My middle daughter’s miraculous survival and complete recovery from her year-long medical crisis and hospitalization was a huge turning point in my life. It also happened to coincide with my turning 50, a naturally big life-marker.

These events made my self-reflecting quality take on a whole new emphasis. My gut-feeling angst churned at a non-stop and deeper level.

In the Wake of a Miracle

I had just witnessed a miracle. How do I honor that? People do wonderfully meaningful things out of loss and tragedy. They start organizations, become part of worthy causes; create something bigger that transcends the loss. My situation had a good outcome – what was I to do with that?

Having sat with every beep and bleep of the life-saving machines Nava was on and realizing firsthand the thinnest of threads upon which our lives all hang, moved me to want to go beyond my ‘old’ life and do something new.

I needed more than just a return to Before. I couldn’t just pick up the pieces and continue on. The angst began. What to do? How to pay this miracle forward?

Paying It Forward

And so, my searching began. I saw an article on puppy-raising and training for the disabled. I signed on. For 19 months we fostered an adorable mix of a golden retriever and yellow lab who came with a thick instruction book that we followed to a tee.

The goal: to get him trained well enough to pass his tests and go on to live out his life in service to a person with a disability. And so he did! Mission accomplished.

I had seen the movie Patch Adams and was enthralled with his way of doctoring and healing. My interest was keenly piqued when I stumbled across something promoting Patch Adams’ clowning trips.

It showed me that you didn’t have to be a professional clown; the only requirement was to dress up and bring your silliness. And so I, together with my good-sport hubby, embarked on an adventure of uninhibited gallivanting around Sicily, contributing joy in the universal language of smiles and laughter.

Hospitals, senior homes, juvenile centers, rehab centers, and such were the recipients of cheer from a fun-loving group of all-aged folks.

Long-Term Solution

As awesome as these experiences were, and they have both been colorfully woven into the tapestry of my life, they were time limited. I was looking for something more lasting that would possibly change the course of my life.

I did not come to any major breakthroughs, at least not the external or concrete kind. What did come through, however, has been more internal. I live with a greater sense of urgency and intention, with the fragility of life and the reality of death accompanying me, motivating me to live a rich life.

What has become lasting has been the idea of taking on all kinds of new things, opening myself up to new possibilities and opportunities, seeing the world as an endless palette of curious colors waiting to be tried.

Some ‘small’ things, like increasing my intake of vegetables beyond my childhood likes of peas, carrots, and corn, has become exciting as I’ve taken on a much healthier lifestyle. I don’t exactly love those cruciferous veggies, and I do have to force myself to eat at least a little (especially for my bones since I have osteoporosis).

I’ve developed a love for avocados, the consistency of which I had found icky. After hearing that my grandson eats them whole like fruit, I decided to give them another try (knowing they’re a great brain food). And lo and behold, they have become a part of my daily diet.

It is said that kids need to be exposed to a new food at least 10 – 15 times before possibly being accepted. Well, I would say we also need to give ourselves re-exposure to things we hadn’t liked and try them again. We might surprise ourselves.

How to Embrace New Possibilities

So now let’s climb aboard the train towards some new tracks ahead. Here are 3 ways to develop a mindset for embracing fresh and unexplored possibilities:

Become More Curious

Curiosity is a key to staying youthful and engaged. There’s so much to learn. Exploring and expanding on our interests and questions and seeing where they take us is fun and stimulating.

Did you like a certain film or book? Go online and learn more about it. One thing can lead to another and before you know it, you’re engaged in something more.

Curiosity is a strength that’s invigorating and the antithesis of boring. There’s no such thing as boredom when curiosity is present. It’s a large ingredient in the recipe for rich living. The world is truly our oyster for discovery.

Step Out of Your Comfort Zone

There are whole new opportunities to be had. Push through the stagnation of the status quo and give it a whirl. There are always plenty of reasons/excuses not to, but go after the ones to do anyway.

Familiarity keeps us in our comfort zone and leaves nothing to grow towards. That’s when feeling stuck or bored can come into play. Potential and excitement open up when we decide to leave the customary and usual. As the quote by Neale Walsh states, “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”

Be Open to Growing

As long as we’re on this side of the earth, we’re growing. So why not be intentional about it. The old myth that “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” is exactly that – a myth. We may be more set in our ways but again, that’s more of a mindset.

We can become more open to learning and evolving if we make that decision. Much of how we age and live is about our choice and our beliefs. We can always choose to do things differently, to try out other options.

I used to think that by the time I was ‘older’ (whatever age that means to you), I’d know a lot and have less questions. Well, that’s a myth too, at least for me. I’m always amazed that I just keep having more and more questions.

The mystery of life gets more mysterious. The road to self-discovery is a forever path, and our potential is never-ending.

What major life event has changed your thinking about life and growth? Have you made a conscious decision to continue growing until your last day on earth? What pushed you in that direction? How have you grown since making that decision? Please share with the community!

What have I been doing during the pandemic? Well, among other things, I have been adding to my kitchen tools.

When I was young and raising a family on limited funds, I didn’t have many extras in terms of kitchen tools. Just the usual knives, can opener, potato peeler, wooden spoons, and mixer, and a ladle. I got by just fine as a stay-at-home mom, an “earth mother” of sorts (it was the 70s, after all!).

As such, I made meals from scratch, grew a garden, and learned to preserve food for my family. I decided preparing meals was my hobby to keep my attitude positive and to boost my creativity in the kitchen.

A Gift

In the 80s, I was weak from a neuro-muscular disease. A surprise gift from friends in the form of a KitchenAid mixer made my life much easier. We had five kids and I was at home and committed to feeding them healthily and well.

I made all of our bread from scratch and the kneading was tiring me out. I always made large batches of cookies and my small handheld mixer was taxed. That KitchenAid was one of the most thoughtful and useful gifts I have ever received.

A Hand-Me-Down

As my mother-in-law aged, she would occasionally ask me if I wanted that chair or this platter left to me from her belongings after she was gone. I told her, “Just leave me your Cuisinart food processor, please.” She thought I was joking, but I was dead serious.

I did get that small appliance and wore it out. It made pie dough, noodle dough, cabbage slaw, grated carrots, chopped onions and green peppers, etc., etc., etc. for years after her passing. I definitely replaced that when the one I inherited pooped out.

5 Fun and Useful Kitchen Tools

Now, as we are aging and in our third third (pretty close to 70) and simplifying (in a new home that is small but with the kitchen just as I wanted it), I find that having the right tools gives me great pleasure while they make my life simpler.

Our new home is further from grocery stores and specialty shops. We have also been careful about going places during the pandemic, so I find that being creative in the kitchen is an enjoyable outlet. I have gradually added in a few small kitchen tools / gadgets that make me smile whenever I use them.

Immersion Blender

I asked for one two Christmases ago and find I use it several times a month. A simple carrot-ginger soup recipe is so healthy and yummy it is worth repeating so we have it once a month or so.

Last week, I made a pot of black beans and decided to try blending it into a thick puree. It was so good, the entire pot was gone in less than 24 hours. Our son, Joel, had it with eggs the next morning for breakfast.

Joel, who has Down Syndrome, has lost 40 pounds in the pandemic and has a new interest in eating healthy, which means more vegetables. One night, he asked me to blend up a tomato soup I made, and he ate two bowls. The immersion blender makes difficult or objectionable texture a moot point, so veggies get eaten.

Mandolin

Even though I sliced a hunk of my thumb off last week while I was slicing a red onion for flat bread pizzas, I love my mandolin. It is perfectly possible to avoid self-mutilation when using it – it came with a guard, for Pete’s sake!

Ginger sliced thin and thrown into a pan of veggies to roast is a fun surprise. Consistency in thickness of carrot slices or zucchini rounds is satisfying to me. I tend to be fast and not so accurate with cutting, focused more on function that presentation, so the mandolin’s easy consistency makes me smile.

Microplane

Since I am cooking for one or two or three now, not seven or eight or twelve, I love grating parmesan or manchego over a bowl of salad or pasta. It is much tastier than the dried parmesan in the green plastic jar that was easy for large family meals.

The microplane is a good way to add ginger to dishes, too. (I’m a fan of ginger, obviously!) Grated chocolate on ice cream, orange or lemon zest into bread or a cocktail. The opportunities are endless.

Spiralizer

I first bought a $3 hand-held spiralizer to see if we would like zoodles (zucchini disguised as noodles). Middle of summer, there is always a push to find more ways to use zucchini, right? It was fun, and I saw there are tasty ways to use spirals, so I splurged ($25) and bought a sturdier, manual spiralizer.

Besides zucchini, I’ve spiralized onions, carrots, beets, sweet potatoes. Variety is the spice of life, right? Veggies in spirals is a variation from dicing and slicing and chopping. It sort of makes a mess, but it’s not bad to clean the spiralizer and spirals add some novelty to an occasional meal.

Mini Food Processor

Not long ago, I mistakenly ordered a smaller food processor that is a chopper/grinder. I can’t remember what I thought I was getting, but this little machine is a keeper. It will chop onions with no tears, it will mix mushrooms, bell peppers, and onions together to stuff into peppers with quinoa.

It will chop or mince just about anything in smaller batches than the large processor. It’s easier to clean and store than the larger one, too. A handy mistake I made, ordering that.

Appreciating Handy Kitchen Tools

Having the right tools makes any job easier and more efficient. They don’t have to be new, just close at hand and suited for the job. The paring knife I have had for years is fine. So is the bread knife I’ve had since 1972.

Kitchen shears are still sharp after 30 years. I’m not replacing tools that still work, but I am having fun adding to my kitchen tools to make meal making more fun and interesting… and simpler.

What are your favorite kitchen tools? Have you discovered any new tools that make you smile? What have you discovered in your kitchen during the pandemic?

There are a number of rules that the experts tell us about online passwords:

• Never use a password that includes names, numbers, or places from your life.
• Never use the same password twice.
• Never write down your passwords.
• Never store your passwords on your computer or your phone.
• Never give your passwords to anyone else.

Password Rules Are Hell

According to the rules above, you’re supposed to use a different password for every account you have online.

The passwords you use should not contain anything from your life, i.e., people, pets, places you’ve been, favorite teams, or anything else that somebody might guess you would use.

Not to mention, you should keep no record of your passwords, anywhere. And you should trust absolutely no one with your passwords.

Does any of that sound doable to you? Heck no. It’s classic circular logic. Catch-22. Absurd. Impossible. It’s Password Hell.

Most of Us Break the Password Best-Practice Rules

All these great rules leave us right where we started: nowhere. Most of us do what humans naturally do – we cheat.

Either we use names and places that mean something to us to help us remember our passwords, or we use the same password everywhere, or we write our passwords down on a piece of paper, or we store a “secret document” on our laptop with a list of all our passwords. Or any or all the above. Is this you?

How Can You Possibly Follow the “Good Password Practices” Rules?

I want to share a secret: you can follow all the rules you’ve been told, except for one, and you can do so easily and safely. So, what’s do we do, exactly? Break Rule #5: Never give your password to anyone else.

Now why in the world would I suggest you do that? Because it’s the best of all the unattractive, risky or downright foolhardy choices you can make in your password management.

I’m not suggesting that you give your passwords to your spouse or a friend to remember for you. Not only would that be a bad idea, it’d be downright impossible for either of you to manage.

I’m suggesting that you use a trusted, respected, professional password management service. There are many out there. LastPass is one with an excellent reputation, and it’s the one that I use. And P.S., LastPass offers a free option.

LastPass

It works like this: You set up an account with LastPass and create one super-duper, hard-to-guess but, for you, easy-to-remember password for that account.

And that’s it. You will never need to create nor remember any other password again. Just one super-important master password, for the rest of your life.

Once you’ve set up your account, LastPass will generate a new, random password for you whenever you need one. When it generates a password, it will remember it for the website you’re using at the time.

Then, when you come back to that website later, LastPass will, upon your command, fill in your username and password for you. And, if you need or decide to change your password on a website in the future, LastPass will update the change in its records, too.

Why Should I Trust a Password Management Service Like LastPass?

LastPass, and other services like it, is in the business of creating and protecting password banks for its users. It has several levels of security incorporated into its process.

A whopping 7 million people use LastPass. Major companies use LastPass. It has earned a reputation for trustworthiness. It is a good company.

Sure, you could say, “I don’t know them, I can’t trust them.” But you could say the same thing about the people who handle your money in the bank, couldn’t you?

Frankly, unless you want to continue to leave yourself open to the possibility of password theft by using the same password everywhere, or using easy-to-guess passwords, or by writing your passwords down somewhere, your only real option is to honor the first four rules I listed at the beginning of this article, and then “break” rule number 5 and trust in a password management service, and use it religiously.

Is There a Catch to Using a Password Management Service?

Of course, in a way, there is a catch. It’s this: You need to create a hard-to-guess password, and you need to remember it. Really, really remember it. And you should not give it to anyone else – not a soul.

It’s not that a trusted friend is likely to sell you out. More likely, your friend may not do a good job of keeping your password safe, in which case it could get into evil hands.

Obviously, you should not write your password down. So, that’s a bit of pressure. But if your master password is the only one that you will ever need to remember, it sounds doable. You can memorize it just as you do your lifetime government ID number.

If you’re nervous about one day blanking out entirely and irrevocably forgetting your master password, you can always write it down and store it in a safe deposit box or a home safe or in some other super protected spot. After all, we’re all human. One last-resort safeguard isn’t a bad idea.

Do you use the same password for multiple sites, and secretly feel guilty about it? Do you keep a piece of paper near your computer with all your passwords written down? Do you use a password management service? How has it been for you? Please share the service that you use and any advice you may have.

Have you ever had the urge to enter the wilderness with a backpack, but dismissed it as an impossibly silly dream, because you felt too old and out of shape? I am here to tell you that you can do it! You don’t need to be young, thin, athletic or tough. Here is my story.

One day, as an already aging woman, I woke up and felt the desire to immerse myself in the woods. To walk as far as I wanted, then to go to sleep and wake up and walk again. Vaguely, I knew this vision had a name and it was called backpacking.

Backpacking Is for Anyone

I am a 66-year-old Jewish psychologist, five feet tall and overweight. I was raised in the city, I hated gym class, and our family vacations involved staying in nice hotels. I always loved the outdoors, had a small garden and took walks in the neighborhood. But this powerful urge was like a call of the wild.

I wanted to be in secret, hidden spots, 5 or 10 or 20 miles from a road; places not available to mere mortal hikers or car-campers.

But wasn’t backpacking for lean young men who carried massively heavy packs into the mountains? I just wanted to walk and sleep among the gentle woods and lakes of Michigan, carrying tea fixings and a good book.

What’s Needed for a Wilderness Experience

So, like everything else in my life – from pregnancy to being a therapist – I researched. I learned that it was possible to have a wilderness experience if you could carry 25 pounds on your back.

Thanks to modern technology you don’t have to carry a metal fold-out stove, army mess kit or heavy sleeping bag – there are lighter options.

As an out-of-shape older woman, my starting point was clear – could my senior body, with its occasional aching knees, back and neck, carry 25 pounds?

Nervously, feeling like an imposter, I drove to REI and bought a backpack – a special, symbolic, exciting event for me. Then came the moment of truth. I loaded it with 10 pounds of books and tried walking a mile.

I thought I was going to collapse. My shoulders and feet were killing me. Determined, I decided to be scientific about it and hoped in time I could build muscle. I scaled back to eight pounds for half a mile. Then I made a chart, and slowly, over three months, I built up to five miles carrying 25 pounds!

Camping Is the Ultimate in Self-Sufficiency

I thought endlessly about how I would furnish my backpack. To me, it’s like a doll house – all mine and the ultimate in self-sufficiency. I found the cutest, tiny stove, with miniature pots.

Then I added:

• A lightweight sleeping bag that felt like a cloud.
• Extra clothes that served as a pillow.
• A one-pound cushy sleeping pad that magically inflated itself.
• A gossamer silken orange hammock.
• And the best, my four-pound one-person tent, a sanctuary for only me and my backpack.

On a hot August day, I left home and my doubting teenagers, and set off alone for my first backpack trip.

I hiked eight miles that day and stopped every mile or two. I brewed tea on the trail and read my new paperback. I even took off my boots and dangled my feet in a stream. I managed to doze off for a little bit, enchanted by the magical forest sounds.

I didn’t really care where I ended up, but I did get to a beautiful pristine lake with no one around. I set up my tent and made it all cozy inside, then cooked beans and rice for dinner.

Hiking Like a Hobbit

Years later, this is still the way I backpack. I hike slowly, luxuriously, like a hobbit not a soldier. If I come upon a beautiful creek five minutes from my starting point, I take off my shoes and wade and dream.

I nosh on yummy things I don’t allow myself at home, like my homemade trail mix of granola, cashews, and m-and-m’s. I always take popcorn. Sometimes in the summer I leave the cooking supplies at home and eat rice cakes with peanut butter and jelly, paring my pack weight down to a blissful 20 pounds!

In 16 years of solo backpacking, I have never had an injury or a scare.

Really, why do I do it? So that I can do whatever I want: Read a book cover to cover, uninterrupted. Write to my heart’s content. Spend the day in the hammock. Do nothing. Lie staring at the sky for hours, until the stars come out.

Fall asleep under the stars if I feel like it, outside of my tent, snuggled in my sleeping bag. Become a part of the woods, so the birds and squirrels circle fearlessly around me. Let go of time, and worries, and other people’s needs. Just me and the forest.

Do you love to hike or go camping? What does backpacking mean to you? What is your usual hiking preparation? How often do you go backpacking solo? Please share any tips that our more hesitant sisters would find useful.

I don’t know about you but I find most days, it’s pretty challenging to get ready. My life has changed so drastically in the past year and without seeing friends and family, I don’t have a ton of motivation to put makeup on. And if I do, it’s just a little mascara because of wearing masks. Sometimes it feels like, what’s the point? But there is a point. I love makeup and creating looks with new products from buzzy, up-and-coming brands. That’s why this weekend, I decided to do a review of Halsey’s About-Face makeup line. And spoiler alert: it’s good.

Sure, putting contacts in and doing my hair was a bit of a struggle but once I got started, it was really nice to feel like myself again. The only problem was choosing which products to try first. Halsey’s About-Face brand is huge. There are matte lipsticks, lip pencils, eyeshadow sticks, liquid and powder highlighter, eye paints, lip gloss and so much more. And that’s just in the first drop! She is not messing around.

I was quickly drawn to the bold colors of the Shadowsticks, especially the Creature shade (a matte Robin’s egg blue).

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I decided to create a look around this bright blue eyeliner. I grabbed the Oxide shade (a matte white) to anchor the blue and get a little creative, as well as the Matte Fix Lip Pencil in Pink in the Morning, Paint-It Matte Lip Color in Ask Nicely (a matte pale pink) and Light Lock Lip Gloss in Such Great Heights.

I don’t know if because I’ve been watching Euphoria but as I started on the eyeliner, I found myself making little clouds on the sides of my eyes. These shadow sticks are very pigmented and smooth so it’s easy to draw-on any design. They were made to be played with so when you try them, have some fun with colors and designs. I also wanted to play with textures so I added a bit of gloss to the pink matte lip.

Source: Instagram

Even though all I did was make a video and take some selfies, I had a better night than if I would have just been watching Netflix. Sure, I’ll have many of those nights, too, but it’s good to switch it up a bit. I’m pleasantly surprised at how great Halsey’s products are, from the fun shades to the comfortable textures and stay-put formulas. They feel professional but not boring. It’s the perfect mix.

And it seems she has no plans on slowing down anytime soon. The brand just launched its Anti-Valentine’s Day collection with new lip liner shades and even an ultra-black lipstick. Anti-Vday Paint-It Matte Lip Color in Night Sight ($22 at About-Face) is that inky shade you’ve been looking for for Galentine’s Day and any other time you want to add some edge to your look.