The Resolute Woman

Category: Joy

  • The awful grandmother

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    resolutewoman
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    In her semi-autobiographical novel Caramelo, Sandra Cisneros tells the multigenerational story of a Mexican-American family. Cisneros once explained that she originally just wanted to explain the life of her father. However, to explain her father’s life, she also had to explain the life of her “awful grandmother,” who was her father’s bossy mother. And, she…

  • Winning the food wars

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    resolutewoman
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    During February of last year, I was jubilant. I had survived a Christmas filled with rich chocolates and pecan pie, mashed potatoes with gravy and pine-nut dressing. I had gained a few pounds, but, by February, the scales indicated that I weighed exactly what I wanted to weigh. Plus, I felt great. After years on…

  • Jeannette Walls shares her secrets

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    resolutewoman
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    I recently heard Jeannette Walls tell the riveting story she uses in the opening of her best-selling book The Glass Castle. Walls spoke at a benefit luncheon for The Stewpot, which helps feed the homeless in Dallas. If you’ve read the book, you’ll remember that Walls, a New York reporter who was writing about the…

  • “Happy in spite of”

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    resolutewoman
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    I must admit that the automobile accident I described in our last blog post and the dismal reality of the cost of a new car have thrown me into a January, beginning-of-the-year, end-of-the-holidays depression. Everyone gets depressed sometimes. And, sometimes, only time is the cure. I am reminded, however, of one of the lessons from…

  • A perfect afternoon

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    resolutewoman
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     I picked a perfect afternoon to visit the horse rescue where my daughter, Mary Elizabeth, volunteers. Even though it was January, it was sunny and the temperature climbed to 65. I walked slowly, deliberately, encumbered by my borrowed mud boots, which were just a bit too big, around the ranch, stopping to admire the patience…

  • Time to make a resolution

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    resolutewoman
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    I couldn’t resist opening the People magazine I found in the grocery store. Pictured on the cover were two beautiful, smiling, slender women. One had lost 131 pounds, and the other had lost 114 pounds. The headline proclaimed: “How they did it. Half their size!” The photos and the stories were amazing. One woman Natalie…

  • Seize the moment with joy and love

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    resolutewoman
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    One week before Christmas Eve, I attended a celebration of life for a wonderful friend, Sharon, whom I had known since 1978. She was 56 when she died. When I looked at the photograph of Sharon on the program for her service and saw the twinkle in her eyes and her warm smile, I felt…

  • Wisdom from a wedding

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    resolutewoman
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    I attended a splendid wedding recently with a bride and groom who were obviously very much in love, magnificent music and a mother-of-the-bride, my friend Susie, who looked beautiful in a long blue dress. The wedding included a reading from a prayer written by Robert Louis Stevenson. These are the parts of the prayer that…

  • A holiday reminder from Garrison Keillor

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    resolutewoman
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    While browsing in the bookstore, I found Garrison Keillor’s comments about Christmas newsletters. Written in 2006, he quotes one newsletter in which “the writer bursts the bounds on modesty.” This immodest writer reports: “Tara was top scorer on the Lady Cougers soccer team and won the lead role in the college production of Antigone, which…

  • A holiday reminder from Joy

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    resolutewoman
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    I had just enough time to stop at the post office to mail a birthday package. After I finished dropping the box in the chute at the self-serve counter, I looked at my watch and then turned around quickly to head for my car. Yikes! I almost knocked over a woman walking with a cane.…