Mindfulness

  • When We Know

    This weekend has been filled with a lot of “huh.” moments. You might know the kind. It’s when you realize something is over, or some priorities need to shift. You can ponder them all you want; you can even know – deep within you – that something has to change. But until the “huh.” moment…

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  • Finding the Five: What Are You Most Passionate About?

    As we begin our study of poetry in my English classes, we are preparing for our participation in Poetry Out Loud, a program sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. Instead of reviewing the list of approved poems for the competition, I first take my students through a Daybook writing activity where they answer…

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  • Since the news of the tragic floods in Texas broke on July 4, I’ve been lifting prayers of love and peace on the social media posts that are sharing the tragic stories of the individuals who were swept away or died as heroes. The algorithms are noticing my trends and are filling my feed with…

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  • I just finished reading The Witch Of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare, first published in 1958. My goodness, did this book get me thinking about what it means to live authentically. For, I don’t how many years, the idea of living “authentically” has permeated our social streams and, before that, our print stories and…

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  • Jessica Bell’s Icasia Bloom Touches Readers With Happiness

    Review: How Icasia Bloom Touched Happiness (Vine Leaves Press), by Jessica Bell Scheduled for release 21 September 2021 By Rus VanWestervelt ***NO SPOILERS*** I don’t know about you, but I have a full shelf of books that I return to often. Sure, I love the plots, and they are entertaining in a way that makes…

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  • To Exhale Experience: An Offering To The World

    To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle. ~Walt Whitman How often we forget that we are gifted the perfection of finite hours within our lifetime, neatly packaged moments filled with experience. They arrive to us as much as we go to them, a mingling of synthesizing interactions that…

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  • It’s Time To Rename This Thing Called Blogging

    I’m not much into branding, or rebranding, as this case may be, but I think it’s time that I abandon the generic term of “blogging” and get a little more specific about what I am actually doing here on the internet. It doesn’t take a lot of research to realize that everybody has some kind…

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  • Focus on One Thing

    Focus on One Thing

    I made some pretty bold moves this weekend, and I’m a lot better off this Sunday night than I was just 48 hours ago. It’s because of some advice that I received last week, on something totally unrelated to what I just discovered. A little backstory here is necessary. Since the 2016 presidential election, I,…

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  • Offering The Creative Collective To Artists, Writers, and Creatives

    Yesterday, out of a strong desire to create a “safe space” for creatives to share ideas, prompts, strategies, and inspirations, I created a new Facebook group called The Creative Collective. Here, writers, artists, and all creatives now have the opportunity to share and be inspired to rediscover and strengthen their creativity. Nothing is being sold…

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  • Taking A Walk In The Woods

    I’m sharing this on the trail here in Gunpowder Falls State Park, where I’ve decided to take a little walk in the woods to reconnect with the Earth. This is my first mobile post here at The Baltimore Writer, an experiment to bring you my experiences more immediately, perhaps a little raw and incomplete.  It’s…

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