Category transcendence

FMM 8 12 16 Jamaica Sweet!

“Lovely dainty Spanish needle With your yellow flower and white, Dew bedecked and softly sleeping, Do you think of me to-night?”~ Claude McKay.   For many years, I was totally loyal to Air Jamaica.  I refused to fly on any other airline when I flew home to Jamaica.  It was not just the beautifully sleek […]

FMM 729 16 In Spiration

“And what is it to cease breathing but to free the breath from its restless tides That it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?”~Kahlil Gibran.  Human connections are amazing.  Although we are born into one family, we may find ourselves, if we are lucky, as comfortable in the homes of our friends as […]

FMM 6 24 16 In the Dark

“Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom” ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  “Use your common sense, child!”  I remember being told this when I was young.  I imagine it was said in exasperation by one or other of my parents, probably in response to some obvious question I had asked.  Perhaps a […]

FMM 6 10 16 Dream On

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”~ Carl G. Jung  My father ‘dream’ me this week.  This is the Jamaican way for saying you have been visited in your dream by someone, usually one who has passed on.  Of course these dreams are seen as particularly significant, for there must […]

FMM 5 13 16 Be more, Do more, Want less

“We can’t be useful to ourselves unless we’re useful to others.”~Dalai Lama. When I stepped into my bathroom the other morning, I had a memory of early mornings in the hills of Jamaica.  A cool breeze would steal in through the open window, warning you of how cold the unheated water might be.  Outside the […]

FMM 5 6 16 Cold Comfort Clichés

“Motivation will almost always beat mere talent.” ~Norman Ralph Augustine. I learned more about muscle groups and their functions in the gym than I ever did in nursing school.  To be honest, forty years ago, my hospital based nursing school had a system designed for you to learn on the wards, caring for real live […]

FMM 4 22 16 Scratching the Surface

“I am not what you supposed me, but far different”~Walt Whitman.  I was introduced recently to an author who at one time answered ‘Dear Sugar’ letters, an advice column on a wide variety of stressful topics.  The author responded to questions about love, life, anxiety, hopelessness and much more by telling stories from her own […]

FMM 4 15 16 One Spark

“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.”~Aristotle Onassis. I once met a young woman who was too perky.  No matter the time of day, or the circumstances she was upbeat and chipper for no reason.  So annoying!  It wasn’t until I got to know her better that I […]

FMM 4 8 16 Breathtaking

“The poet doesn’t invent.  He listens.” ~ Jean Cocteau. April is National Poetry Month.  I heard a challenge on the radio, to create a poem based on the numbers in your zip code.  Each line should contain the same number of words as the numbers in your zip code.  Ever since I heard this challenge […]

FMM 4 1 16 Forged in Fire

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.”~Ernest Hemingway. My mother once asked in wonderment: “How did I raise such strong women?”  The irony of that question lay in the fact that she did not see herself as a strong woman.  When I replied that we had her example to […]