Fresh Living

“If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.” -J. Krishnamurti   Check out more Yoga Quotes to Stretch Your Spirit   Need more morning inspiration?  Read our entire Fresh Morning collection!

“When there’s happiness in the heart, there’s harmony in the home.When there’s harmony in the home, there’s order in the nation. When there’s order in the nation, there’s peace in the world.When there’s peace in the world, there’s happiness in the heart.” (Repeat)– Sufi song Last week I attended a conference, “The Inner Dimensions of…

I love it that Valerie’s Fresh Morning post this morning was a Mary Oliver poem, because I’ve been rolling one of those around my brain almost constantly this past week.  Blog sistah, you and I are on the same wavelength! Enjoy this gorgeous poem from Ms. Oliver, who I just learned lives in Provincetown, MA,…

      The Journey by Mary Oliver One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice– though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you didn’t…

Today is testing day for me–an annual CT scan to make sure I remain cancer-free. Gah. This means I started the day feeling like a bereft five-year-old when I couldn’t find Sharky, the stuffed animal who comforts me around these times (sharks are kind of my cancer spirit guides); he must have swum off to a…

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward,…

Over the past couple of days, I’ve heard two separate stories of leukemia/lymphoma diagnoses where the patient–one a young father, the other a young child–is in desperate need of a bone marrow transplant.  The number of people who need transplants is growing, and the bone marrow donor registry needs to grow with it. So, a…

“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.” — William Faulkner Need more morning inspiration?  Read our entire Fresh Morning collection!

Folks, today is my birthday.  Yippie! This morning, when I woke up and logged onto my email, I saw 33 new messages, all “happy birthday” notes on my Facebook wall.  I know this is not an uncommon experience – it’s not my first Facebook birthday, but scrolling through them all, I couldn’t wipe the smile…

Oatmeal is–as we’ve discussed before–one of the healthiest, most satisfying breakfasts you can ever eat.  Plus, it’s sweet!  But how is it sweetened?  What a delicious topic.  I like to use natural sweeteners — plural — that give the cereal a depth of sweetness that’s pleasant but not cloying, just delicious enough to get me…

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about

Valerie Reiss

Valerie Reiss is Holistic Living Editor at Beliefnet. She was a founding editor at Breathe magazine, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Women's Health, Natural Health, Yoga Journal, Lime.com, Vegetarian Times, and ABCNEWS.com. A native New Yorker, Valerie holds an M.S. from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a B.A. from Beloit College in Creative Writing with a minor in Women's Studies. She also lived in Maui for a while where she drank green papaya juice and taught some creative writing. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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