by Bruce McIntyre | Apr 5, 2019 | Resilience
Living with Paradox Making peace with paradox. It’s tough, but essential for better living and better perspective. She received infusion treatments on her birthday. This was decidedly NOT the way she wanted to spend her birthday. But, her parents brought cake anyway....
by Bruce McIntyre | Mar 29, 2019 | Caregiving
8 Words for Those Who Care As you lean into your unique situation, remember, there is grace for you! If no one else has ever extended it, or if you have a supremely difficult time believing it, allow me to extend some grace to you: You are forgiven. Today is a new...
by Bruce McIntyre | Mar 26, 2019 | Caregiving
8 Words for Those Who Care She keeps going. Her voice is soft. Her attempts at annunciation tend to leave her words slurred together due to the effects of Parkinson’s disease. She walks slowly, precariously on the verge of a fall at any moment. The disease has...
by Bruce McIntyre | Mar 26, 2019 | Caregiving
8 Words for Those Who Care I fully concur with this elegantly pointed observation from Elizabeth Kubler Ross: “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the...
by Bruce McIntyre | Mar 8, 2019 | Caregiving
8 Words for Those Who Care People never seem to ask when you’re ready for them. These surprise attacks can happen in waiting rooms, on elevators, or in the bleachers. “What’s wrong with your hands? Does your mother have Alzheimer’s? Why were you in the hospital?” In...
by Bruce McIntyre | Mar 1, 2019 | Caregiving
8 Words for Those Who Care The moist smell of cool, morning, summer air stirred lightly past my nostrils and I breathed it in… deeply. Pepper, our cat, was playing with an unlucky toad. A young robin kept an eye on the cat as it pecked at the bird feeder. The steady...
by Bruce McIntyre | Feb 22, 2019 | Caregiving
8 Words for Those Who Care For many family caregivers, the notion of self-care seems counterintuitive. You might even feel a twinge of guilt for resting, exercising, or doing something to rejuvenate. But, if you don’t, you’ll burn out faster. In this...
by Bruce McIntyre | Feb 15, 2019 | Caregiving
8 Words for Those Who Care Like many parents, we worked to “get our act together” before we had children. Assuming we could shield our children from unnecessary hindrances, our six and half years of marriage prior to children helped us mature our relationship, our...
by Bruce McIntyre | Feb 11, 2019 | Caregiving
8 Words for Those Who Care I love this bit of wisdom from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, “Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature’s way of letting in only as much as we can handle.” And grief is the appropriate word here. Any...
by Bruce McIntyre | Feb 1, 2019 | Spiritual Stuff
From Bitter Reality to Resilient Living Worries were piling up, and January has about 492 days. So, I set off on a 27 degree early morning walk at Martin Nature Park in OKC. Trails are dirt and rock, no pavement, which always makes me feel like I’m further from...
