Category Archives: Books

The Nature of Easter

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 Fling off thy sadness!

Fair vernal flowers, laugh forth

Your ancient gladness! 

~Thomas Blackburn, An Easter Hymn

Today as my present to you, valued readers, I have posted an audio chapter of Gift of a Lifetime: Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected.

This audio recording will also be posted permanently to the About the Book page of All Things Fulfilling so you can return and listen to it as often as you’d like.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Your entire family will enjoy listening to what the stellar character in my memoir has to say about an element in nature that has more meaning than just a beautiful flower. Celebrate Easter week by sharing this story with others. Happy Spring!

To listen, click the arrow pointing  right, next to the speaker icon.

 

 

 

 

 

Writing about the King

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“The Irish – Be they kings, or poets, or farmers… They keep company with the angels, And bring a bit of heaven here to earth”~ Unknown 

My uncle, my mother’s brother, was named Joseph King. But he was called King his entire life.  Joseph was his father’s name (my maternal Grandfather’s first name).  King was his mother’s maiden name (my maternal Grandmother). If you ever met my Uncle King, you would never, ever forget him. And you’ll have a chance to meet in him my memoir. He was a lively character who really celebrated life! I believe he felt an obligation to live up to a reputation of being a magnanimous character.

Palm SundayToday, as we approach Palm Sunday, it seems fitting to dedicate this blog to him. The reason will become apparent if you read my upcoming book. The lifeline on the palm of my hand would most likely be very short, had King not become one of my saviors in life. The “King” is  part of my upcoming memoir “Gift of a Lifetime.” I share this small bit of insight into my story, as a gift to you this Easter season. I’m going to remember my King, enjoy Palm Sunday and celebrate the fact that spring is just around the corner. Hallelujah.

On Monday, I will posting a sample audio chapter of  Gift of a Lifetime: Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected on All Things Fulfilling. The audio chapter is  for your listening enjoyment and it’s about Easter. Do return and listen in – you might learn something about this holy week you had never known before.

Remember? Dear Twin Sister,

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 Remember? Dearest Jan,

culotte dressesOur culotte dresses back in the 1960’s? Didn’t we think we were the hottest things going? With our home sewn outfits, our matching wooden handled pocketbooks, our Pappagallo flats and our pink Tangee lipstick, we were stylin’! We added a spritz of our fav perfume “Heaven Sent” (for me) and Yardley’s “Lily of the Valley,” (for you)  and we were sweetly ready to face another day of high school, which we pretty much dreaded.

I don’t think we ever sewed our culotte dresses with sleeves in them. Those were too time consuming. It wasn’t easy getting the inset sleeves just right. Besides when it was chilly we liked wearing our little, white round-collared blouses under the culotte dresses. We turned out the “jumpsuits,” as some girls in other parts of the country called them, a dime a dozen.

Remember the fulfilling feelings when we had gotten through a sewing project without the sewing machine malfunctioning and getting the bobbin and thread all knotted up. Seemed to happen every other minute – that temperamental tension device on the machine caused ultimate frustration!

We were always under our own pressure to get our latest fashions completed to wear to school the next day to show our girlfriends. Remember?

What ever happened to our sewing machine anyway? Did you hand it down to one of your daughters?

wooden handled pursesPappagallo flats from the 1960stangee3heaven sent perfumelily-of-the-valley-eau-de-toilette

Jan, memories of all these products and more came flooding back to me as I wrote my memoir. Did you know that some of  these products can still be purchased? At the Vermont Country Store. And lots of other throwback products from the good ole days!  www.vermontcountrystore.com.

Jan, thanks for walking down memory lane with me this morning. Next time we are together, hopefully it won’t be too long,  I’ll do as you have requested. I’ll sign your copy of Gift of a Lifetime: Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected!

Much love. Your Twin Sister.

P.S. How do you want me to sign your copy? With my maiden name Sue Batton or my married name – Sue Batton Leonard?

 

Twin Abnormalities

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One of the most startling photos of my twin and me was taken when we were about 14 years old. It is included in my newly published memoir. The size difference between us is so dramatic that you have to see it to believe it. It’s almost laughable.

My sister and I are likely a case of Twin-Twin Transfusion Syndrome (TTTS) which is “a prenatal condition in which twins share unequal amounts of the placenta’s blood supply, resulting in the two fetuses growing at different rates.”

My parents never had official confirmation that their twins had that anamoly since ultrasound screenings and prenatal echocardiograms back in the 1950’s were non-existent. The tools had not yet been developed to diagnose such a condition.

According to the Fetal Care Institute in St. Louis, “the imbalance of blood flow starts to affect the the heart function in one or both babies.  This is seen in abnormal blood flow in the umbilical cords or hearts of the twins.” http://bit.ly/1dSHmEr. 

imperfection and delight

If you are a twin or know twins who are cases of twin-twin transfusion syndrome, my sister and I would be interested in hearing from you to learn whether you ever physically caught up to one another as adults. Please feel free to email me through this website and tell me your story.

Do return tomorrow. This blog is brought to you from the author of Gift of a Lifetime: Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected, by Sue Batton Leonard.

 

Twin Bonding

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OMG its twins

Welcome to Twin Week on All Things Fulfilling. Even if you are not a twin, we hope you will enjoy learning something about multiple births that perhaps you never knew before. We will be sharing some fun stuff!

There is a website that has informative twin facts, that I hadn’t seen previously.  Did you know –

“Twins bond in the womb. By examining 3D ultrasound images, a study in Padova, Italy found that fetuses start deliberately interacting at 14 weeks.”

If you wish to read more interesting statistics about multiple births, please visit this link http://bit.ly/PkaMA5.

My mother gets tickled pink when she thinks back to when my sister and I were children and how we used to have our own “twin language.” Without a doubt, we did chatter away in our own little world, that no one dared enter when we were in the “zone.” And if you were to ask my mother, she’d say that even as adults when my my sister and I get together we still enter into the “private twin zone” and like many twins, we finish each others sentences. We communicate in ways that seems to exclude others – including our husbands. It is not intentional – it naturally happens.

Have you seen any of the popular You Tube videos with the two little toddler twins carrying on in their own language, enjoying each others’ company. Whatever it is they are jabbering on about, they are having a very fulfilling and meaningful experience. The video is so incredibly precious!  http://bit.ly/PkeiKX .

Check it out – it will be the best 55 seconds you have spent in a long time. It will begin your Monday morning with a smile.

See you tomorrow on All Things Fulfilling.

 

Wrap Up: Writing Process

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First Step: “Forget all the rules. Forget about being published. Write for yourself and celebrate writing.” ~Melinda Haynes

Last Friday I gave a presentation about independent publishing and my newly released memoir to the Yampa Valley University Women. As a way of concluding my presentation, I mentioned how much I loved every part of the writing and publishing process –

  • the creative

  • the daily discipline of writing

  • bringing the voice of my stellar character alive for the reader

  • the end result of the feelings of fulfillment and satisfaction for having done it

Having a regular writing routine is easier for some than others, but for me I am a very disciplined person, so regular writing was not difficult. Authors have their own ways of motivating themselves to start, stay on task and seeing a project through until the end.

Inspiration-to-writeHere is an interesting article that I came across that speaks to tactics that some very well-known authors have used to tackle the problem of how to be successful in finding time to write. http://bit.ly/1fPjdd0 .

Some people go to all lengths to motivate themselves. I consider myself fortunate. All I have to do is sit down to the computer put my fingers on the keyboard, and pour my heart out. I don’t second guess myself until it is all out on the paper – it’s that easy! Then comes the editing part. Well, if I must be honest ….that’s a different story.

Do return tomorrow. We are going to switch gears.  I have “twin issues” on my mind that I will share with you. This blog brought to you by http://www.AllThingsFulfilling.com,

 

Etching the Psyche

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“…realize that there is only one ‘race,’ – the human race, and we are all members of it.” ~ Margaret Atwood

There have been so many monumental national and worldwide historical events that have occurred throughout my lifetime – man walking on the moon, the Equal Rights Amendment, Watergate, the tearing down of the China Wall, space shuttle Challenger exploding, The Persian War, the collapse of the Twin Towers, just to name a few. But, none of these events have been etched as deeply into my psyche as the Baltimore riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King.

Indeed, “the sixties” was a time of revolution including trends in clothing, music, education and social order in general. Drug experimentation and rebellions on college campuses was indicative of the turbulent times.

I remember when I was eleven I thought that the arrival of the Beatles in the United States was newsworthy of unmatched historical proportions. But by the time I turned fifteen, I had matured in my thinking and I grasped the fact that upheavals in the political and racial climate were were hugely more consequential in nature. A national shift in culture far greater than the Beatles. I was well-tuned into the events around the death of Martin Luther King and tried hard as a teenager to understand the radical changes that our country was undergoing.

baltimore sun MLK headlinesIn one chapter of my memoir I recall the feelings I had one morning as I sat at the kitchen table reading the headlines and the reports in the Baltimore Sun Newspaper. I felt as if I was sitting amid a battlefield I had so many scary, anxious thoughts running through my mind.

Thank God my thoughts running rampant were very different than reality for me. But for so many people residing within the boundaries of the inner city of Baltimore my thoughts were a reality of their living conditions.

I have some fun things planned for next week  All Things Fulfilling on Monday. We will be celebrating twin week. Have a good weekend!

 

Baltimore Nostalgia Time

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Today on All Things Fulfilling: A visual look back at iconic images from my growing up in Baltimore.

Oriole CafeteriasReads drugstores

Berger cookies

Smyth

mary sue easter eggs

DR28_TimoniumAd

61outXDZsKL._SX258_BO1,204,203,200_welcome to baltimore hon

That was a fulfilling journey revisiting my childhood through images this morning. Last summer when I was back in Maryland for an extended visit, my mom bought me a box of Berger’s cookies. I thought I had died and gone to heaven!

As the stellar character in my memoir often stated to my mother after having eaten a box of  Berger cookies –

“Dem’s was da bestest, Miz Battoney!”

Indeed, being given a  surprise box of Berger cookies is as satisfying of being given a Gift of a Lifetime: Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected!

In coming weeks we will be hunting down more images of Baltimore memorabilia… Stay tuned to All Things Fulfilling!

Pillow Dreams

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Every man’s life is a fairy tale written by God’s fingers. ~Hans Christian Andersen

The infamous Dr. Phil says that children should not have to bear adult problems. I admire my parents for they had plenty of adult stresses as a  couple who married quite young and  lived on pins and needles for many years due to “twin issues.” I feel throughout my life, my mom and dad did a fabulous job of letting us kids be kids, unburdened with adult problems. http://bit.ly/P3bMbE.  I am grateful for that.

The other day I was going through my baby book and came upon a letter that I had written to the tooth fairy when I was in elementary school. Here it is verbatim:

untitled (2)“Dear Fairy,

Will you Please keep the tooth under my pillow and give me monney. Wedesday I will put my tooth under my pillow and then you can take it.

From, Sue”

I wonder what my big dreams were for the money that I was expecting? After all it was probably a whole dime the tooth fairy was willing to give me- realize it was  the 1950s! It seems to me from the note, I needed to put my big fortune into spelling lessons rather than something sweet like candy to give me cavities.

In yesterday’s blog, I mentioned the medical bills my parents incurred as a result of giving birth to twins and my medical circumstances. Now that you have seen this letter, do you think I had an inkling that my parents needed some assistance, and I was going to try to help with my big windfall from the tooth fairy? Or do you think I was just being a kid knowing that the tooth fairy doled out money? I wonder. You never know about kids way of thinking.

This blog is brought to you by http://www.AllThingsFulfilling.com. See you back here tomorrow!

 

Originations in Baltimore

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“A kind gesture can reach a wound that only compassion can heal.” ~ Steve Maraboli – Life, Truth and Being Free.

dialing for dollarsWas Dialing for Dollars broadcast in your home town when you were growing up? This show originated as a radio show in Baltimore, Maryland and then became a syndicated TV show in cities around the country. The show had a run of 38 years and gave away $800,000 to suburban housewives who sat by the telephone waiting for the host of the show to call their number.  It finally terminated when more sophisticated game shows began to be aired and fewer households had stay-at-home moms who were in residence to answer the telephone. Here is how it worked, if you don’t remember it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialing_for_Dollars.

I know my mother wished upon a star many times that Dialing for Dollars would call 4-6750. It was our home number and those were the only digits you needed to reach our family back in the 1950s. Then as the population grew,  dialing VA4-6750 (Valley4- 6750) became mandatory. She and my father had medical bills they needed to pay from having given birth to twins – a not so common occurrence in the 1950s and they could have used the money.

The other day I was going through my baby book, and I found the obstetricians bill from when my twin sister and I were born.  There was a personal note on it from the doctor that said “I realize you have incurred very large medical bills with these births, I have tried to keep my charges as low as possible. Please know you can pay whenever or however it is convenient.” The bill was for $140. Seven years later when the doctors figured out how to give me a long and fulfilling life, much greater medical bills were added.  The bills became very staggering for a young couple who by then had three young children and were going through a very difficult time in life.  However, unexpected and more difficult circumstances occurred but that finally allowed them to financially rebuild their life a little bit.

Compared to medical bills in today’s world, my parent’s medical bills were a pittance. But with the wages of that era, everything is relative. Medical bills are a strain on all people who live within very tight budgets. The very technology that helps people to live long lives today is expensive to develop, maintain and use. I do get it, but our medical insurance system does need overhauling and I don’t think we are even close with a viable solution.

Come on back tomorrow to All Things Fulfilling. I will share with you a letter I found in my baby book that I had written to the tooth fairy. It made me chuckle when I read it.