Writer. Educator. Artist.
Review from Love to Learn: What a funny and poignant read. I thoroughly enjoyed stepping into Bice’s shoes and experiencing her highs and lows with her husband. It brought back great memories of going to the track with my husband in my youth. Going down memory lane with her was a real treat.
Thank you, thank you, thank you to Love to Learn. I’m so happy you enjoyed the memories from one part of my life!
It’s finally come to light, the date is October 31. What a date to read Step Outside Your Comfort Zone! You’ll find 101 stories and I hope you will read mine, THE MAKEOVER. In it, you’ll read of my gathering encouragement to change one little thing that changed my whole life, making it better than ever!
If you like it, please write a review on Amazon.com/books. Share in my excitement of being published in this Chicken Soup for the Soul book of uplifting and encouraging stories.
A quote from Amazon: Stepping outside your comfort zone is one of the best ways to feel younger, happier, and more confident. These 101 stories will inspire you to try new things, overcome your fears and broaden your world.
When we try new things, we end up feeling energized and pleased with ourselves. There is tremendous power in saying “yes” to new things, new places, and new experiences. The authors of these stories explain how they did it and how good it made them feel, whether it was something as simple as trying a new food or something as life changing as starting a new career. You’ll be ready to shake up your own life after you read about their experiences.
Announcing my newest book: SIMPLY PUT, a collection of poetry. It’s a slender volume of a hundred pages, filled with poems selected from those written in the last ten years. They are not divided by those years, but by subject: Seasons Change, About Words, Past Lives & More, and Other Places. My intention is to stir your own memories by sharing mine with you. As the seasons and years change, so do we. New experiences become old memories as we move along in this life we have created. Words sometimes harm us and sometimes encourage us to keep on going in the direction we are moving. Past lives, whether you believe in reincarnation or not, is meant to give you thoughts to ponder. Places leave imprints on us that we carry long after we have left them behind. Enjoy the words I have written for you and for me to revisit time and again.
Who would have thought! Or how did Spisak ever think of writing a book on grammar and making it so entertaining that I carry it with me! It’s a pick up and read when I get a chance, great to read in a waiting room and have everyone else in the room looking at me while my laughter overflows! This book is an absolute must read for any writer or editor or teacher or anyone who ever picks up a pen -to fill out a form or sign your name or write a note/letter. In other words, this is a book for everyone to love as I do.
Spisak gives us tips on the difference in using bear or bare, doing good or doing well. She also leads us into where to put a comma in greetings. Sounds simple, right? You may be surprised! How about cutting out unnecessary words that drag on you and don’t move your thoughts along?
All these tips are told in a breezy way that pulls your attention in, mingled with stories and examples that help you to remember the reason why or why not to use a word or a phrase, etc. I LOVE THIS BOOK! And (Is that correct?) I never, ever, believed before that I could love a book on grammar!
PS: Attention school teachers and those who order books for students.
PS #2: More to come on this one.
ANNOUNCING…Giving Life and Taking It, my personal story, has been published in Writing Menopause, editors Jane Cawthorne and E. D. Morin. It is now available on Amazon at $22.89 (I think in Canadian money.) I’m honored to be published among such notable writers and groundbreaking editors.
From Amazon: The Writing Menopause literary anthology is a diverse and robust collection about menopause: a highly charged and often undervalued transformation. It includes over fifty works of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, interviews and cross-genre pieces from contributors across Canada and the United States that break new ground in portraying menopause in literature. The collection includes literary work from award-winning writers such as Roberta Rees, Margaret Macpherson, Lisa Couturier and Rona Altrows. Emerging voices such as Rea Tarvydas, Leanna McLennan, Steve Passey and Gemma Meharchand, and an original interview with trans educator and pioneering filmmaker Buck Angel, are also featured. This anthology fills a sizable gap, finding the ground between punchline and pathology, between saccharine inspiration and existential gloom. The authors neither celebrate nor demonize menopause. These are diverse depictions, sometimes lighthearted, but just as often dark and scary. Some voices embrace the prospect of change, others dread it. Together, this unique offering reflects the varied experience of menopause and shatters common stereotypes.
Finally! A book recommended to me that truly appeals to those who are just discovering their intuitive abilities, who have already awakened and studied the intuitive, and to those who are fully enwrapped in intuitive knowledge. I’ve been reading this book slowly so the words soak into me, lest I forget anything. It’s a book I’ve lined with marginal notes and circled words and stuck arrows in, to draw my attention the next time I read it. I know it will be bedside for a re-read and for referencing so I keep the benefits I’m enjoying now. In other words this book has become mine and will remain close for a long time!
Drenth is a medical intuitive who uses the results of her research from thousands of patients to help us on our journey, through brief, easy-peasy exercises that made immediate changes in my life. She uses techniques that are easily adaptable, for us to tap into, and rely on, that intuition we all have but are sometimes afraid to believe in.
When we become truly aware of the people and the world around us, we also become aware of the dangers of negative people trying to influence us in ways that are not beneficial. Drenth instructs us on how to protect ourselves from them. You’ll easily recognize how important and simple this is to do.
Those readers who have a difficult time sleeping are going to love Chapter 6. Remember how refreshed you were after a good night’s sleep? You can have those nights every night again. I know because I’ve benefitted from this chapter and there is so much more! I LOVE THIS BOOK!
The photo shows Grandmother Elizabeth Urbanski Daniels (my mother’s mother) holding me approximately one year before she passed away. No stories have come to me about anyone before her in her birth line being psychically developed. She certainly was. My mother didn’t tell me about this until I was nearly 30 years old. I’d had some out of body experiences of my own, but Mom didn’t know that. She never knew it because I never told her. Mom had a habit of belittling me, so I wasn’t about to confide anything at all to her.
Grandmother Elizabeth (as she was referred to, never Grandma) read tarot cards. She was good at it. My mother was developed as far as my two brothers and I was concerned. She always knew before I did, when I was pregnant. I’m talking about within days. With my brother Bob, it was instant. In her later years, she lived in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida but knew instantly when Bob’s car was in an accident in New Jersey. She called on the phone within minutes after it happened. The car was empty. Bob was in the house with me at the time.
Waiting so long to write about the strange things that happened to me was a natural decision. I first spoke about seeing a ghost while I was working in my bookshop in Bordentown, New Jersey. This came freely because I was conducting an annual ghost walk as a fund raiser for my business group. There were other houses on the tour that also had true stories of hauntings. There is a comfort and freedom when you are among your own kind. And people who lived with ghosts in their houses were my kind.
Once word got out that I lived with a little girl ghost in my house, others came to me with their stories. They, too, had not spoken of their experiences for the same reasons. One, who would believe them? Two, how many people would ridicule and make fun of them? Three, would the value of their homes drop? And more reasons followed.
Once houses were placed on the tour, they became, if any change at all, higher in value. People sought haunted houses to live in because they wanted that experience. It became cool.
Remember, Bordentown was settled in 1682, adding much Revolutionary War history to its stories. The earlier residents were practically still living to the present-day residents. We kept their personalities alive and familiar through the Historical Society and through fund raisers. One of which was a Friday evening garden party at the DeSantis house. Several of us dressed in our chosen Bordentown “hero/shero.” We had many to choose from.
The first year I wore all white as was the custom of Quaker Patience Lovell Wright. She was America’s first woman sculptor (mostly in wax) who spied in the court of King George in England, sending all the information she discovered to Benjamin Franklin. He was living in France at the time.
Once we entered the garden in costume, we became that person, staying in character, answering questions as that person would have done. It was great fun and imbedded history into our bones. I’m not quite sure about Ms. Wright drinking wine, tho she could have. No wonder ghosts came out of the woodwork!
There are so many married partners out there that suddenly wake up one morning, without warning, to find they are widows or widowers. It’s shocking to become numb for a year, or two, or three. Your head is in the clouds and your heart is just hanging out of your chest, for everyone to see. It’s painful.
Yet Miriam Valmont agreed, signed up, to do just that. She would marry a man that she grew to deeply love, knowing against all hope, that the marriage would be dead in six months.
Bravely, and with avid interest, she learned another culture, alien to her own. This all-American woman loved an Iranian student 25 years her junior. Her story takes you on an adventure, sparing no details of the emotional roller coaster ride, even learning his language.
They created a bridge between East and West. She immersed herself to see life and Iranian customs through his eyes, willing herself to understand, hoping to influence him with American ways. Reading her story you will witness an extraordinary marriage and wonder if you could ever possibly do the same.
This is an exceptional book, full of honesty and the longing for love that we all desire. It’s a story that will linger in your heart for a long, long, time.
This collection of extraordinary poems tells the story of vivid, African-American characters who have passed through the life of the author in a small, rural town in the South. Sometimes they entertain and sometimes salty tears burst, overflowing the eyelid wells, for the terrible tragedy of a life. Park has reached deep into his soul to let you know that these people lived and died and mattered, without any judgment from him. If these characters were not noticed in life, they will remain with the reader for a long, lingering time.
In all his honesty, Park reports on events that happened . . . and didn’t happen. When dreams blossomed with hope for a community and were taken away leaving disappointment for many who worked hard, giving their all, to bring about ideal living. The author exudes love of his community. He shows this caring by continuing to encourage the arts, the love of words and writing to anyone who wants to participate. I love this book.