‘Lean on me, when you’re not strong, and I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on…For it won’t be long, ‘til I’m gonna need somebody to lean on.’ ~ Bill Withers. My professional introduction to mental health began in nursing school.  I was assigned to an inpatient facility which was housed in a beautiful […]

“Doubt everything. Find your own light.” ~ attributed to The Buddha. When I was growing up, I was introduced to a weird way of earning good luck. Or was it a way to avoid bad luck? I had already learned of one superstitious practice, to throw salt over your left shoulder to prevent bad luck.  […]

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” ~ Mary Oliver. It has been said that travel broadens the mind. The thing about cliches is that they are often true, but repetition has rendered them trite.  On my recent visit to Jamaica I was reminded that when […]

”All night, all day.Angels watching over me.” ~ (Trad). Although I was brought up in the church, I can’t say that the usual vision of heavenly angels was something I actively believed in.  Like fairies, elves and gnomes, they seemed to be a little too fantastical to be real.  Thus, the concept of life after […]

“He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.” ~ Socrates. Time, they say, is relative.  The vacation that stretched ahead of me a few weeks ago is rapidly coming to an end and we will soon leave Jamaica.  I have to remind myself that there was a […]

“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” ~ Lao Tzu. When I first returned to Jamaica after an absence of some fourteen years, I had already begun writing, filling unruled journals (I did not appreciate the lined versions, which seemed too restricted, too dictatorial) with thoughts and impressions.  […]

FMM 12 22 2023 My First Love “I have forgotten much, but still remember The poinsettia’s red, blood-red in warm December” ~ Claude McKay. My parents came of age in a country at war.  Britain was mobilized against the threat of a fascist, one whose dream was to take over the world.  My mother was only […]

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.” ~ Albert Schweitzer. When I returned from Jamaica to live in the UK to go to nursing school, one of […]

‘A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.’ ~ Lao Tzu. I read something in a group chat the other day that resonated. A friend wrote that often it is at a funeral that you learn something about the person who died.  Even if it is someone you thought you […]

“Share our similarities, celebrate our differences.” ~ M. Scott Peck. As will be apparent as this morning’s musing unfolds, I am currently in a different time zone. So although it will be late for those in the Eastern Standard time zone (five hours behind the Universal Coordinated Time rather than the old Greenwich Mean Time) […]