Life is TOUGH.  No matter your color, race, religion, or background, life will always bring challenges you have to face. You will be scrutinized, judged, and persecuted for your beliefs by those who think differently than you do.

When life gets tough, it’s tempting to let our hearts HARDEN ~ to view the world through the lens of our past hurts. That will leave you feeling alone.

And when we look through the tainted lens, we start to DOUBT that good still exists.  We might find ourselves losing faith in people, holding back and hesitant to trust others. The hurt caused by one person can spread, leaving us guarded and overly CAUTIOUS as if we’re constantly waiting for the past to repeat itself.

Instead of thinking “resolution”, how about TRANSFORMATION? Developing and acquiring new skills and stepping out of our comfort zone to reach our full potential. Doesn’t that sound better? Working on DEVELOPING ourselves in a positive manner rather than proclaiming we are going to do something that we have no intention of doing.

Here we are, the beginning of a NEW year! Do you find that to ge encouraging or exhausting? For many people, January 1st each year is a time to start over. A FRESH start. It’s like we consider a calendar year as being broken down into 12 chapters and those 12 chapters become a book with the year as a title “Mama P 2023”. There is a beginning and an end to each book, but many STORIES occupy those pages. There is not just one beginning though, we have so MANY beginnings throughout the year.

You see it everywhere, on shirts, posters, billboard, etc. You know, the statement “Be Kind” or the one I as a beekeeper prefer “Bee Kind”. It seems that everywhere we go there it is, that statement, a REMINDER, to be kind. Why? Why do we need to be reminded to ACT with kindness? Why do we have to have something spark that character trait within us? Why can’t we just do it - just be kind?

Do you get so caught up in the day-to-day routines that you forget to take TIME for yourself? Do you feel like taffy being pulled from one role you play in life to the next, and next, and next? Sometimes in that taffy-pulling process you can FORGET to take time to breathe. You forget about taking care of yourself because you are focused on taking care of others and trying to JUGGLE family and career.

Do you sometimes drive yourself CRAZY with the things you do?  I sure do!  Sometimes I think my brain is just in overdrive.  I get an IDEA to do something and it just keeps going and building from that tiny snowball of an idea into an enormous, watch-out-because-this thing-is-going-to-knock-you-over snowball!  

Life happens in stages, phases, chapters, whatever you want to call it, and none of them last forever. Stages and phases are typically used to describe the DEVELOPMENT of something, whether a human, animal, plant, etc., but they can both be used for adults as well since throughout life we are developing - mentally, physically, socially. And every phase of life has a LESSON to teach you. You need to learn the lessons and grow from them, but then let go of that phase so you can move on in your GROWTH and focus on the present phase of your life. Live, learn, and move on.

Lifelong learning, physical and mental health, having a sense of PURPOSE and achievement, and overall wellness. These are all vital to a healthy life at ALL stages of life! Wellness does not just entail nutrition and exercise, there really is so much more to it. And thank goodness, because just the IDEA of nutrition and exercise can be more than some people can handle so they immediately feel deflated. Let’s think out of the box for a minute. What about learning a new SKILL, taking up a new hobby, finally doing something on your “bucket list”? Enjoying a newfound sense of achievement can help you to REGAIN your sense of purpose while improving your physical and mental health.

Let’s face it, life is HECTIC! It seems like there is rarely a free moment to just relax. When it comes to holidays, well, that can not only be OVERWHELMING and nerve racking, it can be almost impossible to get everyone together. Everyone has their "place to go” for each holiday and a lot of people become the ROPE in a major tug-of-war event with families on his side and her side - everyone wants you at the same time! You become emotionally and physically exhausted and may even dread or RESENT holidays because of it.

We all encounter storms in our lives. Nobody is immune to them. But how we RESPOND to those storms . . . well that’s our choice. Completely. TOTALLY. Nobody can force you to stand in the rain and get soaking wet. Nobody can force you to dance in the storm or rainfall of life. There always has been and always will be storms. But there also always has been and always will be bright, sunny, warm days. We have to take the good with the bad, the sunshine with the rain. Unless we experience the rain and storms, we can’t fully APPRECIATE the sunshine.