2009 In Review

As we sat down to write our annual holiday update, we realized this year we have no weddings, no new family members, no trips to Asia, Europe or Yellowstone, and no major home remodeling projects or purchases. It occurred to us, that we might have single handedly brought down the world economy. We apologize for that and will do our best to bring things back in 2010!

You might remember in November last year, Sheryl was laid off from the job she loved at Bluegreen Resorts, due to the unavailability of mortgages to finance timeshare sales and resulting staff cut of nearly 60%. She proceeded to become the busiest unemployed person ever, working as a marketing consultant for three or four companies at a time -almost 7 days a week. Thank goodness, in May she found a job with a company she likes, and a product she believes in – an online homeschooling curriculum – Time4Learning.com. Now she’s only working one job and managing a fun project as she is also developing and teaching email marketing courses for University of San Francisco through Bisk Education. She is much happier with a full-time job!

Toni feels very fortunate to still be with McClatchy Shared Services- this year was 20 years since she started at Miami Herald (now part of McClatchy). Despite tough times in the newspaper industry, Toni feels as strongly as ever about the importance of newspapers, and is glad to still be a part of this newspaper company! She just earned an Executive Certificate in Project Management at Florida Atlantic University and will sit for the Project Management Professional (PMP) exam within the next quarter! (CPAs are supposed to talk that way- marking time in fiscal quarters!

We did have a couple of small trips this year – we went to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival with treasured friends Becky and Melissa and CAMPED out – in a tent- in pouring down rain, thunder and lightning! Toni was a MWMF virgin, though Sheryl has been many times. So Toni believed Sheryl during this 12-hour torrential downpour that if she even thought about touching the inside of the tent that Niagara Falls would come gushing through the tiny breach. It was the last camping trip for Toni who was extremely uncomfortable curled up in a fetal position all night, trying not to touch the inside of the tent. She has since questioned the logic of Sheryl’s thunderstorm orders, and would also have positioned the tent much closer to the port-a-potties.

This year we celebrated Toni’s mom, Patty’s, 84th birthday with a family trip to Orlando with Patty, and Toni’s son Jerry & his wife Tiffany from Chicago. We got to all stay at a vacation rental condo Patty owns in Orlando – so it really felt like a luxury vacation for all of us! We celebrated at a highly acclaimed steakhouse in Old Towne Orlando with nephew Mike & his wife Illham who live in Orlando! We are so grateful that we can all get together to celebrate her each year!!

We had a Labor day trip to Ft Myers for a fun-filled birthday celebration with dear friends Laura, Ginger, Cindy and Blanche, an adventurous road trip to Key West with close friend Julia, and short trips to see Sheryl’s mother and stepdad Bruce in New Port Richey and to spend more time with Toni’s Mom and family members in Central Florida. The good thing about the FL trips is we usually get to bring the puppies! We are still head over heels in love with our 4 legged kids – puppies Maya, Gabriel, and kitties Cassidy and Sundance.

We’ve enjoyed our visitors this year – Toni’s son Tom & his wife Amanda & top dog Joe came to stay a couple of times, and we had visits from Jerry & Tiffany, and Sheryl’s Mom, Bruce and her nieces Lexi & Jessie. Tony & Ryan stopped off as they took a cruise out of Miami. Wing & Cassidy made a quick visit- and we had a great time! We LOVE visitors! Please put us on your calendar to come visit!

Well since we started this newsletter a few days ago, we decided not to live in “fear” in 2010! Yesterday Toni booked an Olivia cruise to the Greek Isles for Sheryl’s Christmas and birthday present- and we will do our best to jump start the world economy! Our best wishes and love to all of you. Know that we love you and that you always have a place to stay if you make it down to South Florida!!

Happy holidays and a wonderful New Year from Sheryl, Toni, Maya, Gabriel, Cassidy & Sundance

It Only Appears Bad Due to Lack of Perspective

The illusion that something is good or bad is usually only a matter of perspective. There is a great parable that illustrates this point. It is about a man whose son captures a beautiful, wild horse. His family and friends say to him, how wonderful, what a great skill your son has, how lucky he is and the father only responds, we will see.

When the son is thrown from the horse and breaks his leg, his family and friends all say how terrible it is and what a curse the horse is and the father responds, we will see. So when the military comes into town to gather up all of the able-bodied boys to march off to war, his friends and family say how wonderful it is that your son's leg was broken and that he was spared military service and his father responds...you guessed it, we will see.

So the moral of the story is that no matter how good or bad something may appear at the time, it is only perspective that allows us to see a broader meaning or reason for that thing to occur in our life. The thing itself is neither bad or good, only our perception changes bad to good or good to bad. Said another way, we would all be much happier and healthier if we could remember this at times when things appear to be going badly, or even in times when they appear to be going well so we don't get stuck in our mistaken perception.

Although I don't want to give up my joyful times, I certainly could do with some perspective in my less than joyful or sorrowful times. I experienced this lesson when I was quite young faced with a daunting decision at the age of 15. I found myself pregnant, in a relationship with a heroin addict and living in government subsidized housing. My mother insisted that I go to a convent to have my baby and then give it up for adoption. I knew this would be the end of my education and that I would soon follow in her footsteps and never make it to college even though it was always my dream.

I ran away and was picked up by the police after a few days of living on the streets. I spent several hours speaking with the Catholic Priest who was on call at police headquarters until my mother arrived to pick me up. The Father convinced my mother that she should honor my request to terminate the pregnancy and after she recovered from being told by a man of the cloth to allow an abortion, she agreed. So off I went to New York (this was just before Roe versus Wade legalized it nationwide) alone, afraid and feeling like my life was over in so many ways.

I managed to recover and found new meaning in my life once I was relocated to my grandparents' care. Only a short year later, I was instrumental in starting a community crisis hot line and high school peer counseling center where I personally helped hundreds of girls just like myself through the tough choices of teenage pregnancy. I was able to share the terrible truth of a decision to have an abortion and I know that I had a tremendous impact on those that sought my advice. I also know that I was a role model for girls who thought that suicide was their only choice as their life looked to be too terrible to bear. I assured them that it was only a matter of perspective and that eventually they too would see how this event could positively impact their life or the lives of those they touched. What a wonderful gift this experience was in that it shaped me to be able to return the gift to those in need.

So now I try to remember in the midst of something that appears to be terrible, that it only seems so because I don't yet have the perspective that will help me see it differently. I try to imagine that I am standing in front of a tree so close that I can't even see that it is a tree yet. And then I imagine slowly backing away from the tree, allowing distance and light to enter my field of vision, allowing me to finally see the situation clearly. This helps me have the patience to gain the perspective for whatever seems terrible to take on its true meaning in my life. Even if it might take months or years to get there, I trust that it will come. And this trust makes it easier to bear in the present moment and helps me embrace those terrible moments.

Who Am I?

I'm one traveler on a journey together on planet earth with my fellow travelers (that's you). I believe we all originate from the same life force and incarnate here together to give and receive love as we learn life lessons. Everything else is just a stage for the real learnings in life to happen.


My judgments about the things that happen are just an illusion as nothing that happens is good or bad, it just is. It is my thinking that makes it anything else and I get to decide at every moment how I will react. I am divinely blessed for where on this earth I incarnated. Yes I am grateful for being an American and realize that anything I can complain about is insignificant in relationship to 95% of the rest of the human population.

I was born a Pentecostal, spent many years as an atheist reading books titled “Religion as a Creative Insecurity” and "A Course in Miracles." I also lived for 2 years at a Yoga Ashram founded by a wonderful teacher, Swami Satchidananda. In addition I spent nearly 4 years living overseas in Brussels Belgium where I got to see Americans from the perspective of a non-American and found the experience terribly eye opening and self reflective. I now share a spiritual reality with those who attend the Religious Science Church (sorry, not Scientology) called The Center for Spiritual Living.

I seek to find the day when I can experience peace in all things, no matter what is going on around me.

What is Prayer?

"Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view." Ralph Waldo Emerson

I remember growing up that prayer was the time when I would be in need and I would beseech an outside entity to please hear my plea and aid my call. It was definitely a child/parent relationship. If I could just find the right way to ask for it, the parent would grant my wish. But then as I got older it changed, the whole pray and though shalt receive didn't seem to be working out so well, and besides, who said I really know what is best for me anyways. Creating the world in my own image is so limiting. I mean reality has much more imagination than I do. Why limit myself?

So then I studied Eastern religions and their method of prayer was meditation, where I learned to find peace no matter what was going on around me or no matter what lack I might perceive that needed to be filled. An hour of meditation a day seemed to make all things fall into place, to help me gain perception and learn how to be grateful instead of needy.

What a better place to come from. So no matter what name you give it, prayer, meditation or just being, Emerson said it best: It is a time for me to contemplate the facts of my life from an out of body point of view. Now if I could just find that hour a day that I need...

Emerson on self reliance

So, I'm getting to be on a first name basis with Mr. Emerson through my class at The Center for Spiritual Living in Ft. Lauderdale. And I can see why his concepts were so powerful especially in his day. The single most important essay he wrote was the one on Self Reliance. I created the cartoon strip above on self reliance to help drive home the point. You can click on the image to see it larger and legible. The situation described is a poignant one, how do you decide what is your genius and what is yourself making excuses for not doing something you don't want to do or maybe it's just a cheap excuse to buck authority?

Well, that's the million dollar self reliance question. I think maybe the acid test is in the results of your decisions and actions. If my inner voice tells me to do something and I follow it and in that following I am able to tap into a power greater than my own, then I know I am in the flow with my divine purpose.

Ralph's essay goes on to say, " Trust thyself." "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind." Still he doesn't give us a clue as to what that might look like and how we might tell the difference. He is a big one for non-conformity. He says, "Whoso would be a man (I assume this is true for women as well), must be a nonconformist."

He challenges us to not do something just because it is popular or expected. He asks each one of us to look inside our heart and make our lives from within instead of from without. He also states, "What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think." I've heard that put another way by Wayne Dyer, "What other people think about me is none of my business." (This is very similar to a book published in 1988 by Terry Cole-Whittaker - What You Think of Me is None of My Business). And yet Emerson said it in more emphatic and passionate terms back in 1926 in his essay on self reliance. Some people think his essay is the best way to describe our great Nation and what made it great and how so many great people have risen from nothing to successes, no matter how you measure success.

I only hope I have the courage and inner hearing to know what this means for me, to trust my inner self even if it means non-conformity, to find the strength of character to go beyond worrying about what others think of me and enter my greatness of purpose, even if it isn't socially acceptable. I hope you too my friend can find this as well.

Our words paint a self portrait

I'm reading the Emerson Essays again and there are two things about him that strikes me. He is 1.) wicked smart and has amazing insight into the human spiritual psyche and 2.) extremely inaccessible to mere mortals that don't have a reading vocabulary at the Ph.D level. Okay maybe I exaggerate a little bit but seriously, I have to look up at least 1-2 words per page of content and most folks don't have that much patience. In a world where our President is selected based on out of context soundbites, I can't imagine the average person taking the time to read Emerson.

So I had this idea, if I could somehow reduce the essence of Emerson, or any great spiritual thinker down into a manageable soundbite then I could do a great service to the world. The great thinking inaccessible to many could be delivered over coffee with the Sunday funnies. The only problem I have is that I'm an okay writer but my drawing skills are nil to none. So here's my first attempt at a comic strip sans pictures. Think of it as a strip in search of an artist.

I love the self portrait concept and have always believed this idea that what we say of others we really reveal about ourselves, but I never said it with such eloquence and directness as Emerson, "A man cannot speak but he judges himself...he draws a portrait to the eye of his companion by every word. Every opinion reacts on him who utters it."

I've seen it in my own life time and time again. And the reason this happens is that we typically have something inside ourselves that resonates with the person we are talking about. The more emotional we are, the more resonance.

So for example a thief will suspect everyone of trying to cheat him or steal from him because that is how he thinks about the world, what can I steal or take that isn't mine. And on the positive side, a trusting soul will leave their door and heart open to others because how they are is how they see the world, full of trusting honest people.

The next time you are tempted to go on a tirade about someone or something that is happening, take heed and notice how much more you will be saying about yourself.

You are the author of your life

During my mid-life crisis years it seems I learned a lot about myself and was able to finally put some perspective on things that had eluded me in my youth. Right around this time of my life I decide to take a pre-retirement (retiring when you are young enough to enjoy your time off) and for a year I traveled and visited places that had significant draw and opportunity for spiritual growth. The places I went to included Hawaii (for about 5 months) studying with a powerful Shaman, Findhorn Foundation Spiritual Center in Scotland for about a month, Integral Yoga Ashram in Yogaville, Virginia (just South of Charlottesville) for about 3 months and Palm Beach Florida for a month to heal my relationship with my Dad. What a blessing to have had that year, to work for a company that offered unpaid sabbaticals and to have the savings to afford me this luxury.

In the Hawaii portion of my journey I worked with about 50 other people who committed to 66 days, 22 at a time to do some very intensive introspection. One of the most powerful takeaways was an exercise we did with an assigned partner over a period of 22 days. Our task was to tell our life story every day but each day we had to change the tone of the story. So one day our assignment was tell our life story as if we were a hero in our life, the next as a victim, the next day as a fairytale, the next as a tragedy, again as a comedy, and then a drama - on and on for 22 days, 22 different stories all based on the same factual basis. We could not change any of the facts of our life, only our interpretation of those facts from these different perspectives.

What did I learn? That my life story is just that, a story. Every single rendition was true. I didn't change any of the facts but what I did change was the spin on those facts. I changed my interpretation of my life events, which is what we do each and every day. We decide each moment how we are going to perceive every event in our life and it is just that, a perception, a judgment, a spin that we put on the facts or reality of our life.

I was so sick of "my story" at the end of 22 days, 22 tellings, 22 renditions that I didn't care if I ever heard or told that story again. That was all it was, a story. Something I made up about the events that happened around me in my life. None of it was true and none of it was false, the facts just were and my story was something in my mind that reflected those facts but did not take their place or become real just because they lived in my mind. Oh but how real that story had become to me and my emotional body, how much I had invested in it, how much unhappiness it caused me, and for what purpose?

It was about as real as the fairy tales I read when I was a child. A fantasy born out of some experience or idea that has little to do with reality. So my lesson was a reinforcement of one of my favorite historical figures most famous quotes, "Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be" by Abraham Lincoln.

So what about your story, is it a drama, comedy, tragedy or a romantic novel? Remember, you are the one that gets to write it and tell it any way you want it to be.