Creating Sparks That Last & All Things Relationships

The Sound of Love If you've been reading my blog posts for a while, you'll know that I focus on later-in-life love quite a bit. I feel that this kind of relationship is a transition stage that very often gets overlooked, so when I come across books that include seasoned lovers, or midlife lovers, I snap up the opportunity to devour them.  This month, I have 3 relationship-altering stories for you that will make you see love from a fresh perspective of youth through to maturity across a range of environments from castles to ghetto kids to small-town every day kids. I'll start with the seasoned love in a castle story because it was on my tbr list the longest. I discovered the titles written by Jasmine Guillory when researching 'factual fiction' for my own writing projects. This one is called The Royal Holiday. Royal Holiday by Jasmine Guillory Vivian is a single midlifer who is coaxed into going on holiday to England with her daughter, while she works on the Christmas

  Reviving a Lost Art Image credit Jill Wellington courtesy of Pexels  [I invite you to read this thought-provoking article on self-reflection by guest blogger Janice Melmed] I’ve been feeling quite overwhelmed lately. There has been so much going on in my life and I have felt pulled in so many directions at once. Distracted and not fully present, I reversed my car into a lamp post and jarred to a stop. I drove carefully home and I finally pressed pause on the chaos. I sat down and for a few moments I tuned into my body and I asked myself what I needed. Never mind what everyone else who I was giving my energy to needed, what did I need? I was surprised when the answer came back as gentle loving kindness. I decided to explore that a little deeper and to really understand what it was I was craving. Closing my eyes, I focused on my breathing, and once I was still, I allowed my senses to explore the words.   Gentleness brought images to mind of soft pastel colours, the sounds of tink

Sometimes sombre, sometimes humorous, always enlightening Something wonderful is happening so I wanted to share the excitement with you. In 7 months I will be a published author! I have written my memoir which is an expansion of ‘Creating Sparks that Last,’ which you might already have read. If you haven’t, it’s available at the link in the top post; it will give you the backstory to my memoir. If you’re unable to access the link I’ll gladly email the ebook/pdf document to you. Anyway, back to my memoir, ‘En Route: The best is yet to be.’ In the unraveling of my inherent people-pleasing practices I uncover a hidden dragon within. This self-empowerment helps me give voice to my opinions; to speak up in trying times and to face adversity head on. From all this self-discovery I learn new ways of engaging in all my relationship dynamics. From siblings, to offspring, in-laws, parents and partner, I find my identity and mightily so! If you’d like the same empowerment for your life, register