Life-Changing Tip

August 2, 2026August 2, 2026 / Hermionejh

“If you had to give one life-changing tip, what would it be?”
WordPress writing prompt, August 2, 2026

Do It NOW. Tomorrow, or some future date, rarely presents the right time. When we ‘get around to it’ more often means the pile or the project remains undone.

I once heard that ‘it’s the start that stops us.’ If that applies, break it down. What can be done in 5 minutes? 10, 15, or 20 minutes?

You’ve got this.

And I know it’s supposed to be just one, but:

YOU ARE ENOUGH.

YOU MATTER.

❤️

Abundant Life

July 14, 2026 / Hermionejh

It’s possible to see the flowers over the weeds, and remember that weeds also serve a purpose.

It’s possible to know that chaos, enmity, greed, and the maleficent use of power are reining supreme, and also know that those of good will are also still here, continuing the work of uplifting humanity.

There is community, understanding, kindness, love, protection and an abundant life – without the need to dominate or control.

We can say no to those who would steal our peace and joy, and then create more peaceful and joyful spaces.

We can form collectives and our own economies and remove our money, our time, and our labor toward a government that has turned against the people it pretends to serve.

We can still love our neighbor, take care of the sick, and remember the abundance of the natural world and of helping each other.

We are making a choice. We have the power to change direction, to adjust, to create a world in balance and harmony.

We can have each others’ backs.

We do not have to accept lies meant to obscure corruption and abuse.

Will we?

Dear Sister

October 3, 2025 / Hermionejh

I listened to a message you had left that sunny September day in 2023, letting me know you were in the hospital – ‘doing okay,’ although you said you were feeling very weak.

It’s hard to listen to now because you’re gone. It was just three months from your diagnosis to your death. As we talked during those months, you said that it had been a couple of years that things were starting to not feel right. You said you were tired all the time, and you couldn’t get to your doctor, and when you finally did, he minimized what was happening. Unfortunately, you weren’t someone who would demand being adequately treated.

By the time they had ordered tests when you had called me from the hospital, it was already basically too late (although no one could know that in the moment).

But I think you did know. I think that’s why you had me take you home that night. I’m sure you were terrified, and you were trying to run from it. I understand it now in a way that I didn’t before.

I’m so sorry that we never got back to the kind of friendship we had in our twenties. I don’t really know what happened, but maybe it was just time moving on and life shaping us.

I hope you know that I always loved you, and always wished that we could be friends again. I know that you loved me, but I didn’t feel like you liked me very much, and I felt hurt and defensive.

If there’s another place where I’ll see you again, I hope that we’re in our best selves with each other. But I’ll be glad to see you no matter what.

I’m also glad I saved your message – I’ll take the bitter to have the sweet.

An Arc

June 10, 2025September 16, 2026 / Hermionejh / 1 Comment

Life gets more cherished, not because I’m going to lose it, but because I have become aware of how precious the everyday was with others that I cared about.

Last year the daughter of a friend died and the funeral reception was held at a restaurant in Bernardston, Mass, that had a large separate building for such occasions. A woman I have known most of my life was there – indeed, most of the people there I have known as long – but she has always been special to me, even though most of it was periphery when I was young, and she was a decade older. It’s funny how that gulf seems so long when you’re young and you know it’s barely anything once you’re beyond that.

She was, and is, beautiful – inside and out, and she was not just kind, but present, whenever she was around- and I regret that I didn’t spend the time with her that day that one of my contemporaries got to, but I was overwhelmed by the multitude and had to leave. I did, however, sit next to her, and got to rest my head on her shoulder for a few minutes. Time fell away and I was 12 again.

She means so much to me, and I can see the arc of our lives. She was a contemporary of the majority of the people we were involved with, and I was a child, but soon going into my teen years. She seemed so cosmopolitan to me. She had a daughter several years younger than me and I enjoyed every moment she shared time and attention toward me.

She didn’t know my inner world. For all I know she thought I was fine and getting what I needed because I had learned early on that something is better than nothing in several aspects of my life. I wasn’t consciously aware of that back then, but I am now.

She read a story with me and her daughter, but I knew that I got more of the ironic and funny bits than her daughter did, and we got to share that. That moment is emblazoned on my heart and in my mind forever.

It’s painful that I feel the ghost of that girl wandering through my psyche, still holding onto those precious bits like those desperate people who panned for gold in California must have done so long ago. I want her to get what she needs, and I don’t know why the well is so deep.

There are other forces at work, of course, but she deserves a full well. She deserves to breathe quiet and unburdened. I just have to figure out how to give it to her.

But I honor, and am grateful for, those who stepped in fully present – whether on purpose, or by happy accident. I’m sure it is in no small part of why I am still here.

Here And Now

October 24, 2024October 24, 2024 / Hermionejh / 1 Comment

The yard is frosted over this morning, late autumn is tip-toeing over the land. The maple in the side yard is nearly naked – its yellow leaves left a skirt around its base.

Everything is quiet as I breathe in the chilled air. Nothing disturbs the break of day.

It’s good to be here now and to be alive to witness this.

I know many are suffering all through our Country and all through the world. There is no taking a moment to breathe in the quiet morning air. There is work to do.

Mud needs to be dug out – in some places it’s three or four feet deep. They need helping hands, a kind word, food, and rest.

I’m sorry that there are people who believe that officials are holding back funds or national guard workers when those officials are there to assess what’s needed. I wish we weren’t easy prey for mis- and dis-information.

There are good people everywhere but there are also those who delight in causing harm.

Maybe we’ll lose this experiment we’ve been privileged to have the last few hundred years, and maybe a dictatorship with the censorship and grueling conditions of such rulers will cause regret in those who welcomed it and helped usher it in, but it will be too late then. There will be no more speaking out.

History and living examples of authoritarianism are begging us to see what happens under those conditions, but sometimes something set in motion has to play out.

Much like the season turning, leaves falling, and frost deadening the bright summer growth, spring will come again. I just hope it’s not before years of winter.

Couldn’t We

May 11, 2024May 11, 2024 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

Couldn’t we just go back for a visit so I can ask you questions that now hang in the air unanswered?

Like, did you used to thin out the hasta plants that grew along the walkway?

We were gifted several hasta plants last year and now they seem poised to take over the whole garden.

I don’t remember you gardening when I was little. Maybe I was in first grade?

I was wondering if you had wanted me to help you clear out and organize your accumulated stuff, but I never asked you. I don’t know why. I guess I thought it was enough to visit or bring you swimming at Laurel Lake, and going out for ice cream after.

Maybe we were just different, but you never failed to help when I asked. I was your ‘needy’ daughter I read in a letter you sent my now deceased sister.

Couldn’t we just meet on a sweet summer day and walk together and talk?

You could tell me more stories about your life, about my relatives.

I know it was a hard life, Mom. I know. It was hard all over, and it is again. You loved going to your French Catholic boarding school. I’m sure it took you away from whatever else was happening.

You had friends that made your world – and Harvey who was your first boyfriend and I never knew why you broke up, but he remained in your life through letters and occasional visits your whole life. I think he really loved you.

Couldn’t we have time to be together more than snippets in a dream that were strange and unsatisfying? I suppose something is better than nothing, and I’m glad I saw you as a young, radiant woman.

You offered me food, or were carrying food. Was that a message to myself from my subconscious? Maybe I need spiritual food now?

Change is tough, but so much changes all the time you’d think I’d be used to it. But I’ve also lived in the same place for ten years, but I don’t expect that will always be so. I’ve had the same routines, hung out with many of the same people – so there’s a sense of stability even though we’re all changing all the time. We’re growing older, and friends and relatives are leaving or have left us.

I heard your voice say “what a rainy day,” as I looked out the porch window onto the steady rain dampening the days plans.

I thought you were really there for a moment because I hadn’t been thinking of you, but it was your voice I heard. It was both comforting and filled me with longing to see you again.

Thank you for what you did for me, and for loving me.

No Time

April 11, 2024April 12, 2024 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

My oldest sister and I went to Rhode Island today to meet with my deceased sister’s tax prep guy who seemed like a lovely, caring person.

Our sister had been using his service for 29 years. 29 years! I don’t think I’ve used any kind of service for that long.

He told us that they used to chat while he did her taxes, and she would talk to him about her nursing schooling, and he would tell her about his love of all things Germany – especially Munich and Oktoberfest.

We all got teary-eyed over our departed sister.

Her house sold two days ago, and while her partner bought the house, it’s not the same. She’s gone. It was her house. Many of her things are still in it, but she’s gone.

I can’t conjure her except in memories, and maybe someday they won’t be as sad and depressing.

I can’t sing music we both enjoyed without sadness and sometimes weeping. I can’t talk about things that remind me of her, and there will never be another family beach day that she attends, or time to just spend with her – because no matter how awful she could be to me sometimes – she also just let me be wherever I was most of the time.

I don’t know what happened the last several years, but she became less happy, and less happy meant me not being treated well.

I think part of me understood that she was damaged. She didn’t want to be a jerk, but trying to make me feel bad made her feel slightly better. I understood it as our shared trauma. She learned differently. She would fight and I would flight/freeze. I was the youngest sister and learned to never mistake who was in the one-up position. Having an oldest sister who liked me helped moderate our other sister’s behavior toward me. She wasn’t top dog, but she was more top dog than me.

She told me she wanted to be a better sister. I saw her struggle with her inner world. I watched her change in ways she didn’t like, but the work to be different was a foreign language she couldn’t invest in.

We had a mutual friend from our early teens and they grew closer while they seemed to shut me out.

It was one of the most painful things I’ve ever dealt with. I honestly didn’t understand what happened, but I had to learn to accept it. Another mutual friend told me it was because they lived mostly on the surface and I had the unfortunate bent of wanting more dimension in my friendships. I also remembered the past more vividly than they did, so even if it wasn’t shutting me out, exactly, it was still a shock. I’m still shook thinking about it, but I’m adjusting and adapting, and doing my best to move on.

I guess that’s growing up. Those who I thought were my tribe are not. Maybe they once were, but that was then, this is now – and she’s gone. There’s no more chance at being accepted into the tribe – and why would I want to belong to a tribe that doesn’t want me to belong?

Still, my oldest sister and I, and my deceased sister’s partner, were with her the last days of her life. We did the best we could. She knew we loved her, and she told us she loved us.

It’s not easy to die. It’s not easy to leave a life in the middle of it. I think it’s easier to go quickly with no time to reflect on the fact of life’s end.

But we’re all dying. We’re also living. Living is what this place is for, and one day, sooner than I know, my turn to go will come.

I Forgot

February 13, 2024February 13, 2024 / Hermionejh

Our brain and body’s super power is perseverance.

We forget childbirth’s intensity, and blunt trauma’s pain. We can remember that it was awful, but not really feel the raw intensity.

Our brains anesthetize us against horrific events. We go numb.

My partner was in a horrible accident that rattled his brain so bad the doctors had to drill his skull to relieve the pressure, and he fell into a coma for several weeks.

The doctors told his parents they were likely saying goodbye to him and to try to prepare for that.

He doesn’t remember a thing about the accident. He remembers leaving for a party with his friends, and waking up briefly in enormous pain at the hospital, only to sink down into oblivion again. The next time he regained awareness, he was being wheeled into rehab where he spent painful months while learning to use his voice after being intubated so long, and to use his body again.

He can only recount what the driver (his cousin), and the medics and hospital staff, his parents, brother, and his girlfriend told him about what happened.

They can barely talk about it to this day without choking up.

Had he died, he would have been in blissful ignorance.

This is my dark time of year. I forgot.

How, you might ask. How, when it happens every year? I can only look at you in silence. I wish I knew.

I think, perhaps, my brain anesthetizes that particular knowledge, which is difficult because I am woefully unprepared every year. It would be funny if it weren’t so devastating.

But this year there are extenuating circumstances. The death of friends over the past year, and most recently a sister, pushed my preparation for this dark time completely out of my mind.

I use my lighter times of year to shore up my psyche, my resolve, and practice my emotional and mental tools I have learned over the past thirty years.

And then it seems to all fall apart in my moment of need – as though I’m fresh on the planet and have no idea what this thing called emotion is or how to handle it.

Maybe I can come up with a safe word or phrase my partner can say to me, like “It’s the fucking trauma, stupid!”

Yeah, that would go over so well! LOL

Maybe “Keep it simple, sweetheart,” would suffice.

Past Present or Present Past

February 13, 2024 / Hermionejh

I dreamed I saw a young woman who had red hair in a long thick braid like my sister used to wear her hair when she was younger. I didn’t dream of my sister – just a stranger.

What did that mean? Anything? Nothing?

I’m stuck in this wanting place. I recognize it but I don’t know what to do about it.

Why am I hanging onto the past? What do I think is there? Maybe it’s a kind of protection from the reality of now.

The past is long gone – I know that. I know there’s no going back, nor would I honestly want to. It sucked back then – but I was a part of a tribe.

A fucked up tribe, but it was as fun and interesting as it was terrible.

I didn’t know how to live this life. I only knew how to react to it.

I dreamed of being famous because it looked like an inoculation against the hell of life as I saw it.

I didn’t know that they were just people in another kind of hell. Some of them were genuine and good, and some were shit in reality. I wouldn’t know that for many years. I only saw the fantasy and the potential ticket out.

The older girls I got to hang around with seemed worldly. My sisters didn’t want me around them, but they were overruled by the clan leader. She was the arbiter of all things back then – at least to me.

She deemed me worthy, and so I was – at least when she was around. Mostly the older girls, including my sisters, kept to themselves, but I always got to hear about their adventures.

One of the girls, just a year older than me, was a true friend to me, but even we seemed to pass in and out of each others’ lives. We had a bond beyond time and space though. We belonged to each other without having to declare it – although we did become blood sisters by cutting our fingers and pressing them together to mix our blood.

She pierced my ears when I was 12. She was a mother hen toward me and did what she could to protect me.

I didn’t know that I needed protection, but she saw how I blew with the wind. She kept me safer than I would have been on my own. The wolves were always at the door.

She left the world last May and I so wish I could talk to her about my sister’s death and hear what she would say to me.

I keep thinking I should just go join her, but I can’t for several reasons, the biggest being that I don’t know if I would find her out there. What if suicide fucks you up on the other side from here?

My therapist said to hear what she would say to me, but the thing is she almost always said something I wouldn’t have thought of. She also didn’t judge me or tell me to have a better attitude or that everything would be alright. Just that she loved me and was here.

But she’s not anymore.

I have to figure it out from here.

I guess I always did figure it out anyway, but knowing she was in the world helped.

My sister was a jerk to me quite often. It was how our family abuse twisted her, but she came into this world with her own essence just like I did – just like we all do.

It feels stupid to miss her. But it’s complicated. She brought fun & high adventure in our early lives regardless of her prickliness.

I don’t know if anything truly exists after this life, but her story has ended.

The ringleader of the group of older girls died a few months after my friend died, and then my next oldest sister a few months after that.

I’m worried that I’m just going to see all my friends and loved ones die before I do, but I have no control over any of that.

I wish we would all just leave this world on the same day and have a plan to meet on the other side – if there is an other side, but it’s not my deal.

Being here at all was never my deal. But here we are, so, good luck, I guess?

I’m not pondering or railing against anything that hasn’t been pondered or railed against before, I know.

There are thousands of books and programs and gurus and religions who all say different, albeit similar, words and thoughts about the why of this place, but the bottom line is that no one knows – and anyone who tells you they do know is deluded or lying or mentally ill.

“Life is pain, Highness, and anyone who tells you different is selling something,” from The Princess Bride.

Love Remains

January 15, 2024 / Hermionejh / 2 Comments

Sometimes I wish I could visit my friends and family during the best times in my life.

I would ask my favorite Grandpa & Grandma what their lives were like, and if they felt content. What challenges did they face and surmount? Did they ever ponder life’s existential questions, or was it a life too busy with ordinary concerns?

Like so many stories about going back in time, I don’t know if I’d change anything that would affect my life now (unless it was for the better).

And even if I thought that changing something would obviously better my life, I’d still be taking a risk that the opposite would be true.

It’s not really situations that I want to re-live, it’s to revel in my connections with friends and relatives – especially those that have passed on.

But, if I could time-travel, would it be helpful or harmful for my mental/emotional health? Would I find what I was looking for?

Am I just imposing what I wish now on what was?

I am betting those moments I want to recapture in their fullness are only partially, or even barely, what I’m attributing to them.

It’s deep and abiding connection with those who share my values, kindness & humor I seek.

Laughter is one of my favorite lights in the dark. Gladness and companionship continue warming my heart long after parting company.

‘Cultivate what is missing here and now,’ my inner wisdom whispers. Trust that my loved ones passed on will greet me at my end – but that I still have (hopefully) many good years to carry on in this world, and to create the kind of life that matters to me.

I’m not forgetting them; I’m bringing them with me. Their laughter can still ring in my ears, and I can revisit the love & goodness we all shared any time I want or need to.

Love remains.