Once upon a time in my 20’s, 2 other friends and I drove to New Braunfels, Texas to go tubing in October.

It was my turn to go thru the flume. The current is so great there that it flipped me over and poured me out of my tube. I got in the undertow holding my breath for what seemed like 2 minutes. I remember thinking my mom is going to be so mad at me if I drown, so I kept holding my breath until it washed me down to the shallow part of the river and I stood up to find my friends and two guys waiting on the bank to pull me out! I lost my glasses and a flip flop. I was so thankful to be alive and able to drive home.

Last month I had my ears to stop up with fluid from the flu. It took a month with the help of burning peppermint oil to dry up the water. I was so thankful to be able to hear in stereo again and know where sounds were coming from! To me it’s sad how soon I started taking the ability to hear fine for granted.

I’m so thankful for your great work and the time you take reminding us of what else is out there in the great unknown of our minds!

- Gloria

I was building condos in northern NH, on the side of a mountain, across the road from a ski resort. I was putting plywood on the roof. Unfortunately, someone else had cut plywood while on the roof — a big no no. Sawdust is slippery.

As I was carrying my sheet of plywood up the roof, which was steep, 12 in12, which for the layman means a 45 degree pitch, about as steep as roofs get, I stepped on the sawdust and my feet slid out from underneath me. I crashed down on the roof with the plywood underneath me. The plywood and I slid down the roof on the sawdust lubricant. Fortunately when we started roofing we always nailed a 2×4 safety stop at the bottom edge of the roof.

As I was sliding down the roof time and space changed, everything seemed to slow down. On the way down I had time to contemplate all kinds of things, what was below me, life, death, and to calculate that the plywood was 1/2″ and that left me 1″ of the 2×4 to get my feet on, so I had better get them down.

I got my feet down, but the speed I had picked up on the way down threw me upright. So there I was teetering at the edge of the roof, 40′ above jagged granite boulders that had been dynamited out of the mountainside to make a flat place to put the condo. It must have been a sight watching me flapping my arms trying to keep my center of gravity on the roof side.

I am grateful that my feet caught the 1″ of wood and I was able to stay on the roof. Going over the edge probably would have killed me, at the very least I would have been seriously damaged.

- John Riordan

I go the same way every time I leave my office. I enter a busy road and then perform a u-turn amid traffic so that I may proceed to the highway. There is an alternative route that goes over a hill, through a hotel parking lot, and is a means of going a long way around a block to access a set of traffic lights. At these traffic lights I can turn easily and pass the spot of my usual u-turn without having to negotiate the dense traffic. It takes longer and is less direct, therefore I always opt for the u-turn route.

The other day, I was driving to an appointment at lunchtime. I saw the traffic, no more than usual, and almost automatically began to turn my car around to take the long way around to the traffic lights. I actually had a conversation in my head about whether or not I was listening to the Higher Power within me (or Big Bear, in cluster call-speak). I distinctly recall wondering if this was what following my Guidance was supposed to feel like.

After taking the long way around and turning at the aforementioned lights, I came upon a woman getting out of her car with her hands in the air and a look of incredulity on her face. There was also a large truck pulling off to the side of the road right in front of me. It became clear that the truck had just rear-ended the lady’s car and, although she appeared physically unharmed, the rear section of her car was severely smashed in. The accident occurred on the spot where I normally begin to make my u-turn. I looked up and around and widened my circle of focus as if to glance at the giant-sized Power or Being that is everything; including a friend.

- Ron

On a dark Fall night I headed out for the weekend. I was driving to my brothers wedding, Tired from the previous night’s alcohol addiction, I began to get comfortable in my little Buick, so comfortable I fell asleep and drifted into oncoming traffic. The 1st vehicle to greet me was an 18 wheel Mack Semi. His wakefulness saved me from my sleepiness as he swerved just enough allowing me to only side swiped him instead of delivering a head on collision. I was much more thankful than scraped up.

- Patrick Finnegan

My last year has been eventful. My husband left a 22 year relationship, two weeks later my sister and best friend had a major stroke, after being a stay at home mom for 15 years or so I found my self in need of a job in a crappy job market. With in the year I signed my sister into a nursing home, took a low paying job at a hardware store (inventory no less, yes counting screws) and finalized a divorce I didn’t think I wanted.

What I now seem to see is, my marriage was broken and my husband actually left long before he physically moved out. My sister who suffered from M.S., before the stroke, was not going to go gently into that dark night and the stroke perhaps saved her many years of discomfort. I moved through the hardware job gaining confidence in the working world to find a perfect job in my children’s school district. I work with learning disabled youth, very challenging and rewarding. Every day I am privileged to witness and in small ways participate in their journey. A large bonus for me is to be on my children’s schedule. I can still be, in a lot of ways that stay at home mom. Attending sporting events, awards breakfasts. etc……

Though you would have been hard pressed to convince me a year ago, every bump in the road adjusts our speed, direction, and even yes I dare say our patterns.

I am thankful. I am thankful that through divorce I am finding myself again. I am pretty cool. I am thankful for the time I had with my best friend and all she brought to my life. I am thankful that though the road still has many bumps, I have the ability to travel over them. AND I am thankful, that at the times when I get caught up, there are people and stories like you and yours that remind me I can see things differently.

Thank you.

Kathie Vincent

My anger is really informational/instructional this week. I get that it’s always there, and that it’s not directly attached to stimuli.

However, I learned a LOT this week! I learned that I’ve been saying, “yes” far too often, and not for the right reasons. I need to say no when I don’t want to take things on, and I need to not care if people think I’m a “bitch” or don’t like my saying, “no”. This applies at work, with my daughter, my ex, my friends, parents, everywhere. I’ve been lying down and taking it in every facet of my life, and I’ve ended up really pissed! It is my own fault. Now I see SO clearly! I need to take responsibility and do things differently for me. I said, “no” to my boss yesterday about taking on a second daily duty, when many folks have none. I’ll just do my one duty, and do it well, thank you. Not two, AND team leader, 3 committees, plus, let’s not forget, my full time teaching job! Enough!

I said, “no” to a friend yesterday, too. It was scary, because she does a lot for me. She also asks for things from me that are beyond the call of friendship, and she knows I’ll say yes. I think we were both surprised that I said no. But I got what I needed and more from it.

I have a right to be here! On the planet! I do not have to earn my place every day, any longer! I am enough! I’m not what I do! I claim my space, free of charge, right now, today!

So I needed to be MORE of a “bitch” , AND less of one, too. That tender spot still beckons me, and I tiptoe around the edges of it. I’ll melt into it when I do.

Gratitude for you is plentiful. THANK YOU.

Love, Amy Kipping

The year was 1990, and my massage client, Mr. Big Movie Star, was shooting a film in Europe, mostly Italy and Hungary. It was the fashion among the Hollywood elite at the time, to have a massage therapist as part of the entourage. So, there i was, working in Europe.

It was a rare afternoon off, bright and mild, and I was walking the winding cobblestone streets of Rome, just strolling where my fancy might take me. I found myself in what appeared to be one of the nicer shopping areas, with stores with names like Fendi, Gucci, and Versace — not the kind of place I’d expect to find trouble on a sunny Roman afternoon.

I guess I’d wandered into a kind of cul de sac, without an easy exit — something made my skin crawl. I looked up from the fancy store window that contained an outfit that’d cost me a months rent at home, to find that I was alone… except for the gypsies who surrounded me, four woman and what looked to be a boy of about 10 years old. They didn’t look too friendly, and I became very aware of the fanny pack at my belly containing my passport, and my hard-earned money.

Without thinking, I lowered my stance to a crouch, opened and closed my fingers, and twisted my face, snarling and growling.

A look of surprise passed over the face of the woman whom I took to be the group’s leader. Clearly all poised to advance, they all looked at her. She said something in a language other than Italian, and as swiftly and as silently as they’d arrived, the band disappeared. My first thought was pleased wonder at how swiftly they moved, in concert with each other. Then the adrenaline hit, and my knees turned weak and watery. Whew!

- Sharon Stone

I personally experienced benefiting from intuition by taking a new route on the day a six car pile up occurred along my habitual road. The one time that stands out for me though, was the time I followed an unusual request from the universe - to hide. I was driving up to an intersection on the left on green arrow lane behind another car.

I had a feeling that I should very slowly approach the intersection and stay out of the sight of line of the driver ahead. It was such a weird ‘request’ that I had to follow it. So I very slowly drove up behind the driver and noticed she was busy talking on a cell and putting on make-up. The light turned green and I sat there out of the line of sight and quietly waiting for the car ahead to go. Seconds passed, beyond the time which I would have politely reminded the driver to go, when suddenly an eighteen wheeler plowed through the intersection.

I knew then if I would have done anything differently for sure the driver in front and very possibly myself would have been broadsided by the truck. I sent love and light to the trucker and went about my day knowing at least one life possibly two was saved by listening to that quiet voice within.

– Armando Fierro

I was exiting my subdivision onto the highway where people regularly go 65-70 MPH. There’s a stoplight, and I was turning left, so I was waiting for the light to turn green. When the light did turn green, I found myself paralyzed, physically and mentally, and I couldn’t get out of it. I could see the green light, but for a few critical seconds, I couldn’t make the connection that “green light means go.” It was like one of those moments when you walk into a room but can’t remember why you walked into the room and you stand there in a stupor waiting for the knowledge to come forth so you can take action.

Before I could get myself out of the temporary stupids, a car blew through the red light on my left at 60 MPH. Had I gone when I thought I should go, I would have gotten hit at high speed on the driver’s side… I would have been killed or at the very least seriously injured.

The car did slow down after the driver realized he had blown through a red light, and I looked both ways and ventured into the intersection and beyond, grateful and amazed at how being forgetful and paralyzed had just saved my life and had saved the life of my unborn daughter.

- Kathy Zant

A little over a year ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It seemed daily that this cancer revealed itself to be nastier and nastier. Thankfully, the gods had, in the past decade, provided a drug that suppresses a human growth hormone that “feeds” the cancer in 1 out of 4 breast cancer patients, including me.

All the seminars I had taken paid off. I was able to accept this illness in a way I would never have anticipated. So many people say “why me,” and I never went there. I only have been interested in what we can do to give me the best chance for long term survival. My outlook is, my chances are not that different from the normal population of women my age.

I have been very fortunate to have great insurance during this time. My insurance is billed $11,000 every three weeks when I have my Herceptin treatment, and they actually pay out a contracted amount of $5,300. I have only had to pay copays to see the doctors, and $500 to the hospital. My theory is, I was put in the job that I have so that I could have the treatments I needed without a lot of financial or personal stress.

Life does look different. How much so, and just how, I am still discovering. I emerge from my final Herceptin on April 25th, and will then go forward into life and discover more.

- Peggy Testa