Category Archives: living positive lives

Easter: An Awakening of Spirit

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In my opinion, for many people – 

The joyful news that He is risen does not change the contemporary world. 

Still before us lie work, discipline, sacrifice. 

But the fact of Easter gives us the spiritual power to do the work, accept the discipline, and make the sacrifice. 

~Henry Knox Sherrill

Easter spirit

 

easter bunny cake

 

have a happy easter for peeps sake

Looking for other meaningful Easter quotes to pass along to your loved ones this holy season? Here are some you might enjoy from http://www.findmeagift.co.uk/topics/easter-quotes.

Have a great Easter Weekend filled with All Things Fulfilling. If you missed  Monday’s post, a sample audio chapter called  “Easter Traditions” from  Gift of a Lifetime: Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected, by Sue Batton Leonard is on the About the Book page on this site.  Listen in as many times as you’d like!

 

Small Things Big Wonders

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“All of our life is a miracle. . . . There is not a minute in the twenty-four hours that is not filled with miracles.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Have you ever noticed how the smallest things sometimes hold the biggest wonders? Consider:

  • The sudden appearance of blue-speckled robins eggs in the nest
  • An unexpected phone call from someone you were just thinking about
  • The delightful scent of a newborn baby’s head
  • A colorful rainbow after a wicked storm
  • Perfumed air from a gardenia, rose or lilac
  • The extraordinary talent of a musician, painter, dancer, writer or singer who has had no training
  • The crowing glory of the daffodils through the snow

When did you last stop, take heed and intently observe  a small thing that holds big wonders? Springtime holds an abundance of opportunity! Recharge your life by being keenly observant as the season of renewal unfolds and opens up. Deeply inhale all the goodness and find gratefulness in each daybreak and sunset.

little is much

This blog brought to you by Sue Batton Leonard, the author of Gift of a Lifetime: Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected.  See you tomorrow on http://www.AllThingsFulfilling.com.

 

 

Sojourns in Reaching a Dream

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After my book presentation on April 4 to the Yampa Valley University Women, Beverly, who is a group member and someone who was in the audience, came up to me and said “Sue, I get the feeling you have been on a real journey with this book.” “Have I ever,  Beverly, ” I replied smiling. I was thrilled that she understood the amount of work that went into it and how I was feeling, “There is no denying it,” I said.

Between writing about the publishing project throughout the process on this blog All Things Fulfilling and bringing the story alive on paper, it has been a real sojourn of sorts. It is as if I have been up in a hot air balloon looking down, and describing the publishing landscape has it has changed. I have soared as I have gone along for a ride with it.

The-Journey-Is-What-Brings-Us-Happiness-Not-The-DestinationI, like many others, was not aware when I started my memoir writing project how this would lead to enormous personal growth in so many ways that I had not anticipated. A lot of the development has come as a result of doing whatever it took to do it right, independently.

I’ve faced and recorded into words the  most poignant moments in my life, tackled my shyness about reading the manuscript out loud while having it critiqued by a whole bunch of professional writers. Then I faced the fact that I need to become someone who is comfortable with public speaking, if I really want to continue to achieve my dreams of traveling around and vocally sharing my retrospective thoughts.

I have had the great fortune of being in an environment that is very supportive of writers who helped me to achieve my mission. I would like to state my gratitude to anyone who has helped me along the way. You know who you are, and so do I. I consider each one of you as one of many “personal angels.”

My advice to anyone who is embarking on an independent publishing process – do whatever it takes to make it happen.  Don’t hold back, don’t limit yourself to what you are willing to do or not. In other words, remove all stops! And most of all seek out the help of others who can help you along the way.

What is the greatest lesson I have learned throughout the process? By maintaining faith, and being willing to open myself up to all possibilities, my dream has become a reality!

If you didn’t visit this site on Monday, it was very special day on All Things Fulfilling!  I revealed a chapter of the audio book version of  Gift of a Lifetime: Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected. It is posted permanently on About the Book Page for your listening enjoyment. Listen to it as many times as you wish so you can get a sense of the voice in the story.

It’s Baltimore Lexicon, Hon

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If someone asked me to describe the people around the area where I grew up in the suburbs of Baltimore, I’d have to say –

MD-Flag-cropped“Loyal to their State.” In my opinion, that’s why so many Marylander’s rarely leave the state boundaries. Ocean City is the be all, end all, for family vacation spots for many Baltimoreans.

They are as loyal to “Bawlmer” as they are to their unique lexicon that they speak. It’s hard not to lapse back into it when I return to the soil of my native roots.

I may have to take some heat from my “Murlin” readers for these huge generalizations. Unless things have changed dramatically since the years of my childhood, I stand behind my opinions.

It’s ok if y’all send me a little feedback. I am only sharing what I noticed from my growing up. When I left hoskull and went off to cah-widge, I noticed a lot about y’all in Murlin. Besides, hon,we all have our own bleefs, including the Calf Licks. As long as I don’t end up going in the amblance to the hospital, a little heat from my readers won’t be harble. Bring it on, hon, bring it on.

family & love

This blog brought to you by All Things Fulfilling and the author of A Gift of a Lifetime: Finding Fulfilling Things in the Unexpected. Despite all my teasing about Maryland accents, please don’t ban me from the State of Murlin. I many want to do some book presentations! It is the setting of my publication.

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

Film Friday: Movies of the 1960s

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“Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days.” ~ Doug Larson

If you remember shows like Mickey Mouse, Bozo the Clown, Captain Kangaroo, Ozzie & Harriet and Leave it to Beaver you are probably among the first generation of American children to be raised by television.

old movie projector from 1950s. jpg

You’ll also remember what it was like watching a movie back in the 1950s and 1960s. Just setting up the film screen and the projector in the living room was a big production. Then there were the challenges of the film getting messed up in the projector when it malfunctioned – piles of film, knotted and tangled on the floor.

It was a different experience than in today’s world of digital filmmaking, where watching a movie entails the ease of slipping a disc into a DVD player which projects a movie through a computer or television screen.  Convenient and hassle-free!

 

If you are a baby boomer, you can relate to some of my favorite movies from the 1960s like:

  • Lilies of the Field
  • To Sir with Love

Oh how I loved Sidney Poitier in those two films.

Then there were my Disney Favorites from the same decade:

  • My Fair Lady
  • Mary Poppins
  • The Sound of Music

Let’s not forget some of the Westerns that the boys and men in the family liked such as:

  • The Guns of Navarone
  • How the West was Won

And the Jerry Lewis movies brought us such memorable characters and silliness that the scenes will be forever etched in our memories from films like:

  • The Nutty Professor
  • The Patsy

Mills-Hayley-Pollyanna_04

Remember Hayley Mills in Pollyanna? Oh, how I have the most heartwarming memories of my cousin, my twin sister and me seeing that movie together with our mothers at the Flynn Theatre in Burlington, Vermont when we were on vacation.

I love revisiting the old television and movies from the era of my childhood – the 1950s and 1960s. When was the last time you stepped back in time and reread a book from your past or watched an old favorite movie? It’s a blast! Movies from almost every era can be located through the Internet Movie Database http://www.imdb.com.

 

Have a great weekend and do return to All Things Fulfilling on Monday.

 

Connecting to the Great Outdoors

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“Teaching children about the natural world should be seen as one of the most important events in their lives.”  ~Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth

If you are a baby boomer, no doubt you learned to read from the Dick and Jane series. For forty years (1930s – 1970s) these books were used by elementary school teachers around the world to teach children the art of reading.

dick and jane jumping ropeDid you ever notice how the Dick and Jane series had so many pictures of children engaged in outdoors activities? The books typically featured images of kids walking the dog, playing hopscotch on the sidewalk, planting flowers, pulling wagons, playing ball, lying in a hammock under the shade tree day-dreaming, and flying kites outdoors.

Miss Zerna Sharp, known as the “Mother of Dick and Jane” http://bit.ly/1pwGk0u had great insight in the creation of the series because she felt that students would enjoy learning to read and find it much easier if they identified with the children shown in the illustrations. If she were alive today to redo the series to make the stories more relatable for this generation of children, she’d probably be horrified to realize what would the illustrations would look like. Rather than publishing pictures of fit children playing outdoors, I suppose we’d see images of  children engaged in all things digital and figure drawings of children with physiques that look very different than those of the children from the 1930s – 1970s. dick and jane use the force

We are living in a very visual age. With the power of digital marketing perhaps we need to stir children’s interests and entice them into wanting to experience the great adventure of life called the “great outdoors.” Personally, I think our whole society would benefit by becoming more aware of our connection to mother nature and all that she has to offer.  And it may even save us some trips to the doctor!

Those are my independent thoughts, words and views for today. See you tomorrow on http://www.AllThingsFulfilling.com. Have a great day, and remember to get outdoors for some fresh air! It’s good for fulfilling the mind, body and spirit.

Nature’s Healing Qualities

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“Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.” ~George Washington Carver

The image below looks like me as a little girl. Even as a little child who lived life on the edge with some serious health issues, I was not pampered and made to feel any different than my twin sister and brothers. Our home was surrounded by the forest with a leafy canopy of tall straight tulip poplar trees. A beautiful natural environment where fresh air and sunshine was plentiful. I played outdoors constantly digging for worms, making mud pies and throwing rocks in the streams that bordered both sides of our property. My parents insisted that I spend the days outdoors playing in the muck so I had little time to think about my miseries. For that, I am grateful to my parents.

It concerns me that too many children today are nature deprived and become ill as a result of it. It’s important for children to get outdoors and explore the natural world. Here is an article from the New York Times that every parent should be aware of. http://nyti.ms/Nx7lVj.

Spring has sprung, and the warm-up has begun. Parents get your children outdoors as much as possible in the coming months. Take them to parks, gardens, nearby woods and forests. If that’s not possible, be one another’s walking partners. Hold each other accountable and trade off TV and video time for outdoors time. Enjoy the natural world that was given to us for a reason. Its good for the mind, body and spirit.

childs immune system

This blog brought to you by www.CornerstoneFulfillmentService.com. See you tomorrow on All Things Fulfilling.