January 2018

“Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” -Desmond Tutu A year ago I almost died in a car crash, which was the catalyst for me deciding to pursue all of my dreams in life - I decided that I wanted to devote my life to inspiring others to follow their heart and blaze their own trail. I wrote a crazy mission statement that said that I wanted to, "inspire millions of people." I...

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever." -Steve Jobs I’m writing the foreward to my book, before my book even exists. A few nights ago, lying in bed, a simple message popped into my head, “Write the foreword” was all that it said. I woke up, turned on the light on my nightstand,...

A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. -Leopold Stokowski   [caption id="attachment_2738" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] The Musical Mountaineers, Rose (piano) and Anastasia (violin)[/caption] I never imagined that I would be one half of The Musical Mountaineers. Even now, when I watch our videos or look at the photographs from our adventures, I have to pinch myself - "Is this real life?". When I decided to jump in and blaze my own trail, I knew it was going to be beautiful, but I never imagined...

My official “poetry training” is as follows: I started writing poems as a child on an old, manual typewriter. That’s it. I’ve never taken a class on how to write a poem. I vaguely remember learning something about, “iambic pentameter”, but I would need to use Google to remember what it means. I know what a haiku is, but otherwise, if you are looking for some sort of definitive poetry training, I have no clue what I’m talking about – and I’m so incredibly thankful...

“You were born with wings, why prefer to crawl through life?” - Rumi   One year ago today, I almost lost everything. My mom and my husband and I were driving home from the most incredibly wonderful day of snowshoeing, when our truck hit a patch of black ice and went spinning across the highway - directly into the path of an oncoming semi-truck. To this day, I cannot explain why I am still here. There is no feasible explanation for how we did not get struck...