Sunday, March 22, 2009

Don't squander good news


Juliahna was diagnosed last August with acute myelogenous leukemia. Since then she’s undergone progressively more radical procedures, all the while keeping her friends informed of her progress through her Caring Bridge journal. The other day, while sharing the great news of hopeful prognosis for recovery, Juliahna wrote the following:

“As of today, I'm committed to really celebrating all the good news that comes. Too often I skip right into wondering how long good news will keep coming to me, which I've come today to consider a rather careless squander of good news. I'm wanting now to practice a more disciplined mindfulness of being present to this moment, this one I've been gifted with in this fractal of time. And in the bigger picture, I'm reminded that this has been and will continue to be the only way it can be: a moment to moment experience. I'm going to work to keep all of me with me in the only place I can be: here, now.”

What a powerful reminder of the vulnerability yet the giftedness of life. Juliahna's words resonate within me and spur me to a similar mindfulness. What better teacher than one who has entered the darkness and emerged filled with light.

1 comment:

Wayne Stratz said...

great quote. This weekend my mind so wanted to race to Monday morning. and when my brain went there, it got anxious.

About Me

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Beryl is the author of The Scent of God: A Memoir published by Counterpoint NY in 2006 and A View of the Lake published by Lake Superior Port Cities Inc. in 2001. She’s been living on Lake Superior for seventeen wonderful years, and spent 10 years writing two popular columns for the Cook County News Herald: Newcomer Notes and Putting Down Roots. Beryl is past president of the Schroeder Area Historical Society and a long-time chair of its Oral History and Marketing committees. She is a past board member of the Violence Prevention Center in Grand Marais and committee member for the Grand Marais Art Colony’s first ever annual North Shore Reader and Writers Festival. She’s been published in the Sun Magazine, Minnesota Monthly, Lake Superior Magazine, and The Trenton Times and in the anthologies, Surviving Ophelia published by Perseus Publications in 2001 and The New Writer's Handbook, Vol. 2, published by Scarletta Press in 2008 and was named Best of Minnesota Writers by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. She is currently working on her third memoir: the sequel to The Scent of God.