“Whatever happens, stay alive. Don’t die before you’re dead. Don’t lose yourself, don’t lose hope, don’t loose direction.
Stay alive, with yourself, with every cell of your body, with every fiber of your skin.
Stay alive, learn, study, think, read, build, invent, create, speak, write, dream, design.
Stay alive, stay alive inside you, stay alive also outside, fill yourself with colors of the world, fill yourself with peace, fill yourself with hope.— with Wow Scenery.
Stay alive with joy.
There is only one thing you should not waste in life, and that’s life itself.”
~Virginia Woolf

2024 of course had it’s mixed bag of ups and downs, and I’m grateful for all that it has given, for we have learned much and grown from it all.

New Year’s day of 2024 saw my daughter’s fiancé pulling up to her house with a truck to move his things out after he had picked a fight on Christmas Day and then he had stormed out. It was to have been a story-book wedding, it’s theme was Princess Bride, but after he left the kids told me the relationship was not fairy-tale good. I went from feeling devastated to feeling relieved that he left. All-in-all, it was a strange start to the year, and thankfully it improved after that.

The war in Ukraine has been on my heart through the year, and I participate in fundraisers to help the refugees who arrive in my city. I gladly buy goods and I donate 100% of the sales of my artwork in the fundraiser sales the Ukrainian church hosts. It is a miracle really how this smaller nation has managed to stand up to the much larger aggressor, and the Ukrainian ingenuity and tech skills are now creating brand new warfare tactics, avidly watched by other nations. As much as I want the war to be over, I do not wish it to be at Ukraine’s expense that Russia gains more territories.

This is my 3rd year studying the Ukrainian language with the Deacon of the church, and let me tell you, it’s a struggle! Not only does it have masculine and feminine of nouns as in French, but there are 7 cases apart from the verb conjugations that give specific endings to nouns and verbs. There isn’t an English equivalent to the different cases or their applications, so for my 60+ year old brain, it’s very challenging. Progress is slow and hard-earned! Not to mention, the consonant and vowel combinations are new to the ear and tongue.

In March a friend gave me and my daughter lessons in working with hot metal in a forge. Smithing work takes a long time, but it is worth the very hard efforts!

This summer I got to see my first corpse flower blooming, after having missed all previous occasions. It was the second day, so it was already wilting and the smell was less horrid. It’s a massive bloom, check out the normal size bricks in back for scale! Then a scant few weeks later I got to go with my daughter and Miss T to see another bloom at the botanical Garden sister site, this time for an evening show.

My Mazda 6 surpassed 200,000 miles in August, and when it hit sequential numbers, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, I pulled over to snap the photo. I contacted Mazda to find out what the max number of miles was recorded for my year and model, and when they told me 250,000 miles, I felt I wanted to accept that challenge! I’m inching closer to 217,000 as I write this, so maybe I’ll achieve that goal in a couple years? Of course, I plan to go well beyond that, and when 2 mechanics pronounced the car to be in great shape, I bought the 5-year lifespan new tires instead of going for cheap ones. Grandma wants to be safe on the road, especially since I drive 3 hours to my daughter’s house (each way) and long stretches of that road are desolate, so a winter roadside breakdown wouldn’t be on my wish-list!

Around this time a pottery-making friend got me into pottery too. She has a pottery studio with a kiln in her horse-barn, and when I pointed out that I live in a small 1-bedroom apartment with no room for a pottery wheel, she said, “No problem, you can do slab work!” I soon found out that meant rolling the clay out (on a mat on my kitchen table) and forming it into neat things. She said that with my painting background I’ll love to use those skills, and she was right, underglaze dilutes beautifully to be able to do watercolor style work. I slowly dry my pieces under plastic bags, and when they’re dry I give them to her to glaze and fire in her kiln. (This is the friend who raises chickens and gives eggs to veterans as her community service project, and to help her efforts I pick up and deliver the carloads of egg-cartons a local church is collecting for her.)

Below are 2 of my latest pieces. I discovered that I love creating sculptural flower dishes, and they’re a lot of fun to paint. These are in the “green-ware” phase, pre-firing. The blue one is still damp while the pink one is dry and ready to fire.

Some of my first pieces are below. I’m having fun creating a unique piece each time and getting creative with the front and the back of the piece, treating it more like functional sculpture. I highly recommend this hobby!

My daughter and I visited the twins chosen colleges in late fall, Mr. D will go to a 2-year technical college and his twin, Miss L will be pre-med in the fall of 2025. These trips were eye-opening for them, their futures suddenly started to feel real. It was bitter-sweet for my daughter – she has been getting them ready for adulthood, but it all seems too soon now! She has forbidden their 13-year old sister from getting older, or at least from growing up too quickly.

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For 2025 I would like to try more 1sts, to continue to explore new things as well as enjoying the activities I have come to love. I wish to continue to spend quality time with friends and family, as well as finding ways to help others around me.

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As much turmoil and trouble there is in the world and our lives, we still need to live our day-to-day lives in the best way we possibly can. Being our best versions of ourselves can occur whenever we choose, and isn’t predicated on how others behave. Just because our neighbors or friends or family choose behavior that is contributing to the negatives in this world doesn’t mean we have to do likewise. We get to choose who we want to be, and we get to choose our next steps!

I wish each person reading this to have success, and if success means overcoming a big obstacle or habit, then kudos to you! Success is measured in the little choices and decisions we make all through our day, so if you’re feeling down that you fell down a rabbit-hole or two, you can turn a page any time you want to!

Blessings to you!

This may save a few relationship issues:

#2025-new-year-challenge

Here are a few inspiring post to get you started for the New Year:

• Do you REALLY need to create New Year’s Resolutions?
• A Neat Trick for Setting Goals
• Kudos not Kicks each year!
• My to-do list for today: 6 points to remember
• Where do you start when you don’t know where to start?
• Generational curses: are they breakable?
• Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it!
• “What kind of love do I allow in my life?”
• The power of love is the strongest force in the universe.
• The more you extend kindness to yourself, the more it will become your automatic response to others.
• 10 Steps to Owning Our Happiness
• Happiness starts with you. Not with your relationships, not with your job, not with your money, but with you!
• Happiness starts with you. Not with your relationships, not with your job, but with you. Part 2.
• Happiness doesn’t start with a relationship, a vacation, a job or money. Part 3
• Happiness starts with your thinking and what you tell yourself every day! Part 4
• 5 Things to quit RIGHT NOW!
• “Letting go” – to be able to follow your Joy, and the incredible focus it brings to life!!
• Being happy is a very personal thing and it really has nothing to do with anyone else.
• Find Joy in your Journey!
• 7 Rules of Life
• One day you wake up and realize you are truly happy from deep within your soul.
• 7 things to keep in mind
• 5 Daily Reminders: Say these to yourself in front of a mirror!
• 5 great how-to’s!
• How to set joyful goals

 ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Blessings!
Thank you for liking, sharing this post and for following me!
Tamara

I hope you’ll poke around my Archived Posts Main page divided up into 3 sub-pages: Mental Health and Rewiring the Brain || Healing and Developing Ourselves || Positive thoughts and Affirmations to find a wonderful trove of supportive and encouraging posts!
https://tamarakulish.com/

My books: Now available through Walmart.com!

Developing Happiness When You Can’t Find It and How to Heal Your Life on a Deep Heart Level are available in paperback and Kindle. Audiobooks are available for the busy person!

Guided Journals help you work on a particular issue by answering questions to help see patterns and to find solutions:

Removing Inner Blocks ||  Anger Journal || Guided Anxiety Journal  ||  Joy & Mindfulness Journal   ||  My Boundaries Journal  || My Inner Thoughts Journal   

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