Hope Is Real!

It’s been too long since I’ve shared one of my quotes from my inspirational quote book!  This one is from Ezekiel: It will not be as it was: The lowly will be exalted and the exalted shall be brought low.  Ezekiel 21:26 Sometimes I feel really lowly, like I should be ashamed of myself, even when I have done nothing wrong.   In fact, after my meltdown last week I struggled with some feelings of shame for several days.  Some fundamentalist, conservative religious people would say that that is a logical, natural feeling for human beings to have because of original sin.  We should all feel ashamed, because we, as humans, inherited a depraved nature when Adam and Eve first sinned.   These people would say that women especially are depraved, since it was Eve who first sinned.  This is bullsh*t. I believe we feel ashamed when we are afraid to own our own goodness.  As Marianne Williamson says, “It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.”  It’s easy to say that w

In late April I attended a fair trade luncheon put on by the organizations, Fair Trade Atlanta and Fair Trade USA .  I felt honored to be invited and the talk was very interesting.  Fair trade is something that I already believed in, but hearing the lecture really impressed me much more as to its importance.  Fair trade is important, because it discourages slavery by giving the artisans fair wages and it makes sure that environmental and social laws are met.  Did you know that there are currently 27 million slaves?  The number is staggering.  Fortunately, by ensuring that you buy fair trade whenever possible, you can help tell the slaveholders that we don’t want to use their slave labor anymore.  One positive that the organizer pointed out is that we (the United States) are the largest consumer, so we can make the most impact in the fight against slavery.  Unfortunately, there is only a 34% awareness of fair trade in America, as opposed to 84% awareness in many European countries. 

Hello!  I’m back!  It seems as soon as the April writer’s challenge ended, my life sped up and I was too busy to write.  I’m not the kind of person who can stay in the fast lane for long before I become too overwhelmed and have a meltdown, which is precisely what I did on Friday.  I recognized that I was beginning to feel overwhelmed several weeks ago, but I felt like everything I had agreed to do was equally important and so I did not amend my schedule.  In fact, I added more to it!  If everything would just happen the way that I planned them to, then I would be able to do everything, or so I thought.  Of course, this did not happen.  Friday I went to my art therapy class where I found out that it was canceled and that's when my body decided that it was time for a meltdown.  I sobbed and sobbed.  I felt like I was a failure-if only I had been  perfect, than the class wouldn't have been canceled.  I cried all the way home and I continued carrying on for several more hours.  I

 Before I get to my book review, I am happy to announce that psyweb.com has now published the second part of my recovery story .  They liked my story so much that they asked me to write another article about how I deal with my fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome for their sister website, myfibro.com .  How exciting!  I'll let you know when you can read it.  Also, you may have noticed that Hope Is Real! now has its own domain name!  You can now find this blog at the address hopepersists.com  Hopepersists is my twitter handle, so hopefully that will make it fairly easy to remember.  Don't worry though, if you put in my old address, you will automatically rerouted to the right site.  Having my own domain name is more professional and it is the first step in my journey to turning this blog into a book.  I am very excited about my progress!   But on to the books: Both books I finished in April were for my classics book club, although I wasn't able to attend the meetup,

Today is officially the last day of the Wego Health Activist Writer's Monthly Challenge!  What I liked about it was that the daily prompts helped me write more often and to think about topics that I wouldn't normally write about.  (That was my very short recap-day 30's topic.)  But I am going to go back in time by one day and complete yesterday's prompt-talk about three things that I can do well.  What a fun topic, right?!  Finally, I have a prompt that lends itself easily to food-porn!  I haven't done a post about food in a while and I am glad to do so.  I really do love to cook and I love trying out new recipes.  I am a very harsh critic, which is one of the reasons why I haven't been posting recipes as much as usual-I like to only post recipes that I really like and I tend to be a harsher critic than my parents are.  For instance, while I liked this recipe for stuffed bell peppers, my mom absolutely loved it.  I made it a long time ago and had almost comple