Family Encourager

The holiday season for our family is December! We celebrate Christmas in all its true sense. To be honest, the tree will go up in November, and gift buying and hiding them, will start anywhere in October onwards. The parties, the baking, the gatherings, the caroling, the continuous action will go on for a whole month!  We love the Festive Season for reasons we probably cannot articulate. Including love of family, friendships, spreading cheer, meeting old and new friends, making more effort for charity and unity, the food, yummy yummy food, church celebrations, gatherings of all sorts, ugly holiday sweaters, and even that weird relative you see only once a year. The whole package is all special and unique! I cannot explain it, but while I moan every year about everything that needs to get done for the holidays, I love every second of it! This holiday season, I am reminding my children of their blessings even more then years past. We live in a region of conflict and st...

Fifty years ago, being a 50 year old woman, meant you were counted as an old person. Fast forward to today, and 50 is the new 30! For the sake of this topic and because I am a mid age female, living this truth, I will discuss the woman's point of view. Sorry guys, you are going to have to find yourself somewhere in my writing. Aging is not a choice! Everyday if I look in the mirror I could find a new wrinkle, new line, new sag, new white hair, new jelly wobble, new reason to hate getting older. It's good I don't look in the mirror very often! How you age is a choice.  Outward appearances will change, it's a fact. Until the fountain of youth is discovered, as you get over a certain decade your body becomes unrecognizable. You wake up one day and think "who is this person staring back at me?" On the inside I feel like I am still 25! My spirit feels young and beautiful. The beauty industry in the last 20 years has metamorphosed from enhancing y...

As a family encourager, I encourage and support all types of families. In all shades, shapes, and sizes. In today's world, any family unit that lives under the same roof looking after each other is a beautiful thing. Even if I do not agree with the choices people make to become that family, I still encourage all types of families. Nuclear family, blended family, step family, grandparent family, single parent family, childless family, same sex family, adoptive family, the list is endless in family structures. It is also my belief that diversity and differences make our world a tapestry of freedoms and understanding. In our family, we raise our two children to respect all religions, skin color, and cultures. Our children have friends from all around the globe, their social circle looks like the United Nations, where all nationalities are welcome. We celebrate with those friends, their many festivals and religious holidays. We accept all their multifaceted lives, that ...

No family encourager blog will be complete without dedicating one or more entries to the family I have chosen. The family we are born into, is ours to have, like it or not! (That could probably fill a few months worth of writing!) Lucky for you, today I am not writing about that! My friends are my tribe, my team, my pack, the people that carry me through life. I hear soul mate bandied around all the time. I always wonder what that means? The definition of soul mate is "a person ideally suited to another as a close friend or romantic partner". The truth is that your soul mate does not have to be a romantic partner, it could easily be a soul sister or brother. Yes, I have male friends that have been especially extraordinary in my life. I have been blessed in my life, that wherever the world has taken me, I have met amazing hearts that have made my new journey worth it and that balanced the "new place" feeling with an "at home" feeling. H...

Being married as long as I have and being "wise and worldly" now! (Said with an undertone of sarcasm). I wonder if happily ever after truly exists. The happily ever after, of fairy tales and princes on shining stallions. The happily ever after, of a bride framed at her wedding day, looking and feeling like a princess, remaining like that for eternity. The happily ever after, of the love and passion that couples start their life together with, continuing for a lifetime. The happily ever after, of movies and novels, were love prevails above all. Let us dissect that phrase, "happily ever after",  what I understand it to mean (in my wise and worldly way of course); "to live ones life happy forever, with your loved one"! Does anyone live happy forever? Ever? Is that even a thing? If you are such a human being, please get in touch immediately! I need to know! Marriage is a confusing state of affairs. You fall madly in love with a person and sign on th...

A few days ago, I spend a large part of my morning in a well known technology specialist store. I sat patiently observing the activity around me. The service I was there for, was mind numbingly slow and I had nothing else to occupy me, but to people watch. It made me wonder what my life has become with all the technology available to me. How my generation, whose formative years had very little technology available, has evolved. What have we gained or lost with the latest advances? Are we better or worse off when we had none of these gadgets in our life? I remember when spending time with a friend, meant you had to get dressed and use a form of transportation, to meet up. Now, you can have a social interaction in your living room with a virtual visitor, who lives thousands of miles away. When I had my first job, a fax machine was magical in comparison to the telex before it. Now, I can send a multitude of people the same note with a press of a b...

Like all humans existing in the developed world today, I am an avid user of social media. I, of course, being of a certain age, am unable to stay on top of this phenomena that has us in its clutches.  My teenage son is never far from what he calls "checking his social media". Yet again, I recently observed that my octogenarian father is not that far from his social media either. They both use it in different ways, my son to keep up to date possibly with trends and the latest gossip. My father for entertainment and to ward off loneliness. This blog will not be about, the pros and cons of social media and what it brings to our life or not. It is more as a self observation on what does social media make us. Are we more honest or less so knowing that our audience is not in the same room with us? As we go on with our daily life, we cannot help but compare and contrast what   we have, who we are, what our children are achieving, our total existence...