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Living Life Poetically: Hope’s Promise
The feeling of hope has literally been around longer than we can possibly imagine. As humans, whenever our situation or condition has been less than ideal, hope has carried us through; enabling us to not only envision a better tomorrow but also strive toward it. Now, imagine if hope had…
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Living Life Poetically: The Intangible Gifts of God
About half of this poem (later titled “The Intangible Gifts of God”) was written on August 2, 2014. It was originally intended to be a song, but that plan went nowhere. At the time, all I had was the first line in the first, second, fourth, and sixth stanzas–but no…
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Depression Part 3: Finding the Cause and Working Toward the Solution
How is depression caused? What can you do about it? Those are two big questions, and it would take a whole book to cover both of them–each. So attempting to do that in a single blog post is quite a challenge. But, through this attempt, we get a short yet…
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Living Life Poetically: At the Water’s Edge
After publishing “Until We Meet Again,” I wanted to write another poem that tells a story. A fictional poem of sorts. However, this time, I felt the urge to write something that’s not so much about a fictional place with fictional human characters. Rather, one that’s about nature. Similar to…
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Living Life Poetically: To All Haters, Thank You
In life, not everyone is going to like you. That is a given. Sometimes it’s because of jealousy, insecurity, or maybe because you happen to look (or were born) a certain way. Whatever the reason, hardly any of us can go through life without indirectly or directly crossing paths with…
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Depression Part 1: Eliminating the Stigma
There’s been a series on anxiety and self-esteem. There’s even been one on motivation. It’s about time we take a closer look at depression—the other category under “Mind.” Not surprisingly, Part 1 of this Depression series is solely about eliminating the stigma that surrounds talking about it in the first…
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The Debbie Downer Effect: How to Stay Positive Yet Supportive
So you happen to have a close friend or relative who’s always complaining about something or another. They’re always sharing some kind of bad news, and things never seem to be going right in their lives. But if things happen to be going well, it’s only momentary. Maybe for a…
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Just Take a Chance: The Importance of Facing Your Fears
“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you…
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Living Life Poetically: The Fact of the Matter
There isn’t really much to say to introduce the poem, “The fact of the Matter.” I wrote it during a couple moments of reflection. It’s a poem about life, and it’s about things having a way of working out. So if something is the matter, remember the fact of the…
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Living Life Poetically: To Hope or Not to Hope
To Hope or Not to Hope is the third and final poem in my series of unfortunate poetry. I came up with the term “soul suicide”, which means making the conscious or subconscious decision to completely give up hope. It’s going through life like a robot–going through the motions with…
