• Typo “A” Personality

    • October 26, 2023 3:13 pm

    Dearest Readers,

    How are you doing in these challenging times? Our world is experiencing such unbelievable turmoil and unrest yet beauty and goodness continue to promulgate despite the great suffering around us. I hope you are finding ways to be okay.

    Over the years, I have been sharing with you how perfectionism and control contribute to a feeling of “not enoughness” in my life and the healing practices that enable me to be enough. You’ve heard me say this inner work is an ongoing process and I continue to wrestle with insecurity and low self-esteem.

    One of the most effective tools in my toolbox for battling the seemingly endless barrage of inner criticism is talking out loud to those negative voices (“Thank you for sharing, now f-off”) and speaking reassuringly to the part of me that needs encouragement (“It’s okay that things aren’t okay”).

    For me, having a sense of humour about a situation is the ultimate goal and, if I can get there, evidence that I am doing well.

    Recently, I re-posted an announcement for a talk I am giving at an upcoming event in my area. When I had first viewed the presenter’s original post, I noticed a pretty significant typo in the title.

    My immediate response was to panic, stomach tightening and mind racing. What would everybody think??

    Well …

    Let them think it!

    Do I actually believe I can control what everyone thinks anyway? (Okay, yes, I do. But this is an unsound belief.)

    Instead of emailing the presenter to request that she take down the announcement, re-do the graphic and re-post it without the typo, I practiced a form of detachment, in this case, separating my self-worth from the mistake.

    I decided to go ahead and re-post with the typo and make a joke about it. To my delight, many of the commenters also made jokes. One wrote about embracing imperfection and another expressed their preference for the mistake!

    I can’t always make fun myself. Because I was laughed at and criticized as a child, there remains a very tender part of me that doesn’t find these things funny. But if I can reassure the more sensitive part and strive for detachment, I’m laughing.

    From the fires of love,

    Celia

    Glad Tidings

    • October 10, 2023 2:16 pm

    Dearest Readers,

    I have been putting off writing this letter for so long!

    At the beginning of each week, I write the letters “HJL” (short for “Healing Journey Letter”) on my to-do list. At the end of each week, I cross the letters off and re-write them on the page of the coming week.

    Talk about procrastination!

    But I am here now. And I have so much to tell you.

    After a month-long Spring book and retreat tour in BC/Yukon, I returned to Ontario having sold a good number of books, led two inspiring retreats (Being Enough and Soul Care) and connected wholeheartedly with family and friends.

    There were challenges along the way and I wrestled with a few angels and I was acutely aware of how privileged I am and what a fun adventure I was on.

    “How is this my life?” I asked myself one evening after a book talk, staring into a bank of towering trees on Bowen Island.

    While there, a woman who bought O My God sought me out to tell me she’d had a trauma flashback reading the part of the memoir where I describe the sexual assault I experienced as a child. In order to regulate her response, she had immediately taken herself into the woods to rage, cry and heal in the arms of Nature.

    “Thank you,” she said to me after sharing her experience. “Your story helped me to heal a little more.”

    As a person who has struggled with the need to succeed in order to feel worthy, I allowed myself to enjoy the kind of success that cannot be measured by book sales or profits.

    This woman’s life had been deeply touched by mine. My life, in turn, had been newly touched by hers. Nothing else mattered in that moment.

    When I got back to Ontario, I directed and acted in a play that I’d written for the first time in more than 10 years. My co-star was a man whose neurodivergence and acting talent inspired the short play, which we performed for the Port Hope Arts Festival. “This is my dream come true,” he said of the experience.

    Wow.

    In more recent days, I’ve been “chopping wood and carrying water”, working as a spiritual director, writing a novel, and doing my best to live a life of service.

    Port Hope has not had the floods and fires we are seeing elsewhere this summer, though the sudden, torrential rainfalls we’ve had feel unsettling. And it is painful knowing there are so many people who have been struck by disaster in Canada and around the world. I do my best to align myself with these fellow humans through spiritual practice.

    A few days ago, I stepped off a high stair onto uneven ground and my foot turned beneath me. I felt a crunch and went down, groaning and gasping with the pain. An X-ray showed a small, bone-chip fracture in the talus bone. Now, I am wearing an air boot and walking with a cane, hurray!

    Because I am a person who has also struggled with the need to control things, I immediately went looking for the spiritual significance of the injury. Forget about feeling this experience of powerlessness, I must understand it and figure it out.

    Here is what came:

    A meditation experience brought forth the idea that I had (yet again) taken on other people’s suffering to the point of injuring myself. (Ugh. Does anyone smell burning martyr?)

    A website about the mind-body connection gave me the wise (but pretty obvious) advice to PAY ATTENTION.

    A counsellor friend suggested I “Be Still and Know …”

    My boyfriend wondered if I was too busy (again) and needed to slow down (again).

    “How about you’re just clumsy?” one of my sisters said.

    After the incident, the perfectionist part of me was in a shame spiral. The wounded child within felt like she was being punished. I could feel myself going down, down, down into the black, squishy quagmire of self-pity and despair.

    What did I really need? A good cry.

    So I did that. I took the time to bawl my friggin’ eyes out.

    Guess what came next? Gratitude.

    Surprise!

    So often, when we allow ourselves to release the grief, the gift arises.

    What is the gift?

    In this case, for me, just getting to be here.

    I watch people die all the time where I work.

    My life will end one day.

    Being alive now, even with all of the crazy, heartbreaking madness in our world, is really something pretty incredible.

    From the fires of love,

    Celia

    No Fixing Required

    • December 11, 2021 9:45 am

    Dearest Readers,

    On September 21st, I nearly fainted at the long-term care home where I provide spiritual care. I was in the middle of delivering a sermon for the residents during our homemade church service and the world started to go black.

    I pulled up a stool and carried on, acting as if I was okay when I wasn’t. I didn’t want people to worry. But after the room cleared, I got help from the nurse and called for a ride home.

    Because I had spent part of the previous weekend with a family who’d had “the gastro,” and because I was in bed for the next two days with nausea and a weak stomach, the sickness was chalked up to gastroenteritis.

    The family who’d given me the bug got better in two days. Ten weeks later I am still sick.

    What I want to write to you about is not the details of my illness but the practice of surrender. Because one has led to the other.

    Twenty-plus years ago, when I got on the Healing Journey and began to seriously attend to my spiritual life, I unwittingly got on the Fixing Journey, too.

    Give me a problem and I will give you the solution. You’re sick? Say affirmations. You’re sad? Be positive! You’re depressed? Change!

    Apparently, I’m not the only one. There is actually an Instagram account called “Healing from Healing.” It can be a bit crass but the account holder is ultimately trying to illustrate the wider healing community’s compulsion to fix: if you’re not happy/healthy/whole you must be doing something wrong!

    It’s taken me a long time to learn that healing doesn’t mean fixing and controlling. It means letting go, releasing, accepting, surrendering. And believe me, I haven’t finished learning the lesson.

    Since getting sick, friends have offered me silent faith sessions, tried to perform distance healing practices on my body, and recommended shamans and psychics.

    You would think I would be grateful for all of this support but my reaction has sort of been, hmm, how shall I say it? Irritation.

    “Stop trying to fix me! Just let me be sick!”

    Now, because I analyze everything, I realize that this part of me, let’s call her Resistance, might be the part of me that doesn’t want to heal. Maybe she likes being sick because she gets to check out of life.

    Maybe.

    Maybe not.

    Maybe there is another part of me, let’s call her Wisdom, that knows that this illness is actually teaching me something important and a miraculous cure would only eradicate the lesson.

    So what’s the lesson?

    There are a few:

    Since becoming ill, I have had to say “no” a lot. Saying “no” is not one of my strong points.

    Since becoming ill, I have had to let go of my fear of being judged. I imagine that people are going to see me as “less than” because I’m not working, I’m weak, I’m cancelling appointments, I’m falling behind. I have had to let these imaginary people think what they are going to think.

    Since becoming ill, I have had to accept that my body is not able to do what it could do ten weeks ago. But I’m a yoga teacher! Too bad.

    Since becoming ill, I’ve had to surrender to the fact that life has thrown me a curve ball and I can’t reach my arm out to catch it because the lymph nodes in my armpit are swollen and it hurts to much to stretch.

    These are big lessons. Vital lessons, no? Why try to fix and control them away? They are teaching me well.

    Yes, I would like to heal. Yes, I would like to have my energy back. And, what if it was okay to be sick? What if this sickness is actually healing me, one small surrender at a time?

    If I was to be suddenly, miraculously healed by a prayer, a shaman or a psychic, would I not just go right back to saying “yes” when I need to say “no”? Would I not immediately return to over-giving my time and energy? To doing more than my body can handle so that I would finally be enough?

    It’s highly likely.

    In the first few weeks, when I was still fighting this thing and struggling to accept what my body was saying, I taught a couple of online yoga classes. Cancelling was unthinkable.

    Then I remembered how I am always telling my students to “listen to your body.”

    How could I teach this kind of wisdom and not practice it myself?

    So, I cancelled. And the next week, I cancelled again. And the next week, again.

    Ugh.

    The only consolation was that I was living my teachings.

    Listen, let go, accept, surrender.

    That’ll fix it.

    From the fires of love,

    Celia

    The Return

    • February 18, 2018 10:48 am

    Dearest Readers,

    Resisting Love, the last blog post, elicited a number of heartfelt responses. One woman’s comment struck me as particularly pressing.

    She wrote:

    “I appreciate the message of acceptance and I have to admit I was left wanting more….more about how….how to accept…how to stay open…..how to live and trust and evolve….”

    Isn’t this the million dollar question for all of us? How? How? How do we do it? How do we really live? Not just cope or get by or survive the daily struggle but really embrace Life fully and joyfully, living as though each day were our very last?

    There is no One Manual. There are many manuals to choose from to help guide us but despite being given great wisdom from the sacred scriptures of our ancient cultures and having multiple modern-day self-help books from which to choose, none of us really knows what we’re doing. We are all just figuring it out as we go.

    This is really something, isn’t it? We are all trying so hard to get this Life Thing right. And it isn’t easy! Being human is very confusing. Why did that happen? What am I supposed to do about this? What do I do with all of these thoughts? How do I handle my emotions? Am I doing enough?

    Without an Instruction Booklet we pretty much just carry on the best we can. And we really are all doing the best we can. It might not seem that way sometimes and yet this is where ‘how to accept’ comes in. How would it be for me to accept that we are all doing the best we can with what we’ve got?

    The inner perfectionist balks. Are you kidding me? she says. He is not doing his best and she could be doing way better.

    There is no Acceptance when I am expecting everyone to be operating at a perfect level of human awareness and behaviour. Acceptance requires that I let go of unrealistic expectations and remember that just like me that person is trying to figure out how to live.

    ‘How to stay open’ is just as challenging. Staying open means leaving myself vulnerable to being rejected and getting hurt. Staying open means I will not be in control of the situation. This is unthinkable. The inner protector says, It is better to armour up and shut down. But being numb doesn’t actually feel all that great. What to do?

    The ‘How’ of anything always starts with a conscious decision. I am deciding to practice staying open even though I am afraid to let go of my desire for control. Once we make the decision, it then becomes a little bit easier to take the necessary action, in this case welcoming the fear of rejection.

    That sounds really unpleasant. Welcome the fear of rejection? Are you nuts?

    The only way I can possibly welcome anything this uncomfortable is by cultivating a Deeper Understanding of Who I Am. This is where ‘how to live and trust and evolve’ comes in.

    If I am 100% identified with my temporary nature, my little finite human life, then I will experience all hurt and rejection as being about me, about my person, as my fault. This misguided identification will then result in shameful feelings, which, in turn, produce the controlling, perfectionist, armoured-up person living in fear and anxiety.

    Cultivating a Deeper Understanding of Who I Am involves dis-identifying with what I think and feel and desire. Take note, I did not say annihilate. Thoughts and feelings and desires are natural, human, and necessary and I am not trying to get rid of them (and believe me, I have tried).

    I am simply trying overcome the false notion that my thoughts, feelings and desires are the sum total of my being because when I mistake these instincts for my True Identity, I suffer.

    But if I am not what I think, feel and desire then who am I? What is my True Identity?

    As I wrote in the last post, Who We Are is nothing less than The Evolving Manifestation of the Mysterious Energy Creating and Sustaining All Things at Every Conceivable Level of Physical and Non-Physical Reality (aka ‘God’).

    The human challenge is that we cannot Know This with our intellect. This Knowing comes from a place in us that is beyond the intellectual mind and it is only by cultivating This Knowing through formal or informal practices like prayer and meditation (in any and all forms) that This Knowing becomes intuitive (oh, and studying astrophysics helps, too).

    Once this intuitive connection happens, the How is more readily accessible because there remains only one, simple action left to take: The Return.

    The Action of Returning is key to accepting, staying open, living, trusting and evolving. And it’s not too difficult, though it does require vigilance. Every single time I realize that I’ve forgotten Who I Really Am, that I’ve become identified with my thoughts, feelings and desires, I return to the Deeper Understanding of My Being, my True Identity.

    How often do I practice The Return? A hundred million times a day.

    Whenever I realize I’ve disappeared, forgotten, resisted, distracted, escaped, left the building, I return, return, return.

    To what am I returning? To That Which I Already Am.

    Yes, my anger, fear, self-loathing, doubt, insecurity, jealousy, resentment is still there. This is my humanness and I will never outrun it (and I do still try). But what we are returning to is far deeper than our humanness, it is That Which Makes Us Human.

    From the fires of Love,

    Celia

    Take Care

    • January 28, 2016 6:47 am

    I recently posted about making a major life decision and how difficult it can be when perfectionism or the fear of making a mistake is a dominant, controlling factor. Another element that hinders my own healthy decision-making is the desire to protect other people from their hurt feelings.

    The decision I made to return to Canada directly impacted a number of people, and one person in particular, whom I shall call Maura, was especially affected. She and I had been living together in community for 8 months and I knew that if I left she would be alone, hurt and even betrayed by my choosing to go. The thought of inflicting these feelings upon Maura was enough to make me stay. The voices of dissent were pretty loud: How could I do this to her? Leaving her was totally unconscionable; an unforgivable, selfish act.

    These negative thoughts plagued me and I wavered, thinking it would be better to sacrifice my own well-being to save Maura from her pain.

    Red-flag moment. Save Maura? When I get into saving someone else I know I am in big trouble. I have moved out of the relative safety of taking care of someone and into the dangerous territory of care-taking. There is a big difference between the two.

    “Taking care” involves looking after someone’s needs, being of service, helping out. Care-taking is about looking after someone else’s needs at the cost of my own and serving the ego’s desire for approval and esteem. It is not helpful. To anyone.

    If I had stayed to protect Maura from her grief not only would I have been compromising my own needs, making me emotionally sick (and possibly even physically), I would also have been depriving Maura of her own life process. Not my job.

    Care-taking is controlling behaviour at its most subtle. I tell myself I am protecting Maura therefore I am doing a good thing. I am noble. I am a saint! In fact, I am simply trying to orchestrate an outcome over which I am entirely powerless. I cannot save Maura from herself.

    The consequences of care-taking can be dire because in trying to protect the other person I eventually become angry and resentful. If I had stayed in community with Maura I would have begun to see her as the one now keeping me from living my fullest and best life. And even though she didn’t ask me to protect her, even though I took it upon myself to save her, she would have been the one to blame for my faulty thinking. See the insanity? I sacrifice myself and it’s her fault.

    Leaving Maura was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I wrestled with the question of what was right and agonized over whether I was wrong. In the end, I chose to put my own well-being first. (Even writing that sentence feels uncomfortable.) Doing so required an enormous amount of trust that my own liberation would somehow mean Maura’s liberation, too. Even if it caused her pain.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: Am I able to embrace the concept of self-care? Do I attend to what is life-giving for me? If I am putting myself last on the list and it is costing me too much I will begin to trust that my own deepest needs can come first.

     

    Decide

    • January 8, 2016 9:39 pm

    It is just before 5 a.m. and there is a ghostly bird whistling somewhere outside in the dark. I am not able to identify a bird by its call. Some, like the chickadee, are obvious. I got to know the sound of a baby coot because there was one living on the nearby lake and it peeped incessantly. The bird I’m hearing now could be a wood pigeon or an owl. Its sound is almost a cry, somewhere between a hoot and a coo. A hoo.

    I was awake at three, possibly because of jet lag, having arrived back in the UK after 3 weeks in Canada. But it’s been a few days now so it is more likely the mind unable to fall back to sleep after being woken to go and relieve the bladder. I was dreaming of giant crocodiles and Steve Irwin, bless his Crocodile Hunter heart.

    The mind is also being kept awake by its desire to ruminate further on a major life decision. The decision has been made but how it loves to go over and over the details! I employed all meditation techniques to no avail. Finally I got up to write.

    Making decisions at the best of times let alone major life ones is never easy for the recovering perfectionist. I once stood in the linen section of a giant store trying to decide which sheets to buy. I was probably there for an hour before I left empty-handed. If I struggle to decide whether the cotton-striped or the plain flannel are right for me you can imagine what happens when I have something really important to discern. Total mental chaos leading to eventual paralysis.

    I have gotten better. There is hope. Change is possible. And yet I still seem to have to go through a certain amount of turmoil before I actually decide what to do. Sticking with the decision is also difficult. Depending on the level of impact on others I can experience all kinds of guilt and shame and remorse. Ridiculous but true.

    So I’ve made a major life decision. I’ve decided to move back to Canada after 19 months abroad, leaving the community I’ve been living in and the job I’ve been working at. It is the right thing to do and yet the fear comes at me in myriad ways threatening to pull me back and keep me down. I need every resource at my disposal to remain steadfast in the peace that came with the final decision. Because believing the doubt does not bring peace. It just sets me back in indecision. And indecision is really just another form of control.

    Control is the perfectionist’s drug of choice. Getting off it is a lifetime journey of letting go practiced one decision at a time. Luckily, or unluckily, depending on your view, Life itself is the rehab centre. We’re given countless opportunities each day to release the fear and trust in the Unknown. Like the bird singing in the dark trusting day will come.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: Despite my fear of making a mistake I will stick to my decision. I will surrender perfectionism and let go of trying to get it right. I will practice trusting the Unknown.

    Humble Pie

    • November 23, 2015 4:03 am

    “O Lord, it’s hard to be humble/When you’re perfect in every way…”

    This old country song by Mac Davis has been running through my head lately as I have recently experienced a newfound humility borne out of an old way way of behaving.

    The word “humility” is often confused with the word “humiliation” and yet they are not the same. When I am humiliated I feel bad or ashamed about myself. When I am truly humble I am teachable, right-sized and grateful.

    When I am trying to be perfect “in every way” I am hardly in a teachable frame of mind. What can I learn when I already know everything? I am not the right size for my skin because I am ten-feet tall and bullet proof. And how can I be thankful when I am judging everybody else for not being as perfect as I am?

    I often say I am a recovering perfectionist. Perfectionism is its own form of addiction. I am consumed by the need to be right and I will go to any lengths to sustain the illusion that I have the power to control others and outcomes. Like many addictions perfectionism is coming from a deeply wounded place. I’m not a perfectionist because I’m an exceptional person I’m a perfectionist because I am a broken person.

    Last week, after trying to win my way through a discussion and coming up against brick wall after brick wall I was finally confronted with my own self-righteousness. It was not a pleasant feeling. The worst part about it was that I thought I was being very spiritual the whole time I was engaged in the battle! That sounds frighteningly similar to the terrorist who attacks others in the name of God. (I’m being hard on myself. And yet if we are not examining our inner assassins we are hardly in a position to condemn the “real” ones. I feel another post coming on…)

    After it became clear that I had been acting like a hypocrite I had no other recourse but to admit I was wrong and make amends. The response from the other side was silence. No more fighting. The interior response was peace. I am dumbstruck by the complete paradox of this simple formula: We diffuse the bomb through surrender. (Would this work as a tactic at the political level? Declaring peace? There’s that other post again…)

    As the shame from my humiliation gradually transformed into humility I began to see a wider view. I remembered that my self-centered behaviour is not actually who I am. It is merely the action that comes forth from my woundedness. I reconnected to the unbroken, untouched Sacred Centre that is the True Core of Who I Am and what do you think emerged? Gratitude.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: Accepting my imperfection is an ongoing process. I will give thanks for my humanness, which allows my Whole Self to continually emerge.

    Home Run

    • June 6, 2011 10:31 am

    Dearest Readers,

    A cousin of mine recently dug up some old home movies and sent a DVD copy my way. My immediate family didn’t have a video camera so I haven’t ever seen any live footage of myself from my childhood. Pictures, yes. Moving pictures, no.

    So there I was, no longer a child but not yet a teenager, captured on video and suddenly brought to life on the computer screen. All I’ve ever had of those days are memories that play out in the recesses of my mind. Now they were before me, vivid and tangible. The year was 1983.

    The clip I saw was a family baseball game at my grandparents farm.  After the novelty wore off (seeing the past come to life is pretty cool) I found the footage difficult to watch. There before me was the girl I used to be. And it wasn’t pretty.

    I pushed my youngest sister aside when she tried to help me play catcher. I refused my other young sister’s pitches because they weren’t up to my standards. I yelled at the other players to run faster. I vied for attention when hit by a ball. All in all, it was rather excruciating.

    My immediate response was to go into shame. What a bad kid I was. What a bully. What a bossy pants. What a self-absorbed sore-loser. Look how I ruined the game for everyone!

    This has been a pattern in my life. Beating myself up. The sick pleasure it provides is quite baffling but it makes some sense. The inner perfectionist gets to say, “See? You are no good after all.” Painful but understandable. The wounded wound. The hurt hurt.

    Being on the Healing Path means I must be willing to change that pattern of thinking. I don’t get to indulge in self-brutality. I need to flip it. I need to change the behaviour.

    That night I wrote in my journal: “Could I have mercy on that little girl? Could I love her with all of my heart? She was doing her best. She didn’t have emotional tools. She didn’t have real living skills. She’d experienced sexual trauma only a few short years before. It was not her fault she behaved that way. Those were her survival mechanisms. She was who she was at that time. Love her. Forgive her. Accept her. Be gentle with her.”

    And this is what I must do.

    The most amazing part about the healing process is finding out that there is still more to heal. This amazes me! I’ve done so much work! How can I still be holding myself hostage for my past behaviour?

    I believe it is because we, as humans, are the walking wounded. No matter what our individual wounding is we carry it with us all our lives. And we heal by degrees. We heal in layers. One comes off and another one lies beneath.

    This can feel discouraging but, in fact, it is the opposite. It encourages me to remember I am not perfect and I’m not expected to do any of this perfectly. I simply have to do it degree by degree, layer by layer, one step at a time.

    Now that’s worth watching.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: I will continue to forgive myself. For who I am today, for who I was yesterday and for who I will become tomorrow. I will say it now, “I forgive you for being human.”

    Reach for the Top and Stop

    • July 30, 2010 8:11 am

    Dearest Readers,

    We inherit our parents’ behaviours. This is not news to anyone. They pass on to us all that they are and all that they know: the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful.

    Both of my parents are perfectionists. It’s no surprise that both of their parents are/were, too. I have struggled most of my life with the effects of this debilitating dis-ease and have done big time work on myself to overcome the suffering perfectionism can cause. As many of you know, I often refer to myself a “recovering perfectionist.”

    It’s easy for me to forget that just as there are two sides to every story so there is an asset to accompany every defect. I was reminded of this last night by my dear old dad.

    For the last couple of weeks I have been staying in Montreal with my parents in a house they are looking after for some friends of theirs. Tomorrow we are all leaving. My mother has been gearing up to do a “major job” on the house before we go.

    This has been the story of our lives. It’s the clean-your-room-the-cleaning-lady-is-coming syndrome. We leave houses in a better state than they were in when we arrived. If we break a glass it gets replaced with a set of six and some placemats on the side. In other words, we have been taught to go above and beyond, over the top, round the loopin’ bend of the call of duty.

    Though I am getting better at keeping my mouth shut in family situations I didn’t manage to do so successfully on this issue. There is a woman coming here to clean the house after we leave and still my mother was talking about this “major job” we had to do to get the house ready.

    So I turned my frustration into a little song while we were doing the dishes: “Above and beyond the call of duty/That’s why we’re so f’d up/Forcing us to go/Above and beyond/The call of duty…”

    My dad cracked up laughing (thank goodness a sense of humour has also been a cherished family trait) but then he said, “You wouldn’t have gotten where you are in life without going above and beyond the call of duty.”

    He was right. I couldn’t rebut. My personal drive can also be attributed to this powerful instinct to please others, to succeed, to do more and be more. If the defect of perfectionism is to go over the top then the asset surely must be  to strive for one’s personal best.

    So I have to hand it to my parents. They gave me a lot of issues from which I am currently recovering but they gave me a lot to be grateful for as well. I owe them more than a critical song-and-dance number. I owe them my deepest thanks.

    Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go and re-tile the guest bathroom.

    Inspiring Message of the Day: Every negative attribute I have inherited from the generations before me has a positive side as well. I will recognize the asset in the defect and see if I can find the middle ground.