It would turn out to be another fateful day.  We were all together as a family with friends at a Mountain Lodge and I took a break from all the activity to relax and read in my room. That's where my daughter's boyfriend, Dan, found me and that began the fateful part of the day. He asked if we could talk so I set my book aside to see what pearls...

Messages in bottles have been the stuff of folklore for centuries. Dying, desperate sailors have hurled them. Curious children have launched them. Nicholas Sparks wrote a novel based on them, but don’t read it—or watch the movie—unless you already have a prescription for antidepressants. The story I find most interesting about such bottles,...

Messages in bottles have been the stuff of folklore for centuries. Dying, desperate sailors have hurled them. Curious children have launched them. Nicholas Sparks wrote a novel based on them, but don’t read it—or watch the movie—unless you already have a prescription for antidepressants. The story I find most interesting about such bottles,...

Blah, blah, blah! All too often the words we speak come across as meaningless chatter. Communication, the transmitting of information from one person to another is such a common part of our lives that we engage in it without giving the words we speak much thought. Our communication techniques can devalue those we are closest to. In fact communication...

67% of first time marriages go the distance. I was reading a report on divorce statistics from StatsCan and this fact jumped off the page.  It seemed to contradict a much repeated statistic that 50% of marriages end in divorce.  So which one is true?  Well, they both are actually. Two of every three new marriages will indeed last for life….but...

How are your relationships with your family, your friends? As a culture we do not have strong relationships the way that we used to.  In the past there were very strong communities.  Generations stayed in the same area and spoke into each others’ lives.  It takes years to build the type of friendship where you can speak the truth and have it...

Human behavior suggests that people are “hard-wired" to retaliate when they have been hurt by another person.  Our pride or self-esteem is injured. Our expectations or dreams are disappointed.  We lose something very valuable to us.  We want recompense for the damages. But there are other resistances which block our motivation to forgive. ...