Home Sweet Home

We say it all the time - "There's no place like home."


Home is the pinnacle of comfort and contentment. It's the place that feels the best after a long day at work, the place we are always glad to return to. To slip off your shoes and be in your own personal space surrounded by your own personal things feels so good. It's the place where you most want to relax and enjoy, to spend time with loved ones. The place you most want to be when you're tired, or sick, or just having a bad day. It's making memories, building a life. It's the family that will always welcome you back, no matter how long you've been away.

I am a homebody by nature. These days, I find I am much more inclined to stay in than to go out. Staying home and watching a movie versus going to the movie theater makes good sense economically, but it is also much more comfortable to be home instead of at a crowded place. I do like to get out and get away from it from time to time, but I am always relieved to get home.

The joys and comforts of home are always there, no matter where you live. They are easily transferable. The aromas of your favorite meals cooking, your favorite chair, the laughter of family and friends, the togetherness. Any place where there is love, support and understanding, can be home.

Some of the loved ones have passed on, and the locations have changed a few times over the years, but home will always be where my heart is. The happy memories of each of the places I've called home will always be precious to me. Even if you don't live there anymore, a home always lives on inside you.

Looking for Rays of Hope

"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things." - Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption

I love how every once in a while, the landscape looks gray and bleak, and then suddenly, the sun breaks through the clouds, making everything bright and pleasant again. It's like Nature's way of giving us hope. Hope that the storm will pass us by, or be a brief one.


Hope is a pretty powerful thing. In dark times, it sustains us. In so many of the things we do, hope always plays a role. We hope we win the game, or that we get something we really want, or that we made the right choice.



Hope can be tricky, though. Sometimes we may be afraid to be too hopeful, because we don't want to see our hopes dashed when things don't work out. Or maybe something happens that gives us hope, and then things go downhill again. We may start to think a situation is hopeless.

Still, we tell each other not to lose hope, to keep hope alive. Because hope is something that we can always have, if we want it.

There is so much wrong in the world, it is good to know that when we look around, we can find lots of things that can give us hope - seeing people helping each other, the cheerful outlook of children, acts of kindness, achievements. Sometimes you have to grab onto those little glimmers of hope that you see, and hold on tight.


Hope is like a gift that is good for all occasions, for all times. "Hope you have a great day", "Hope you get well soon." And of course, the greatest reward, is having our hopes come to be realized.



Hope is indeed a good thing.

Appreciating The Humor, Even When The Joke is on You

I was kind of disappointed this month because St. Patrick's Day came and went so fast, I couldn't get my post about good fortune fleshed out in time to write it here. It occurred to me that April Fool's day is nearly upon us, however, and it seemed like the perfect time to write something about humor and laughter.

April Fool's is a holiday for kids (and kids at heart). I don't remember any of the April first pranks from my childhood, but once in a while I'll recall a funny thing that happened in those days. Like the time I had to chase after my two-year-old little sister as she ran naked down our driveway. Or the time my friend and I were in my mom's car waiting for her to come out of a store, and the car started to roll backward. Just remembering my friend frantically trying to get the car door open still cracks me up! (The car stopped, and no one got hurt.)

Little kids' laughter is the best. It sounds so cute, and they will laugh at pretty much anything. Once when I was outside with my nephew (he was three), my cat ran past us and I said, "Look at her go," and "sang" the theme from Bonanza. The kid broke into peals of hysterical laughter, and I couldn't help but laugh as he kept giggling away.

It's easy to laugh when someone falls victim to a prank or does something funny, intentionally or not, but it's important to be able to laugh at oneself as well. In living with MS, it especially helps to be able to make light of the way this condition can affect you.

MS is full of "I meant to do that" moments. Little stumbles, falling over, dropping things. If you are able to laugh at yourself, it shows the world you have a positive attitude.

At my last MS treatment, two other patients and I got to talking about our symptoms and such. I mentioned my walking troubles, and the male patient joked about how he hopes he never gets pulled over and asked to walk a straight line. We talked about how early symptoms can appear, and I mentioned a bout of double vision I had as a kid. "Tequila has that effect on me," he quipped. "Well, this happened when I was six," I said, laughing. It's good when you can find a little humor in something that isn't particularly pleasant to have to deal with.

While it may not be the cure for what ails you, laughter truly is the best medicine. Sometimes, even when I don't feel like laughing, my cat will do something silly, and I'll crack up. Or I turn on my favorite sitcom, just out of habit, knowing that even the show can't make me laugh, I feel so bad. But I end up being wrong. It's so great that we respond naturally to humor by laughing; it's like self-medicating. And afterward, you feel better.


It's funny how some of the best moments in life can have you laughing so hard it makes your belly hurt, and even makes you cry.

Life sometimes plays some mean jokes on us. If we can't laugh at our own expense, at least being able to laugh about something, to distract ourselves for a while from whatever is going wrong in our lives, is just too good an opportunity to let pass us by.