Jan 03
Do you know the first word you ever spoke? Perhaps “da-da” or maybe “ma-ma?” I don’t recall whether my mother ever told me mine, but I know for certain what our oldest daughter initially uttered. Danielle was 8.5 months old and crawling after my parents’ Siamese cat when my mother and I heard her say …
Sep 28
Bill and Pat Shifflet have faced five cancers in their 80+ years–some cured, others not–but please don’t feel sorry for them. The very happy couple doesn’t spend time bemoaning their own struggles; they’re too busy helping others. “Everyday I pray ‘God, show me a need’,” explains, 82-year-old Pat, who loves to pray for people, send …
Jul 26
My husband’s Cousin Marge, born a premie in 1919, came with a doctor’s warning to her parents: “Don’t get too attached because she’s not going to survive.” For years Marge loved to tell that story, including the detail of spending her first few months sleeping in a shoebox. That precarious beginning seemed to set the …
Apr 06
You may or may not be familiar with the 1969 Beatles’ song, “Give Peace a Chance” but years later John Lennon explained its message: “It wasn’t like ‘You have to have peace!’ Just give it a chance. We ain’t giving any gospel here – just saying how about this version for a change? We think we have the right to …
Nov 17
It’s pretty easy to thank God when everything’s going well. When you feel happy. When you have your health. When your loved ones are doing fine. It’s a lot harder when some things—maybe most things—are not going well. In those first dark days after my cancer diagnosis in 1990, I literally could not pray. Sentences simply …
Oct 13
I haven’t posted anything since March about my oncologist/former boss/dear friend, Dr. Marc Hirsh, who was diagnosed 16 months ago with an extremely rare, large cancerous tumor behind his heart. Last month at his 6-month checkup with his Hershey Medical oncologist, Marc and his wife Elizabeth braced themselves for bad news, still clinging to hope …
Sep 15
I miss my dad. It’s been a decade since he took his last breath on this earth and I still miss him. Especially during college football season as I’m frantically cheering on my Ohio State Buckeyes (with apologies to all my friends in that state up north!) My dad was an incredible multi-sport athlete, as …
Jul 07
Perhaps you feel a little like a pigeon-covered statue these days or maybe you simply would like to experience a measure of calm in your harried life. Either way, here are some words to the weary taken from “leftover” quotes (including the blog title), which I ended up not using when writing my last …
Apr 14
I don’t think most people are truly prepared to get bad news–especially concerning our health or a loved one’s. Instead we hope against hope that things will not turn out as we fear and the whole nightmare will go away. Right up until I saw the look on my gastroenterologist’s face after my colonoscopy …
Feb 03
In grade-school science, you probably learned that a shadow is caused by the absence of light when an opaque (not see-through) object has absorbed the light. And that shadows fall opposite their light source. That’s why your shadow is in front of you if the sun is behind you and vice versa. The way you’re …
