Hope: childhood, bullying, mental health and hurt, adolescence, parenting...

What a title: a lot of different issues all under one label. I've thought about hosting different blogs from encouraging  mental health, to discouraging bullying, from discussing children and parenting, to love and marriage. In the end I realized they are all simply subjects for the Examined Life.

If we think about life we can enjoy it more, because in the thinking, we don't take it for granted. Perhaps we slow down - a little at least - and smell the flowers, so to speak.

Flowers makes me think of my husband. He brought some home once recently. It was the first bouquet in a very long time. Not because he doesn't love me, but because he doesn't think of flowers, and he certainly doesn't like to give them for an occasion. He'd prefer to bring something home every day except Valentines or my Birthday rather than to focus on a particular day. That's just the way he is. And although I love flowers, I've learned to by myself some from time to time. (https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=280748765372108&set=a.116043658509287.21081.100003109602306&type=1&theater)

I am in love with my husband a little. I always love him a lot. There is a difference - the one is a flame of fire, the other is embers embedded deep inside my soul.

I adore my children. One I bore, the other I married into. The first is more like me and I understand a little better; the other I cherish in part because she is an enigma to me (and I to her perhaps). I've sacrificed a lot try to understand (and she too perhaps) and I wouldn't trade her for a hundred girls I might have borne.

I was bullied as a child and it wounded my adolescence tremendously. But it taught me compassion.

I wanted to die several times in my twenties, but I'm here now as a testament that life does work itself out and we're the better for the pain as well as the pleasure. In fact the pleasure doesn't teach us much at all, except that suffering is endless. It's good to suffer and to enjoy the goodness of life, so we grow and adapt and learn to live and learn how to love all the more.

So, which concept, idea, topic should I explore in depth? Dunno. All of the above.

Love and Marriage, Down with Bullying, Up with Mental Health, Childhood-Adolescence: Parenting completes the cycle.

I'd love to hold a split second in my hand - to know what it's like to see a moment amidst all the ages - and enjoy the wave of time pass through me. Then I might know how to touch another human soul and spark into it life and hope and longing.

Live, Love, Laugh: and if not, cry, but know life is a cycle and though good moments are fleeting, difficult ones pass to and it is always good to be alive.