The short version of the story is that on an ordinary day in 2018, I passed out at home after a massage. Ten minutes later, I woke up on the floor to discover, to my horror, that I was paralyzed. I literally couldn’t move. That was (and still is) the single scariest moment of my life. My brain had basically shut off communication to my body, but I was totally conscious and coherent.

Here are some tips to find a lasting love for volunteering!

While 40 is considered the midpoint of your life, we all know that you don’t make it that far without a little help. I wanted to celebrate forty in style, but I also wanted to acknowledge forty people that made a positive impact in my life. I wanted to use my birthday as an opportunity to thank them for helping me become the person I am.

I’ve been writing this letter to my birth mom in bits and pieces throughout the years—words trailing when inspiration flows like a staggering stream. I’ll admit, the words feel like mismatched puzzle pieces without a reference picture. How do I convey the assurance I ache to give a woman I’ll probably never meet?

I’ve found five strategies to be particularly helpful to pursue my dreams and goals without putting myself or my dreams in a box. However, don’t let these ideas simply evolve into another goal post or benchmark for your plan. These strategies are meant to inspire you to live your dreams without the need to plan your life in charts and checkboxes.

It is hard to deny the power of love. A difficult situation can almost always be turned around when one person decides to bring love in. That is why I get up every morning and choose to love my husband with breakfast. When I don’t feel love, I do love. The doing creates something in me. If I want there to be joy, happiness, and love in my marriage, I have to do my part to bring what I can offer to the table.

In the past year and a half, I’ve been trying to get back to that younger version of myself by getting in touch with how moving my body makes me feel. To think of exercise as “play-time,” rather than a chore necessary to ensure that I look a certain way, I’ve developed this list that hopefully you find useful too.

It happened. Toxicity in your inbox. Clean up in aisle 7. Now what do you do?

You have the power to transform that uncomfortable moment into something much more needed in the world, I believe. Love. And compassion. Here’s how.

Learning the harp has become a unique spiritual discipline for me, teaching me lessons in becoming a beginner, creating for creativity's sake, and remembering that life is long.

There are a couple of ways I’ve learned to celebrate the miracle of Christmas — practices that exchange sensational consumerism for quiet anticipation, and occasionally, joyous celebration. I want to give gifts that mean something to the person receiving them. I want to bake cookies and share them, decorate my house in a simple yet joyful, meaningful way. I want to soak in these moments, and share them with my family. I want to be a better neighbor. And I don’t want to feel guilty when I don’t get it all done in time. Magic carries with it a connotation of quickness, doesn’t it? Just snap your fingers. Santa maneuvers athletically in and out of houses — somehow, he gets it done.

Just as people disagree on what physical things are important to them, what it means to live a meaningful life is different for all of us as well. To find value, we must look closely at our choices. Do we really think about the things we surround ourselves with every day? The small, quiet things, the things screaming for our attention, the things we shower upon others? Sometimes we don’t think about our values at all. We simply follow the status quo. Traditions have endured because many people find value in them (they are great at fostering a sense of place amidst the never-ending passage of time), but even traditions evolve as the people who practice them grow physically, mentally, and emotionally. After all, at some time someone somewhere started something new that is now considered a tradition.

I don’t know who’s missing from the family picture that no one wants to actually take.

But I think I just wanted to be a voice in the conversation. I wanted you to know that I’m with you. That someone out there is also going to be crying in front of the Christmas tree out of sadness, exhaustion, loneliness, and grief.

Friend, I don’t know if 2021 was a year of beautiful and hopeful things for you, or if it included pain, heartache, and grief. I do know that our pondering of the year behind us does not have to end with the overwhelmingly messy, hard, and (sometimes paradoxically) beautiful things of this world. Instead, we are invited to still ourselves—to slow down and breathe.

Making homemade stationery is certainly a journey, but it’s a journey worth taking. Not only is being creative fun, self-expression is important for the soul and reusing materials you have on hand is good for your wallet and the environment (if you’re into that).

Just remember, don’t be afraid to experiment and don’t get down on yourself if you’re dissatisfied with some of the stationery you make. You can always try again. Have fun, be kind to yourself, and celebrate the creative process!

If you were to step into my childhood bedroom, you’d find countless half-written plays about long-lost sisters and numerous diary entries detailing my family vacations. Writing always came naturally to me. It is how I deconstructed new concepts and ideas.

For me, it is easier to think in terms of small indulgences, where the stakes are low, but when I’m honest with myself, indulging daily is much grander than office supplies and pizza nights. It’s about being present and grateful and joyful in the moments when you can be, because sometimes you can’t. It’s about living in abundance, even if that abundance is something as simple as having a slice of hot blackberry pie for dinner.

Finding people is half the battle. Once we’ve found them, how do we move from the touch and go of superficial conversations and a few scrolls on our six inch screens? Trial, error, and a few acts of courage have taught me a few things.

Sadly, your friend or loved one has just been diagnosed with cancer. You want to write to them, but you don’t have a clue what to say. That is completely normal. Perhaps you’re tempted to wait until you find the perfect card or the perfect words – and so you write nothing. Hopefully, you already believe that writing to someone is an excellent thing to do (I don’t imagine you would be reading the More Love Letters blog if you didn’t), so here are some hints and tips which will, hopefully, encourage you to put pen to paper.

Today, I see my white cane as a badge of honor.

I see my white cane as a reminder of how far I’ve come. Every time I use it, I see a girl who felt despair the day she was diagnosed with RP to someone who is learning to love herself enough by embracing all parts of who she is. Today, there is nothing self-conscious about the cane. It’s simply a little help for my vision.