Category: Sunday Letters

Every year about this time—generally when we go from Daylight to Standard time—I share with friends my conviction that humans are closely related to bears, and that in fact we should be hibernating now. “I want to burrow into my cozy cave,” I tell them, “drift into dreams, and not wake up until the strawberries are ready.”

This year, I’m more emphatic about that than ever. It’s more than the fact that daylight is rapidly shrinking away, that the world has lost its bright autumn colors. It’s more than the coming season of cold and ice and snow. This year, it’s also the fact that, world-wide, chaos is on the loose and tension seems universally sky high.

On some level, it affects us all. And coupled with inevitable pressure and stress the coming holidays bring, it can be a difficult season. It brings exaggerated emotions. For many, it creates a heightened awareness of pain, inadequacy, loneliness and loss.

As I thought about the suffering that so many are enduring, I found myself remembering a piece of wisdom from psychologist and meditation teacher Tara Brach. She pointed out that often, when we’re suffering, we feel very alone in our pain. But in fact, all across the world, countless others are feeling the same kind of suffering we are—and many are suffering even greater pain than ours. Suffering is, after all, a part of being human. At one time or another, in one form or another, it comes to us all.

The remedy she suggests is that we say to ourselves, “This is suffering. Everybody suffers. May I be kind.” It’s a powerful remedy. Recognizing that we’re suffering allows us to open ourselves to experiencing it, to letting ourselves feel it, rather than trying to cover it up or deny it or ‘power through.’ “This is suffering. I am in pain. I hurt.” When we can say that to ourselves, it lets us be authentic and gives us a kind of permission to sit with the pain, to accept it for what it is.

The next phrase, “Everybody suffers,” brings comfort. It opens our well of compassion and allows us to see that we’re united with a great body of others. We’re all in this together. And somehow, that makes bearing it easier. In a season when the ideal is to be vibrant and strong, it takes away the sting of thinking that it’s somehow ‘bad’ to be sick or upset or afraid. It’s not bad. It’s human. “Everybody suffers.”

Then Tara gives us the pathway through our suffering: “May I be kind.” May we be kind, first of all, to ourselves. May we be gentle and forgiving toward ourselves. May we look for ways to comfort and strengthen ourselves. May we nourish and hydrate and rest and move our bodies. May we remember all the good that remains and seek to see the goodness around us.

“May I be kind.” Then, may we have the grace to be kind to others, knowing that they carry burdens, too. May we be gentle and forgiving toward them. May we look for ways to comfort and support them, as well as ourselves.

In the background, songs that sing of good will and good cheer are beginning to float through the air, and despite the season’s dark side, a current of hope and expectation lies beneath it all.

Thinking about all of that made me feel much softer inside, and much more willing to go with time’s flow. In tough times, compassion is the best tool I know. May we kind. May we all be kind.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Hans from Pixabay}

I was thinking the other day about how each of us really does live in our own, unique Reality Bubble. It’s hardly a new thought.  But lately it’s struck me with a new clarity.   

Oh sure, there’s the world we all more or less agree on:  That’s a tree.  The sky is blue.  This is a table. Some call this layer of reality “the materium.”

But when it comes to remembering things we observed, or interpreting events, we step onto some shaky ground.   Ask any police officer who’s ever taken an accident report from eye witnesses.   Three people will give three different accounts.  We even have to watch sports replays to decide whether the officials made the right call.

And when it comes to what we believe about, say, gender, or religion, or politics, well, watch out!  The ground gets more than shaky.  It sort of resembles quicksand, where, before you know it, you’re sunk.

I took a psychology class once from a professor who had a special interest in belief systems.  He found three guys in different mental hospitals, each of whom believed he was Jesus Christ, and he had them all transferred to the same hospital and assigned to the same support group.  His hope was that their delusions would be lessened.  But instead, they began by aggressively arguing with each other about which of them was holier.   And finally each found ways to convince himself that the other two were, in one case, insane, and in the other, dead and being operated by a machine.

(The professor wrote about their encounters in a book called The Three Christs of Ypsilanti, if you’d like to read the whole story. )

The primary lesson the professor brought away from the experiment is that we strongly identify with our beliefs.  When they’re threatened, we respond defensively because it feels as if we, personally, are being attacked.   We each believe that what we believe is the true reality.  And our brains work hard to support our beliefs.  They carefully scour all incoming data and present us with the evidence that matches our beliefs, filtering out the stuff that doesn’t.     

And because people who hold beliefs that are similar to ours reinforce our identity, we tend to like them better than people whose beliefs are different.  And the more different the beliefs are, the more disturbing we find the person who holds them.

If we want to create more harmony with others, a good place to start is by recognizing that we aren’t our beliefs, and our beliefs don’t necessarily provide us with a true picture of the way things really are.  Truth, as the saying goes, is under no obligation to conform to our beliefs.

Other people aren’t their beliefs either.  But they probably feel that their beliefs are a part of their identity, just as we tend to feel that what we believe is an intimate part of who we are.

Beliefs are just thoughts, repeated so often that we assume they must be true.  Maybe they’ve been repeated to us since our early childhood.  Maybe we picked them up in school or adopted them in college because they seemed to have so much proof behind them.  And our brains have been bringing us evidence ever since to reassure us.

Sometimes, if you’re very tactful, persistent, and patient, you can provide enough evidence to someone to persuade him to accept something that you believe in place of a belief he has held to be true.   But his first response is likely to be defensive.   (And later, he may conclude that you’re either insane or dead and being operated by a machine!)

But on the whole, the most harmonious way to deal with those who hold beliefs that differ from yours is to recognize how crucial our beliefs are to our sense of being, and to respect that each of us is entitled to his or her own view of things.   

Look for the things on which you can agree, and agree to disagree on the rest.   And above all, try not to take offense when someone’s beliefs are different from your own.  If you’re really brave, try looking at things from their point of view.  Who knows?  It may turn out that you discover your own view needs some alteration.  Reality is, after all, a very complex and mysterious place.

Wishing you a week of open-mindedness and love.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by rihaij from Pixabay}

I have a quote for you to play with this week.  This one is from American motivational speaker Denis Waitley: “Life is the movie you see through your own eyes. It makes little difference what’s happening out there. It’s how you take it that counts.”

Now here’s my question for you:  What’s the soundtrack of your movie?  And what would happen if you changed it?

You know how, when a movie starts, the soundtrack tells you a lot about the feel of the movie?  You get a sense right away whether it’s going to be suspenseful, or nostalgic, or funny.  The soundtrack sets your expectations about the kind of story that’s about to unfold.

So I ask you again:  What’s the soundtrack of your movie?  And what would happen if you changed it?

Once I was having a really frustrating time at work.  I had this co-worker who really got under my skin.  My teeth would clench the moment she walked into my office.   Her voice was one of those finger-nails-on-the-chalkboard, high-pitched whiny voices.  Even her gestures irritated me. 

I struggled for a long time trying to learn to like her, or at least to be able to endure her presence without wanting to explode.  Then one day I happened to have the radio playing quietly in the background when she walked in. Some playful little tune was on that reminded me of old-fashioned TV sitcoms, maybe an episode of “I Love Lucy,” if you’re old enough to remember that.  And that did the trick.

All of a sudden the movie I was seeing through my own eyes turned into a comedy, and my co-worker could have won the Oscar for best supporting actress.  Everything she said seemed funny.  Her voice seemed funny.  Her gestures were hilarious.  I managed not to laugh out loud, but I’m sure I smiled more brightly at her than I ever had.  And you know what?  Because I was relaxed and happy, she softened somehow and relaxed, too. 

We both saw each other in a whole new light that day, and we worked together much more easily from then on.

I remember another day when a change in my soundtrack made a difference, too.  It was the day after my mother died and I was standing on my front porch watching the sunrise, full of an aching grief over my loss.  But then, as the clouds took on color, the key of my soundtrack changed just a bit into a sweeter sound and melted my grief into a kind of peaceful acceptance, and an inner knowing that Mom would always be with me.

Music has great power to color our emotions.  There’s even some science that maps the connection between feelings and sounds.   But you don’t need to know the science to make it work for you.  Just play with it. 

When you’re in an uncomfortable or stressful situation, try imagining what the soundtrack for it is like.  Then experiment with imagining a different kind of tune. 

Comedic music can make a surprising difference in your perspective.  But play with different genres. Pay attention to the background music in movies that you watch and see how it underscores the mood of the scene.  Keep a little collection of a range of mental tapes on hand.  You can practice while you’re doing mundane things like walking or driving or shopping or cleaning, even while you’re taking a shower, and see how it changes your perspective and your mood.

Because it is your movie, as Waitley says.  And because you’re the producer, director and star of it all at once, you can change it any way you want, at any time.

Me?  I’m going for romance this week:  I plan to fall in love with life all over again.

Wishing you chart-topping hits this week, every single day.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay}

I ran across a quote this week that has long been meaningful for me. It’s by author “George Eliot”, the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, one of the leading English writers of the mid-1800’s.

“Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles,” she said. Then she added this powerful line: “What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other?”

It was rather synchronistic that I happened on that particular quote this week, for two reasons.

The first reason is that I had a remarkable experience early in the week. It was a gorgeous autumn day, warm and sunny with the last bits of scarlet and gold dancing in the trees, and I had been in the woods with my camera—one of my very favorite things to do. I found myself catapulted into what I call “a trance of beauty.” My spirits were high, and when I stopped to pick up a couple groceries on my way home, I found myself seeing beauty in every face I gazed on.

People noticed me looking at them, a smile on my face, and even the ones that seemed burdened and care-worn inevitably smiled back and returned my “Hello.” I could actually see them brightening for a moment, as if they suddenly felt recognized and affirmed somehow. It was magical, and I was moved by the power a simple smile held.

The other reason the quote struck me was because it’s second part – “What do we live for if not to make the world less difficult for each other?” – both summarized and answered for me, the unformed question that rolls around like a tangled knot inside me when I see the division and conflict around me.

We have been propagandized on every side into dropping each other into labeled bins, “for” or “against” whatever issue we can name, into seeing each other as either ally or enemy instead of recognizing each other as a fellow human being. And worse, we have somehow, it seems, fallen into a snare of thinking those who are “against” our positions deserve to be silenced, banished, at least from our personal spheres, and perhaps even from the face of the earth.

That sounds pretty drastic, I know. But it’s a stance I witness every day, to my deep sorrow. I don’t know how to cure it on a mass level. I suspect the cure must rise from the grass roots—from you and me. As the wise, old saying goes, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” If you want to see more respect between people, give it. If you want to see more tolerance, more kindness, be more tolerant, be kind.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for one another?

To that I can only say Amen.

Wishing you a week where you strive to personify all the best that you wish to see in the world. You can always begin with a smile.

Warmly,
Susan

I’ve been leafing through old files again. It seems like the season for it. Today I ran across an essay I wrote on a lovely June Day way back in 2016, an age that seems to belong, somehow, to a different world. Still, we grappled then with the same kinds of fears we find ourselves facing today. Even though it’s a tad longer than my usual Sunday Letters, I thought the piece might touch you as it did me. So here it is, with love. ~Susan

I woke just before dawn yesterday morning. I’m not an early riser. The birds hadn’t even begun to chirp. Yet here I was, wide awake. I made a cup of coffee and took it out to my front porch to experience the beginning of the day. As I took my first sip, I noticed a faint ribbon of pink just above the eastern hills, gradually growing brighter. Looking directly overhead, I saw that the sky had gone from dusky gray to light blue graced by soft clouds. When I looked down again, a whole palette of color was lighting the sky—pale gold, coral, robin’s egg blue, soft lavender. And as if to acknowledge the coming of another day, the birds woke and began their morning chorus.

I let myself drink in the peace of it. The world has been such a brutal place these last few weeks, its violence and mayhem loud and sickening. Yet here I was, enveloped in birdsong and sunrise, sipping freshly brewed coffee. I felt lucky, and grateful, and kind of humbled to be so blessed.

I paused to do a few rounds of loving-kindness meditation, and as I sent wishes for well-being, peace and happiness to friends and acquaintances, to my community, to my region, to my nation, and then to all sentient beings with whom I share the globe, I realized that more of us are living unscathed by mayhem at the moment than are directly touched by it.

Most of us live our ordinary lives, attending to our daily routines and chores, relating in our usual ways with families and coworkers and friends. We share our smiles, and sometimes our tears. We share our rituals, our news, our opinions, our gossip. We play together. We squabble. We make up. All of us. All over the world. And isn’t that beautiful!

That we can go on, determined to live ordinary lives in the face of extraordinary times, is remarkable.

I came across a couple observations by American historian and professor Howard Zinn this week. He said:

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. “

I get the impression that Zinn is thinking of acts of high bravery and daring when he talks about how magnificently we can behave. And indeed we can. But I think courage is more than the extraordinary act performed at great risk. I think it’s also the determination to go on living ordinary lives as well as we can even when the world seems mad. The acts of compassion, and sacrifice and kindness can be tiny ones as well, consistently performed despite it all.

Mark Twain had this to say about courage: “Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave.”

When we live our ordinary lives in the face of what seems almost omnipresent violence and rage, we are being brave. By refusing to surrender to fear, however loudly and persistently the media screams about atrocities, we tell the world it cannot take the best of us. We will behave magnificently, holding to the dignity of our ordinary lives. And sometimes pausing to recognize that despite it all, we are surrounded by extraordinary goodness and beauty, and, sometimes, bathed in moments of transcendent peace.

Wishing you a week of brave, wonderful, ordinary life.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Hervé Lagrange from Pixabay}

I have to confess that it’s been work to keep a positive perspective on life of late. I keep getting news about misfortunes in my circle of close friends. I’m frustrated with new software that seems to make no sense to me. My house needed sudden and unexpected repairs. And in the larger world, well, you have only to turn on the news to see that things appear to be coming apart at the seams.

What’s helped me the most is accepting that this is life. And gosh! Good or bad, I get to live it. I get to experience the whole range of human emotions – Not only shock, disappointment, anxiety and grief, but gratitude, serenity, hope, and joy as well.

And by accepting, I mean allowing myself to experience whatever emotion is flowing through me at any given time. Not to fight it. Not to push it away. Not to want to hold onto it. Not to judge myself for it. But simply to let it be and to feel it.

It helps, too, to look at the story I’m telling myself about whatever circumstance I find myself in, and to ask myself, in Byron Katie fashion, whether it’s true and whether I can be certain, and how I would be without that story.

When I do that, I often find an old Zen story coming to mind that reminds me that none of us has any idea how things will turn out, or what fortunes await us. Here’s a version of that story that I found years ago online:

Once upon the time there was an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically.

“Maybe so;maybe not,” replied the farmer.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed.

“Maybe so; maybe not,” the old man said.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.

“Maybe,so; maybe not” answered the farmer.

The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.

“Maybe so; maybe not,” said the farmer. . . .

That story has served me well over the many years since I first heard it. I hope it will stick with you and serve you, too, when you’re tempted to label your circumstances as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’

And finally, the beauty of autumn has held me in its arms and reminded me that for everything there is a season, and that the seasons turn. And this is life. And we get to live it. And that, my friends, is miracle enough and then some.

Wishing you a week of perspective, brushed with autumn’s beauty.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Rebekka D from Pixabay}

I happened across an interview with Dannion Brinkley this week that presented a new way to look at how I interact with people. (Dannion’s best known for his descriptions of his three Near Death Experiences and what they taught him. You can search for his books on Amazon if you’re interested, or find him on Youtube or Facebook.)

One of the experiences Dannion had while he was clinically dead was undergoing a “Life Review.”

We’ve all heard the claim that “your whole life flashes before you” as you’re dying. Dannion says that what we’re not told is that we don’t see our life as if we’re living it again. We see it from the point of view of every person we ever encountered. We experience the thoughts and emotions that our interactions with them created in them—the warmth, the uplift, the comfort, the encouragement, and the hurt, the anger, the indifference, the discounting, the isolation.

It sounds sort of like the 360-degree feedback sessions some companies use for employee evaluations, where your co-workers and maybe even your customers say what it’s like to deal with you. Only the Life Review isn’t a mere report from people. It’s far more intense. It’s actually experiencing yourself from the other person’s point of view—seeing your face, your expression, whether you looked at them or gazed away, hearing what they heard from you, your words, your tone of voice, feeling what they felt during every exchange they ever had with you.

Regardless of what you make of Dannion’s story, imagine that you were offered an invitation to undergo such a ‘life review.’ Think about the important people in your life—your parents, your partner, your siblings, your kids, your neighbors and coworkers and friends. Think about your pet. Would you welcome a chance to see yourself through their eyes? Through the eyes of the person you most recently talked with? Or would you maybe rather not?

What if you did a mini life-review for yourself each evening as you tucked yourself in for the night? Would you be pleased with the way you treated other people in your life that day? Would you be motivated to be more patient, more attentive, kinder, more aware of their needs?

I turned the idea into a game for a day. I imagined that everyone I encountered had the letters “LR” for “Life Review” written in invisible light on their foreheads. It turned out to be a good game. The only rule was the golden one: treat them as I would want to be treated. On the whole, the day was filled with genuine connection and smiles. As a bonus, I got some insights into situations where I need to pay more attention to the way I respond to some people, and that’s always a good thing. More patience, more clarity, more connections, more smiles.

It was an exercise in full-immersion empathy, putting myself in the other person’s position, imagining what they most needed or wanted from me. Mostly they just wanted to seem real to someone, to be recognized, respected as a fellow being, appreciated. That’s what all of us want, I suppose. I know that when you offer someone that much, they glow. And you do, too.

Wishing you a week that’s bathed in a golden glow.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Fran • @mallorcadogphotography from Pixabay}

If you’ve been reading these Sunday Letters for a while, you may have heard this story before. I tell it from time to time because it’s a favorite of mine. And as we slide into the holiday season with all the high emotions it brings, it feels like a timely reminder. So here we go:

One day, while riding in the car, my teen-age son and I were listening to the radio. Some guy was explaining that we don’t always feel warm fuzzies toward someone we love. “We like each other because,” he said. (Because she made you laugh. Because he did the dishes. You can imagine any “because” you like.) “But,” the radio guy continued, “we love each other anyway.”

We love each other even when. That’s because love can embrace even those things in each other that drive us batty, or that conflict with our own cherished viewpoints or beliefs. Liking usually can’t go there; it stops at the differences.

My son and I loved the radio guy’s statement: We like each other because; we love each other anyway. It was so true that it made us laugh, and from that day on we often said to each other, as a kind of affectionate joke, “I love you anyway.”

I thought about that this past week when I ran into a difficult situation with a friend. She was recently diagnosed with a serious medical condition and when she asked me to pick up a certain snack item for her, I said I would feel uncomfortable doing that and asked if maybe she could make a different choice. Later, I gently suggested that she see a dietician for help in changing her eating habits so her body could stay as healthy as possible as long as possible.

She told me that she knew I was trying to help, but that it was up to her to choose what she wanted to eat and what she didn’t, and she didn’t want any more of my advice on the subject.

I thanked her for telling me that, and promised that I would respect her wishes. And I will – even though in my version of reality, the things that she’s eating are killing her.

What do you do when someone you love is, in your view, choosing to do things that may cost her life? Things that make you furious, that make you feel helpless, that, according to everything you know and believe, are potentially deadly mistakes Do you abandon your relationship because it’s too painful to see your friend’s choices? Because she’s refusing to accept what you (of course) believe to be superior information?

Nope. You love your friend anyway. You love her enough to honor her free will to make her own choices about her own life.  That doesn’t mean you consent to enable clearly self-destructive behavior. You can draw lines and say what you are unwilling to do. Your free will counts, too. 

You can work to find compromises. You can even do things for her that you strongly disagree with, as long as you’re clear that you’re helping only because you honor her right to make her own decisions and not because you‘re condoning them.

In essence, it all boils down to the Golden Rule – treating others the way you want to be treated.

Yeah, it gets difficult when you and the other hold strongly conflicting beliefs. You have to face the fact that each of you has plenty of evidence for what you believe, and that, in the end, beliefs are just that.

Whether it’s which foods to eat or not eat, or what political party to support, or what treatment to choose for a medical condition, or what God to believe in or reject – each of us must choose for ourselves. And each of us has the right to expect those who love us to accept our choices – whether they agree with them or not.

Because, in the end, it’s really true. We may like each other because, but we need to love each other anyway.

Wishing you a week where liking triumphs almost every minute.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Ben Fleeson from Pixabay}

I was paging through the local newspaper this morning and happened across the area’s high school football scores. I chuckled as I remembered the year our junior high school’s team got off to a dismal start. After losing their opening game 37-0, they went on to lose the next one by an even more crushing 67-0. Ouch. But eventually, they tasted victory and held their own for the rest of the season.

When you think about it, all the games we play—even the ones we call “life”—are a bit like experiments. And as Buckminster Fuller said, “There’s no such thing as a failed experiment, “only experiments with unexpected outcomes.”

Losing isn’t the same thing as failure. You form your strategies and put them into play the best you can. You bring all you know to the game; you call on all your experience.

But life is full of mysteries and variables, and the only way to learn more is to do the experiment, to play the game. Sometimes it all comes together just the way you had hoped. Sometimes it doesn’t. Accidents happen. We make mistakes. We get reminded that we’re mere human beings. But win or lose, we always come away knowing more than we did before we took the leap.

It’s the unpredictability of life that makes it interesting, after all – and fun.

You may think that you’d like to know what the remainder of the day holds, or what tomorrow or next week will bring. But if you did know, life would soon become one long and tedious déjà vu. Surprises keep us awake – and show us where we need to be paying more attention. They teach us. They give us new opportunities to use our strengths and talents and to develop them.

I hope when the coaches of losing football teams sit down with their players that they point out what the team did well and help them to do it even better. I hope they’ll help the kids discover how they can bring their strengths and talents to improve in the areas where they’re weak. And more than anything, I hope they tell their players that losing isn’t failure, and fill them with enthusiasm for learning more about playing the game, and loving it, win or lose.

I hope the next time you stumble, when something doesn’t work out the way you wanted, that you’ll remember it’s just one of life’s unexpected outcomes, meant to lead you onward, to make you better next time, and to unveil a few more of its mysteries for you.

Wishing you a week winning – however things go.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Keith Johnston from Pixabay}

The host of the program I was listening to last Tuesday asked his listeners to send in their stories about a transcendental experience in their lives, one of those defining moments that you know you’ll always remember.

He read a couple of them, and you could feel the emotion in each one, the quiet power and beauty. Then he came to one that topped them all.

It was from a woman who identified herself as Maria. When her daughter was ten months old, Maria and her husband took her to the zoo. The baby fell asleep after a while and Maria was carrying her in her arms when they decided to visit the gorilla house. Someone had told them that a couple of the gorillas in there had babies.

They were barely in the door when Maria found herself across the glass from a seated mother gorilla, cradling her own baby in her massive, hairy arms the same way Maria was holding her daughter,

The two mothers stared at each other, each of them sharply aware of the bond that linked them. Maria bent down and held her sleeping daughter nearer to the glass so the mother gorilla could see her more fully. To Maria’s surprise, the big gorilla carried her sleeping baby to the glass for Maria to see. For about ten minutes, with only mere inches and a pane of glass separating them, the mothers showed off their babies, comparing their little hands and ears and faces and feet.

Those ten minutes with the gorilla mom were a defining moment in Maria’s life. They made it clear that the right decision for her was to turn down a job she had been offered. It was well-paying and would have been a definite step up on the career ladder. But it would have required her to put in a substantial amount of time. She took a lower paying one instead so she could spend more time with her baby. The moments she shared with the gorilla showed her that children come first. “That’s what nature directs,” she said.

Maria went on to have another daughter two years later, and now she’s expecting twin boys. And she credits her family life to what she learned the day she met the mama gorilla and her baby. May they all live happily ever after.

Wishing you a week in harmony with nature.

Warmly,
Susan

^{Image by Candice from Pixabay}