December 25th
“Music is playing inside my head Over and over and over again, My friend, there’s no end to the music.” —Carole King, “Music” It’s a rare moment for me that some piece of music isn’t playing through my head. Some days it’s a classical trumpet concerto left over from my daughter’s days as a trumpet […]
Read more of Living in Harmony–The Universal Truths of Music…
December 11th
It’s that time of year again—when people spend time and money seeking the perfect gift for young children, imagining the delight in those children’s eyes as they open the gift and immediately immerse themselves in playing with the new toy, only to find the real fascination is with the box the toy came in. What’s […]
December 2nd
“Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language, and the last, and it always tells the truth.” –Margaret Atwood How are you feeling today? Have you ever thought about what that really means? It’s interesting that to “feel” can not only mean to “touch,” but also refers to that inner sense of well-being—the […]
November 22nd
“It takes a village to raise a child.” (African proverb made famous as Hillary Rodham Clinton’s book title) A recent article in Psychology Today’s Moral Landscapes blog by Darcia Narvaez, PhD, entitled “Where are the Happy Babies?” bemoans the lack of “happy, confident, socially-engaged babies” as compared to the “distracted, unhappy, dazed, and pretty uninterested in others” […]
November 15th
“Children are not the people of tomorrow, but are people of today. They have a right to be taken seriously, and to be treated with tenderness and respect. They should be allowed to grow into whoever they were meant to be. ‘The unknown person’ inside each of them is our hope for the future.” —Janusz […]
November 13th
“Children are made readers on the laps of their parents.” — Emilie Buchwald A British department store recently surveyed 2000 parents and discovered that the traditional bedtime story is becoming a thing of the past. According to this survey by Littlewoods housewares store, only 64% of these parents read a book to their children, and […]
November 8th
My dad was born in 1922, the son of a Georgia farmer and a would-be concert pianist. He had five older brothers and one younger sister. To hear him tell the story, his parents had boys until they had a perfect one and then switched to having girls. The older brothers told it differently. When […]
November 6th
(originally written in 2012) Today is my 58th birthday. How did that happen? Fifty-eight used to seem so ancient. It’s about the age my grandparents were when I was first old enough to understand “old age” on any level. And there’s an oft-told tale in my family about the day my dad turned 40 and […]
November 3rd
(originally written 5/9/2012) When was the last time you took a vacation? A REAL vacation. Just taking a day off from work to stay at home doesn’t count. In order to take a vacation, you have to first vacate—empty your life and plate of all (or at least as many as possible) of your normal […]
October 31st
This month marks a transition of sorts for me. After today, October 31, 2013, I will no longer be able to say I am an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC). After a 20-year run, my certification has run out—and I made the conscious decision to let that happen. IBCLCs are the “gold standard” of […]