Saturday, January 20, 2024

Everyone is talking about IT!

  


 Once upon a time Everyone was happy. There were no potholes in the road and a Starbucks at every corner on the way home from work, and a game or a good movie waited for us on tv after a good dinner with family.

 And then....

 Everyone was talking about IT. 

The whole country and soon the world was a-buzz. I would have found the trend sadly amusing, if it were not so scary.  It was as if NO ONE knew of IT before. But no matter.  Even if we had we had ignored it, we could not any longer.  Because everyone was talking about IT. And we became very afraid.

We began to blame and hate. Everything was wrong. It was as if only yesterday, before IT, no one was being murdered in our inner cities, our children were not being neglected in foster homes or abandoned or kidnapped by traffickers, no one was dying prematurely and at increasingly alarming rates from diabetes, obesity, suicide and from many other stress related illnesses. We had not been concerned that our children did not play outside anymore, nor did they know the history of their own family or town in which they lived.
But of course, not only had all that existed, but these issues had been growing globally and at unprecedented rates.  

 And then IT arrived. And overnight we became an enlightened population -- not about everything that was wrong -- but about IT. We were sorely afraid. We were now wishing and hoping and waiting for someone or something outside ourselves to fix IT as well as us, our country and the world. 

Everyone is still talking about IT. 
….  as if there is nothing else.

What if...?

We never mentioned IT for 24 hours?  for 48 hours? 

We began talking about A NEW IT!? 

   We find a NEW VISION? A NEW PERSPECTIVE?



 Instead, let's tune in, tap in, and turn on to the IT within.
Stop for a moment. Listen.

Feel IT.

The Yearning


Click on the link below to find out more about Judy's books.


Oh, and don’t forget!! Readers’ reviews keep writers motivated.

USEFUL LINKS 

            Let's Tune In, Tap In, And Turn It On!



 



Friday, December 31, 2021

2022! Let's Rock It 'Til The Roof Caves In!

 




December 31, 2021

Letting go and New beginnings!

What a year ! But then I looked back at the previous five years! What a  ride I have been on! But for today. I am reviewing 2021.

Every New Year is pivotal yet always the same. A time of letting go. And in contrast,  a time of Grabbing the ring on the Carousel! But for me, this year has been the most  intense of the past five years.

I began 2021 as I had  done for the last  twenty years  traveling to Quartzite  to reunite with friends. This year I reunited  with a  unique group  I had met the year before – my man group!

I had sold my house in California, and as the Universe has its way of lining up events,  this eclectic and  goodhearted group of  guys became the angels in my life when “complications” developed at end of escrow leading to the eviction of the  tenant. My property manager and real estate agent called my man group “ Judy’s Henchmen” but I called them Angels. Because with their help I closed escrow and the eager new owner  could start his own new  life chapter  as did the tenant.  (No tenant was injured in this event.)

The sale of my home  cut my  last ties  to California where I had lived the last  fifty years.(except the last six when I lived full-time in my motorhome traveling the country writing my books and presenting my writing and motivational seminars.)  A Big Change in the making. I had decided to move to a small town on  the southern Oregon coast, Brookings, Oregon. I bought my home in Curry County in which the slogan here is, “There’s no hurry in Curry.”  And so, as I learned to release the  hustle and bustle  life of California my lessons of patience  and trusting the process of life as it is began.


On April 1st  I laid down my California money on a home  I couldn’t  believe I was buying but knew in my heart was the right one for me.

Four months later I have  settled into my perfect fit for a home. As I write this,  I am looking out my window  upon a mountain of green trees  and a light rain  that seems to  dampen  my entire world. The gift of a thin layer  of snow at Christmas  has melted from an occasional sunny day In this  place I have decided is a vortex  of ocean, river, and rain to create a circle of good will  that I have only found a few other places in my travels.

Now as I gather the hard and easy  lessons I’ve learned from 2021, and    mold them  into the massive  bundle  of other incredible gifts of years past, I am ready to meet 2022  head on, as the newest updated version of Judy!

 I leave behind one of the most beloved influencers  of my life. The one who lived the biggest life of all and might be the most influential ... my dearlest, beloved cat, Sportster. May his next cat life rock the world like he did mine. 

I wish you all  a wonderful and  bountiful new year. May your cup of kindness and good will overflow that the entire world will notice.

I am sending my wishes of love and good will to every one of you … because all of you … guaranteed … every one of  you …

have  changed my life!

I am eternally grateful!


Happy New Year!

 With love,

Judy Howard  

(And Sportster in spirit)

Friday, October 2, 2020

What have we become?

 

Look Away

 

What have we become? How did this happen?

The discontent has  been brewing  for quite some time or maybe it began when Europe thought the solution to solving what was wrong in their country would be to send their condemned  criminals and misfits to live far, far away in the wilds of the new world.



What is happening is as old as time. As government takes over more and more, we become less involved and less invested with one another. We become separated. We see only the differences in one another. And we are afraid.

When we live in fear, we cannot be loving. We lose our perspective that we are all a part of the whole, that we are connected.

When we distrust  the man across the street who doesn’t drive, but rides the bus  --- when we become suspicious of the apartment dwellers across the tracks, and those who reside in the small little town huddled in the woods who keep to themselves   --- when we  compare those who live in the southern part of the state to the northerners, the east coast to the west coast ---  

We see only an endless list of  differences.




In nature, differences abound, but when united they create a rash and intrepid life force!  Every river contributes to the ocean’s mighty tides.  What happens when one tree joins together with the myriad of others and share their space? An eight hundred-billion-acre canopy of shelter and a cornucopia of nourishment is born for the various herds, nests, dens and packs of animals and species.

And what happens when we cease to experience and understand nature’s endless and herculean demonstrations of strength in unity?  We disgrace ourselves; we ignore her message and we look away. We find ourselves  focusing only on the  six inches of blue light of our phones, the seventy-two inches of our TV screen and the print on our Kindles which tell us what  we should want and what we shouldn’t do, what we should love and what we must fear. And because we see nothing else, we believe that is our reality.    

What happens? There is no imagination. No wonder. Nothing left to debate.

 


What remains? Only argument, accusations, denouncing, and denial.  And we are left to believe our safety, our security and our faith are in the hands of only  two blatant and embarrassing examples of our humanity,  vying for control of what is the largest and most powerful economy on the globe.

When we lose our focus, only fear remains which takes of down the path of anger, distrust, and depression. None of those whom we have looked to have restored our confidence or our faith, nor have they have acted as leaders.   None have built trust or hope. The world only saw two fighting dogs in a small ring behind the barn.

When we believe only two can make us strong, when we believe billions of dollars will unite us and create a safe and secure future, we have forgotten or never known that the only  real and lasting power is in unity. Billions of energies coming together.   

It is time to look away, to learn  from the raindrops which formed the endless seas, to learn from the plush and bountiful forests which give, you and me, and all earthly creatures, the air that we  breathe, the food for our families, and shelter from the storms.

 We only need to look away from   our screens – look away from the fake chaos paid and produced to steal our attention from the non-profitable but peaceful and caring reality that still exits -- if only we look away.





 We  need to be accountable for  only our small part in this world’s big picture. Be the raindrop, be the tree. Reach out. Become a part of the whole, like the raindrop is to the ocean, and like the tree is the forest.  And then we can become as the universe is mighty.

What happens  if  you and I  face our obligation to the whole?  What remains when we walk across the proverbial street and shake the hand of a stranger?

 All of us, not just two, but  all of us, and the strangers whom we have not yet met, become a unit of strength mightier than all of the oceans and more nourishing than all of the forests.

United we become like the Almighty.




 Click on the link below to find out more about Judy's books.





Oh, and don’t forget!! Readers’ reviews  keep writers motivated.

USEFUL LINKS 

Other books by Judy Howard: JUDY’S AMAZON  AUTHOR  PAGE


Click on the link below to find out more about Judy's books.






Safe travels!



 

Monday, August 31, 2020

Do you know what today is? Today was your future yesterday!

 

  Today was your future, yesterday.

Welcome September! Growing up in Illinois, fall became my favorite time of the year.  I welcomed the brisk, crisp air after   the long, hot and humid summer,  a season when my sis and I would rake up the musky leaves, amassing their shades of red and gold and earthen browns into towering heaps that  made the most  perfect of world of tunnels.  

And when the afternoon shadows stretched across the lawn,  the fresh fallen leaves crunched as we fell backwards onto their bed. And then we wasted  the  afternoon away while we studied  the magical clouds as they  painted kittens and puppies and  lions across the backdrop of  a perfectly blue sky.


For the past four years, I have planned my road trips so that I would arrive in Illinois to enjoy fall’s rapture.

But today, as fortunate as I am to be savoring the sound of the crashing coastal waves of the Pacific as I write to you, I am saddened  that this 2020 fall season  I will be  missing  the experience of reliving my childhood memories … and also regretting  that I never packed a rake on one of those visits.

Missed opportunities.  I vow here and now! Next year I'm bring a rake!

During today's  trying times, when I've  considered the adventures that  I believe I am missing,  I have become  engaged in a brawl between clinging to my optimism, or joining the vast crowds of the bitter and blaming.

This girl, whom you all have called inspirational, a firecracker, and an adrenaline junkie, feels as if she’s been at war with her soul.


At first, in March, I relished the chance to waste my days away, dreaming of tomorrow when things would go back to normal.  I treated the stay-in-place order like I had the long, humid Illinois summers.  I waited for the misery to pass. I made the best of it.

 Through the month of  April I grabbed hold of the opportunity to write  day and night undisturbed. April became my adult version of lying in a bed of fresh fallen leaves and getting lost in the journey of the clouds.

But soon my patience waned and the thunderous clouds of anger, hate, negativity and fear shadowed me everywhere I went. The new limiting circumstances made it impossible to escape.  It seemed as if there was nowhere to go.

And now it is September, and even though I am enjoying fall in Oregon, my heart yearns for the classical season of an Illinois fall.

 What to do?

 With only four months left of this  unusual year, I am ready to rake up the last six months of claustrophobia, loneliness, anger and regret,  gather up the multitude of mixed emotions into a heap,

 and then, 

like my childhood pile of old musky dead leaves …

Jump in!

This novel experience that we all are sharing?   I say, it is like Bette Midler’s, song, The Rose. This untried and unfamiliar encounter is not a river made to drown us, nor a razor leaving us to bleed, nor does it have the power to fill us with a hunger or aching need.  Instead, it is  a season of transformation, like the fall.

Perhaps we are experiencing is an audition, a shakedown, a prelude for a   glory even more spectacular than Bette Midler’s The Rose.


When the trees bare their leaves, I do not see the leaf’s demise as a death, or the  forest’s appearance as stark.  Instead I choose to see the trees  have offered up a gift of gratefulness, for the summers’ nurturing heat that contributed to their abundance of fruit … and thus, their seeds to be strewn upon the ground. 

 Do they know that through their sacrifice, they will become heroes in the spring? Do they know their blanket of warmth across the cold barren ground offers an opportunity in the spring for The Rose to perform its miracle?  

I look back upon the big picture of my life, and the struggles I thought I would never be able to endure, and yet somehow, I did.  

All of those troubles and tragedies brought me here, to this life I am living, a life I love. A life  created out of the  ashes  of my troubles that  I could never have imagined.

So, I will confront this novel  unknown  as I have always done. I will refuse to be afraid of a heartache, or to learn to dance, or to take a chance. I will not be so afraid of dying that I forget to live. 

So who's with me?  I say, “Bring it on! Show me what you’ve got!”

Oh, the new friends you will make!

Oh, the people we will meet and the miracles we will create! 

 We are all under the same blanket of fear. Let's not see it only as dead smelly leaves.  For me, I’m changing my perspective.  This season, which yesterday seemed dire, I now see as a promise and we are the seeds. 

And if we are the seeds, then we are also the future. We are full of tomorrows which are offering us  unlimited opportunities. And through these opportunities we will be  transformed into someone  more amazing  than we were yesterday.

Making Friends while riding the rails in Ione, Washington.

Sportster is winning friends (meet Tadd) and influencing people in Kalispell, Montana while our new refrigerator is being installed at Gardner's RV .
.

How long will it take? Who knows?  But the journey is an exciting challenge and the makeover will be spectacular! 

Today is the first day of your future.

 

                                    The Rose



Bette Midler

Some say love, it is a river, that drowns the tender reed
Some say love, it is a razor, that leaves your soul to bleed
Some say love, it is a hunger, an endless aching need
I say love, it is a flower, and you, its only seed

It's the heart afraid of breaking, that never learns to dance
It's the dream afraid of waking, that never takes the chance
It's the one who won't be taken, who cannot seem to give
And the soul afraid of dying, that never learns to live

When the night has been too lonely and the road has been too long
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong
Just remember in the winter, far beneath the bitter snows
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love in the spring becomes the rose.


Click on the link below to find out more about Judy's books.






Oh, and don’t forget!! Readers’ reviews  keep writers motivated.

USEFUL LINKS 

Other books by Judy Howard: JUDY’S AMAZON  AUTHOR  PAGE


Click on the link below to find out more about Judy's books.






Safe travels!



Tuesday, April 21, 2020

The Power To Determine a New Normal





Your most authentic self is not who you currently are, but rather, who you desire to become. You are the author of your life’s narrative. You have power to determine the stages of life you will be on and the characters you will play.




Today is my birthday.

I have favorite days of the year. Thanksgiving - for the food and the sentiment behind the holiday. New Year’s Eve, a time for reflecting and looking forward. And my birthday, a time to say goodbye to who I was yesterday and to plan for a new and improved version of me for tomorrow.




Yesterday I wanted the world we live in to be a better place.

I wanted us to disconnect from everything and connect more with one another.

 I wanted us to find a universal commonality that would show us we are all in this together.

I wanted to us to discover that the answer to longevity and health is not to focus on what is wrong with us and our world, but instead to envision the future and the life we want.

Yesterday I embraced the belief that change is as simple as a new idea going viral.

Yesterday I hoped everyone would grab ahold of an innovative concept, a new life design and take it to heart.  



Yesterday I believed this new outlook, this conjecture would be a novelty, a miracle cure, and yet as old as dirt which had always been here, right under our noses. but just overlooked as insignificant.

 Yesterday I wanted us to keep an eye on the prize. Not the problem. Because when you decide what you want, the universe conspires to make it happen.


Yesterday my aspiration was to help those who only saw guilt and anger, and sadness remorse when they looked at their journey through their past.

Yesterday I wanted to show those who were in despair, believing their life was a stagnant pond, that if they continued on their path, they would be like  the raindrop which believed it did  not make a difference in the flood or in the drought. Where would we be then?  







We are all connected.














Today, my birthday present to myself?

I am looking forward to tomorrow and engaging my newest  improved plan in hopes of inspiring others to follow their  star, connect with those unlikely  others  who will become  the wind beneath their wings and to soar into their future in which they have envisioned.





Because we all know you go where your eyes go.
You may think it is difficult to plan for tomorrow during these life changing times. You ask, “How can we plan when we don’t know what tomorrow brings?’

 Did any of us ever have a crystal ball? Could any of us see the big picture?  No. We only thought we could. The illusion of being in control is just that, -- an illusion.

  Self-distancing?  Sure!

You may think it is difficult to plan for tomorrow during these life changing times. You ask, “How can we plan when we don’t know what tomorrow brings?’




 Did any of us ever have a crystal ball? Could any of us see the big picture?  No. We only thought we could. The illusion of being in control is just that, -- an illusion.

  Self-distancing?  Sure!

 But we can no longer distance ourselves from our problems and the struggles of others.  We cannot sit back on our haunches and throw money at our degrading lifestyle and culture in order to fix it.  

Money will not repair the world consciousness in which at this moment 80 % of the global population suffers from depression and stress. And that rate was rising at an alarming rate before COVID19 struck.

Neither can we continue to look to our government for solutions.

We must cease looking outside of ourselves for the answers.

We need to disconnect from the noise, be quiet and look within.

From the bottom of my heart, more than words can say it is my wish to save our planet. Overly ambitious? I think not.

We have been so focused on the tragedy of the COVID19 pandemic we have forgotten to see the heroes.  Those who have succumbed to this devasting illness are our heroes! Their sacrifices have made way for a new enriched future.

Our skies are bluer our hearts are bigger, and our compassion is stronger. We are connected with one another.

We’ve been afraid far too long even before this virus came into being, but we are not born to be a fearful people. It was killing us.

And now look how far we have come!!

 we are coming together We are slowing down and going within for our solutions. Each of us is listening to an  answer  that is  unique only to us. We are coming together. We’re believing in miracles, loving our heroes, and giving, not money but ourselves, our time and our hearts in order to make someone’s life better.  

My plan for tomorrow?  As only one raindrop, I hope to continue sprinkling inspiration and faith to convince you that anything is possible if you…..

Be still.

Go within

Listen

And believe that what you hear is your way.  








Click on the link below to find out more about Judy's books.






Oh, and don’t forget!! Readers’ reviews  keep writers motivated.

USEFUL LINKS 

Other books by Judy Howard: JUDY’S AMAZON  AUTHOR  PAGE


Click on the link below to find out more about Judy's books.






Safe travels!