When was the last time you looked at your life with wonder and curiosity rather than as a series of day-in and day-out sameness? By taking on new activities, even small ones, you can freshen up your life story and how you view and live. 

We each float in a bubble of our own stories. We are each a storyteller with our narrative of how we view events.

Pete has proven – as have many clients – the most potent contribution of life storytelling goes beyond writing notes and organizing and scanning memorabilia to create heirloom books. There is healing in the interaction of telling life stories to an active listener.

In the Albert Brooks movie Mother, there is a scene when Brook’s character realizes his mother has a whole other life that has nothing to do with him. In that moment, he sees the woman who raised him as not only his mother but a person, too.

Benjamin Moore calls it "White Sand," I call it salvation. It has only taken 20-plus years, but I'm changing out the colors of the bedrooms in our two-story home. The update is subdued and feels like a relief. With the shift, my space reflects who I am at present.

This deluge of images underscores the quandary: what to do with them all, especially when you add in all the hard copies of pictures we collect. If you’ve lived more than a few decades, it’s likely you have old-fashioned printed photos collecting dust somewhere.

In the past six months, I've transitioned from using YouTube as a tool to help fix my toilet to a frequent source of serious quality entertainment and inspiration. Creators of all kinds offer viewers the opportunity to explore lifestyles vicariously. Experiences vary from living alone in the woods to traveling the world via the highways or the waterways.

I’ve learned some universal truths about families in the years of listening to others. There are always stories of joy, stories of triumph, and naturally stories of sorrow. And even if the details vary, the feelings are relatable for us all. But one kind of story which doesn’t get much light – are the ones about family estrangements.

We have the technology to help bridge the distance, but the reality is my grandkids are unlikely to see parts of their family more than perhaps a half a dozen times throughout their childhood if that much. I have wondered how I can help them identify and understand their place in their larger family circle and gain an understanding of these far-reaching individuals.

Life is in the little moments so it’s great when they offer up pleasant surprises. Here’s one that caught my attention.

Once upon a time, sometime in the 1940s, there was a woman who was young, married and had a child. But things went sour, and there was a bitter divorce. The father of the child asserted that the woman