Lifelessons: What You’ll Find on This Site

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This scene appeared in front of me as I drove to Ajijic. I pulled over as quickly as I could and captured this photo, which looks like a sunset but is actually a sunrise. Sometimes it is hard to tell a beginning from an ending. I guess my move to Mexico was both.

On the pages of this blog, you will find the poems, stories, books, essays and photographs of a youngest child, small town girl, waitress, traveler, teacher, writer, artist, t.v. production assistant, curator, editor, poet.  My blog address is “grieflessons” because this started out to be a website to try to get my book Lessons from a Grief Diary: Rebuilding Your Life after the Death of a Loved One out into the world.  If you need to know a bit more about that, please click here and go to the second book description on that page. If you wonder why the name of this blog is “Lifelessons,” when the url says “grieflessons,” look here.

I gave birth to this blog on March 27, 2013 and it very quickly turned into a blog not about grieving, but about life.  On July 14, 2014, I published my 172nd blog entry.  Most of these entries were made during a one month period of 2013 and April through June of 2014 when I vowed to make an entry a day, writing to a prompt sent to me either by the NaPoWriMo site, the WordPress Daily Post prompt or prompts by readers of my blog—and to do most in verse form. You may see them, newest to oldest, here.

If you’d rather start with Prairie Moths, Memories of a Farmer’s Daughter, an account, in verse, of growing up in a place where you would think there wasn’t very much going on—unless, of course, you could look into the imaginative mind of a youngest child whose whole family seemed to go continually on ahead of her, leaving her lots of time to observe and comment.  She tells her story from a progression of selves, aged 6 through 50. To read more about Prairie Moths, go here.

Available on Amazon are my children’s picture books: Sock Talk: A Christmas Story, (Go here  to read a sample) and Sunup/Sundown Song, both  Illustrated by Isidro Xilonzóchitl. Soon to be published is I Really Want a Puppy. Future books in the series are: Fish Feet, and How Come the Thumb, Chum?)

I hope you will be interested enough in my blog to meet me here daily.

73 thoughts on “Lifelessons: What You’ll Find on This Site”

    1. grieflessons Post author

      Thanks, Kate. It was a gift. Looked up and there it was! Couldn’t pull off the road fast enough.
      I, too, have taken lots of skyscapes–mainly sunrise, sunset or clouds–but this is my favorite.
      Judy

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      1. baconbits3536@gmail.com

        Hi your words are like good friends, even in your souro, something close yet who are you,Excuse me you can tell my feelings. just do that at times. Now to business. I see her, walking down the street, past thee shops that meet her need’s. Stop’s at one just to seek a thing ot two. Today she, stops an what’s that, is for sale. Knows just what she wants, you see buy’s and sells on Ebay, turns the corner, heads down the pier. Buy’s fresh fish from some old giesser there. She says he likes the deal he gets, says he knows where she lives! But that’s all she gives. Heads on down to daves place, best dam sandwich around this place. Here she comes back this way. I hope to ask her if we can play. Not to bad for this time of day?

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  7. grieflessons Post author

    That was 72 poems ago, dear Ann. I am at 172 now. I just ran my entire blog off yesterday —264 pages. I could have written a book! (But wouldn’t have. This is like eating the whole cow but just by taking very small bite by very small bite.) xoxo

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  10. Eileen

    I heard a reading of “Sock Talk: A Christmas Story” and absolutely adored it.

    Your sunrise photo is gorgeous. I need to develop the chutzpah to just pull off the road and take photos like this. The one I crave to capture is the purple pink sunrise that looks like a Japanese watercolor painting. I’ve seen them so many times here and am just awestruck every time.

    You do need a new URL. This blog is about living life to the fullest. I love your sense of adventure and survival.

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    1. grieflessons Post author

      Hi Eileen. I did change the name of the blog for this very reason, but if I change the URL, I’ll lose all my followers, posts and stats, won’t I? Thanks for visiting and commenting! Hope you come back and I appreciate your expert advice! Judy

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          1. eileentheartfulcrafter

            We’re in the middle of moving our blog and website to a new domain but keeping our name. Our stats, comment, everything will move. People looking for the old domain name will be redirected to the new. I guess that’s not quite the same. Do you have a web guru you can ask?

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  11. eileentheartfulcrafter

    Another thought. It look fine here at the site “lifelessons”. But when I receive a notice of follow-up comment, it still says “grieflessons”. That’s should be an easy change.

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  12. grieflessons Post author

    Hi Eileen. That’s because I changed the name of the site to Lifelessons but I can’t change the url without creating a completely new site. I think for the follow-up comment the way WordPress is designed, it just automatically gives your “name” as the url name. Don’t know if this can be changed, but if you know how, oh blog maven, I would appreciate your wisdom in this. Know you are much more of an expert at this than am I. Judy

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  13. grieflessons Post author

    P.S.. I do have other website names with urls registered, just in case I ever figure out how to do as you recommend and change my url, but have never figured out how to do so and don’t want to maintain two websites. Judy

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  14. eileentheartfulcrafter

    I’m a complete novice in WordPress. WordPress is where we are moving our websites and blogs to! Our current platform has settings options where you direct the program in how you
    want your name to appear.

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  15. grieflessons Post author

    But your url will remain the same? I think if you own your domain name, you drop the WordPress and just keep the same url. Problem is that my url is where the grieflessons appears. I do have a friend in CA who could perhaps answer the question. One of those things I keep putting off, you know! Welcome to WordPress. It was the easiest option for me and there is a nice community here.

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  17. the_health_networker

    I share your story of grief … living life after loosing love ones is a struggle worth doing and as we say in the family death is a celebration of the life lived to the fullest 🙂
    I like your sunrise photos and I also have shared of sunrise and sunset shots and always fascinated with cloud formation when I travel.
    Happy to stumble on this blog.

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    1. grieflessons Post author

      Ah, I welcomed you and thanked you for following before I saw this post. My Grieflessons blog very quickly turned into Lifelessons. Not surprising because this is really what my book is about. Your blog and mine are all part of the same thing. Staying healthy and continuing to live and thrive and be happy no matter what. Only choice we really have. Life is meant to be lived. Again, thanks for joining me and hope I continue to be of interest…Judy

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      1. the_health_networker

        I would be happy to keep coming back and check out your posts … thanks for following my site too.
        Cheers!

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    1. grieflessons Post author

      Thanks, Barbara. Life is a buffet best enjoyed, by my grandmother’s philosophy, by having “a little bit of each!” I appreciate your visiting, reading and liking!!! Judy

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  19. Manasa

    Dear Judy,

    Just joined this blog, the picture is really awesome and reminds me of good old memories.
    Read your blog too, it is very thoughtful, thanks!!!

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  20. Ann O'Neal Garcia

    Your new novel? Do I know about the other ones? I have about ten novels under my belt now–only one published, most never even sent anywhere. Confined to their spaces in the closet (I threw one away), they are trying to rewrite my plots. I hear them–natter, natter, natter. Once you start a novel, you won’t be able to keep up with your blog, or will you? Love, Ann

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  21. grieflessons Post author

    No…not my second, just my new one. I’ve started several but never finished any of them. No, I won’t do the blog for those two months. Love your personification of your novels. They will come get you in your sleep if you don’t attend to them!!! J

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  23. Pingback: Lifelessons: What You’ll Find on This Site | almosthereinc

  26. ssherayko

    Recently I began a podcast series on Rebuilding Your Life and interviewed Uma Girish, a grief counselor who is also a published Hay House author. The grief journey is such a powerful impetus to discover a new purpose. It is interesting to find you here now.

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  27. ssherayko

    Judy, I would love to receive your book. The grief journey is proving to be such a large part of the rebuilding process. I look forward to gaining your perspective. Thank you. Susan

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    1. lifelessons Post author

      hi Maria. I would love to do this but can’t figure out the procedure. What do they want a thumbnail of? My blog gravitar or a pic from a certain post. And, do they want my overall blog URL or URL for a specific story? I always have problems figuring out what they want on these signups….Thanks, Judy

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      1. mariaholm

        You copy the link of the special post you want to share and when you it in to the spaces it will come up as you enter the next line.
        I copy three posts one at a time. I wish I could jump from here to you and sit beside you and we would do it together

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        1. lifelessons Post author

          Maria. After whining to you, I went back again and did it and it worked fine. I think I “overthink” these things. Thanks so much for suggesting it. On that site, I read the post by the American woman living in Saudi Arabia. Very interesting…Judy

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            2. mariaholm

              I can hear myself talking to the young schoolboys warning them not to be at the computer more than an hour a day🙄 and some years later and having retired I can’t count the hours. At night when I have to go to the bathroom I tell myself NOT to look for likes

              Liked by 1 person

            3. lifelessons Post author

              Aha… I found my blog on that site. Didn’t realize she had many different prompts going and I had to hit on the one I submitted to… and bop the frog! Why don’t I wait and try again before I panic and ask for help? One day I’ll learn. J

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            6. lifelessons Post author

              Maria, I thought I saw my post there but now it seems to be gone, as were some of the others I viewed there. I hit the button to view more but still didn’t see my blog…What am I missing?

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            10. lifelessons Post author

              The top pictures were of a woman I was observing and had no dialogue–I thought the pictures told the entire story. The bottom set of pictures have captions–what I imagined Aedan, the small boy, would say. Some day I must ask that woman what he was really saying to her. She was as enlivened and rapt in the tale as he was. The two of them, so charming.

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  31. Delyn Merce

    It’s interesting how “grief” can turn into a pondering of Life and its lessons. Often when I’m feeling hopeless despair, and turn to writing a poem about it–I find myself writing about my faith, which is about hope in the middle of this less than perfect life/world. Best regards.

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    1. lifelessons Post author

      I feel just the same way. Most of the book “Lessons from a Grief Diary” was written for this express reason–to help me deal with what I was feeling during my husband’s illness, death, and afterwards. It is a bit like consoling yourself and presenting some kind of an answer that you didn’t know you knew until you wrote it.

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  33. Pingback: Looking Out, Looking in for dVerse Poets | lifelessons – a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown

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