Blog
Doggie Daycare Regret: Puppy Trauma, Ignorance, and AI’s Surprising Help
By the time I brought my puppy home, one thing was clear: she had nerves of steel.
Vacuum roaring? Unfazed.
Strange noises? Barely a glance.
Roofers hammering overhead, shaking the whole house? She slept right through it.
Confident, curious, and utterly unbothered, she was exactly what I’d sought from her breeder. Temperament is everything in a dog’s life, and hers felt rock-solid. Raising a puppy like that feels like winning the lottery.
Then one afternoon changed her forever.
By the Grace of God, I Write Memoir
As a memoirist, there are times when I question myself about why I feel called to write about my life. It’s like I need a reason, justification, in order to keep at it, not so much for others, but for myself.
About two years ago, while poking around online for some inspiration I landed on a sermon by Rev. Ed Bacon who said, "The reason God gave you your story is so you could tell it." A sense of freedom came over me. I knew that God was talking directly to me, saying, “Ruthie, you don’t need a reason. Just write.” Getting the go-ahead from God was the permission I needed, and the quality and quantity of my writing improved.
Be Still Now… Be Still
I grew up hearing, “Be still now….be still.” My parents meant for me to go away, to stop being a bother, to not “crowd” them. I often wandered off to my cave up on the hillside, just above our house out on the holler. With the cool earth beneath my bottom and the smell of dirt in my nose, I did as I was told. I sat still. Inside the shadows of my cave, I watched. I could see my family, but they couldn’t see me.
Breathing Classes: TBD
Please join me for a breathing class! See details on the above flyer.
The Wandering Wisdom Within Your Body: The Vagus Nerve
When we ignore our body’s wisdom, and its innate ability to heal itself, we experience stress. Stress in the body sends a message to the brain that something is wrong, releasing stress hormones into the body.
Philosophy: An Antidote to Stupidity
For a good portion of my life, I believed that ignorance equaled stupidity. I developed a complex, a sensitivity, about how others saw me. I worried about what they thought of me because each time I exposed my ignorance, I was certain they saw me as stupid.
Using the Breath to Build Resilience
No matter how hard we try, we cannot avoid stress or prevent suffering; it’s part of being human. But with a few tools and a proactive mindset, we can build resilience toward life’s setbacks—and even grow stronger from adversity.
Building resilience isn’t necessarily about “toughing it out” so much as it is about tapping into your spirit. Spiritual energy runs through our veins; it’s the life force that sustains us during hardship and lights us up on the other side of it.
There exists a powerful structure of spiritual energy centers throughout our bodies called chakras. The word chakra comes from Sanskrit, an ancient language of India, and is commonly referred to in the practices of yoga and meditation.
Paramhansa Yogananda, the great yogi who brought yoga to the west in the 1920s, teaches us that there are eight aspects of God: peace, wisdom, power, love, calmness, sound, light, and joy (or bliss). When we marry these aspects with the seven primary chakras, we have a set of tools, a roadmap, to navigate our lives.
Musings of Memoir: Where is the Takeaway?
While attending a writing conference recently, something stood out to me: regardless of genre—mystery, romance, prescriptive/nonfiction, sci-fi or thriller—there’s an aspect of the writer’s personal story in every tale. Even more notable, is how all tales stem from opposition.
