The Sun is the BEST Writing and Writers’ Magazine I know of! Here’s a free sample for you:

/ Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

If you’ve never heard of “The Sun” you need to find out about it now! It has no ads, it’s just pure wonderful writing supported by dedicated writers. In case you don’t believe me, here’s a link to a short essay from one of their award-winning pieces.

The Cure for Racism Is Cancer

America, that old problem of yours? Racism? I have a cure for it: Get cancer. Come into these waiting rooms and clinics, the cold radiology units and the ICU cubicles. Take a walk down Leukemia Lane with a strange pain in your lower back and an uneasy sense of foreboding. Make an appointment for your CAT scan. Wonder what you are doing here among all these sick people: the retired telephone lineman, the grandmother, the junior-high-school soccer coach, the mother of three…

How our self-image must change as we age

/ Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

Somehow I never pictured myself with oxygen equipment. For most of my life I have felt strong, healthy and very self-sufficient. That was how I saw myself as I traveled the globe, collecting sometimes difficult but important life experiences and M.A. degrees.

Life certainly has an amazing way of surprising us!

The view from our new solar home!

Ever since I moved down to southern Colorado in 2014 and then up to seven thousand feet in 2015, breathing has been a struggle, leading to many doctor’s appointments, cat scans and even a recent lung biopsy. No, I don’t have cancer, just damaged lungs from decades of bronchitis and bad air. What a great thing to find out as we settled into our forever home near the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

I fought hard for a couple of years, not accepting that I needed oxygen full-time to live a normal life. I thought I would eventually adjust to our thin air, using all of my inborn stubbornness. If you know me, you know how stubborn I can be! Accepting reality has never been my forte. But finally, twenty tests and a sleep study later, I have resigned to my new reality. I will probably be on oxygen for the rest of my life.

Acceptance releases everything to be what it already is!

Some say just move to a lower elevation. My answer is a resounding NO! Living away from cities, listening to the marvelous natural silence and looking at the mountains constantly has changed me completely in ways impossible to describe to others. I feel so content, safe and grateful here in spite of my breathing struggles.

I know what’s happening in the “world” but I can also completely ignore it here, close to nature and what matters most to me…

Are YOU ready for the country? A Review of “The Biggest Little Farm”

/ Laura Lee Carter / 1 Comment

When I first heard about this DELIGHTFUL new film about moving to the country to start a farm, I knew I just had to see it. Mike and I moved to the country ourselves five years ago and we’re just getting settled in. After seeing this documentary, I would say the line from Variety best describes it:

“Like fresh air for the soul!”

This film is refreshing like nothing I have ever seen! It makes you laugh and cry all at once. The narrative and descriptions of finding a whole new way of life are right on, and the cinematography is scrumptious.

That is not to say that all is goodness and light on the newly established Apricot Lane Farm. They started from 200 acres of desiccated land north of Los Angeles with the goal of learning enough to transform their land into a fully balanced and sustainable organic farm. This film chronicles eight years of that process, with all the traumatic ups and downs. I think I observed as much death as life in this film, that is how new farmers learn how to grow in harmony with nature.

Apricot Lane Farm eight years later!

In the end I learned a lot myself about living in harmony with nature instead of fighting it, and I felt so glad to have shared this experience with Molly and John Chester.

How our definition of “success” changes throughout our lifetime

/ Laura Lee Carter / 6 Comments

I am sure most of us have been in search of ways to “succeed in life” ever since we became conscious human beings. What a great goal, and yet we have been constantly trying to hit a moving target. How many times have you re-defined success in this lifetime?

In my 64 years on this planet, this re-definition process has divided into three main stages of life:

In our early years we are simply busy learning all that we can to be able to succeed in traditional ways like finding a dependable mate and a career of some kind. This stage tends to error on the side of self-consciousness and appearances, focusing too much on what others think we should do.

In our middle years we develop our career and perhaps a family, maybe buy a home, and strive to feel well-established and secure.

Midlife Crisis: I for one experienced a major midlife crisis around age 49. The bottom fell out of all my best-made plans, with a divorce and then job/career loss. Other forms of midlife disillusionment may include serious illness, the death of a loved one, or some combination of these various misfortunes. This may compel us to question many of our previous assumptions about how we have defined our own life success. At this point we might ask:

Will I feel like a success in my life if I continue down this path?

Will I be content in the end if I maintain these priorities?

Aging is nature’s way of answering these questions for us, slowly but surely. For me, my emphasis on career fell away quickly when I realized that my highest priority was finding one genuine, honest, loyal love in this lifetime. After that I became a writer and author, best known as the “Midlife Crisis Queen” online. Then my husband and I decided to choose an entirely different lifestyle by moving to rural Colorado, away from most city stress.

After five years of quiet meditation in the peace of the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, I find I have learned much more about how easily I was convinced to live someone else’s life in the past, making many mistakes in my previous priorities. Now I know, the best things in life aren’t things. And, in the end, it all came down to this:

The hardest battle you will ever face in life is to be no one but yourself, in a world that is trying its hardest to make you like everybody else…

Hip Hip Hooray! There’s joy in everyday!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

Spending time with my parents last week was a timely reminder to me that I must work to find joy everywhere, in spite of physical limitations. Yes, there are a number of irritations in life that must be dealt with, but be sure and find the joy too, or before long it will all seem like a pain in the butt!

For example, the double rainbow last evening!

One thing I always notice when I visit other people’s home is that their windows and views of nature are so limited compared to ours. We have a passive solar home so our south-facing windows cover the wall. I am constantly looking outside here. That is where the action is…

Sometimes a Road Runner will amble up to look in!

Our sky garden is always a good place to observe birds, lizards and occasional deer coming up for water…

and the clouds around here always present something new and interesting!

Find the joy & gratitude YOU need to keep going! That’s what life is all about!

Coping With Life’s Disappointments

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

I spent a couple days with my elderly parents this past weekend. It was great fun seeing their old friends from decades ago, and reminiscing with them about our childhood. I LOVED my tap dancing lessons in third grade and running around the miniature golf course at Renfro’s in Emporia Kansas. Good times!

But I would be remiss if I did not also share some other observations I made while hanging out with Mom and Dad. On the second day I felt both of their disappointments with life, and not just with the physical failings which inevitably come with advanced aging.

Disappointment comes with life and the deeper you dig into life, the more likely you will eventually see how disappointing the human race can be.

When I look at my own life, I find the human race disappointing in its lack of intelligence and loyalty. I abhor its cruelty and just plain craziness. My greatest disappointments have been with friends and lovers that I thought I could trust and their failures to be true friends. I believe the world could be such a better place if we led with intelligence and loyalty instead of judgment, selfishness and cruelty.

But in the end, we all may find disappointments with how things have turned out. The trick then is to cope in some healthy way with those disappointments by giving everyone a break. After all we are all only human, frail and flawed as that condition implies. I know I have also treated others badly at times and I apologize now for my human state. As we age, coping with disappointments is our job. One of my goals is to forgive everyone including myself by the time I die.

One great tool I have found in reaching this goal, is replacing disappointments with GRATITUDE:

This short video was the beginning of my journey towards daily gratefulness.

When you can’t breathe, nothing else matters…

/ Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

In the midst of a number of medical biopsies, scans and tests, I am learning exactly how LARGE my breathing problems are. Time to accept this new reality! My sleep study showed that I come very close to not breathing during the night, and my walking test explains to me why I feel so dizzy just walking a few blocks. Yes, it’s true this all came up after moving to a higher elevation, but I’m certain I had nodules in my lungs before. Living here just made the problem much more obvious to me.

Now to the question of why. Since I never smoked or was regularly around second hand smoke, I have to conclude that my work environments, old libraries, and the air pollution everywhere in our world have been very hard on my lungs. I have always felt a bit like the canary in the mine. I’m always the first one to notice bad air before anyone around me.

My brother, who has worked in asbestos abatement, informs me that old libraries are one of the worst places in terms of asbestos pollution. In fact, I worked at CU-Boulder when they were removing some. I have also lived in quite a few polluted cities like Bangkok, Taipei, Hong Kong, etc. I used to joke that I have had bronchitis in the most exotic places…not so funny now.

Why should this matter to you? Whenever I see someone smoking now I want to go and tell them how awful it is when you cannot breathe like you used to, or do any of the things you used to enjoy. In summary, do everything you can to protect your lungs from anything that will limit your breathing in the future because:

Struggling for breathe SUCKS!