Skip to main content

Day 30: Title of my memoir



WOW!  I cannot believe we are at Day 30 of the 30 day Blogember challenge to blog each day.  How did that time pass so quickly?  It honestly wasn't a challenge - it was a real pleasure!  Not only to write each day, but to read the writings of my new friends who are also participating!

Today's topic is title of my memoir and why.

Hmm … when I ponder that prompt my first thought is to be clever and witty, funny and description.  And yet when I got quiet for a moment, the phrase that settled with me is one that is very familiar to my internal voice.

Breathe.

During several difficult times in my life I've had to surrender to the mantra: breathe in, breathe out.  The rest will take care of itself.  And now I remind myself of that phrase even before things are escalated to a 'difficult' time.  And that reminds me to focus on what's within my control, and what do I have to allow to unfold in it's own time.

So the chapters in this memoir could easily have one word titles as well.

1) acceptance
2) surrender
3) survival
4) endurance
5) endear

And those to me are all the words that make up the many-threaded weave of my life - as the body of this memoir!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Day 19: My first job

Memories of my childhood bakery with a cannoli …. As this roller coaster ride of emotions and outpouring continues on Day 19 challenge to blog each day in the month of November for Blogember I recall my first job. I often say that when we recall the past, things that appear to have gone on forever, are often relatively short in the grand scheme of things.  After my dad passed away when I was 8, my mom remarried a year later.  By the time I was 10 they went into business together opening a neighborhood Italian bakery on the west side of the town I grew up in. This was long before the days of Carlo's Bakery where cakes cost hundreds, even thousands of dollars. A bakery was a lot of hours and energy for very little profit back then.  To that end, I was cheap labor and was trained to bag rolls and make change at the cash register.  In retrospect it talk me a lot about customer service, the value of relationships in returning customers and how running a family b...

Day 17: Happiest Year in Elementary School

Today's post for Blogember - the commitment to blog each day during the month of November is about choosing my happiest year in Elementary school and why. Elementary school is much of a blur of school and teachers that largely run together, with the exception of a few moments that stand out with ringing clarity. The year I was in second grade was marked with another change to Division Street School and blessed with Mrs. Barbara Chubb as my teacher.  I'm not sure I'd call it idyllic, yet  by all other signs it appeared to be a quite normal school year.  Until my father 'got sick' in February and died in early June before the end of that school year. And then the world changed. Immediately. I recall an instant change in responsibility and how life as I knew it would never, ever be the same. I would not call that my happiest year.  I would call that my most life-changing.  Would first grade be my happiest because it was the last school year I had my ...

Day 26: Favorite Teacher

When I reflect back on my school years several teachers stand out to me:  Mr Favat - 7th grade English who encouraged me to keep writing…. stories, poems, doesn't matter .. "just keep writing," he told me. And Mr. Stanley - 10th grade Health whose lessons still ring true today - it was more of a human relations class and life lessons than it was a traditional high school Health class. Yet, the person that changed things for me was a professor that I encountered when I returned to college as an adult to complete my Bachelor's Degree.  At the time I wasn't even sure what my major was going to be, as I'm was fully emerged in a successful career that didn't require additional training or education. When I found Professor Pfitzer in the American Studies department at Skidmore College I was hooked.  His classes inspired me to grow and learn in ways I hadn't done previously.  I developed a love of History and for putting the pieces together that I tre...