The Power of Positive Thoughts

The Power of Positive Thoughts

Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 8 seconds

Embracing Tomorrow with JanI have lived one day at a time most of my life, and since Jan died, living one hour at a time for the early part of my grief journey, I woke up not fully rested but very positive.

The arrival of the sandman has always been fleeting at best.

But I have always awakened to positive thoughts, albeit many of late have been dim and difficult to articulate.

Today my morning thoughts were decisive, specific, and effortless to implement.

With days left in the year, my thoughts as I lay in bed focused on what can I do to invest in the charities that mattered to Jan and me.

The short-term focus was on where to make the end-of-the-year donations.

In the long term, I focused on planning to distribute the modest estate Jan created.

Hopefully, these early morning dreams will resonate in the world and assist in repairing the globe.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

Subscribe

Contact Us

I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.



Grief is a Great Teacher

As I pray every week at Temple Sha'arey Shalom, when we remember those we lost in this passage, one of our readings is: "Grief is a great teacher when it sends us back to serve and bless the living. We learn how to counsel and comfort those who, like ourselves, are bowed with sorrow. We learn when to keep silent in their presence and when a word will assure them of our love and concern."

1 comment add your comment

Share your thoughts and ideas

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund!

The Power of Positive Thoughts
×
The Unfolding

Read: October 2022

Get this book

The Unfolding: A Novel

by A.M. Homes

The Unfolding by A.M. Homes is a darkly comic political parable braided with a Bildungsroman that takes us inside the heart of a divided country. The Unfolding is an alternative history that is terrifyingly prescient, profoundly tender, and devastatingly funny. Will this novel help me to understand how we became a nation that no longer shares the same definitions of truth, freedom, and democracy, much less a shared vision of the future?

Although I understand more clearly the crisis facing the US, I highly recommend this novel.

Ms. Homes has written a must-read book that compliments the January 6th Committee report and should make us all more vigilant.

The characters are so well defined that at the end of the novel, I wanted to continue to read about them, especially Meghan.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

The Big Guy loves his family, money, and country. Undone by the 2008 presidential election results, he taps a group of like-minded men to reclaim their version of the American Dream. As they build a scheme to disturb and disrupt, the Big Guy also faces turbulence within his family. His wife, Charlotte, grieves a life not lived, while his 18-year-old daughter, Meghan, realizes that her favorite subject–history–is not exactly what her father taught her.

In a story that is as much about the dynamics within a family as it is about the desire for those in power to remain in force, Homes presciently unpacks a dangerous rift in American identity, prompting a reconsideration of the definition of truth, freedom, and democracy–and exploring the explosive consequences of what happens when the exact words mean such different things to people living together under one roof.

In her first novel since the Women’s Prize award-winning May We Be Forgiven, A.M. Homes delivers us back to ourselves in this stunning alternative history that is both terrifyingly prescient, deeply tender, and devastatingly funny.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

Subscribe

Contact Us

I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love.

×
Salvage the Bones: A Novel

Read: September 2024

Get this book

Salvage the Bones: A Novel

by Jesmyn Ward

I’ve started reading “Salvage the Bones: A Novel” by Jesmyn Ward, a two-time National Book Award winner and author of “Sing, Unburied, Sing.” The book delivers a gritty yet tender story about family and poverty in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Helene’s devastation makes it the perfect time to read this book. The novel is among The New York Times’ 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.

The story is set in Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, where a hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the city. Esch’s father is growing concerned, although he is often absent and a heavy drinker. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there is little to save. Esch, who is fourteen, is pregnant and struggling to keep down the little food she gets. Her brother Skeetah is trying to care for his pit bull’s new litter, which is dying one by one. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior struggle with family dynamics and lack parental guidance.

As the twelve days that make up the novel’s framework yield their dramatic conclusion, this unforgettable family – motherless children sacrificing for one another, protecting and nurturing where love is scarce – pulls itself up to face another day. The novel is a big-hearted story about familial love and community against all odds, offering a wrenching look at the lonesome, brutal, and restrictive realities of rural poverty. “Salvage the Bones” is a revelatory, honest, and poignant exploration of social issues, filled with poetry and emotional depth.

×
The Time Traveler's Wife

Read: May 2021

Get this book

The Time Traveler’s Wife

by Audrey Niffenegger

My wife had asked me to read – The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger – on several occasions. When we first met, we both liked to read fiction and non-fiction. As we aged, I focused almost exclusively on non-fiction, and she focused on fiction. Since her passing, I have started reading more of both genres. We could now have a book club!

Both Jan and I have always enjoyed books and movies about time travel. If I could travel back in time, there are tens of thousands of days I would love to spend with her again. But time travel is not possible. Or is it? Her spirit returns to me whenever I am paralyzed and encourages me to dust myself off and keep going. Maybe one day we will time travel together!

I enjoyed reading this book, even if it was difficult to keep track of the periods. It is very much the type of time-traveling book that both of us would have liked to read, and it has helped me to imagine a world in which Jan and I will meet again.

But what if it is not time travel as imagined by H. G. Wells. As the Hasidic story foretold, God split our souls at birth and placed one part of my soul in her body and placed the rest into my body. Very few people are lucky enough to find the person who has the other half of their soul, and Jan and I did.

When my life ends, what if God takes a portion of our two souls and places them into new bodies. Each of their souls would include a part of each of us. Those two new people would have to find each other in the future to connect as we did. They might not see each other and forever hunger for true love. Whatever happened, they would not know that they once were very much in love.

Subscribe

Contact Us

×
The Sorrow Apartments

Read: June 2024

Get this book

The Sorrow Apartments

by Andrea Cohen

Today, I explored “The Sorrow Apartments,” the eighth collection of poems by poet Andrea Cohen. Renowned poet Christian Wiman accurately describes Cohen’s work as a “cumulative force,” showcasing her deep attention, genuine intelligence, and soul. Cohen’s distinctive talents are featured in this collection, complemented by her characteristic sly humor, unwavering conciseness, and surprising moments of profound wisdom.

It’s astonishing how swiftly Cohen transports us:

Bunker

What would I
think, coming

up after
my world

had evaporated?
I’d wish

I were water.

The Sorrow Apartments house a collection of sparse and haunting poetry, each piece a captivating narrative of mystery, grief, and awe. These poems transport us not just across time but also through a spectrum of emotions. Cohen’s unique approach to illumination is evident in “Acapulco,” where an unanticipated companion muses, “as men tend to, / the stars comprising Orion’s belt — / as if it were the lustrous sparks and not / the leveling dark that connects us.” For a poet often deemed unfashionable, Cohen’s work proves that unfashionable can be beautiful.

×
Land of Milk and Honey: A Novel

Read: October 2023

Get this book

Land of Milk and Honey: A Novel

by C Pam Zhang

Today, I commenced reading Land of Milk and Honey: A Novel by C Pam Zhang, the award-winning author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold; she returns with a rapturous and revelatory novel about a young chef whose discovery of pleasure alters her life and, indirectly, the world. With the arrival of forest fire smoke in my neighborhood, it seemed a timely book to read.

A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world’s troubles.

There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global eliteZhan, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her body.

The chef’s boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion in this atmosphere of hidden wonders and cool, seductive violence. Soon, she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.

Sensuous and surprising, joyous and bitingly sharp, told in language as alluring as it is original, Land of Milk and Honey provocatively bare the ethics of seeking pleasure in a dying world. It is a daringly imaginative exploration of desire and deception, privilege and faith, and the roles we play to survive. Most of all, it is a love letter to food, wild delight, and the transformative power of a woman embracing her own appetite.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

Subscribe

Contact Us

I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.



×
Neruda on the Park: A Novel

Read: May 2023

Get this book

Neruda on the Park: A Novel

by Cleyvis Natera

Neruda on the Park is a novel by Cleyvis Natera that beautifully depicts the complexities of family, friendship, and ambition. The story highlights the community’s efforts to protect their neighborhood amidst the gentrification and the tension between a mother and her daughter.

The Guerreros have lived in Nothar Park, a Dominican neighborhood in New York City, for twenty years. When a neighboring tenement faces demolition, Eusebia, an elder of the community, takes matters into her own hands and devises a series of increasingly dangerous schemes to halt the construction of luxury condos. Meanwhile, Eusebia’s daughter, Luz, a rising associate at a Manhattan law firm, becomes distracted by a passionate romance with the handsome white developer working on the project her mother opposes.

As Luz’s father, Vladimir, designs their retirement home in the Dominican Republic, mother and daughter clash, escalating tensions in Nothar Park and leading to a near-fatal climax. Overall, Neruda on the Park is a captivating story that weaves a rich, vivid tapestry of community and sacrifice to protect what matters most.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

Subscribe

Contact Us

I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.



×