Image from “Always Love: Finding the Light in the Darkness – Caregiver Tips”

I felt honored recently to be interviewed by Bert Copple as his guest on the Caregiver Cafe Radio show, Tuesday, April 26.  We spoke of using Haiku for stress reduction and much more.

In the Metro Detroit, MI area the show was live-streamed and could be heard on the web in many areas throughout the country.  I’ll post the replay link here once it’s available.

During our time together, I was particularly impressed with Bert’s considering throughout this past week about ways Haiku writing [3 lines – 5 – 7 – 5 syllables] could be used by Caregivers in working with their loved ones and/or clients.  He reflected: “One might think ‘How am I going to capture emotions and feelings…into just 17 syllables?'”

The “Icing on the Cake” for me was Bert’s story on how he decided to “test” some of his thoughts with his just-turned-eight-years-old son Brady.  As he was tucking Brady into bed, the latter declared, “You know, Dad, the bed’s so cold, I can’t fall asleep.”

Bert continued his story stating: “Thinking about what I read on your website, I got the idea to get Brady to refocus. I told him, ‘I have an idea. Let’s write a Haiku about how your bed’s cold.'”
Bert then  went on to explain Haiku to his son.

Within 5 minutes of working together, Brady declared:
“Cold bed freezes toes
Heart-racing warming my nose
Tucked in tight. Good night.”

Pretty awesome, especially for an 8-year old, wouldn’t you agree?

I was moved and close to tears, particularly as Bert continued:

“Here’s what I noticed… What I loved about this is that as he was writing, he got to share and express his emotions and his feelings… he felt validated and he got heard…In the process of doing it, the environment around him changed. His bed became warmer. He became more comfortable…

He took a situation that was not good, that he was not happy about in his little 8-year-old body and brain and he was able to all-of-a sudden transform it into a piece of art and use that artful expression to help calm himself down.”

Amongst the elements playing on my emotions were:

1 – How Haiku opened up new experiences with father and son… perhaps an even greater bonding;
2 – The actual demonstration of how things were altered for Brady in his environment;
3 – The using of the experience to transform, as Bert said, negative into a positive;
and
4 – The clear example of how transferable the writing of Haiku could be for easing and providing relief in so many situations.

As the interview continued, Bert asked me how one would get started writing a Haiku poem. I suggested the following. AND I invite you now to think of something that might be bothering you, perhaps a negative “refrain”, so-to-speak, that the voice in your head might sometimes, and/or regularly, nudge you with.

Instructions:
Speak it…
Finger count the syllables…
Pare the words down or add to it for 5 syllables total.
Then create a 2nd line of 7 syllables,
And the 3rd line…5.

Turning the above instructions into Haiku:

Troubling words out loud
Finger count the syllables
Feeling control now.

I now invite you to do one or more pieces of Haiku yourself, and share what you write in the comments below.  You can see more on the Haiku for Healing page on this site and you can get my Haiku for Healing PDF by filling in your name and email address on the form in the right sidebar.

A final Thank You to Bert and Brady. You made a difference for me and I’m sure many others now and in the future.

Again, please leave a comment below…Share a Haiku and/or a caregiver or family experience of your own.

The post Haiku by 8 year old, plus Guest on Radio Show first appeared on Writing For healing.

“The soul would have no rainbows if the eyes had no tears.” Laurel Burch

This quote is on a mug that I purchased from Amazon shortly after Sam died. During those first few difficult months, I gave myself permission to buy little, what for me were, “luxury items” as comforts for my soul, I suppose.

I do have several Laurel Burch mugs and hadn’t seen them since we moved here. The beauty of the image on this one initially drew me in and, even more importantly for me, the writing in the center of the mug was a reminder of tears… that tears are ok. Only I wasn’t doing much crying, permission or not. So that’s the story behind my having introduced the quote to our [writing] group today…

“Rainbows, I’m forever chasing,” I stated the other day when I went chasing a beautiful rainbow (to photograph) after a violent thunderstorm. It seems to me that perhaps the most beautiful rainbows come after turbulent storms rather than gentle rains.

Does my soul, thus, need turbulence to have rainbows in it? Does it need to have the tears to create whatever combination creates a rainbow? Beautiful colors? Shapes? Purity?

(and the 4 minute timer called the end….Interestingly, for me, the next prompt somewhat continued the “conversation.”)

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass… It’s about learning to stand in the rain.” – Anonymous

This one brings up immediate memories… tearful ones now…of the hurricane of a couple of years ago. I recently came across photos of Sam sitting in my closet… me, too, when I got back in to join him after taking the photo. Close and secure, the two of us, as we waited for the hurricane and its threats to pass over.

Though we weren’t physically standing in the rain we were going with it, no protest, simply enjoying being with one another and whatever was going on… at least I’d like to think there was no fear there.

The effects of that hurricane left us powerless… in electricity that is.. for several days. And we got to appreciate being in the present. Instead of complaining I treasured the time for reading, resting, eating gooshy strawberries that had defrosted and were still cold when I took them out of the cooler.

How glad I was to have Sam with me, my companion, my lover, and, I guess we were learning to stand in the rain of our lives over several years… the rain being the effects of Parkinson’s disease on him and, thus, us.

PS – For cheer when I bought the Rainbow Soul mug I also bought Laurel Burch’s Ponies and Parrots mug from Amazon –Final note on this post – Having created a miraculous life of beauty and love with her art and color and entrepreneurship, despite constant pain and broken bones, Laurel Burch sadly passed away (2 months and 8 days before Sam’s death) on Sept. 13, 2007 at the age of 61.

See her spirit and process in a 6-minute VIDEO interview with her. You can also read about her life in The New York Times – Obituary – Sept. 20, 2007.

NOTE: The two Laurel Burch mugs shown here are long longer available. You can find other beautiful ones on LAUREL BURCH MUGS on AMAZON .

First published on Sept 1, 2009. Updated December 7, 2019

The post Rainbow Soul and Tears – Storms in Life – Timed Writing Prompts first appeared on Writing For healing.

Although the following was not written for “healing writing” as such, I wanted to share it with you.

Starting, even before he was 9 years old, my grandson Ryan Finkelstein dreamed of being a baseball player.

And he never got close to it as you’ll read in his essay below.  It was written in response to a college application question:

“Describe a bump in the road in your academic or personal life.”

I was highly moved by the depths of what he wrote as well as the maturity of his writing. With his permission, I share it with you.

“If I never lost everything that I was, I never would have become who I am today, and the most important thing I have learned is to have faith and work hard and everything will work itself out.” (His concluding statement in the essay that follows.)
“The first sixteen years of my life were devoted to one thing and one thing only, baseball.

I was very much the same kid at sixteen as I had been my entire life, very simple and naïve. Not naïve in a bad way but so consumed by my passion that I hadn’t done that much growing up.

That all changed the Spring of my sophomore year. I had recently gotten my first job working at a fast-food restaurant and was starting to be opened up to the real world. Balancing a job, school, and baseball was going to be nearly impossible but I was preparing to face the challenge until my world was flipped upside down when I didn’t make the team.

I had spent nearly two years as a part of my high school baseball team and all of a sudden my entire identity at my school was erased. It was probably the hardest experience of my life only because I was in uncharted waters for the first time in my life.

I realized that some of my friendships were fake and superficial and once I was off the team my old friends almost disappeared. So I had to turn to the only new thing in my life and that was my work. Working for the restaurant was the greatest learning experience of my life, mostly because of the age I was at the time and the personal growth I went through. A job will mature you faster than you can ever expect.

First you start to have to meet a lot of people. Which was almost surprisingly new to me because although I have always met a lot of kids in school I had never really met people who were too different from me. All of sudden I have friends who are 10, 20, even 30 years older than I and I’m just this young kid.

The job taught me responsibility. I learned how to manage my money, and it really just gave me a completely different perspective on life in general. I am cognizant of the world around me and much more self confident than I have ever been.

I find myself saying “yes” to new opportunities more and I want to have new experiences and see things that I have never seen before.  Overall it is the self confidence that the job gave me that makes most ready to tackle college and influence the UCF community.

This self confidence leaves me feeling more mature than ever and as I sit in the same classrooms I can’t help but feel that I have now out grown high school. I have been everywhere I could want to go, met everyone I would want to meet, and I am eagerly anticipating my newest adventures.

If I never lost everything that I was, I never would have become who I am today, and the most important thing I have learned is to have faith and work hard and everything will work itself out.”

© 2013 Ryan Finkelstein, Age 18

The post A Bump in the Road – A Life-Transforming High School Experience first appeared on Writing For healing.

I am in a weekly writing group where the members and I do 4-minute, free-flow writing to quotes that participants bring. After I read my writing to the quote below, my friends became quite adamant in encouraging me to post it.

Though it wasn’t exactly “writing for healing”, I find all my free-flow writing is healing, in some way, as my subconscious speaks to me. I thank my friends Morgine Jurdan, Marifran Korb and Linda Butler today for their listening and giving me the space to be me.

The specific quote:

“If you are not living in AWE you are not paying attention,” Albert Einstein

to which I wrote:

“Right now I don’t feel like I’ve been living in awe at all.  So I guess I’m not paying attention. Actually what is most likely happening is that I’m paying more attention to my limiting thoughts/beliefs than to anything else. I don’t have time to be in AWE – to look outside myself.

And that’s not quite, or always, so. I’m thinking as I write, AWE is more a state of mind, a blank one, so that in everything we see, we can experience awe.

Well what is AWE ? Awakening to the Wonder of our Existence.

Awaken
Wonder
Existence – which encompasses everything.

To simply say “exist” seems very passive.  Existence is all embracing. To have it be one of awe is being present to the wonder around us, and within us, in each and every moment. Wow.

Sounds like a lot of hard work.  And I suppose it’s simply, or not so simply, training… initially, an exercise for being still and open.”

Thanks to Travis Ruskus, artist, photographer, rock balancer for his permission to use his photo.  The balancing of the rocks in the perfect, peaceful water scene seemed to be the “perfect” expression of balance, so necessary when we simply and totally “be present” to what’s in front of us.  I invite you to take a moment or two, BEING with, and in, AWE of the Wonder of Travis’ image.

Photo ©2013 Travis Ruskus – truskus.com •  Writing ©2013 Sheila Finkelstein – writingforhealing.com

The post In AWE – Being Present to the Wonder in Our Life first appeared on Writing For healing.

On this Father’s Day, 2013, I’m moved to post here, the “writing for healing” after my father died.  I then ultimately read it at his memorial service on March 3, 1987.

(Note: Top photo was likely taken sometime in 1941 or 1942 when I was 2 years old. The second photo was in Florida from a road trip our family of five took in 1953. I was 12 1/2.)

“Beloved Family and Friends,

I feel the need to sum up my feelings and discoveries in search for understandings of me and my father.

Uncle Dave has summed up his childhood.  To an extent the Daily News, his labor years, although it did not mention that my brothers and I are products of a Ladies Garment Workers picket line where Dad fell in love with Mom when he spotted her marching while he was organizing.

As we mourn his loss today, I’d like to share with you his final years in Florida and the man described to me by his wife, Laura, and his friends of the last 10 years.

My original intent was to have Rabbi Waintrup, whom Dad was so pleased at having hired when he was on the Board at Old York Road Temple, read this.  When I got to Florida last week, Dad proudly handed me a Temple newspaper that discussed the Rabbi’s celebrating 36 years there.  How proud Dad always was of what he helped to accomplish!

But as I reflected, I realized that for me, and as my father’s daughter, I needed to deliver whatever I write myself.  My sons said, “Mom can you do with without breaking down?”  With rehearsal, I think I can.  And, actually, I guess I am now the head of the Bakely/Grubman line.  Let me help us all as we mourn and attempt to make closure today.

When I came home from Florida in December after my father’s next-to-last surgery, I kept hearing the echoes of his beloved Laura, her sister and brother-in-law, Ada and Bernie, and his friends and neighbors.  They kept speaking of Sam, their “gentle warm, caring and wonderful friend.”

“Who is this ‘Little Boy/Man?”, I recall I thought.  “How did he get here?  What did I miss?  What did I gain?  What remains the same?  If he liked you then and now, he’d go all out to do for you.  That hadn’t changed.”

Those of you who know me well, know that I have few and isolated memories of things past.  But in flitting glimpses I most often picture, probably at age 5 or 6, standing alone on the corner  of Franklin and Jefferson Streets selling poppies for the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Then, in later youth, I see myself folding papers and stuffing envelopes for Democratic elections and ADA activities.  As I write, I hear the sound trucks going down the street, records singing and promoting candidates, “Don’t vote for Dewey or things will go screwy…”  and so I became his political ally.

At this point, it’s probably fitting to mention Dad’s last act before leaving for the hospital last Monday.  An hour before we were to leave, he went out to Town Hall to pick up an absentee ballot so he could be sure to cast a vote in the upcoming election.   “I want to make sure we get in a new regime,” he said.  When he returned to the apartment, he then instructed/counseled Ada [sister-in-law] on whom to vote for.

He was a man who always believed that his vote counted, that each and every vote counts, and that he could lead others to action and to have an effect.

Now that I’ve started, I could go on for hours on traits and actions.  Unfortunately for me, and him, I can’t talk about feelings in relation to him.   I cry for the fact that although I “know” that he adored me [others told me so], I never “felt” him, nor did he, me.  I could list his many organizations, many of which he led, including being treasurer and three times president of his co-op in Florida.

But it is actually about the Florida years I said I wanted to speak.  Harvey [my late brother] sums up the transition as, “He went from Steak Tartare and Beer, to Sprouts, Beets and Carrot Juice. Sunday morning big, raw, red meat hamburgers to natural foods, then only fish and vegetables.”

In his last 14 years, Dad had a chance to rest, to appreciate love, nature and friendship.  He was able to give much deserved pleasure and love to my mother, Eva, in her last years, sadly cut so short.  And then he fulfilled her last wish by remarrying.  Her deepest desire was that he continued to be taken care of.

How fortunate he was, we were, to have found Laura, who adored him, cared for him through innumerable sicknesses, surgeries, hospital stays.  To listen to this described, it sounds like he was a sickly man, but in fact he remained on his feet (so to speak) until the end–a fighter, as he had been his entire life, “a trooper” as described by one of his doctors.

This time he was fighting for his life, which he so strongly wanted and, we came to find out, he wasn’t so sure he was going to have.  How thrilled and proud he was when he turned 75 a year ago.  He often shared with my husband the fact that he never expected to live beyond his mid-50’s.

His rabbi shared that at his next-to-last surgery, he said, “Sam, you’re doing so great.”  “This was nothing,” said Dad.  “I still have the big one to face.  I know what I’m in for, and I don’t know if I’ll make it.”  “Then why do it?” asked the rabbi.  “It’s the only way,” said Dad.  “I want to live, and it’s my only chance.”

In closing, Dad loved to walk along the beach with both Mother and Laura.  It was somehow fitting to have noted yesterday that in retrospect, the day we took Dad into the hospital, when he looked so great, as if he were going on a back-to-back vacation, the ocean was calm.

Every day during the week thereafter, while Dad was fighting for life, the water was choppy and rough, although the weather was beautiful.  “How he loved to watch the weather,” stated Laura.  Yesterday, as I paid my last respects, the sea was once again calm and peaceful.

His grandsons whom he loved and adored, will fondly remember his touch and his long, introspective talks about his past/our past history.  The pre-dawn walks at the beach and the pride he helped them feel in their heritage will forever be with them.  They viewed him as a special person, as he did them.  He and his love live on through them, as well as through me and my brothers.

In a condolence conversation, his and my mother’s beloved doctor described him as a gift:
–  a gift to Laura, at a time in life when she never expected it;
–  a gift to him, the doctor, who never knew such a patient-doctor relationship;
–  the gift to my husband of me;
–  and the gift to me is that in so many good and strong ways, and weak ones too, I am
       my father!

For him, for me and for us–I thank you all for your gift of love in being here today.

Sleep in peace, dear Dad.”

The post On Father’s Day – Remembering Sam Bakely, My Father first appeared on Writing For healing.

Throughout most of these posts my “Writing for Healing” has been around Sam, my beloved late husband, and the various emotions coming up around his no longer being here.

Given that tomorrow is Mother’s Day, I’m reminded of the healing writing I did 37 years ago, much of it on the airplane going back to her home in Florida to be with my father before coming back up to Philadelphia, her final resting place.  I expanded on what I wrote on the plane and read it at the Memorial Service we had for her. Publicly sharing like that was another part of the healing process.

And, 37 years later, there still as a missing along with the deep love and gratitude for who she was that had me be who I am today.

SHE WAS MY BEST FRIEND – Remembering Eva Grubman Bakely 11-12-14 to 8-1976

Best friend to husband, daughter, sons;
Best friend to family, sisters, sisters-in-law, nieces:
To friends; to those to whom she gave of self;
To those in Al-Anon to whom she helped give a new lease on life–
an inner strength.

“Who is SHE?” she would have asked.
She was wife; she was mother.
Sometimes one was first, sometimes the other
But never self!

Consoler, confidante, advisor, lover–
Wisdom was her way.
Always searching, always seeking, always finding something new.
Seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling–sensing. . .
What beauty she could find!

Loving nature, loving life,
She shared.
She excited others into new perceptions, new appreciations.

Talk to these others; listen and hear:
“Generous of self–soft, sensitive.”
”She enriched the lives of all who let themselves be touched by her.”

“Never an unkind word about another.
Always concerned with doing right by him.
Totally open and honest in her relations.
She always had a sense of humor.”

“A truly unique person–a beautiful one!”

To hear much of this is to be a little surprised,
Only because her virtues have become inbred and an accepted part of being.

If to have known her is to have been enriched,
To have been descended from her is to have been blessed.

She made her life, and through her actions imparted and taught,
“God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can
And Wisdom to know the difference”–The Serenity Prayer

Courageously she fought her illness and the inevitable.
Finally and serenely she faced it and accepted.

**********

Good-by our Dearest, devoted friend,
Eternally a part of us.

©1976 – 2013  Sheila Finkelstein, Daughter

The post Mother’s Day Memories – She Was My Best Friend first appeared on Writing For healing.

As I was writing this week’s post for  Treasure Your Life Now I spontaneously registered HaikuForHealing.com and mask forwarded it over here to WritingforHealing.com.

Then I discovered that it’s been over 6 months since I posted here.  I haven’t been thinking in terms of needing “healing” and that’s kind of “silly”.  I’m thinking I’m putting a heavy weight on the term “healing”.  Writing is a process I use daily in my Morning Pages (a la Julia Cameron in the ARTIST’S WAY and all of her other books).

Oftentimes it’s “healing” when it gets me passed some blocks. The writing itself, when I don’t make it mean something, can be freeing.  Sometimes when “dumping” feels necessary, it can be cathartic. It’s far better to do it on paper than to or at another person.

And, at times when I’ve really needed to get control of myself I’ve used the Haiku process as described below.

Going through some old papers recently, I found one of the numerous Haikus I had written six and seven years ago when I was experiencing a great deal of anger at how Parkinson’s Disease was affecting my beloved Sam.

“Harsh and Brittle Words
Destroy Do No Move Forward
Breathe Deep Love Clears All”

©Sheila Finkelstein 3/23/06

During that period, I discovered Haiku to be a creative way of gaining control of my anger and other emotions. This form of writing consists of 3 lines – 5 syllables, 7 syllables, then 5 syllables again.

The words would come, sometimes describing feelings. Other times the words were about what was happening. After three lines, I would stop and count the syllables in each of them. This became something I COULD control and change. The process also created an almost immediate shift in how I was feeling.

Impressed with the importance of the above Haiku words, I put the paper aside to create a visually appealing photo/message. I planned to join in the words and picture posts that are currently being highly circulated in Facebook. I had no idea what the visual background for the words would be. Then yesterday a photo image showed up. See Harsh Words – Haiku Healing for the rest of the that story.

The post Haiku Writing Used to Control Anger first appeared on Writing For healing.

                                                                   
Photo on Left is Charcoal Portrait of Sam Finkelstein done by Chester Bloom in 1961. Photo on Right is Sam in Restaurant at Dinner Party in November, 2002, prior to move from NJ to Florida in December.

The Gift of Sam – Eternally grateful for my beloved Sam
The gifts from Sam to me were, and are, countless, some beyond measure:

The gift of unconditional love,
The gift of me,
The gift of my being “Number 1”, always and forever in his life, his heart.

The gift of love beyond measure for me, his sons, daughters-in-law and grandchildren
The gift of acceptance of what could not be changed
The gift of words, words that surface and sustain me even now, some from 51 years ago.

The gift of always being supportive
The gift of countless hours in the darkroom honoring the photos I took of my students and their work
The gift of non-judgment and always being present

The gift of goodness, generosity and love
The gift of a seeing eye, that complemented mine
The gift of partnership and belief in me, in us

The gift of sweetness, tenderness and caring
The gift of humor, commitment and action
The gift of belief

The gift of caresses, soft and tender, with special smiles
The gift of Being, accepting and caring
for him, for me, for all peoplees in the world.

Gentle and compassionate, count-on-able and always there
The gift of life
Despite his death
His honoring of me lives on!

Forever grateful for it all, blessed to have been the recipient of so much, I express my gratitude to you, my Beloved, and all those who helped make you into the forever kind and always man who you were for us, and for your contributions to our world.

And, though I pang at times for things I didn’t do, for ways I was and wasn’t and the “could have’s” done more and better’s, the incessant mind chatter that still surfaces from time to time, I have the greatest gift of all from you, the knowing that, no matter what, I had your love and you had mine!

Eternal gratitude is both of ours.  Remembering it and you this eve of Thanksgiving that marks the 4th year that you have been physically gone from me, from us.

Always love, my Beloved.

NOTE, Prefacing Today’s writing:
Yesterday, 11/22,  in the Wild Woman Writers Group in which I’m a participant, I wrote the following in response to a timed writing prompt.  The calendar date of Sam’s death is 11/21. The day of the week that year in 2007 was the eve of Thanksgiving.

Hmm. Is what’s sticking me my not having spent time writing yesterday honoring Sam, telling him how grateful I was and am for all he contributed to my life? Oh, my Darling, is it even necessary to write, or do you and I both know it?

Hmm. I’m evidently thinking words, which are so important to me, were not spoken out loud enough.

The feelings were taken for granted, not always even identifiable by me.  How easy it is to recognize the feeling of pleasure.

The feelings of love are so much more intangible. They are often elusive, except for the somewhat standard romantic-type words always used.

Is it sufficient to simply know love, without words?

Eternal gratitude is both of ours.  Remembering it and you this eve of Thanksgiving that marks the 4th year that you have been physically gone from me, from us.

The post Thanksgiving and Always Gratitude for the Gifts of and from Sam first appeared on Writing For healing.

I came across these random thoughts written on a pad as I walked in Green Cay a couple of months ago. Thought I’d add them here, since all writing, for me, adds to some form of healing.

Seeing loads of snail shells, large ones, out of their element, or is it me?

Breezes sweep past and caress my legs as I look out –
Cameraless, Partnerless, here at Green Cay.

Pad and Pen – Spaces for Tears.
Well, I let them come.  No camera to hide behind tonight.

Feeling breezes again
Quick caresses on my legs.
Oh, how I wish they were yours, that you were here, my Beloved.

Spoonbill was on dry land, dried out spot –
Found way back to walk.
Only for me, dry land – wet land.
There is more to find here on Earth.

Anhinga is spreading his wings and don’t know why it is.
Is it you, my Darling, letting me know through your favorite bird that you’re here?

The post Wind Caresses, Memories and Longing first appeared on Writing For healing.

Today WRITING CAMP, my friend Morgine Jurdan wrote and read about a delectable meal she recently had. Beautifully described, missing, for me, was the bread soaking up sauce part she had told me about in an earlier phone conversation. After the call, I wrote:

Morgine’s bread soaking up the cream mustard sauce – doesn’t matter what the sauce – I see it, feel it, that piece of bread swelling with the fullness of the tasty moisture it is absorbing – all the cells getting full as its body is pushed around the plate to gather up all that is available in the plate of life to put into my gut.

“My gut” – Interesting I’m so harsh about it – “gut” sounds so heavy, almost ugly. What if it were into my “being” – gently, slowly, if I temper myself to taste morsel by morsel and allow myself to digest the treasures of the plate – slowly working their way through my boding, sensing the spaces they need to fill? It’s all liquid, absorbed and softened by the carrier, a healthy piece of bread, bringing out peace of mind, peace of body.

PS – Originally wrote “mustard sauce” and in editing added the “cream” (which had in reality been there). I was tempted to remove the “mustard” part. “Too tangy”, thought I. Then, “Silly, or not, maybe that’s what’s missing for you – the tanginess of life!”

If you missed the link to Morgine’s writing, see I Remember…, halfway down the post, for the meal writing to which I responded.

The post Bread Soaking Up and Giving Life first appeared on Writing For healing.