Winters’ Day In
Conversations on life, faith, stories, and creativity from author Talena Winters.
Pour a cuppa and stay awhile.
After the Storm (Photo Friday: Become a Gift)
I know that sunflowers think their job is to propagate their species by creating seeds. But today? It was to teach me that even when we've been hammered by life, and everything seems wretched, and we are broken all over the ground, we can still be beautiful.
How Being Unselfish Heals Us
Bitter or better? We can choose how we heal from loss. It's all in what we focus on.
Joy Comes Softly
Every day is another step forward. Every day, grief morphs and whirls and changes into a different shape, like dancing aurora borealis. And lately, I have been surprised by joy.
Reactions Are Varied
In life, every day brings something new. It can be a real mixed bag of pleasure or pain, inconvenience or joy. The trick is in being ready to participate.
Riding the Rails: How to Avoid an Emotional Train Wreck
Are you trapped in the tarry black hole of dwelling on loss? Are you jumping trains trying to hide from it? Or are you figuring out how to keep moving forward with loss as your travelling companion? How to avoid a train wreck on your road to healing and your dreams.
Just Start
Obstacles will always be there, right in front of everything you want to achieve or do, from painting a room to building a multi-national company. At the beginning, when there are the most obstacles between you and your goal, it is tempting to focus on those and decide that the end result just isn't worth the effort.
Pants are optional—but they’re a start
When everything extraneous has been stripped from your life by a loss, and you are left naked and broken, sometimes just getting your pants on in the morning is a big deal. But you look for those moments that you see progress, too. Moving forward, whether in small steps, or giant leaps--in the end, that's the only thing I can really ask of myself.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Are we in control of our destiny? Or is God? And who is to blame when things go wrong?
The Cost of Talent
I am a strong believer in being the best person you can be. Not in some humanist, "you-aren't-living-unless-you-achieve-your-full-potential" way. But in an "I'm-grateful-for-the-person-I-am" way.
Are you grateful for the talents you have?
Choosing Belief
Even though I don't understand the reason, I still believe. Like Job, I choose to believe despite the uncertainty. And because I choose to believe, my grief is changing me for the good.
What San Francisco Taught Me About Love
So often we think that it is words as sharp and cold as icicles that will sink the deepest. But really, it is love sown through kindness and respect that opens hearts.
Boulders and Balloons: When Sharing Isn’t Caring
Being human is hard. There is so much pain involved in this thing called "life." But it is also joyful. What makes life easier is walking this road with other humans, and sharing those experiences of joy and pain with each other.
But there is a time and place for everything.
My Greatest Fears
When your worst fear comes true, there’s no such thing as “getting over it” anytime soon. You discover who you really are, and what you really believe. Written less than two weeks after losing our youngest son.
Inconveniences I Would Rather Have (and “Things I’ll Never Do” song)
On Wednesday, I found I was grieving all the things that Munchkin will not get to do that I wanted him to be able to do. I find that writing songs helps me deal with very stressful and emotional topics, so I wrote "Things I'll Never Do". Here is a quick scratch recording on a video for this song.