Tag Archives: empty nester

For A Seed To Achieve Greatness It Must Come Completely Undone

“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.” ―Cynthia Occelli When I look back at the last few years it is amazing to me to see some of […]

Be In Their Lives Today

“To be in your children’s memories tomorrow, you have to be in their lives today.”   Oh, how I love that quote. And it is such a great reminder for all of us that have the blessing of being a parent. I remember throughout the growing up years of my children when they would ask me […]

Remember what it feels like to just breathe

The last several weeks have been such a whirlwind for me. I was running around like crazy trying to prepare everything for my daughter to get home, and then there was all the emotion that surrounded her actually getting home, followed by hosting a huge open house event for everyone to welcome her back. I […]

When we don’t know what lies ahead

At different points in our lives, especially during times of trial, we might find ourselves feeling anxiety over the uncertainty of what lies in store for us in our future years. I have faced that myself at times, especially when one phase of life has come to an end and another one begins, such as […]

Amazing blessings, tender mercies, little miracles…

I had the coolest experience last Sunday night and I just couldn’t help but share it. So the story started on the Friday before. My son Dalton called to let me know that he and his wife wanted to come over to our house for Sunday dinner. I, of course, was thrilled because as an […]

Rediscover the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in

As we age we grow wiser from life experience, which is a good thing. But sometimes as we grow older we also become a little bit jaded…almost too realistic…we often lose that sense of wonder and excitement we had as a child, and that is a not such a good thing… Now that I am […]

See How Far You’ve Come

It was exactly three years ago today that I signed the final papers to sell my company. As I look back over the last three years I am blown away at how much has happened since then. I transitioned out of my old company, I launched REES Capital (my angel investment firm), got our charity […]

“Love your Parents. We are so busy growing up, we often forget they are also growing old.”

Life the past few months has been a reminder that I am growing older, especially facing an empty nest.  However, in all my focus to deal with seeing my own children grow older I have honestly lost sight of the fact that my own parents are also growing old… My parents stopped by the other […]

You Can’t Start the Next Chapter of your Life if You Keep Re-Reading the Last One

Moving Forward. That is a concept I have been taught since I was young.  Whenever I went to my father or my Grandfather for advice in life they would always tell me, “Just keep moving forward.” It was the solution to almost every problem I would take to them, and over time I began to […]

“Just go right along and you’ll start happening to”

Welcome back!  I hope all of you had an amazing Labor Day Holiday!  So mine was awesome, mainly because my two children came home from college for the weekend to spend it with me and that was pure heaven!  Oh my goodness how I value every second I get with them now.  Saying goodbye to […]

Happiness is a CHOICE

“Happiness is a choice”. That is the saying that my daughter has on a sign on the dashboard of her car that she looks at every time she gets in her car to go anywhere.  When I asked her the other day if she had a favorite saying that was her motto of sorts in […]

The Nest Will Soon Be Empty

Today was an amazing day – we had planned to take our kids out to the Lake to go boating with their friends, everyone got their swimming suits on and we packed the boat with snacks and we drove 45 minutes to the lake and got the boat on the water only to have our […]

“Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what the heck happened!?

Do you ever look in the mirror and feel shocked to see a grown up staring back at you? Do you ever look in the mirror and realize that you can no longer pretend that you are still young, cool, and hip, and you are forced to face the fact that instead of being hip, […]

Growing Up

Growing Up Growing up is never easy. You hold on to things that were. You wonder what’s to come. But then you realize that it is time to let go of what has been and look ahead to what will be. But letting go isn’t always easy. In every aspect it is hard at times […]

Endings and Beginnings, Happy and Sad, But Never Alone

I hate that we sometimes feel alone in this life – the fact is that we are never alone – there are always others out there going through the same thing that we are, it’s just that we need more of us who are willing to be honest about it so we give permission to […]