Category Inspirational

FMM 5 17 19 Shape Shifting

“Whoever you are holding me now in hand, Without one thing all will be useless, I give you fair warning before you attempt me further, I am not what you supposed, but far different.” ~ Walt Whitman.   Story-telling is in our bones, in our genes, in our blood.  It is how we know who […]

FMM 5 3 19 Link me!

“The idea of shared humanity and the connections that we make with one another – that’s what, in fact, makes life worth living.” ~ Clint Smith.  One of the beauties of being a nurse is that you are legitimately able to ask people intimate details about their life, with impunity.  For a story teller, this […]

FMM 4 19 19 Natural Wonder

“The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.” ~ Walt Whitman. I am by nature suspicious of flowery speech.  I have a memory of my father explaining something to me as ‘purple prose’, passages of literature that are too fulsome, too many superlatives and flashy […]

FMM 4 12 19 Crowning Glory

“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart” ~ Khalil Gibran. The other day I met up with someone I hadn’t seen for a while.  And to be truthful, I did not immediately recognize her.  She was an acquaintance rather than an old friend, and it was only through the […]

FMM 4 5 19 Distilled Spirits

“Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.” ~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. I was a late arriver to the gym scene.  My husband took up jogging in the early years of our marriage, but I always told him I preferred to exercise my mind.  With a […]

FMM 3 22 19 Intentionality

“When you eat mindfully, by paying attention to what you eat, you get more pleasure with fewer calories.” ~ Dean Ornish.  My father was a man who had great faith, but who also believed in doing his part to ensure good outcomes.  He would say he always knew when God wanted him to do something […]

FMM 3 15 19 Real Talk

“I just go with the flow, I follow the yellow brick road. I don’t know where it’s going to lead me, but I follow it.” ~ Grace Jones. I don’t remember when (if ever) I got the ‘birds and the bees’ talk, but I heard about girls and periods early.  They didn’t want to tell […]

FMM 3 8 19 Envisioning

“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.” ~ Jonathan Swift. Three is a magical number.  Don’t ask me why.  We all know that things happen in threes: deaths, births, weddings.  In art we have triptychs – a set of three paintings created to hang together.  In medicine you can have syndromes […]

FMM 3 1 19 Existential Filter

“Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore. One of the features of growing up in a large family is the noise.  Shouting, laughing, arguing, crying, the only time the poor parents have peace is when all the children are asleep.  Which reminds me of the Jamaican t-shirt […]

FMM 2 22 19 Consonance, assonance, resonance

“I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty.” ~ Edgar Allan Poe. I am a pragmatist by nature.  It was when my children were finishing high school and thinking of college and their future careers that I realized that when it comes to job security, I favor the […]