Good Day –
Hello, Its Dan and my 18th day
hunkering down. When we lived in Florida
once in a while we had to hunker down when there was a hurricane coming and
certainly during one year when we were in a mix of three in succession in a
short span of time. However; we did take a short break in between but we never had
these many days in a row. How are you
all doing?
I’m dedicating this blog piece to my
family and friends for all the blessings that you have shared. You all have been through the ups and downs,
good times and bad, and have truly been the WIND BENEATH MY WINGS, Dan and I could
not
have gotten this far without you.
As I sit and read and go within my mind, a
thought came such as, that everything happens for a reason and people come in
and out of your life. The ones that are everlasting
are there for a reason. I am blessed to
have my best friend by my side every day and through Dan also my second gift my
daughter.
I came across this article that I felt was
something worth sharing:
How we can find friends who encourage and
strengthen who we are.
Posted Oct 27, 2016
What makes a perfect friendship? How do we
find and keep friends who encourage and strengthen who we are? How do we
maintain friendships with the demands of our jobs, family, and other
responsibilities?
Reflect on the most meaningful friendships
in your life. Think of that person you can call at any time of the day when you
need some advice, are feeling down, or when you just need a good laugh.
Although Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter allow us to be constantly updated
with our friends’ latest posts, we have to remember to sign out of our accounts
and pick up the phone and call each other.
We need to make a greater effort in our
very busy lives to find ways to connect face to face with friends. Although the
demands of life will call for constant attention, friends are the ones that
provide both spiritual and mental renewal.
They are the ones who give hope in
life’s most difficult situations, help to de-stress your life, and provide
affirmation of your life’s path. When you and your friends are investing in a
conscientious relationship, meaningfulness often follows.
7 Traits of Friendship That Affirm a
Conscientious Life
1. Friends who are empathetic. Being
empathetic is the ability to actively try and take yourself out of your own
shoes and put yourself in someone else’s. Too often we listen to a friend’s
struggle and immediately make it about ourselves by adding our own experiences.
Sometimes, the greatest thing friends can do is just actively listen to each
other.
2. Friends who are selfless. Our friends
who are the most happy and positive are the ones who are grounded, who care,
and who do not always think about themselves. They are able to understand their
own life experience but are not consumed by their own problems. Instead, they
take action to help solve the problems of others.
3. Friends who are trustworthy. Being
trustworthy is a trait that is essential for understanding that the deepest
relationships are the ones in which we can confide in each other. Trustworthy
friends remind you that you are not alone and empower you to be a better
person.
4. Friends with shared interests. Whether
this pertains to hobbies, sports, goals, education, values, or religion, we
often prefer spending time with people who enjoy the same things as we do. This
allows for immediate connection and ultimately strengthens our relationships.
5. Friends with different perspectives and
backgrounds. The time you can truly grow as a human being, both professionally
and personally, is when you have the opportunity to listen to people who are
different from you. Sometimes, you remain in a fixed mindset when you hang
around people who just agree with you or who do the same things as you. Friends
who offer new perspectives, ideas, experiences, and advice can help you learn
more about yourself and will help you grow as a more well-rounded human being.
Friends of diverse backgrounds have the ability to transform a fixed mindset
into a growth mindset.
6. Friends who are humorous. The best
friends are simply the ones who know how to make you laugh and who are full of
life and spirit. They are the ones who bring you joy, hope, and comfort even in
the midst of life’s most difficult situations.
7. Friends who are team players. A trait
we learned as children but one in which we often forget. Being a team player
and putting the needs of others before ourselves for a shared goal is what
friendship is all about.
Communicating, collaborating, and active
listening are all essential traits that make the most successful teams
unstoppable forces.
Contacting friends should not be a burden
or put on a to-do list. Make a conscious effort to integrate communicating with
friends a part of your routine.
Whether it is calling a friend on your way home
from work, setting aside one evening a month to get together, or designating at
least once a year to reconnect, even these small changes can have a profound
influence on your overall mood and well-being. Friends help you to maintain and
strengthen healthy relationships as you balance those with your co-workers and
family members who may demand a lot from you.
So, put down your phones in the presence
of your friends and sign out of your social networks. Surrounding yourself with
friends who embody these traits will allow you to step away from the mobile
social notifications of life and find solace in each other to create meaning in
the precious time you have together.
The more we are invested in our
relationships, the less we become single-minded and forget about the things
that actually matter. Find friends that affirm a conscientious life; who uplift
your soul, who are full of life, and who are excited about your new ideas and
want to see you through.
When you struggle with the many obstacle’s
life will throw at you, know that you are not alone. Remember the people in
your life and actively reach out to them.
The investment you make with a friend
will enrich both of your lives.
I remember when I was in my late teens
this saying, friends can be lovers, but lovers can never be friends.
I have this plaque that was given to me
from a dear friend that I met in Mexico.
Right before I left, she gave it to Dan and I, it’s a treasure of the memories
that we shared and will continue to share.
Thank you, Maureen, for the unconditional love.
WHO AMONG YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY HAS
TRULY BEEN A BLESSING TO YOU?
In the dictionary family means, a basic
social unit consisting of parents and their children, considered as a group,
whether dwelling together or not: the traditional family. A social unit
consisting of one or more adults together with the children they care for: a
single-parent family. The children of one person or one couple collectively. Any
group of persons closely related by blood, as parents, children, uncles, aunts,
and cousins: to marry into a socially prominent family.
We all come from roots, but our family are
the ones that spend your whole life with that share unconditional love without
any questions. I have been blessed with
a family that may not agree on different topics, but share this unconditional love
and are always there when needed.
This song goes out to my grandson- Jonah
Sesame Street: Family Song
Love these quotes from famous people
related to family.
Rich
or poor, we will keep together and be happy in one another. ~Louisa May Alcott,
Little Women, "Burdens," 1868
I don't care how poor a man is; if he has
family, he's rich. ~Dan Wilcox and Thad Mumford, "Identity Crisis,"
M*A*S*H, 1981
Poor Folks have neither any Kindred nor
any Friends. ~Italian proverb
It is not flesh and blood but the heart
which makes us fathers and sons. ~Johann Schiller
The family is a haven in a heartless
world. ~Christopher Lasch
The truth is maybe we are just average.
But the way I see it — families where parents get up every morning and go to
jobs that are hard so they can get their kids through school and through life,
and struggle to make it all work and manage to do it with dignity and a little
humor — well, that's not average. That's extraordinary. ~DeAnn Heline and
Eileen Heisler, The Middle, "Average Rules," 2010 [S1, E24, Frankie
Heck]
Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear
family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no
support, we've put it in an impossible situation. ~Margaret Mead
Families are like fudge — mostly sweet
with a few nuts. ~Author unknown
Across the range of diverse experiences
and traditions that have been written into our Nation's story, family has
remained a steadfast and common foundation. Every day, families offer comfort
and support to one another with enduring and unconditional love and they
contribute to their communities and our country. During National Family Week,
we uplift and honor the families that give so much to forge a brighter future
for themselves and for America.... As we reminisce on warm memories and share
in the joy and love family can provide, let us also pledge to lift up our loved
ones and recommit to the family bonds that have strengthened the fabric of our
Nation. ~Barack Obama, 2015 November 23rd, quoted from The White House Office
of the Press Secretary
The thing about family disasters is that
you never have to wait long before the next one puts the previous one into
perspective. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
If you don't believe in ghosts, you've
never been to a family reunion. ~Ashleigh Brilliant
We all grow up with the weight of history
on us. Our ancestors’ dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the
spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies. ~Shirley
Abbott
Family: A social unit where the father is
concerned with parking space, the children with outer space, and the mother
with closet space. ~Evan Esar
A family is a unit composed not only of
children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold. ~Ogden
Nash
The family. We were a strange little band
of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting
one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out
of our rooms, inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant,
loving, laughing, defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that
bound us all together. ~Erma Bombeck
When you look at your life, the greatest happiness’s
are family happiness’s. ~Joyce Brothers
In some families, please is described as
the magic word. In our house, however, it was sorry. ~Margaret Laurence
Family quarrels have a total bitterness
unmatched by others. Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of
tang, a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness, based on the tacit
understanding that this is not for keeps; that any limb you climb out on will
still be there later for you to climb back. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's
Notebook, 1960
In good times and in bad, 'til death do us
part isn't just for marriage — it's for family too. Lifelong vows coursing
through our blood. ~Terri Guillemets
Be polite. Perhaps your family won't mind
if you practice upon them. ~Minna Thomas Antrim (1861–1950), Knocks Witty, Wise
and —, 1905
You don't choose your family. They are
God's gift to you, as you are to them. ~Desmond Tutu
An ounce of blood is worth more than a
pound of friendship. ~Spanish proverb
It's nice to have friends, but it's better
when your friends are family. ~The Middle, "Meet the Parents," 2017
[S9, E3, Frankie Heck]
The happiness of the domestic fireside is
the first boon of Heaven; and it is well it is so, since it is that which is
the lot of the mass of mankind. ~Thomas Jefferson, 1813
To us, family means putting your arms
around each other and being there. ~Barbara Bush
When our relatives are at home, we have to
think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them.
~George Bernard Shaw, Heartbreak House, 1919
Family:
love is in our DNA. ~Terri Guillemets, "Time loses, biology
wins," 1995
Call it a clan, call it a network, call it
a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.
~Jane Howard
In a houseful of toddlers and pets, you
can start out having a bad day, but you keep getting detoured. ~Robert Brault,
rbrault.blogspot.com
There is no cure for laziness but a large
family helps. ~Herbert Prochnov
Family quarrels are bitter things. They
don't go by any rules. They're not like aches or wounds; they're more like
splits in the skin that won't heal because there's not enough material. ~F.
Scott Fitzgerald
Our most basic instinct is not for
survival but for family. Most of us would give our own life for the survival of
a family member, yet we lead our daily life too often as if we take our family
for granted. ~Paul Pearshall
The great advantage of living in a large
family is that early lesson of life's essential unfairness. ~Nancy Mitford
Having a place to go — is a home. Having
someone to love — is a family. Having both — is a blessing. ~Donna Hedges
The happiest moments of my life have been
the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family. ~Thomas
Jefferson, 1790
And thank you for a house full of people I
love. Amen. ~Terri Guillemets
The family — that dear octopus from whose
tentacles we never quite escape, nor, in our inmost hearts, ever quite wish to.
~Dodie Smith
Family life is a bit like a runny peach
pie — not perfect but who's complaining? ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
The great gift of family life is to be
intimately acquainted with people you might never even introduce yourself to,
had life not done it for you. ~Kendall Hailey
In time of test, family is best. ~Burmese
proverb
Family is just accident.... They don't
mean to get on your nerves. They don't even mean to be your family, they just
are. ~Marsha Norman
The only rock I know that stays steady,
the only institution I know that works is the family. ~Lee Iacocca
Friends are God's apology for relations.
~Hugh Kingsmill
A preoccupied family: they none of them
threw themselves into the interests of the rest, but each ploughed his or her
own furrow. Their thoughts, their little passions and hopes and desires, all
ran along separate lines. Family life is like this—animated, but collateral.
~Rose Macaulay, Daisy & Daphne, 1928
At the end of the day, a loving family
should find everything forgivable. ~Mark V. Olsen and Will Sheffer, Big Love,
"Easter"
If the family were a fruit, it would be an
orange, a circle of sections, held together but separable — each segment
distinct. ~Letty Cottin Pogrebin
In a household of toddlers and pets, we
discover this rule of thumb about happy families — that they are least
two-thirds incontinent. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
The informality of family life is a
blessed condition that allows us to become our best while looking our worst.
~Marge Kennedy
The family is one of nature's
masterpieces. ~George Santayana
A family is a bunch of people who keep
confusing you with someone you were as a kid. ~Robert Brault,
rbrault.blogspot.com
We cannot destroy kindred: our chains
stretch a little sometimes, but they never break. ~Marie de Rabutin-Chantal,
marquise de Sévigné
The advantage of growing up with siblings
is that you become very good at fractions. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com
Other things may change us, but we start
and end with the family. ~Anthony Brandt
There's an awful lot of blood around that
water is thicker than. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at
people who belong to us, we see the past, present, and future. ~Gail Lumet
Buckley
If minutes were kept of a family
gathering, they would show that "Members not Present" and
"Subjects Discussed" were one and the same. ~Robert Brault,
rbrault.blogspot.com
The house of the childless is empty; and
so is the heart of him that hath no wife. ~Hitopadesa
Are we not like two volumes of one book?
~Marceline Desbordes-Valmore
What greater blessing to give thanks for
at a family gathering than the family and the gathering? ~Robert Brault,
rbrault.blogspot.com
Go home, find a wench, raise fat babies,
live a good long life. ~R. Scott Gemmill & Gil Grant, NCIS: Los Angeles,
"Brimstone" [S1, E10, 2009, Hetty Lange]
The lack of emotional security of our
American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger
family unit. No two people — no mere father and mother — as I have often said,
are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself
one in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet
allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could,
for nature has welded him into it before he was born. ~Pearl S. Buck
Thomas Jefferson, apostle of equality,
wrote (1771) to his agent in London: "One farther favor and I am done; to
search the Herald's Office for the arms of my family. I have what I have been
told were the family arms, but on what authority I know not. It is possible
there may be none. If so, I would, with your assistance, become a purchaser,
having Sterne's word for it that a coat of arms may be purchased as cheap as
any other coat." A little later Jefferson was prophet of a party laying
its axe to the root of every family tree. ~Moncure D. Conway, "The English
Ancestry of Washington," in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, May 1891
Even in the last generation exceptional
young people who betrayed any interest in their ancestors were apt to be
snubbed, and old family papers were abandoned to the mice. But gradually
interest in genealogy crept back. Some families began to suspect that the mice
had eaten their titles to English estates; the new science of heredity had
attractions for a people disgusted with vulgar plutocracy. It is now pretty
well understood in America that a family tree is no Upas, but a good fruit
tree. ~Moncure D. Conway, "The English Ancestry of Washington," in
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, May 1891 [Upas is a poisonous tree. —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]
Family history is a history dramatized....
If the history of a particular family is searched, it is because it is
searchable, not because it is great. Great and small are terms of ignorance, in
regard of historic causation.... To tell the story of one family is to tell
what is essential in the story of all.... All families are equally ancient.
~Moncure D. Conway, "The English Ancestry of Washington," in Harper's
New Monthly Magazine, May 1891 [a little altered —tεᖇᖇ¡·g] #genealogy
In this genealogy, there has been wondrous
diversion. Let no man fancy he knows sport unless he has family-treed an
ancestor of George Washington. ~Moncure D. Conway, "The English Ancestry
of Washington," in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, May 1891
I don't have to look up my family tree,
because I know that I'm the sap. ~Fred Allen
Would love to hear what your quote is or meaning
of a family or your best friend.
Until tomorrow, be safe.
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