As We Continue On

September 2, 2017Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Meditations, Reflections, Writing Tags: Connections, Continue on, History, Inspirational, Interactions, Life Story, Reflections, The Daily Post 2 Comments

Photo: Dvora Freedman

Our lives are partially the story of others, interwoven into our own. In the good and the bad and the things that time may shift to someplace in between. We are who we let our story make us into. Like the seasons that spin about us, we recycle some bits of our story and reuse other aspects to rebuild or grow from. Through it all, our lives crease along the odd and unexpected, yet are fed by the mundanely profound interactions that form the backdrop to the breaths we take, each day, each moment, as we continue on.

For The Daily Post

In The Balance

September 1, 2017Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Meditations, Reflections, Trauma and Development, Writing Tags: compassion, Current events, Difficult times, humanity, kindness, Poetry, Rebuilding, The Daily Post 2 Comments

Photo: Amitai Asif

As tensions hold

The edge

Between manageable

And overwhelmed,

Between spared

And flooded,

Be tender.

As scales tip

To potentiate

Disaster

And fluctuate

From safe

To calamitous,

Be kind.

Remember how

Critical times

Hold within them

The balance

Of rebuilding

On the fabric of

Strength

And profound

Understanding.

For The Daily Post

A Structure – In Memoriam

August 30, 2017Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Current events, Life and love, Memoriam, Photography, Reflections, Writing Tags: Anniversary, healing energy, In memoriam, Kathryn, Photo Challenge, Photography, Tree of Life 10 Comments

Photo: Kathryn Cameron

This is my second response to this week’s photo-challenge. However, I post it not for me but in memory of the photographer who’d taken it, Kathryn Cameron. This week marks five years since her passing and she is deeply missed by all who knew her. I know she’s thought of every single day.

Kathryn had sent me this photo of Swiss Chard from that day’s Farmer’s Market haul. She was washing the greens and something about that leaf’s structure and composition led her to position it on the window-sill and photograph it.

Beyond the stunning beauty of this natural masterpiece of leaf, I remember finding the pink veins as somehow representative of the tenacious carriers of both nutrients and chemotherapy inside Kathryn, who at the time was battling a recurrence of the cancer that would not long after take her life. The vibrant green and light shining through mirrored Kathryn’s indomitable spirit and her love of nature and all growing, flowering, living things. The leaf, placed against the sky, became a miniature Tree of Life, the manifestation of her loving heart and dedication to healing pain and trauma, offering succor, and living as a compassionate soul upon this earth. Now in the beyond.

This post is for you, Kathryn.

I love you more.

For The Photo Challenge

Structured

August 30, 2017Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Photography, Reflections, Writing Tags: Nature, Perspective, Photo Challenge, Photography, Potential, Reflection, Structure 6 Comments

Photo: Amitai Asif

At first glance I wasn’t sure what had made my nephew stop to snap this photo of a monochromatic, drab dry bulb laying on the ground. Then I took another look and understood: in it lay the promise; the potential stored; the strength of tender yet tenacious tendril roots that had worked to nourish the more glamorous aspects of whatever plant this had been and maybe still was. Curiosity raised my eyebrows for the few seconds it took me to realize which side of this natural structure was ‘up’ or ‘down.’ I found myself pondering the mysteries and histories held by this brown bulb – now bare and barren on dry dirt – in the rain it had drunk and energies it had generated and the earthworms that had undulated around it … in the story as it would be told by the few leaves still left clinging, dry but home.

How incredible. How incredibly mundane. How marvelously so.

For The Photo Challenge

Dear Deer

August 30, 2017Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Meditations, Quotes, Reflections, Writing Tags: Awwww, Enamored, Hug, love, Photography, Quote, Sweet, The Daily Post 2 Comments

Photo: Smadar Halperin-Epshtein

There is little more dear

Than a dappled fawn

And enamored

Small child

Gently curled

In deer hug.

For The Daily Post

Rhyme Time

August 29, 2017Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Funnies, Life and love, Speech Language Pathology, Things Kids Say, Writing Tags: children, Funny, grandparents, Hearing aids, hearing loss, Incentive, Rhyme, speech therapy, The Daily Post, Things Kids Say 2 Comments

Photo: dragonhillart.blogspot.com

“Hi, bye, my, spy,” he walked in, grinning.

I smiled at the five-and-a-half year old. A head of brown curls and melt-you-on-the-spot dark-chocolate eyes, green glasses, summer freckles, a missing tooth from playground accident at age three, a superhero hearing aid. Pure charm.

“Why, shy, guy, cry?” he challenged.

“Why indeed?” I chuckled.

“Ask my dad,” he giggled. “He told me that one. One, sun, fun, done.”

“You’re rhyming a lot today!”

He nodded. “I’m practicing. My grandpa gives me a dime every time I rhyme.”

For The Daily Post

City Blues

August 29, 2017August 29, 2017Na'ama Yehuda Anecdotes of Life, Life and love, Photography, Reflections, Writing Tags: Central Park, New York City, Photo Challenge, Photography, Reservoir, Trivia, Water 8 Comments

Central Park reservoir; Photo: Na’ama Yehuda

People are often surprised that an expanse of blue water in the middle of Manhattan is iconic NYC, and yet … there it is, the Central Park reservoir, perched at the upper half of the massive park like the pit of an avocado. Built in 1860, the 40 feet deep reservoir holds a billion gallons of water. Locals use the 1.58 miles running/walking track around the reservoir for their daily exercise (and might frown at you if you disregard the signage to follow a counter-clockwise direction, or bring your bikes or pets or strollers onto the track – they are not allowed). In this photo, taken from the Upper East Side looking toward the Upper West Side, the blue of the water strives to tickle the blue sky and the clouds get comfy on and in between the towering apartment buildings.

For The Tuesday Photo Challenge