The Resolute Woman

Author: resolutewoman

  • The importance of friendship

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    In the May 2012 issue of The Atlantic magazine, Stephen Marche tells the story of Yvette Vickers, a former Playboy playmate and B-movie star, who lay dead in her home in Los Angeles “for the better part of a year”  before a neighbor found her mummified body. Yvette Vickers, Marche says, had no children, no…

  • “You can adjust the sail”

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    We were talking in my Sunday School class about the need to accept disappointments in life and to accept people as they are—and, most important, to accept that we can’t control everything. Will remembered the words to a song Ricky Skaggs sings—“We can’t control the wind but we can adjust the sail.” What a wonderful…

  • Lessons from Roz Savage

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    Roz Savage spoke at my son Jay’s graduation at the University of Tulsa. Have you heard of Roz Savage? I hadn’t. Now I know that she was the first woman to row across three oceans—the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian. She has rowed more than 15,000 miles, sometimes braving 20-foot waves, once capsizing three times in…

  • “Just get off your rear”

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    At age 81, Dr. Kenneth Cooper has switched from running to brisk walking. Do whatever you can, and do it with gusto, he advises. “Just avoid inactivity. You don’t have to run a marathon. Just get off your rear.” Cooper, the founder and chairman of the Cooper Aerobics Center in Dallas, talked recently to Steve…

  • How did I build better boundaries?

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    I wish I had a simple answer. I don’t. For most of life’s big issues, there are simple answers that provide a glimpse of the truth. And, then, there are long answers that reveal the truth. I built better boundaries by getting to know myself, figuring out who I was and what I wanted to…

  • What I learned about boundaries

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    When I was a child, we ate a farm breakfast before we rushed out of the house to catch the school bus—eggs and bacon or sometimes biscuits and gravy. At the same time that my brothers and I were climbing into the school bus, my parents were leaving the house and starting their daily chores.…

  • A sensible approach to dieting

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    What’s the best way to lose weight? A sensible program of diet and exercise, concludes a study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. It’s based on research from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and we read about it in the April 24, 2012, issue of The Dallas Morning News. What’s the…

  • Try the Goldilocks approach

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    What’s the Goldilocks approach? Remember the girl with the golden ringlets? She visited the Three Bears, looked at what they had to offer and took what suited her best. You can do the same when you get advice from books or friends or people who are supposed to be experts. Think about the advice that’s…

  • Wisdom from Anna Quindlen

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    I am reading Anna Quindlen’s new book Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, but, so far, I like the first paragraph best. “It’s odd when I think of the arc of my life, from child to young woman to aging adult,” begins Quindlen, who is 59. “First I was who I was. Then I didn’t…

  • What to do with a 13-year-old?

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    My friend, worried about her 13-year-old son who doesn’t want to go to school, asked me for advice. I hesitated, remembering some of the complicated conflicts and issues I had with my two children when they were teenagers. Finally, I said, “Let’s call Fayteen and see what she has to say.” Fayteen, too, remembered the…