His words make me feel beautiful – CNN.com.

I felt this when I read it. I can only hope that when I have lived as long as the author, my husband will feel the same way.

“I don’t believe that inner beauty is sufficient in this cruel world. That’s the pap one tells a child. I don’t believe that positive thinking improves your skin tone or that loving or being loved changes the shape of your nose or restores the thickness and color of hair, but I do know that there is a way of being beautiful, even as age takes its toll, that has something to do with the spirit filling with joy, something to do with the union with another human being, with the sense of having done well at something enormously important, like making happy a man who has made you happy often enough.”

“Optimists live longer, healthier lives than pessimists, U.S. researchers said on Thursday in a study that may give pessimists one more reason to grumble.” I told you so!

http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE5247NO20090305?rpc=59

» Continue reading “Pollyanna and the Road to Immortality”

There is an interview available on NPR.org. She gives her recipe for peas!

Pol·ly·an·na
n.   A person regarded as being foolishly or blindly optimistic.

[After the heroine of the novel Pollyanna, by Eleanor Hodgman Porter (1868-1920), American writer.]

In the novel, Pollyanna is the irrepressibly cheerful orphan who triumphs over adversity through the power of positive thinking. Her infectious optimism brings life to a beleaguered New England town and its inhabitants. What’s wrong with that? It actually sounds like a really moving story, the type of story that Hollywood might consider remaking with a modern twist, since they’re so good at recycling stories from the past. Maybe they will do a centennial film to commemorate the publication of the book.

» Continue reading “What’s wrong with Pollyanna anyway?”

Coming into the season of Lent, after a year I alternately wish I could do-over or wipe from my memory, I am looking to affect positive change in my life. I am bipolar and I have spent the last ten years of my life workshopping my shit and doing all the things I am supposed to do to take care of myself. I don’t take medication because I have historically suffered adverse reactions to it. Last year, after seeing advertisements for newly approved medications for the disorder, I decided to give medication another try. What I didn’t know is just how bad a bad reaction to medication can be.

» Continue reading “It’s Lent and I gave up sugar, so I’m blogging”