Tag Archives: climate change
FMM 9 30 2022 Special Gifts
“Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it.” ~ Florence Nightingale. My first nursing experience was on a gynecology ward, run by an old-fashioned ward Sister (Nurse Manager, US style). She was close to retiring and had not changed the way she ran the ward […]
FMM 9 9 2022 Holisticism
“My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.” ~ Desmond Tutu. I greeted my two near death experiences with song. When I went into labor with my first child, the only way I could handle the pain that I thought was about to kill me, was by singing ‘Nearer […]
FMM 10 22 2021 Rivers in the Sky
“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” ~ Muriel Rukeyser. The art of science is to be able to make it comprehensible to common man. I remember learning ‘General Science’ in high school, and learning about the water cycle. To illustrate this concept, we had to draw a body of water, the sun […]
FMM 10 15 2021 The Sound of Silence
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” ~ Anton Chekhov. I don’t remember learning about ‘therapeutic communication’ when I was in nursing school forty years ago. Of course, some concepts have earned names which change over time, but being taught how to respond to patients, especially […]
FMM 9 3 2021 Means and Extremes
“Faith minus vulnerability and mystery equals extremism. If you’ve got all the answers, then don’t call what you do ‘faith.’ “~ Brene Brown. You never know what will trigger a memory. I was sat in traffic the other day, and saw a small poster advertising a Bible bookstore. When I was a teenager, my Saturday […]
FMM 8 13 2021 Our patchwork life
“Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.” ~ Stephen Sondheim. My grandfather (whom I never met since he died some years before I was born) was a truck driver. He left school at the age of twelve, and his first job was to stand outside a grocery store (where there […]
FMM 5 1 2020 The Evolution will not be Televised
“What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.” ~ C. L. Stuart. When I was about seventeen, I was itching to learn to drive. This was in Jamaica, back in the days when stick shifts were standard, automatics were rare. I was the youngest child, and only one still at […]
FMM 9 27 19 Regeneration
“If you’re going to live, leave a legacy. Make a mark on the world that can’t be erased.” ~ Maya Angelou. Ninety-nine years ago, my father was born, the third child of a truck driver and his housewife. He grew up in a working-class neighborhood knowing that the only way out of poverty was education. […]
FMM 3 29 19 Mother and Child Reunion
“Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.” ~ Barbara Kingsolver. I am the youngest in my family. I found that to be frustrating as a child, as I had no baby brothers or sisters to play with. My mother was unmoved by my requests. She often declared herself to ‘have no maternal […]
FMM 10 07 16 Thankful
“The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche. I grew up in a God-fearing household. When your father is a minister, and a seven-day-a-week-Christian, there is no escaping the religious routines and rituals. Grace was expected before every meal, whether silently before breakfast, or out loud at the family meal. […]
Friday Morning Messages 