Spreading Sunshine
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Spreading Sunshine A free, monthly e-newsletter to brighten your day and make you smile! Issue 5, August 29, 2007 Join Us! Welcome! By receiving this newsletter, you are part of a group of people making their dreams come true. If you like what you read, please forward this message to your friends and family, and invite them to join us too! Click here to subscribe to Spreading Sunshine now! Welcome Back! For those of you who wrote wondering if you had missed an issue of Spreading Sunshine—fear not, I just took a bit of a break. Thanks for noticing! You might say I took the last issue (on the importance of resting and napping) to heart. As you will discover in this issue, though, something woke me up! J In all honesty, besides playing hard this summer, what really kept me from writing Spreading Sunshine these past few months was I was preparing my two books (they seem like children, we’ve been together so long!)—Soul Wisdom: A Guide to Miraculous Living, Book One, and Spirit In Disguise: A Guide to Miraculous Living, Book Two for publication. YAH! I was also authoring an e-course called Miracles: Creating Your Magical Life with Energy and Intuition for the awesome website http://www.selfhealingexpressions.com. More on all of this soon. Stay tuned! In the meantime, as always, there’s lots of good news happening around the world. Enjoy! When Something Wakes You Up © 2007 Laurie Smith My husband and I had agreed we were not going to set the alarm for 3:45 a.m. PT this past Tuesday morning, when the total lunar eclipse was supposed to be most visible. I had a rowing test at 5:45 a.m. the same day, and my husband Jim was tired. We needed our sleep. Plus, as my husband pointed out, the fog was rolling in. We probably wouldn’t even be able to see the moon. For some reason, I’m not exactly sure why, I awoke promptly at 3:00 a.m. Drawn to the window, there it was in the perfectly clear sky—the full moon. It was glowing red, just as they said it would be, with the exception of a little sliver of white—the part that wasn’t yet covered in the earth’s shadow. It was spectacular. Of course, I had to wake Jim to share in the beauty. The way in which I woke up that night, out of a sound sleep, was not unlike another night a few months earlier, when again, I awoke suddenly at 3 a.m. That time too, I was drawn to the window, but instead of looking up, I looked out to the bay. That time, I was looking to see if I could catch a glimpse of the famous wayward humpback whale and calf who were at last traversing out to sea. Although I saw no whales, my wake-up that night was similar. It was as if some friend calmly tapped on my shoulder until I was awake enough to see what she wanted. I think life is full of moments like this—whether they are in the middle of the night or just a random moment in time when we suddenly become ready to get out of bed, or a rut, or wherever we are in life and make a change. Something like this prompted the mother whale and her calf near San Francisco to do an “about face” and swim back out to the ocean, after weeks of being off-course. Something prompted a member of our family to not buy more cigarettes when she ran out of them, finally kicking a habit she had tried for decades to stop. Something has been helping me to get our house organized the last few months, changing so many habits my husband has been scratching his head wondering who this woman is he is married to! What is that silent force that peaks, often without us knowing why or how, and gives us the energy to (finally!) do that one (or several) thing that is in our best interest? What is that “something” that comes along, often without explanation and with timing different than anything we would have chosen, and energizes us to do what we are ready to do? All I know is that this something exists, and like the perfect wave a surfer seeks in a sea filled with millions, it’s worth the wait.
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Good News! Here are just some of the good news stories that I’ve been enjoying since the last issue. Click on the headlines to link to the original news stories. Happy reading! Great news for parents everywhere. In the results of poll of teenagers age 13 to 24 released a week ago, spending time with family was the top answer given to the open-ended question, “What makes you happy?” In fact, 20 percent of the teens asked (that’s one in five!) gave this response. Time with friends, then time with a significant other took second and third. Three-quarters (75 percent!) of those surveyed say their relationship with their parents makes them happy. When it came to naming their heroes, more than half chose one or both parents! For those of us with young children dreading the day when Mom and Dad are no longer cool, this is good news indeed! After several weeks of being lost in freshwater and traveling up the Sacramento River, two ailing humpback whales who are believed to be a mother and calf, finally found their way back to the ocean on May 30. After scientists tried to get them to turn around by banging pipes other creative means to no avail, the whales ultimately reversed their course a few days after receiving antibiotic treatment. It took them many days to finally reach the San Francisco Bay, where they were last spotted a short distance from the Golden Gate Bridge. It is suspected they swam through the bridge unseen, out to their home of the Pacific Ocean. May they be out there somewhere, safe and sound! A 43-year-old Greek man was discovered alive, though semiconscious, by vacationers at a beach near Aigio, Greece. Three days earlier, he had been swept out to sea while swimming at a beach 15 miles from where he was found and rescued. The man’s wife had declared him missing after he failed to return from his swim. A sea and air search had failed to locate him. The man was treated in the hospital for hypothermia. Aren’t the human spirit and physical body amazing? Yes, you didn’t misread it, the Russian Governor Sergei Morozov of Ulyanovsk, a region on the Volga River about 550 miles east of Moscow, is sponsoring a national conception day on September 12—strategically scheduled nine months before Russia’s national day on June 12. President Vladimir Putin called the low birth rate in Russia the most acute problem facing the nation and announced a broad effort to boost it, including cash incentives to families to have more than one child. This prompted Morozov to add an element of fun to the national campaign, announcing that on conception day you and your spouse are supposed to give it your all to show how patriotic you are by conceiving a baby. Isn’t it nice to see at least one country prioritizing what’s really important—whoopy (er…love)? A 94-year-old great-great-grandmother who left school at the age of 12 to help her mother look after her siblings appears to be the world's oldest recipient of a master's degree, an official with Guinness World Records said. Phyllis Turner was awarded her master’s degree in medical science from the University of Adelaide in Australia. After raising her own seven children and two stepchildren, she completed her education at night because ''I love study,'' Turner said. Let’s shoot to break her record when we hit 94! Tamera Dixon, who is believed to be one of the smallest babies ever born in New Jersey, is now ready to go home. Tamera weighed slightly more than 11 ounces and measured 10 inches when she was born after only 25 weeks in the womb. Now she's 4 pounds, 8 ounces, and doctors are cautiously optimistic that she will develop normally. Tamera was delivered by caesarean section when her mother’s kidneys started failing and Tamera stopped growing. On a personal note, this story makes me especially happy because dear, spectacular Tamara was delivered with the help of the able hands of a physician in the same ob/gyn practice and the same hospital as where our son was born. God speed, little one! Conservationists are celebrating the return of a small butterfly about one inch in wingspan, the El Segundo blue, to its native habitat along the Santa Monica Bay. The return of these butterflies is a surprise even to the scientists who have been nurturing their dwindling population in three fenced-in nature reserves and may be in part due to the restoration of native vegetation to the region including buckwheat, the source of the butterflies’ preferred nectar. Scientists believed the El Segundo blues were too lazy to travel long distances, but the insects surprised everyone by returning home without any human assistance. What a great reminder that nature and the animals of the world are far wiser than we know. |
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Readers Report Here is what some of you are saying. Thank you for your feedback. Keep it coming! Happy Coincidences! (This one is particularly close to my heart, as it arrived as a surprise from my husband cousin Laura.) “So I wake up much earlier than everyone in my house, as usual. I have a lot of work to do and it's going to be such a nice day, I decide to jump on it early so we can go play the day away. I finished up and everyone's still sleeping, as usual, so I decided to poke through my 286 emails from the past 2 days...and what do I see? I get this email from my friend Terre (who's middle name happens to be Sunshine) and all things Sunshine are sought out by Terre. So I read this newsletter and I thought this is so wonderful! It's warm fuzzy, feel-good inspiration. After a week of dealing with the VaTech tragedy, the Nor'easter that ripped my sunroom off my house, a terribly cold and 60 some hours of working, this newsletter refocused me on all the OTHER things in life NOT just the awful "stuff". So I kept reading, the sun started coming up and peaked through my drapes...just the smallest beam of light while I'm reading and I'm thinking, ‘Wow this is like a dawning for ...the day is new... I felt so positive!’ So I keep reading ...I see Dr. Seuss quoted ...I get the chills thinking this is scary...this particular quote is like a mantra in my life! Then I decide to "Meet Laurie Smith." I click on the tab & I SCREAMED SO LOUD THAT I WOKE UP THE ENTIRE SLEEPING FAMILY! There YOU are, JB's wife...it's you…it's Laurie! I had to write you this morning to say good morning, to tell you this is a WONDERFUL newsletter! Have a happy, wonderful beautiful day!” -Laura Jones Thanks for the Light! “Just wanted to tell you that I love your newsletter and will be passing it onto lots of people. It's a breath of fresh air. Thanks for the positive news! Thanks for bringing this to light! -Lynn Cohen, PCC, Personal and Professional Coach www.designstogrow.com A Timely Reminder “Another excellent newsletter. With all the upsetting headlines we see every day, I think we all look forward to some uplifting and inspirational news. Thank you.” -Ron Brandsdorfer Yummy Quotes “You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.” -H. Jackson Brown, Jr., bestselling author of Life’s Little Instruction Book “When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.” -Hellen Keller “When turning points finally come, it’s as if all the energies of the universe coalesce and we know, deep within our hearts, we are ready to do whatever it takes to follow the soul’s call.” -Laurie Smith from Spirit In Disguise And inspired by our son: “It’s okay to be Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large… It’s okay to come in last… It’s okay to have an invisible friend. It’s okay to get mad… It’s okay to make a wish… It’s okay to eat macaroni and cheese in the bathtub… It’s okay to be different.” -Todd Parr, author of It’s Okay to Be Different and lots of other great children’s books. Happy New Beginnings! May you experience great joy in the month ahead. Good luck with the first days of school and other new beginnings that autumn so often brings. I look forward to seeing you here again soon! I love to hear from readers. Please email me at www.lauriesmith@comcast.net with your feedback and comments. For more inspiration, check out the new articles on my website www.lauriesmith.com and my BLOG (linked thru my site). Thank you for giving me this opportunity to share my soul! Wishing you warm sunshine and miracles, Laurie Smith Visit me at: http://www.lauriesmith.com Subscription Information Spreading Sunshine is brought to you courtesy of: Laurie Smith P.O. Box 692 Tiburon, CA 94920 If you like what you read, please forward this newsletter to a friend! To receive this monthly newsletter, click here to subscribe to Spreading Sunshine now! I am extremely committed to privacy and simplifying life. You received this newsletter only because you have subscribed or someone close to you thought you might enjoy it. If you would like to be removed from our subscription list, click here to unsubscribe to Spreading Sunshine. Have a happy day! All information in this email is copyrighted © 2007 Laurie Smith. All rights reserved.
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