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The Things On My Mind

January 21, 2026 //
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I’m sipping coffee on an icy freezing morning in January, in a cafe space that seriously wants to be cozy and welcoming. The baristas here do their best, and they are cheery and familiar, and greet me as if genuinely pleased to see me. It’s nice. On the other hand, I may be the only walk-in customer for the first several hours they are open, and it’s a largish space with quite a bit of available seating that goes unused day after day. Chain coffee with a busy drive-through; “cozy” is not quite the correct descriptor, but it is warm inside and the coffee is hot.

I sit for some while sipping my coffee and thinking my thoughts. I’m in a weird headspace this morning. Not really looking forward to work. Not looking forward to the day itself, in any particular way. The news and the world have me vexed, stressed out, and even angry (sometimes). I don’t look at the news this morning, but I can’t pretend that we didn’t get so close to eradicating measles – then fail by our own deliberate (fairly stupid) actions. I can’t pretend that masked government thugs are being civil and professional as they go about the business of kidnapping US citizens from the streets, shooting, and maiming people for at worst some civil infraction that barely rises to the level of a criminal act by any definition (Seriously? tell me again how entering the US looking for a better life for yourself and your family by becoming a contributing citizen is “criminal”? This country was built by immigrant labor.). We’ve lost our fucking minds. Our president thinks it is appropriate (and feasible)(and worth doing) to talk about taking Greenland for ourselves – as if they don’t have a population that governs itself, and might have a fucking opinion about that. What the actual hell?

…All that and more. So much nastiness, pettiness, and bullshit, so much destruction and cruelty…and here we are. Cruelty is now policy. It’s on my mind a lot more than I write about it, and I sometimes find myself “picking at it” like the raw bleeding edge of a torn cuticle, thoughtlessly causing myself more damage and pain. Fuck. I breathe, exhale, and relax. I let all that go – again. I pull myself back to “now”. To “here”. This moment, this place, this experience…

I’ve got my own shit to worry about, right? I mean, the usual real life day-to-day fuss and stress that goes on for anyone, nothing tragic or terrifying (the world provides plenty of that, and I’m grateful for my relatively good circumstances presently). I worry about household maintenance that is needed, and I worry about my recently damaged car being properly repaired. I stress out over traffic when I’m in a hurry to be somewhere, and whether or not my Traveling Partner has what he needs for a comfortable day while I’m in the office. I juggle work and running errands and maintaining the household and getting meals on the table – all the usual shit in an ordinary life. (G’damn am I glad I don’t also have little kids to care for!!) I do my best to avoid taking mundanities personally. I avoid making assumptions that include some entity or individual being personally out to harm me (it’s rarely true, ever, and it does me no particular good to color my experience with that frame of mind). Chronic pain. Disability. Resource limitations. Health generally. Aging. Employment. An ever-growing to-do list that keeps me on a short leash with limited “free” time to read, relax, reflect, and enjoy a pretty good life… ordinary shit we all deal with to one extent or another (unless we’re among the very few with the means to shape our life very differently). I try not to just bitch endlessly about that kind of crap. It doesn’t help me to do so. Venting has been shown to have limited value for good mental health. It’s also probably pretty dull reading. So… yeah. Sometimes I’ve got shit on my mind that I don’t care to be fixated on, or to spend a lot of time writing about or discussing. It’s unproductive and unhealthy to become mired in other people’s drama – or our own. Some mornings the best I can do is sit quietly, drink my coffee, and think my thoughts until they carry me elsewhere.

Why go on about what I don’t write about? I dunno, I guess my thinking is that I’m as human as anyone, having my own experience, but still seeking solutions, still walking my path alert for obstacles along the way – and still walking on in spite of those obstacles. I’m not looking for opportunities to “get it off my chest” so much as I am seeking, finding, and sharing the tools and practices that light my way to a better experience living my life. It’s been rough sometimes. I’ve been through some shit. (You, too, I bet?) I live a better life than I ever expected to – and I’ve made a lot of changes to get here. I want to mostly focus on that. The changes. The possibilities. The practices.

Maybe you have thoughts, too? I rarely ask – but I am interested. Curious. If a particular post on this blog moved you, gave you insight, or lit your way somehow, would you consider commenting and linking to that post? Was it just a thought or some often shared aphorism that anchored you? An “eye-opening moment”? I’d love to know, if you are willing to share that with me. You are a presence in my life, though we’ve likely never met. What brought you here? What brings you back? You matter. I write with you in mind.

I sigh and shift uncomfortably in my seat. Arthritis and chronic pain – that’s fucking real as hell this morning, and I ache with it from my fusion (T12-L1) to the base of my skull these days. I will dutifully report it on my next doctor’s appointment, he’ll make a note and do nothing much about it; there is nothing much to be done. Still, it could be worse (so much worse), and I’m grateful for the day, this moment, and this cup of coffee. Life is more better than bad, and has been for awhile. The day-to-day inconveniences, nuisances, and moments of frustration or annoyance are inconsequential, generally, and do not define my experience unless I allow them to fill my awareness and crowd out my joy. It’s a journey, and I keep practicing.

I sigh to myself and get ready to begin again.

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Categories 2024 Election, Allegories, anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, meditation, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Art of Being, The Big 5, War and News of War, winter, women, Words

Begin Somewhere

January 20, 2026 //
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Fresh baked bread has been sounding really yummy and satisfying, lately. I don’t have much bread baking experience, but I’ve got a lot of recipes. My Traveling Partner has skills in this area, and bakes a lovely loaf of bread now and then. He offers to share pointers and help knead…if needed. 😀 Yesterday, I sat down with my cookbooks, selecting a basic looking “egg bread” recipe from the Good Housekeeping Cookbook (although in my later edition “salt” as an ingredient seems to have been simply removed from most of the recipes, I know to add it back for flavor and the recipes are hilariously often my Dad’s “secret recipe”, and it is a favorite cookbook for that reason). I baked a couple loaves of bread in the afternoon, yesterday, which elevated an otherwise tediously ordinary meal at dinnertime. Satisfying.

Where we end up depends on the choices we make.

I could have made a potato side dish, or something else. I was really wanting fresh baked bread, yesterday, enough to make some. lol I’m not any sort of expert baker, just a woman in a kitchen with a handful of carefully selected cookbooks, trying new things. It was fun. I followed the directions, and took heed of the tips my Traveling Partner shared with me. It turned out well. (Life should be so easy!) It was a satisfying experience. The bread is really good, if fairly ordinary. I wasn’t going for anything fancy or complicated – just something I could start, finish, and succeed with. It wasn’t a costly endeavor, at about $1 a packet for yeast, about $0.50 for a cup of milk, and about $1 a pound for bread flour. The eggs still seem a bit expensive (about $0.66 each), but the price has come down some since last year. Whole healthy real food, made from real ingredients – no fillers, no shortcuts, no preservatives, no additives; tasty and healthy. There were verbs involved, and real effort, and time… and that’s okay. The outcome was so worth it.

Self-care comes in many forms.

It was a remarkably restful weekend, for me. Most of the housework was already “caught up” because we had planned on the Author’s visit. When that fell through, my housekeeping routine was rendered sort of pointless with so much already done. With my Traveling Partner’s encouragement, I took it easy, and made a point to rest, to read, to play video games, and generally chill and have a good time at home. I needed that more than I knew. I sigh contentedly. It’s a Monday Tuesday and that’s okay, too. The weather has been odd. Warmer than expected, sunny in the afternoons, and not especially wintry. I teased myself with maybe getting out into the garden and getting some things done there. This morning? This morning reminds me that it is indeed winter; it’s cold. The car was frosted over and sparkled under the street light. The temperature is an icy 28°F (-2.2°C). I’m not interested in an icy walk in the dark, and head to the cafe I’ve been frequenting as a too cold/inclement weather alternative to walking in the dark. My coffee is hot, and made well. It’s a good start to a new day, and I sip it slowly, enjoying the warmth of the cup in my hands.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. It’s an unremarkable pleasant morning that would be a Monday if it weren’t a Tuesday (yesterday was a holiday). I remind myself to call my doctor’s office and request a refill on an Rx that I’ve run out of. (I didn’t fail to notice I needed a refill, I failed to communicate that to my doctor’s office when I noticed I was due – still a failure, and as a result I’m scrambling. It’s a small thing, easily remedied, if I remember to make that call.) Ordinary stuff. Life. Choices. Consequences.

That’s the thing, isn’t it? We sometimes make our lives or circumstances more complicated that they really need to be. We create a considerable amount of the drama that vexes us. We make choices we know are likely to turn out poorly in some moment, and then behave as though we’re surprised that things went so very wrong. Human primates are weird. A lot of our suffering in life is self-inflicted. We’re often more inclined to complain about the quality of the bread we’ve got, than to bake fresh loaves for our own delight. I sip my coffee and think about that awhile. My mind wanders to the many things that can be made from stale bread: croutons, stuffing, breadcrumbs, bread pudding, French toast, semmelknödel, and more. There’s a lesson here, isn’t there? Something to do with choices, with suffering, with creating something satisfying from something less than ideal? Something to do with steps on a path, and choices. Bread as a metaphor?

I sip my coffee contentedly, thinking about fresh-baked bread, self-care, love, partnership, and creating moments of shared joy. I begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, inspiration, joy, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, The Art of Being, winter, women, Words

Having My Own Experience

January 17, 2026 //
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I’m sitting at my halfway point on this local trail, before dawn.  Venus is bright above the western horizon. It is a clear, mild morning. The forecast suggested it would be near freezing this morning, but it is much warmer. 45°F (7.2°C). Pleasant, compared to freezing, and I am enjoying it. I am comfortable in the warm clothes I chose.

One by one the primroses are beginning to bloom in my garden.

I smile when I recall the primroses blooming in the flower beds along the front walk. They don’t understand that it is winter, they bloom in the mild Spring-like weather regardless what the calendar says. I think about that awhile, and the phrase “bloom where you are planted”. Like garden flowers, human beings also bloom at the time most right for them individually.

I watch Venus slowly sinking towards the horizon. I reflect on how peculiar it is that this appearance of movement is not what it seems. It isn’t Venus moving at all; it is the Earth rotating on her axis. I have no sense of that motion at all, as far as I can tell, I only observe the apparent movement of the stars. There’s something to learn there, about perspective and reality and truth.

My back aches fiercely. No headache yet, today. My tinnitus is loud in my ears. I sigh to myself, grateful for the mild morning and this walk. The air smells like Spring, already.

A beautiful young buck steps slowly out of the trees, watching me as he steps cautiously onto the trail and walks past, glancing my way as if verifying that I am not going to follow. He stops a short distance from me and steps into the grassy strip of meadow on the other side of the trail. I am watching him, and sitting very still. I don’t immediately see the two does who follow him out of the trees and down the path. They are abreast of me, almost close enough to touch, when I see them. They startle me, my movement startles them, and the herd of three quickly move further down the grassy strip beside the trail.

Today the Author arrives for a short visit. After my walk I’ll stop by the store and pick up a few things. My Traveling Partner hustled me and the Anxious Adventurer through a bunch of little changes and housekeeping tasks that had fallen a little behind, in order to restore order from chaos that had crept in while he was (far more) disabled (than he is now), and to prepare for company. The last of the holiday changes made to accommodate the Giftmas tree were returned to more typical placement, too. I was grateful to have help, and for the vision and encouragement provided by my beloved; sometimes the thought work or emotional labor is the most tiring part of some project, and I don’t have vast reserves available for either, lately.

I went to bed exhausted, aware that my fatigue was as much cognitive as physical. Lately I struggle to “find a quiet moment” at home, often turning my attention to a book or a show, only to face frequent interruptions from “noise”. Hyperacusis leaves me feeling as if I can’t get a moment of peace, but it is symptomatic and highly subjective. The coffee grinder isn’t louder than usual. The cupboard doors aren’t being slammed. Someone putting away the dishes isn’t an intentional assault on my senses. Stray remarks lobbed at me unaware of my attention being elsewhere are neither more frequent nor louder. The timing is not deliberate. It’s a “me thing”. The only real solution is the stillness of solitude. It’s a feeling that the literal only time my consciousness is fully my own is when I am alone with my device set on “do not disturb”. Definitely a “me thing”. It is an illusion, and a bit of madness, perhaps.

I breathe, exhale, and relax, and pull myself back to this present and quite solitary peaceful moment. These walks meet many needs, and a little solitude is one of them. I savor the stillness as daybreak comes. Venus is lower on the horizon now, barely above the dark smudgey silhouette of the treetops. The Earth keeps spinning. The wheel turns. The clock ticks on.

I check the time and sigh to myself. I fill my lungs with the cool morning air and exhale slowly. A new day, a familiar path, and I’m having my own experience. I remind myself to let small shit stay small, and to avoid taking things personally. I stretch as I stand. It’s time to begin again. I turn and face the sunrise and start down the trail.

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Categories Allegories, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, solo hiking, Spring, The Art of Being, winter, Words

And If You Get What You Want?

January 14, 2026 //
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What then? What turn does the path take once you’ve achieved your goal, or fulfilled some dream for your future, or completed some grand project, or obtained some wonder you long yearned for? What then? I’m sipping my coffee and thinking about that, no idea why; it was the thought in my head when I woke from a deep sleep, groggy and trembling, unprepared for the day. (At first, I wasn’t at all certain “what was wrong”, and it took me a moment to realize I was simply awake.)

The clock ticks on. The calendar turns another page. A new day begins and the path unwinds ahead of me.

…And I’ve got this cup of coffee…

…And also pain. This morning I woke to pain. Well, shit. It is winter, and the cold and damp definitely do worsen my arthritis pain. I sigh to myself, sit up straighter, and stretch. I guess it could be worse. What did the Chaotic Comic call it? “Radical acceptance.” I sip my coffee and reflect on that. It is a concept commonly associated with DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy), an offshoot of CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy). Radical acceptance sound rather grand and impressive to me… I smile a crooked smile and sip my coffee. I just think of it as coping, and as refusing to let pain make my decisions in life, when I have a choice (which tends to be “most of the time”), particularly since it’s been hanging around since I was in my late 20s. There is work to do. There are moments to enjoy. There is a whole life to live. Pain doesn’t change that, it’s just a… complication. I do my best to keep it managed and in perspective. I’m not saying that’s easy. My results definitely vary. Some days are harder than others. I sigh to myself, and let my thoughts move on.

I frown for a moment, looking at the browser tab I used to find linkable resources for the terms “DBT”, “CBT” and “radical acceptance”. What a world; I scrolled through many pages of links to various costly “resources” (booksellers, clinics, specialists, merch) before I gave up and went directly to Wikipedia. A Google Search is just about pointless these days; the first page is an error-laden overly-simplistic AI overview I have no use for, followed by sponsored link after sponsored link to some bookseller, or costly clinic or specialist, dwindling to videos by various unknowns. Wikipedia? I scrolled all the way to page 5 before that turned up (in spite of it being one of my own most-visited resources). The continued enshittification of the internet is vexing. “Platform decay” is real, and “AI” is not an improvement. I sigh, and wish Google a silent “go fuck yourself” before moving on.

Wednesday. Right – today I take my car for an estimate on the repairs it needs following it’s mystery collision in a parking lot on the last day of 2025. Stress shoots through me at the recollection and my anxiety spikes, hard. I breathe, exhale, and relax, reminding myself the collision is in the past, the insurance coverage is already approved, this is just another step on the path. I unclench my jaw, and take another breathe, and a sip of coffee. The memory of the feeling when I first saw the unexpected damage to my parked car brings it back; the sorrow, the hurt feelings, the stress over the damage and the repair cost to come. The feeling now is as visceral as the feeling then. PTSD. I breathe, exhale, and let that go. Again. I repeat the exercise until my heart is beating in a normal and comfortable way, and the pressure in the pit of my stomach has dissipated.

It can be hilariously difficult to describe the experience of PTSD, what it is like to feel it, to go through it, to have a flare up of one symptom or another. The way it is portrayed in the movies isn’t particularly accurate. It’s not always some massive meltdown (or lost-in-the-past flashback) – sometimes it’s a physical re-experiencing of the stress of some moment that is not now, and little more (although surely that’s enough). Sometimes it manifests itself as a lack of perspective or ability to anchor to here and now, a struggle to recognize that this is not that moment, at all – whenever or whatever “that moment” was. For people suffering with Complex PTSD (not recognized in the US DSM-V, but recognized by WHO’s ICD 11), the moments have piled up one upon the next and made things that much worse for being compounded and complicated by each other.

I sip my coffee, reflecting on my life, and finding it maybe just a little bit marvelous that at 62, after years of therapy and practice, I can at long last let my consciousness gently touch some terrible moment of pain or trauma or horror (intentionally!) without immediately losing myself in that past moment, without tears or terror, without profound anxiety or seething latent rage surfacing (sometimes). I can even, if I choose, tenderly and compassionately support myself through processing some detail without falling apart over it (sometimes). Oh, it’s an unreliable skill, and still wants further practice and reinforcement, and it requires self-care and presence, and willingness to let it go and step back if I begin to feel swamped, but it’s surely progress worth a moment of acknowledgement. It took a long time to get here, and it’s a better place to be in my life – and I didn’t know, ever, if I could even make this journey and stand in this better place. My results have varied – a lot.

I silently wish my beloved Traveling Partner well, hoping he still sleeps. I’ve come so far – and for much of the journey he has been my companion through the ups and downs, and the new practices, and the moments lost to poor mental health, and the challenges of every day life, and all the work and the bullshit and baggage and chaos and damage. The therapy. The work. The love. Fuck, I am so grateful to love and be loved by this singular human being. My heart fills with gratitude and spills over as unexpected tears. Human beings are weird. lol I sigh to myself, and my inner voice mocks me kindly, understanding, “bitches always be trippin, y’all.” I laugh out loud. A barista calls to me merrily, “good joke?”. I reply “life!” and she laughs, too.

Once upon a time, I dreamed day and night about being “a regular person”, less “quirky”, more able to endure stress and able to heal from trauma. Less “plagued by misfortune”. I yearned for things I didn’t yet have an understanding of… resilience… emotional intelligence… and love. I wasn’t certain life was worth living. I had only the most limited sense of agency. I felt lost and crushed, pushed and pulled, and I seethed with the sort of buried rage that if exposed might erupt into something really terrible. I felt invisible, and unheard, and lacked a sense of worth or purpose. Tough times. It seems very far away now. I can’t claim to be “over it” or “cured” or so thoroughly mentally healthy as to set (or comply with) some standard of “a regular person”…but I am no longer an outsider in my own life. I’m no longer mired in despair and filled with a sense of futility. I’ve got better tools for coping with the reality of who I am. I’m grateful. I’m generally content with life. I’m grateful for love and friendship and good times. I’m okay for most values of okay, most days. G’damn that’s… wonderful. It’s been an interesting journey, and not an easy one. I smile to myself, when I try to pin down “when it started”. I don’t think that’s so easy…so many beginnings, so many steps on this path. The journey is the destination. “Are we there yet?” is not a question with a satisfying answer; we walk on.

I finish my coffee, still smiling. It is, after all, time to begin again. Again.

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Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, joy, Love, meditation, Mindfulness, Moments, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Rape, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, turning 60, War and News of War, winter, women, Words

In a Jam

January 11, 2026 //
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It was raspberry jam, as I recall…

The jar was almost empty, and it had gotten shoved to the back of the refridgerator. The lid was cranked down on that jar so tightly that it could not be opened easily, and stayed firmly closed in spite of various attempts. Putting jam on a biscuit should not be this difficult for anyone. Frustration built quickly; this was the third, possibly fourth idea for a sweet bite in the evening, after dinner, and where the others failed due to lack of some ingredient, this was failing over… a jam jar. There didn’t appear to be any other jam in the house, either (although it would later turn out that tiny holiday jams were available, too, they were not cold, and they were not visually obvious to someone who did not know they were there). Cupboards slammed. Tempers flared. An evening’s pleasant quiet was broken.

…This wasn’t about the jam. That’s where it got tricky, actually, this was about the lack of consideration for someone expecting to be cared for, lack of accommodation of known disabilities, and lack of awareness. That’s what the anger was about.

Sometimes it’s really difficult to keep the needs of other people clearly in mind. Consideration is one of the toughest of my relationship values; it forces me out of my head and demands that I be present, aware of others, and considering our shared (and individual) needs more or less continuously. That jam jar didn’t get shoved into the back of the refridgerator intentionally; it was a thoughtless act. The last person to close that jar probably didn’t crank that lid down like that deliberately, which ultimately required considerable effort to get that jar open, they likely were not even thinking about what they were doing in that moment. As the jam got used, no one thought to put it on the grocery list, and so we ran out, resulting in a minimal portion of jam remaining, in a jar that couldn’t be opened by the woman with arthritis in her thumbs (or my Traveling Partner), barely enough to amount to a serving, difficult to get at it in the first place, and the result was hurt feelings, frustration, and seething anger when it was clear that other members of the household were simply not getting what the fuss was about. What the reaction excessive? Yeah, probably. Almost certainly. Here’s the thing, though; everyone in the house is aware of familiar with each other’s disabilities. The expectation – and it has been made explicit (we’ve talked about it as a family a lot) – is that we are each considering those limitations, and accounting for them in our daily actions. That didn’t happen, and it derailed a lovely evening as a result.

Eventually, things settled into a more harmonious state. The jam got restocked when I next went shopping, and reminders were given all around to put things on the shopping list when the last of anything is opened (rather than waiting for it to run out completely – maybe that wasn’t clear enough, previously). Room was made on a shelf in the refridgerator door to hold the currently-open jar of jam, for easier access. Steps were taken to put things right. It’s important that this jam over jam isn’t misunderstood, though – because it wasn’t about the jam. It was about the lack of consideration, the lack of care, and the implied disrespect involved in those, and if that isn’t clear it is very likely that some similar jam over something other than jam may erupt at some future time and place for all the same reasons.

…Hell, I’ve thoughtlessly set myself up for failure in a very similar way, simply by not paying attention to what I was doing in the moment, and dealing with the consequences of my own lack of consideration, later…

I have sometimes been accused of being “overly considerate” (no kidding, some people will find reason to criticize anything, even things that work in their favor). I don’t happen to agree; I manage to persist in sometimes failing to consider some important detail, implying I am as yet still not sufficiently considerate enough of the time. I keep practicing. It’s not the easiest thing to open a refridgerator to put away groceries, and while doing so consider whether each item is where the person most likely to want it will easily find it and be able to reach it. It’s not the easiest thing to tidy up with an eye on the next person to use that thing – or that space. It requires presence, and awareness. It may require clarifying questions (“Hey, if I put the jam here on this shelf, can you reach that?”). It will surely require me to step outside myself and try to see things from the perspective of some other person. Doing this well begins with Theory of Mind, and it’s rather unfortunate that a great many adults fail to use the full measure of their capacity to understand someone else’s experience or perspective, resulting in a lot of chaos, heartache, frustration, and anger.

We are each having our own experience. We each follow our own path. We each understand words based on our own internal dictionary, and tend to reflect on our experiences through the lens of…our own experiences. Although we are “all in this together”, humanity’s shared journey is being taken by individuals who not only don’t read minds, they barely understand their own sometimes, and there is no “user’s guide”. It’s a puzzle. I keep practicing.

I sip my coffee on a quiet Sunday morning. The rest of the house sleeps. I’m astonished that I managed to wake up, wash my face and brush my teeth, make coffee and then move things around in my studio/office space to comfortably write at my computer, while I wake up. This feels like a major win. I’m fortunate that my sinuses feel pretty clear, and I didn’t wake with a cough. Am I finally really over the recent bout of flu? Well that “only” took four weeks – I’m grateful it wasn’t worse.

I sip my coffee and think about jam. Funny, this whole jam over jam was days ago. It stuck with me because I continued to turn it over in my head. The conversation. The emotions. The underlying factual details. The interwoven relationships and the expectation-setting. The actions, reactions, and over-reactions. The course-correction, and careful mending of hurt feelings. It felt to me like there was a lot more to learn from this than the obvious lesson, which initially seemed to be “put shit on the grocery list before it completely runs out”, but I knew it was more nuanced than that, and I kept thinking it over. I woke this morning, thinking about jam – and also thimble cookies, and raspberry bars, and coffee cakes with a jam swirl in the middle, and biscuits fresh from the oven, warm and ready for jam. I chuckle to myself wondering if thoughts of delicious baked goods are the cognitive reward for “doing my homework”? lol

I breathe, exhale, and relax. It’s a lovely Sunday morning. I’m ready to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, anger, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Frustration, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Moments, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, winter, Words
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