Healthy Happy Loving Life: Peace Poetry Day

19 Thursday Aug 2021

Posted by Kebba Buckley Button in At choice, Bad poetry, Effective Living, Happy Healthy Loving Life, Healthy Happy Loving Life, Inner peace, Kebba Buckley Button, Peace Within, Saint Therese of Lisieux, spiritual stress management, the life you want

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at choice, Bad poetry, Healthy Happy Loving Life, Kebba Buckley Button, peace within, Saint Therese of Lisieux, spiritual stress management, The life you want

Poster © Kebba Buckley Button

We can choose to be peaceful, to have Peace Within, and to cultivate CALM. Hopefully, the lovely poster above helps you laugh about the fact that these are choices. We are always at choice. As yesterday was Bad Poetry Day, it follows that today must be Peace Poetry Day. And while I have a whole book to help you find and solidify your Peace Within— curiously called Inspirations for Peace Within— today I’m sharing two exquisite peace poems. The first is in French, which you will really enjoy, if you speak French:

Puisses-tu avoir la paix intérieur aujourd’hui.

Puisses-tu avoir la certitude que Dieu t’as placé exactement où tu devais être.

Puisses-tu ne pas oublier les possibilités infinies qui émanent de la foi.

Puisses-tu utiliser ces cadeaux que tu as reçu et transmettre l’amour qui t’as été donné.

Puisses-tu être heureux de savoir que tu es un enfant de Dieu.

Laisses cette présence s’enfoncer jusqu’au fond de toi, permet à ton âme de chanter, danse, glorifie, aime. C’est là pour chacun de nous.

~ Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux (original version)

And this, actually the more familiar English translation of the same poem:

May today there be peace within.

May you trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities

that are born of faith in yourself and others.

May you use the gifts that you have received,

and pass on the love that has been given to you.

May you be content with yourself just the way you are.

Let this knowledge settle into your bones,

and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.

It is there for each and every one of us.

~ St. Thérèse of Lisieux

Go ahead– post that on a mirror where you will read it to yourself at least every morning. In a week, tell me how your life has shifted. And that would be you– ever more Healthy Happy Loving Life^sm! Are you in?

Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert, holistic healer, and award-winning author who celebrates life. She has a longtime natural healing practice and is an ordained minister. Among her books are: Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), Inspirations for Peace Within: Quotes and Images to Uplift and Inspire, and Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine. The books are available on Amazon and through Kebba’s office. To email us, kebba@kebba.com .

Books by Kebba Buckley Button

Healthy Happy Loving Life: Uniqueness

09 Wednesday Dec 2020

Posted by Kebba Buckley Button in Drew Scott, Effective Living, Happy Healthy Loving Life, Jonathan Scott, Kebba Buckley Button, the life you want, The Property Brothers, unique, uniqueness, zebras

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DNA, Drew Scott, Healthy Happy Loving Life, Jonathan Scott, Kebba Buckley Button, Property Brothers, The life you want, unique, uniqueness, zebras

Photo by Shutterstock

To be unique means to be the only one, unlike anything else. And, although some things may look alike, it’s actually impossible for them to be entirely, perfectly alike. A human being, for example, is made up of about 70 trillion cells. The cells are always shifting and often replicating. This is why even identical twins don’t look absolutely alike. Think of The Property Brothers, Jonathan and Drew Scott. Even with the same DNA (protein structure that cells are made of), those genetics express in slight variations, giving Jonathan an impish grin and Drew a more serious face. Their voices even sound a bit different. (Yes, at one time, I was addicted to HGTV.) Yet they started with the same DNA. So does this mean uniqueness actually the norm?

There are many unusual-looking creatures, on land, in the sea, and in the air. However, occasionally, the DNA pool shows us something delightfully and clearly unique. At the Masai Mara Wildlife Preserve in Kenya, in 2019, a beautiful zebra foal was found, WITH SPOTS.

The Smithsonian says this appearance is likely due to pseudomelanism, or, basically a differential expression of DNA. And yes, you can have zebras that are all-black. Apparently, zebra skin is naturally black, but the fur grows in, usually alternating in white and black stripes. So when the hair grows in all black, it’s called melanism– or basically another different expression of DNA.

So if you have straight hair or fuzzy hair (I have both, depending on the humidity), light/red/dark hair, light skin or dark skin, tall height or short, a narrow frame or a full frame, silky skin or skin with variations, guess what: it’s DNA. Welcome to the science principle that you actually are unique! Even if you were cloned, you would not look exactly precisely like the person you were cloned from. So why not celebrate your uniqueness? Take what you have and bless it! Be grateful for every detail. Frolic like the innocent spotted zebra, who is totally free of any notions about appearance.

Stand proud and do your best every day. Make the most of what you’ve been given. Do your utmost to be Healthy, Happy, and Loving Life^sm! You’ll thank me later.

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Kebba Buckley Button is a stress solutions expert and award-winning author who celebrates life. She also has a longtime natural healing practice and is an ordained minister. Among her books are: Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), Inspirations for Peace Within: Quotes and Images to Uplift and Inspire, and Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine. The books are available on Amazon and through Kebba’s office. To email us, kebba@kebba.com .

Books by Kebba Buckley Button

Healthy Happy Loving Life: Eudora Garden Photos speak for themselves

08 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by Kebba Buckley Button in Effective Living, Gardening, Happy Healthy Loving Life, Kebba Buckley Button, the life you want

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Gardening, Healthy Happy Loving Life, Kebba Buckley Button, The life you want

For the Cornerstone Blog Challenge, today’s prompt was a wordless post. I hope you enjoy these photos I took around my late mother’s garden, on Eudora St. in Denver! She was increasingly Healthy, Happy, and Loving Life^sm!

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Books by Kebba Buckley Button

Healthy Happy Loving Life: Sugar as an Energy Food– Not!

07 Monday Dec 2020

Posted by Kebba Buckley Button in dopamine, Effective Living, Happy Healthy Loving Life, Kebba Buckley Button, stress, sugar, sugar is an energy food, the life you want, yang food, yin food

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choices, dopamine, Grief, Kebba Buckley Button, sugar is an energy food, The life you want, yang food, yin food

In recent decades, we have heard repeatedly that sugar is an energy food. Doesn’t that sound wonderful? And sugary foods and beverages certainly taste good. So we might easily assume that sweet foods and beverages are body-friendly. But now is a good time to challenge that perception. On balance, sugars may not be your great friend. Today, I speak from my holistic healing practice.

When we eat sugars, the mesolimbic dopamine system in the brain clicks on. The brain’s neurons start releasing dopamine, which makes us feel happy. And this makes us want more of that stuff that causes dopamine production: sugars. Ever notice that when you start eating ice cream from the container, you keep wanting more? That’s the brain calling for more of that dopamine-production fuel. You are meeting your body’s biochemistry straight on! This is the effect that possibly makes people think sugar gives them energy. They feel perked up. Plus, if their insulin is working well, they will get more blood glucose flowing into their muscles, temporarily.

However, most people get a crash after that blood sugar high, and the blood sugar level then drops steadily until the next meal or snack. Then the post-sugar person is weak, tired, bleary-eyed, cranky, and fog-brained. There will be less of a crash if you have some protein with your sugary snack: a bit of chicken, tuna, garbanzo beans, nuts, cheese, or eggs. And sweet foods with fiber, i.e., fruits, will process more slowly and give you less of a crash.

So back to why sugar actually makes us tired and weak:

You burn through your available insulin, as above.
Sugars are, by definition, yin foods, in Chinese medicine. You must eat yang foods to balance yin foods, or you will be tired and weak. More on yin– and yang foods in an upcoming article.
You’re not getting nutrition to support your many thousands of metabolic processes, when you eat white sugar. It’s refined, and that removes the nutrition, other than the sugar itself. So on a high-sugar diet, you are malnourished, which is a weakened state.

So let’s challenge that perception that sugar is energy food! Have a little for fun and pleasure, and then eat your veggies, proteins, and limited fruit. (More on healthy eating in an upcoming column.) Try for the least sugar in your diet, and you will find yourself increasingly Healthy, Happy, and Loving Life^sm!

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Books by Kebba Buckley Button

Healthy Happy Loving Life: Floods of Emotions After a Mother’s Passing

06 Sunday Dec 2020

Posted by Kebba Buckley Button in Effective Living, Grief, Happy Healthy Loving Life, Kebba Buckley Button, memories, Mother loss, stress, the life you want

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choices, floods of emotions, Grief, Healthy Happy Loving Life, Kebba Buckley Button, memories, Mother loss, The life you want

Kebba’s Mom, Becky Hill Buckley. Photographer unknown.

The most emotional journey of my life has been around losing my mother several years ago. My mother slipped away, in a Denver hospital room, in January 2017. She was surrounded by people who loved her. She was 91. Her heart simply gave out. Above is a photo (cleaned up as best I could), pulled from a group event photo. It gave us something relatively contemporary to use for her memorial service folder.

Losing Mom was a heart-ripping watershed for me. Not in just the usual way that we miss people when they are gone. Rather, for me, it meant the end of seeking the closeness I had always wanted with her–affection, trust, easy conversations, sharing laughs, enjoying each other’s company. Now no more trying. No more reaching out, seeking the essential Becky, getting to know the deeper heart of Mom. No more learning better what made her tick. No more asking her opinions of things.

My older sister, in charge of the estate and house, seemed to have everything in hand. But she finally asked me to come to Denver, to help clear the garage. I went for 3 weeks, alternating with coming home to see clients and be with my husband: there a week, home a week, there a week, home a week, and there a week. It was April, and the weather was very pleasant. We worked very hard!

The neatness of the garage belied the incredible concentration of the contents: tens of thousands of documents and photos in carefully taped boxes. We discovered many photos from decades when people didn’t just photo-document everything. I had only previously seen one distant photo of Mom from her teen years, with a horse, as a riding instructor. But, below is an image we found of her when she was 16. (Remind you of anyone?) Perhaps going through all those thousands of documents and photos helped me to tie up emotional loose ends. It also flooded and overloaded my heart and mind. Sometimes I just sat in the emptying Eudora house and cried. It was too much.

In one of the boxes, there were what appeared to be the items you would find on top of her desk. She and Dad had moved to Denver about 40 years ago and had a bungalow on Zephyr Street. Of course, it was beautifully landscaped and maintained by Mom. After Dad passed and my older sister went through a divorce, Mom and my sister decided to share a home on Eudora St. I believe the “desktop box” was created during the move from Zephyr to Eudora; someone just swept the desktop gear into a box. In it was a tiny ziplock bag containing a plain wedding ring. I believe it was Mom’s, removed for a medical procedure. I wear it often now. More floods of memories and much comfort.

Below, you can see an iconic photo of Mom in her young married years (1954?), in hat and gloves, showing us how lovely the Golden Rain tree is. Extremely knowledgeable about plants, she was a Master Gardener from a family of avid gardeners. All four of her daughters also became gardeners; I made my entire back yard into a Feng Shui Garden.

When she was young, Mom had a joyful, sometimes impish side. Below is an image of her sitting on what we think was a lab table, in college days. She was a chemistry major, so you’ll be unsurprised to see the textbooks around her on her worktable. My parents would later meet at Oak Ridge National Labs in Tennessee, working for the government, in secret, building the bomb later dropped on Japan, to end World War II.

Almost four years later, I still long to talk with Mom and ask her how she felt about this or that. I am grateful to have known Mom, and to have had her love and nurturing in my younger years. I do my best to live my own life fully, take care of my husband, and give thanks for every Go(o)d thing. I do my best to help the younger relatives stay connected and encouraged. There is much love circulating, and I circulate it as much as possible. I am living the life I want. I believe Mom would be proud of me and my life. I am truly Healthy, Happy, and Loving Life^sm!

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Books by Kebba Buckley Button

Healthy Happy Loving Life: Memories of Seasons

05 Saturday Dec 2020

Posted by Kebba Buckley Button in changing seasons, Effective Living, Happy Healthy Loving Life, Kebba Buckley Button, memories, stress, Stress of Life's Surprise Turns, Sudden stress, sudden winter, the life you want

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changing seasons, choices, fulfilled, Healthy Happy Loving Life, Kebba Buckley Button, living beyond, memories, Stress of Life's Surprise Turns, sudden winter

For many years, I have lived in Phoenix. We have mainly sunny and warm-to-hot weather year round, and I love that. But many of my fondest memories are tied to the sensory joy of changing seasons. I enjoy every season. The cleansing cold of winter, the new life of Spring, the sustaining softness of Summer, and the astonishing transition colors and smells of Fall: all move me deeply. I like to just stop and be present to the sky, the sights, the air, and the smells of each season.

But most moving to me are the sudden changes that sometimes abruptly introduce the next season. Sudden Winter is most awesome to me. And sometimes, Sudden Winter jumps in, not following Fall, but in Spring or Summer. In April several years ago, I got to experience this in Denver.

I had prepared for the trip by packing clothes that could work comfortably in 90-degree heat or as cold as 40 degrees. I had it nailed for the week. I knew Denver weather could be very changeable. But no one, including the meteorologists, saw a 2-day blizzard coming.

Suddenly, intense winds brought in swirling heavy snow. Denver road traffic and air traffic came to a near halt. It was 5 degrees outside my hotel, having dropped from 60 degrees the day before. Fortunately, in Denver, most Uber vehicles are SUVs with 4-wheel drive and year-round tires. So I caught a ride to the nearby REI store and bought some weatherproof winter clothes. I was the only customer in the massive store. The rest of Denver was frozen in place. I arranged with the REI manager to wear my new clothes out the door, into the bitter and blowing cold.

I could hardly walk in that wind. Meeting my return Uber in the parking lot, I gripped a utility pole to stay upright. The wind was so intense that it whipped my glasses off my face! I grabbed them midair as they fell, knowing I would never find them again in the blinding snowstorm, if they dropped into the several inches of snow. I could only see anything by holding my spread fingers in front of my eyes.

Then my huge safe warm SUV Uber arrived, sweeping me back to my hotel…where I remained for several more days, until the Denver International Airport opened again. But, don’t feel sorry for me! Once I arranged to extend my Oxford Hotel stay, this became a delightful Winter vacation. Between waves of snowfall, I walked downtown Denver in my new warm clothes and boots, taking photos of the urban snowscape and fresh flowers topped with snow.

After each photo foray, it was back to the Hotel and those sweet moments of blowing into the warmth of the lobby, smelling the fireplace fire, and pulling off my gloves and scarf. Feeling my face happily thawing out and relaxing, I was in pure joy. I was creating some of the most wonderful memories of my life. I was truly Healthy, Happy, and Loving Life^sm!

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Books by Kebba Buckley Button

Healthy Happy Loving Life: Best Part of the Day

08 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by Kebba Buckley Button in Breakfast, Effective Living, Feeling energized, Happy Healthy Loving Life, Health, Kebba Buckley Button, the life you want

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Breakfast, Effective living, energy, Feeling energized, Healthy Happy Loving Life, Kebba Buckley Button

Photo by Shutterstock

For many years, my favorite part of the day has been breakfast. I wake up hungry. Very hungry. If pot roast, mashed potatoes, and green beans were being served at 6 am, I would eat that. I would also eat cold pizza, pasta, baked potato slices, sauteed zucchini, and anything I brought home from a restaurant last night. However, when I do eat these wondrous tasty snacks, I do hate to miss my standard breakfast foods.

We all know what the most popular breakfast foods in the U.S. are: breakfast breads, eggs, bacon or sausage, toast, and cereal. A new generation of convenient frozen breakfast foods includes all these, plus wraps of different styles, quiches, and omelets. A new wave of muffins includes no-carb egg products and real muffins filled with vegetables you can’t taste. Delectable beverages often include coffees, teas, and juices.

Pundits claim breakfast is mandatory for health– that you must eat when you rise, to have a clear mind and strong energy curve. My metabolism agrees completely with that rule. However, many people wake up with no hunger, or the idea of food turns them off. I have a relative who gets up around 5, has an herbal tea within the hour, and finally gets hungry for food around 10 am. And yes, we both have the same parents!

John Gunther said,

All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast.

My metabolism agrees with that rule, too– I love to read the digital newspaper on my iPhone while munching and sipping. Then check the bank balances and texts. I set a pace for the day, clearing my mind and pumping up my blood sugar. For me, breakfast is truly the best part of the day. This is a planned part of my lifestyle: I’m Healthy Happy Loving Life^sm!

So what breakfast works best for you? How much? And when? Experiment, and find out what works best for you to feel your best!

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Kebba Buckley Button is a stress management expert and award-winning author who celebrates life. She also is an ordained minister and has a natural healing practice. Among her books are: Discover The Secret Energized You (http://tinyurl.com/b44v3br), Inspirations for Peace Within: Quotes and Images to Uplift and Inspire, and Sacred Meditation: Embracing the Divine. The books are available on Amazon and through Kebba’s office. To email us, kebba@kebba.com .

Books by Kebba Buckley Button

Healthy Happy Loving Life!

~ Your source for energized, fulfilled, joyous living!

Category Archives: Happy Healthy Loving Life

Healthy Happy Loving Life: Peace Poetry Day

Healthy Happy Loving Life: Uniqueness

Healthy Happy Loving Life: Eudora Garden Photos speak for themselves

Healthy Happy Loving Life: Sugar as an Energy Food– Not!

Healthy Happy Loving Life: Floods of Emotions After a Mother’s Passing

Healthy Happy Loving Life: Memories of Seasons

Healthy Happy Loving Life: Best Part of the Day

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