I have to say, I love your cooking blogs. (Where were you when I was newly married and banned from using Hamburger Helper?) I love your how-to-be-a-young-mom (or dad)-and-not-go-crazy blogs. (Again, where were you when I was isolated for weeks with a sick toddler?) I am energized by your how-to grow or decorate anything blogs. I wish I could focus on one subject. In The Art of Lovely Living: In Search of Authentic Beauty Living Large, I share my multi-directional but hopefully multi-dimensional thoughts on cliques, labels, relationships, the death of our dog, and whether or not I’m friendly or, yikes, misconstrued to be flirty.

I created my blog in 2011 to share some of my personal essays about life and death, divorce, dementia, my vanity and yours, and how I’m not a fashionista, are you? Sometimes I’m serious, sometimes tongue-in-cheek (defined slyly humorous:). I get to speak my mind and heart in a conversational voice to several hundred readers. I forewarn you, I’m wordy and I’m sappy.

However, just as I love to write, I also love to paint (on canvases in lieu of walls). Both can be lonely sports though. When I joined the Arkansas Women Bloggers and The Women Bloggers, I met others online who love words and their influence. And even though my head swims when you all discuss anything plug-in, computerish, and Instagramy, I read you, and your explanations bring a bit of clarity in my fog.

In my personal life, I try to follow in my grandmother’s example. She showed me what loving parents do. In turn, I focused to be the mother I didn’t have, the teacher I needed. Since I was a child of divorce, I had vowed to not ever divorce for my children’s and scriptures’ sake. When I discovered my eighteen-year marriage included his affairs, that vow was broken, and I entered into a new season. Writing was a good way to air my griefs and soften the shock.

Now as a single parent, I began working on a master’s degree in Technical and Expository Writing. Some of the classes generated my developing educational programs for high school students: a radio talk show—Listen Up, It’s Your Future Talking, and a documentary films workshop. I also produced and directed a city-wide children’s production with a cast and crew of 75. For those eight performances, we averaged 800 on week nights!

For all of these projects, I created brochures, programs, and manuals before graphic arts programs, computers and the internet were available. I know it sounds like the dinosaur age, but that was only 25 or so years ago.

In my early forties, I was blessed to meet the love of my life (trite, but true) and together we have four children and five grandchildren. When we moved to Searcy twenty years ago for my husband Bill, a urologist, to join Searcy Medical Center, we found a house with seven acres on a thirty-acre lake. Only eight minutes from the clinic and Harding Academy where I taught secondary English and then art, the setting has been a godsend. Many hours are spent at our kitchen window watching the world of nature. I call it my God therapy. I’ll share a bit in one post.

For all of my jam-packed years, I now am one who needs quiet days to unplug and tackle a project, whether it be an article or painting. The silence offers room for my best expressions. Several essays have been published in Chicken Soup for the Soul Books, Guideposts’ Mysterious Ways magazine and book and other essay compilations as well as newspapers and online websites. Throughout the years my volunteer work has included serving on five different board of directors, four as Secretary (writing minutes for meetings is not creative but necessary). All give me opportunities to invest in others. All the while, I’m growing and expanding.

Bill and I love traveling together, having journeyed throughout our great country with only ten states left. We’ve ventured through sixteen or so European countries, some twice, and Russia, Cuba and Mexico. We have a mutual love of art, our children, grandchildren, and most especially the Lord.  Life is good, and so I share with you what I find in my search for its beauty and art.