend the regional director and asked if she knew any patients who would like the tickets. Amazingly they had a family from Virginia Beach area (about 2 hours South of DC) and they were going to be in town that weekend. She called them and found out that the daughter (the actual patient) was a big Shania Twain fan.

So, there you go – that’s the end of the story right? NOT. The regional director tried to get the girl to meet Shania but it was the night before Thanksgiving and her people said Shania just wanted to get on the road to get home after the show. But my friend did not give up. And it turns out that the forces of the universe didn’t either. Turns out there was a woman on her staff that had just left her job “working for Shania” to come work at St Jude. So, she pulled some strings and got the family to meet with her after the show. Totally amazing

End of the story, right? NO

The seats they had were way in the back and after we had met we split up and said goodbye. Next thing you know, i see my friend moving down the aisle and motioning to me. She told me where to meet them after so I could be there when Suzanne met Shania. I asked why they all were moving. Turns out that since mom was in a wheelchair (another very long story) they were moving them all down to the area right in front of the stage. I don’t know if any of you have ever seen any of her concerts but Shania Twain really put on a show! And this little girl who had suffered so much was going to get a front row seat! How cool is that?

At the special meet and greet, Shania was so wonderful with Suzanne. It wasn’t rushed or artificial or anything. It made her day and elevated my respect for Shania Twain more than you can ever imagine.

Everything always works out for me (and those around me).

The tears fill my eyes just writing about this great memory.

Today’s gratitudes:
I am so grateful I had this experience last night touring St Jude

I am grateful I found St Jude oh so many years ago

I am grateful for the great strength that others have that give me inspiration.

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How Has Your Life Been Enriched Today?

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To enrich means to improve or enhance the quality or value of…..

Many people conscientiously record a daily list of things they are grateful for – what I call “gratitudes”. But some people just don’t take to that and I think that happens for a variety of reasons. And that’s ok. I have personally learned that gratitude is the strongest force in the universe so it means something very special to me.

I had two experiences yesterday that made me realize there is another way to examine and reflect on your day. Why bother? Well, as you hear over and over – there is no guarantee that there will be a tomorrow so we should make the most of today and this moment.

I had three events yesterday – one was my walk; two was a class assigned group meeting with two other women; and three was my first “visit” with a friend where we could just sit and talk – not only was this a first in over a year but it was really the first time I’ve invited someone into my house (to get to the back patio where we visited) since I’ve done all the decluttering.

If I asked you which one you would think enriched my life the most, you’d probably pick the last. You’d be close but the one that enriched my life the most yesterday (because I think we are different each day) was the second. This is no reflection on the friendship i have with this woman because that is about as solid as it can be. And we talked for hours catching up. So yes, it did enrich my life and enhanced it too – interesting that enhance and enrich have almost the same definitions.

But the call with these two women I didn’t know really added something special to my life. We didn’t know each other and had just “met” in class last Thursday so there was the usual awkwardness of “getting to know you” (my age is showing when I start singing old songs like that). And I wasn’t keen on the assignment we had since it didn’t really make much sense to me. However, I allowed myself to just go with the flow and we all just seemed to open up and learned so much from each other. Then afterwards when we were emailing each other some information, we opened up more and it became an experience of connection that I have rarely experienced with people I don’t know. It helped me see somewhere else deep inside myself (which is part of the purpose of this class we’re taking). It simply felt lovely and those of you that really know me – or even those who have just followed this page – can count on one hand the number of times I’ve used that word. I am not likely to describe anything as “lovely” – ha ha..But this was.

So I have decided that I am going to incorporate a new reflection into my daily life and that is reviewing each day what has enriched (or enhanced) my life that day.

Why don’t you try it? I think the other good thing that will come from it is that we will recognize how wonderful our life is despite the intermittent crap that shows up. Remember my post a few months ago on contrast vs clarity – we need the stuff that we don’t really like or enjoy to know what it is we really want.

Today’s gratitudes:
I am so grateful for my friend’s visit and for her friendship. It means the world to me.

I am grateful I can walk the distances I do walk. I will concentrate on the joy of that rather than comparing and worrying that I’m not doing longer distances. That comparison steals the happiness from what I do and is not worth it. I am trying to concentrate on that more.

I am grateful that I still have a lot to give to people even at my age. It is a blessing and I hope to live up to the intent of this gift I’ve been given

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What’s In Your Brain’s Library?

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The view from my front door

What a fitting quote from Napoleon Hill today:

“Someone once observed that the reason we often fail to recognize opportunities is because they come disguised as problems”

This applies so well to the past year with the pandemic as well as this week’s issues in Texas (and the rest of the affected areas in the country who are much better prepared than us).

Last March within a few weeks of the “use a mask” decree people started making them. Some for profit and some to give away. As the weeks passed more and more companies and people went into the mask business. Since then even more innovative ideas were created and marketed. Big companies started moving from their normal business to making emergency equipment. And of course the rapid creation of the vaccines was amazing.

Look at all that businesses and the government learned about remote working. Their “worst fears” (people being lazy; work not getting done; inability to control the employees etc) never really came true (as far as I’ve seen anyway).

So if big business and even the big government can adapt and make positive solutions (well I guess most solutions are positive lol), we, as individuals, should be able to. On a personal level I wrote about my own plan yesterday.

On Monday I really didn’t know what was up or what to do. You begin to “panic” or get anxious. Then, at least for me, I sat back and let my brain go through its library of memories and recognize similar situations. Then it “checked those memories out of the library” and allowed me to look through them.

These “memories” included growing up in New York where there were occasional hurricane warnings which of course were ‘handled’ by my parents. But I probably absorbed something. Then there were snow issues going to school in Vermont and then Iowa where ‘snow’ is NOT a 4 letter word. I’ve also lived in other hurricane prone areas. Then there was my military training and the field work I had done there. Although not as much as many it helped a lot. Maybe the best memory book I reviewed was all the races in cold weather I’ve done. Especially the fixed time ones. Most of those were cold – especially the one where I met a wonderful woman, Marie Boyd! There are composite memories from the internet and from friends with more experience.

All these memories, once filtered and retrieved by my brain, became easily accessible and useful.

You just have to work your way past the initial anxiety or uncertainty and realize that massive storage system in your brain will provide you with many answers and solutions to your problems.

It starts with how you look at it. Start by realizing you’re alive and then whatever other blessings you have. This will calm your nervous system and then you’ll be able to go to the “library” with focus and filters. You can find the solution to most of your problems from your past experiences. And even if not the entire solution, it will be a good part of it and then your calmed brain should also guide you to where you can go for the rest of it.

Gratitude will also take you out of the complaining mode which simply withdraws energy that you need to find the answers. It also accomplishes absolutely nothing. Be grateful for those helping whose families are probably also affected but they are out there risking their lives for us.

The second and third order effects of this week’s ‘adventure’ are massive and we have to have some compassion for them. I think of all the farmers who have lost their entire citrus crop this week and even the dairy folks who are having to throw away millions of gallons of milk every day because they have no way to transport it.

My comment about not complaining is not meant to absolve those responsible for this massive failure but that situation needs to be examined after all the emotions have been defused.

Use your “private” library (your brain) more than your “public” one when you first need answers.

By the way it’s snowing again in San Antonio lol. I think I’m in a time warp transported to some other place. Lol.

Terrie