If you wanted to know why I write what I write and why I have the burning desire to share my work, reading this long post will answer your questions.

I would be happy to answer any other questions you have.
(Some limits may apply! 😀)

It has taken me a long time to write this and I wrote it with the intention to share it on my about page advised by the great folks, Richard Taubinger and Kylie Slavik at Conscious Marketer.

Technical and copywriting are not my forte and therefore I have been studying the teachings of Conscious Marketer because they teach people about marketing without having to loose our souls, without stepping on people’s feet and they do it very effectively.

Here is my story

Who ever wrote “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words shall never hurt me.” was full of bull poop.

Harsh words do hurt and when you hear them enough times you may be convinced that they are true. After some repetition the person telling them to you doesn’t even have to be there anymore. The programming is so deep it keeps running in a never ending loop, like a TikTok video. It keeps repeating how bad, how useless, how dumb, how ugly, how lazy you are and the list goes on. You can insert your personal message here. Most of us have some old record(s) playing around. You wish you could tell them to shut the “eff off” and you could have a daily battle with them.

Should you put them in their place?

A long time ago I have gone to an amazing seminar. Remember seminars before webinars? We sat in the same room, talked to each other in person and made deep connections. Anyway, the facilitator, Harv T Ecker had a great way of dealing with unwanted messages. Instead of pushing them away to have them come back more forcefully he said: “Thank you for sharing!” instead of being reactive. Dealing with people, who give you unwanted messages this way changes the dynamics. It gets the message across with humour and makes an unpleasant situation more bearable.

So what do you do with the old records that are stuck in damaging morale mode?

Buddhists say that being an observer of your thoughts and feelings as opposed to being sucked into the vortex that keeps feeling worse by the second will stop the downward spiral. It is a quick way to disempower them. As they say things happen to you and you interpret what happened to you. Your interpretation, the meaning you give it determines how it will affect you. Lately I kept hearing people say that instead of thinking that things happen to you, things happen for you. Thoughts surface for you so you can look at them and hopefully put them behind you. Once you bring something to the surface it looses its damaging power.

You then have the power to replace the old record with new empowering words that are encouraging and up lifting.

By the age of 14, after finishing school, I was convinced that I was ugly. The kids teased me so many times about my red hair, freckles, for being short and skinny. Sometime after I started trade school in September along with many other teens my age or close to it, the dating scene started and I had no interest in boys. All I wanted was to have fun, crack jokes, make friends, swim, fish, hike, sing and dance. If a boy ever approached me I felt awkward, ugly, undesirable and unlovable. I fell in love for the first time with a sweet boy when I was 16 and started dating after that but I never believed that any of the boys found me attractive. I thought that if I do “enough” for them they will love me and keep me.

It has taken me years, much spiritual growth and many, many looks, compliments, dating attempts from men to shift my believes about my looks to convince me that I am attractive. After agonizing over my freckles for years, when I was first married at a young age I told my husband at the time that I wanted my freckles removed. He said, please don’t! I was beyond shocked! I couldn’t believe what he said. When I asked him why, he replied: “Because they look cute and are a part of you and I love them!” That was so healing to my very bruised self image and I think I made peace with the freckles.

Fast forward years and I was talking with a childhood friend I went to school with.

He was 14 years old when we met, cute as can be, always had a big smile. I was 16. We were both studying woodworking and crossed paths many times at school and practicum. He was often accompanied by another cute boy and we often stopped to talk and told many jokes to each other. As he was approaching 60 and called me, we enjoyed each other’s company, just like we did in our youth. He quickly admitted to me that he was madly in love with me when we went to school. He said, he loved my red hair, freckles and my great figure. At my tender age of nearly 62 I believed him. Besides the fact that he was a “kid” and I was an older girl I wouldn’t have believed that someone as cute as he would be in love with me.

Now I feel blessed by all the wonderful people in my life, who are kind, caring, honest, yet cautious with their words. Talking with them warms my heart and I feel loved, respected and appreciated by their presence.

These are stories I tell because they demonstrate the power of words. They can tear us down or build us up. We have to choose carefully and be very aware of our intentions when we speak to each other.

With love,
Teri

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Add the heat and smoke we have and my energy level is not the best and my creativity is nonexistent.

Therefore this week instead of posting something I wrote to you, I wanted to share a post my friend Cat wrote. I just finished reading it and found it very good.

If you have any emotional “crap” you can’t share with anyone, doing her practice can be very powerful.

Clicking the link will take you to her blog post, Practicing Transformation on Substack.

Enjoy!

Cat Charissage on Soulwork

Practicing Transformation

And what are YOU doing on this Full Moon in July…

Read more

a month ago · 2 likes · Cat Charissage

I read a great article about loneliness and belonging by a wonderful guy, Gurdeep Pandher, who shares many cheerful videos of him dancing the Bhangra and he writes heartfelt articles on his blog.

Read Gurdeep's article here

The topic of belonging is very important to me. Growing up in a broken family with my parents not talking to their siblings for many years, I missed having a sense of belonging. First time I missed that sense of belonging was because of our broken family ties, the second time it happened. it was because of living in new places and not being able to connect with people. We all need meaningful connections, way beyond the superficial small talk. No matter how self sufficient we are we need people to socialize with, people who are there for us and we all need a sense of belonging.

A long time ago a friend told me, we are lucky if we have at least one good friend at the end of our life, we can count on. I hope you are as lucky as I am because I feel so blessed by many friends I can count on, I can have deep and real conversations and a community that makes the place I live at feel like home.

I have written a poem about holding space and you can read it by clicking the link below. Holding space is a fine art form of being there for people. I find it to be one of the antidotes to loneliness. It would be hard to feel lonely while you are there for someone who needs your attention and your presence. In today hurried world that requires so much of our attention in so many places all at the same time, being fully there for someone is a blessing, yet it doesn’t have to be a miracle. It is very simple and easy to give someone our undivided attention.

Read the Holding Space Poem

Do you have a community?
What do you do to connect with people?
What do you need to feel heard and appreciated?

With ❤️,
Teri

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Some people will be cruel to you, others will be loving. 
Whatever they do, it is not about you. It is about them. 
They are only able to give you what they have. 
There are people who will love you just the way 
you want to be loved and you will mean the world to them. 

Keep loving with all of your heart. 
Some people will break your heart 
and it will hurt when they do but the joys 
of loving and being loved are always worth the risk. 
Be selective about who you open your heart to 
but don’t keep a guarded heart!
No matter how many people love you, 
the most important love is the love you give to your self.

Trust your intuition, trust your abilities, 
know that whatever happens in life 
you can handle it with confidence and grace. 
Have an open mind to learn new ways to see and do things. 
It is the only way to evolve and to progress. 
It is human nature to make mistakes. 
Make sure you correct them, learn from them 
and apologize for them if they hurt other people. 

Satisfy your sense of adventure by going to new places 
and doing things you have never done before. 
Don’t be shy to do them alone if you have to 
but the best experience is with someone, 
who enjoys them as much as you do. 
Acquiring possessions may be exciting for some time 
but true happiness is in spending time making memories, 
that will be etched forever, deep in your mind. 

In all you do in life slow down enough to relax in this busy world, 
notice the little and not so little beauties everywhere. 
Emerge your self in nature enough to be one with it 
and find a sense of home no matter where you go.

Above all, never loose your sense of wonder and magic!

With love,
Teri

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Thank you for reading my post!
Follow my work! Subscribe for free.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments!
Share my post if you think your friends would benefit from it.

Women go trough enormous change when they get passed 50 and I noticed it for years now. Our tolerance for BS goes down, our self care goes up, our clarity to see things for what they are sharpens, the sugarcoating falls away and our self worth increases. We enter a time some call the golden age and call it what you want it can be a very empowered experience.

I listened to this guy, Michael, addressing the guys about women being incredible in their 50’s and he makes a lot of sense. He has a lot of other great videos too.

I highly recommend listening to him. He’s got it figured out so well! Unfortunately, I could only find the video on Facebook. I hope you are able to see it!

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1309776344041792/?s=single_unit

What changes did you notice over 50?
Please share in the comments!

It wasn’t a mistake and you will find out why I gave this title to my post. I had many different volunteer jobs in my life and enjoyed all of them for different reasons. I have written for community based papers, assisted a teacher in a classroom of a hospital, was crew on a marine search and rescue team, worked and am still working on cameras for community TV, and hosted open mic poetry events for eight years. My goal in volunteering was always to serve my community but in every position, I learned so much and had many-many feel-good-moments. On Friday, the 29th. of May, 2026 I started a new volunteer job with Adaptable Outdoors. They are an organization that offer fishing, kayaking and hiking for people with disabilities. I met 3 other people, Steve, Alena and Adam from the organization at Beauvais Lake, near the Canadian Rockies to assist Dwayne, a nonverbal customer, who arrived in his wheelchair in a small bus designed for people with wheelchairs and mobility issues.

I heard a loud, hard to describe sound, the kind you may hear when someone is in pain, when the door to the bus opened and they wheeled Dwayne out onto the dock, where the fishing was to take place. Being on this job for the first time, not knowing what to expect, I felt intimidated for a moment. I always had a hard time with nonverbal people and people who didn’t speak the languages I spoke unless there was a translator. After figuring out that Dwayne does not speak and the sounds he makes are his way of expressing his excitement and happiness I started to feel at ease, and started to look for cues not based on language. I soon discovered that his eyes are very expressive and connected with him by eye contact, more than anything else. Every time he was happy his eyes lit up and when he was excited he made his high decibel sounds. I wasn’t much help with the high tech fishing rods that were rigged up with electric motors and a sensor that can be operated to reel in the catch by him touching the sensor with his baseball cap but I assisted his assistants in any way I could.

After a while I offered to take pictures and videos and Steve along with Alena were happy about that because they don’t often take photos. I became the unofficial photographer and cheerleader because I made sure I celebrated with Dwayne when he got excited about reeling in the catch. Out of everyone there, only Adam caught a fish and we all made sure that Dwayne could feel the fish next to his hand. (I don’t think his hands move.) Dwayne’s catch was weeds from the bottom of the lake and I often tickled his hand with it and cried a few times over his excitement and laughed with him at other times. I realized that communication does not always rely on language and when people are attuned to another person it happens in a way that keeps everyone content and happy. I learned to “listen” to his big, brown, beautiful, expressive eyes and that was good enough for us. Dwayne left happy, looking like a big kid in a candy shop and I stood there crying happy tears, humbled and very touched by Dwayne, the 50 year old kid, who’s eyes say so much more than words can say.

Thank you for a wonderful day Dwayne, Steve, Adam and Alena!
Teri

Written during Cat Charissage’s Poetry Circle on Raine Sillito’s poems

There is beauty everywhere. 
In the embrace when you run into someone 
you have not seen in a long time. 
That embrace lasts longer because 
you have missed each other so much. 
There is beauty in the words we share 
in a supportive, loving writing circle.
When we learn about each other’s deep pain, 
sorrow, grief, joy, happiness and dreams.
There is beauty in the snowfall, 
the soft rain, the howling wind 
and the rise and fall of the waves on the water. 
There is beauty in the Alberta sunrise 
and the deep hues of the sunsets. 

There is beauty everywhere.

Finding and noticing the beauty around you may not erase the hard parts of life but it sure give you another perspective and something pleasant to focus on and shifting focus changes your energy and how you feel.

What beauty can YOU think of?

I dedicate this to all the people who work or worked under less than ideal conditions just to make a living.

Here are some updates to our new policy published 2 weeks ago. There will be no breaks from now on unless you smoke. You can sneak out for a cigarette but don’t let the nonsmokers know. We don’t want to piss them off. There is no time for you to sit down to eat anymore. If you have to eat, do that between customers. Good luck with that because we don’t schedule enough people for you to have time between customers. We know we don’t have enough workers and we should hire more but you have to do the work of at least 2 people and we prefer you to do the job of 3 or 4.

No weed allowed on the job, that makes you have too much fun and we don’t want that. Coke and crystal meth are encouraged because they make you more productive but don’t come in on the days you crash. We just dump the workload on your coworkers those days.

You will have a 6 cents an hour increase in wages every 10 months if you don’t call in sick. Every time you call in sick you loose 1 cent. Joe is now working for 9.40 / hour. The sucker does’t even know how little we pay him! Good luck with not getting sick because we make sure you work your ass off and we get you to juggle at least 5 things at the time. In 4 years you will be a professional juggler and mostly AI. Trust me, you will be reprogrammed and you won’t even notice! We do it slowly.

Next week we are implementing a new PQRS and are updating our OS on every TYR and IDQ. You will need to do some HTML programming and fix all DCG while you are at it. If you don’t know any of this, tough shit! Study it on your own time at home because it is too busy here for us to show you how to do it and we got rid of all the IT people to cut cost. Just download the KUG on your PHT at home and don’t call us for help because we don’t answer your calls.

We know our customers are more and more demanding and don’t like to wait in the increasingly long lineups and we don’t have enough staff but it’s all because some of you call in sick. If you have a problem with this, take it out on your coworkers in the bathroom or the back so nobody sees it.

Make sure you don’t spend more than 4.673 minutes on a customer, no matter what they need or the timer we attached to you will beep louder every 5 seconds. They’ll get the message or everyone will be deaf in a short time. We do not supply hearing aids to you. Get your own!

We hope you got the last memo about the proper use of dusters. You have to stick them up your ass and dust while you help customers. It increases productivity by 74.8593 % and saves a lot of time. We know it’s a tough field we are in and we apologize for making it tougher but people just don’t want to work anymore.

Please sign on the bottom to acknowledge our new policies. We need to cover our bottoms. All of this makes things harder for you but we don’t give a damn because it’s all about increasing the bottom line.

Yours truly,
Management

Daisy had a secret super power nobody knew about. She could shrink everything so small, she could put it in a box, close the lid, put the latch on and whatever she put in that box would never be seen again. Her grandmother gave her this gift when she was a little girl and the big boys in school picked on her at they often hit her as well. She was too afraid to confront them and they just kept picking on her or hitting her every time they saw her. The meanie boys, as many of the girls in school called them were so mean, nobody liked them. One sunny spring day the meanie boys disappeared and only their parents missed them. The rest of the world was relieved not to have to see them again.

Daisy, now an adult is married to Steve. They have two daughters and a son. Daisy is a very successful therapist and manages the work, kids and married life balance really well. People consider her a happy person, who never complains and does everything well. Steve feels so lucky to be with her and he never thought married life could be this good. The day before they married, Daisy shared part of her secret with Steve. She showed him “the box”. It was small enough to fit in the drawer of her desk and had “Problems” written on the top. She informed Steve that she puts all her problems in the box and asked him to never open it. He promised to keep away from it and told Daisy, that the box gave him the creeps anyway.

Everything went well until one day Morgan, Daisy and Steve’s son opened the drawer and found the box. Morgan, being the curious boy he is, wanted to see what’s inside the box and pried it open with a screwdriver. He almost poked one of his fingers with the screwdriver. He was stunned and amazed by what he saw. There were little creatures scouring all over Daisy’s office. They were so small, nearly invisible to most people and he could not recognize any of them. One tugged at his pants and crawled up his leg. That scared him and he yelled out for his mother. Daisy ran to see what happened to Morgan and was sad to see the box open with all the contents out.

Only Daisy knew all the things pouring out of the box. There were the meanie boys, the boogie man, the dog that bit Daisy’s cat, corrupt politicians, a lighting that nearly hit the house, all of Daisy’s nightmares, her panics, fears, a few mice, snakes, a cougar that stalked her in the woods, the boss that touched her inappropriately, the woman who wanted to seduce Steve, a curse from a harmful person, an ill fitting bra, a bad pair of shoes, spinach her mother thought Daisy ate when she was little, a bad report card and everything else, that is not part of a good life. Daisy snapped her finger and all the creatures stopped, she snapped her finger again and they all went back into the box. After putting the top back on she asked Morgan to leave it where it belongs and he never opened it again. Daisy knew that no matter what happened to her she could make her problems small enough to put in the box and that was her secret to a happy life.

I dedicate this story to everyone, who needs to “make problems small” in order to manage them.

Many thanks to Kayla and the members of the The Khaotic Good Collective, a Facebook group I joined recently. They gave me the basic prompts and clues to this story.

https://spillwords.com/the-day-she-fully-embraced-herself/

Sometimes life has it’s challenges to say the least. Some people say that what doesn’t kill you makes you strong and it teaches us a lesson. Sometimes I just wish the lessons would come in an easier package.

What do you think?

There is nothing like the contentment from a day 
you reached your goals and did well!
Weather you created something new, 
learned a lesson or completed a long project, 
you end the day with an inner smile. 
You sit down to rest and you read or watch 
some heart lifting stories of people reuniting 
after fifty years of being apart 
and you see their love outlast time, 
defy age, borders, and all other obstacles. 
Those stories are a true nourishment 
for the heart and we need a regular dose of them. 
You feel euphoric form all the feel good hormones 
and the feeling carries you trough the hard days. 
Count your blessings and plan your days 
to fill your heart with these good feelings. 
Sleep well and dream sweet dreams!

I have been watching videos and reading stories by a fellow Hungarian, an excellent journalist, Tvrtko Vujity. He is from the capital of the province I grew up in. I love watching and reading his stories because he finds humanity even in the hardest places.

This poem was inspired by the story of a Hungarian nurse from the early sixties, who met a sick young boy from Albania during his 9 month stay in the hospital she worked at. The boy kept writing letters to her after he returned to Albania even when he was an adult. When she told Tvrtko about the man, who became a doctor inspired by his stay in Hungary, Tvrtko reunited the two. It was pure joy to see the love between the former nurse and the man, who once was a little boy. Their bond and love defied time, borders and lasted over fifty years.

I grew up without my two older brothers, from our father’s first marriage. I knew of them and met them briefly at the courthouse at the estate hearing after our father died. (That is how the Hungarian government did estate law in 1978.) We said hello and didn’t talk much. From my part mostly because the 15 years old me was intimidated by the two adults my brothers were.

In 2000 when Steven, the younger of the two died, our older brother Adam (Adi) had to get in touch with me because of the same legal estate requirements. It has taken them some detective work but in a round about way they have found me through one of their neighbours, who had a cottage where I grew up. By this time I was an adult and instead of being intimidated I was very curious and driven to meet my brother Adi and his family. He married the love of his life in 1969 when they were both 20 years old and had a son Robert. Robert married Krisztina and had a daughter Luca and son Kristof. After our first phone call I wanted to meet them more than I wanted anything else in life.

In 2003 my partner Neil and I went to Hungary for a long visit and spent nearly 10 months there. Adi and his wife Ilike picked us up at the airport and we have spent about 2 weeks together and got to know each other a little. After spending a few days in Budapest, the capital city we went to Pecs to their house. The house was nice and tidy with a beautiful small city garden. They designed and utilized the small space very well with fruit trees, herbs, veggies and flowers. There was always something beautiful blooming in the garden.

After renting our own place we kept visiting each other. Neil met the rest of my family and friends and we had a wonderful time in Hungary. We stayed in touch with Adi and Ilike after Neil and I returned to Canada. First by snail mail, later email and lately by messenger. We send photos back and forth and call each other using messenger video. Short of in person, messenger video is a great way to communicate.

Last year the doctors found out that Adi had tumours in multiple internal organs. He refused treatment and even biopsy. The family was not happy about his decision but as his disease progressed even his doctors agreed that he made the right decision. Adi has spent as much time at home as he could and sometime last December he had to go to a treatment center because he needed oxygen, IV medications and professional care. Ilike visited him every day and made all his favourite foods for him. Adi asked his son Robert to take care of his will and Robert asked a lawyer friend to do it.

Granting Ilike’s wishes to stay with her during the holidays Adi passed away on January 8th 2026. (I think that sometimes people wait during holidays.)

This March, two months after Adi passed away, when I spoke with my dear sister-in-law Ilike, she told me that Adi has sent her flowers and she has sent me a picture of a beautiful rose bouquet. I cried when I saw it. It touched me so deeply, that my brother did that. Ilike told me that he used to buy her flowers for every occasion when he was still alive. At some point in all the end of life preparation Adi made arrangements for his wife to receive flowers even after he passed away. What I guy! He must have gotten that from his little sister!

That was a joke but joking aside, there was one big thread in common between Adi and me among many others. The biggest parallel and the deepest common thread was our love for gardening, our knowledge of plants, how to take care of them and our love for flowers and beautiful things. Farming and gardening runs in our Schwaben blood line and even after he moved to the city from a small village and I moved across the world and live in a city our love for plants and beauty stayed with us.

I am so touched by Adi’s gesture to his wife he loved so much for the 57 years they have been married.

May he be remembered by all the flowers and beautiful things!

RIP Adi!
I love you very much!
Teri

More posts about women:

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