Today, and everyday, take as your personal mantra: I am what I am and what I am is wonderful.

Indifference breeds animosity.

Real life isn't always going to be perfect or go our way, but the recurring acknowledgement of what is working in our lives can help us not only to survive but surmount our difficulties.

Self-nurturance, or learning to bask in bliss, is an acquired art form.

Deliberately seeking solitude-quality time spent away from family and friends-may seem selfish. It is not. Solitude is as necessary for our creative spirits to develop and flourish as are sleep and food for our bodies to survive.

If we are to flourish as creative beings, if we are to grow into wholeness, we must bloom wherever we are planted.

When I think about my father, the first image that comes to mind is holding his hand as he drove me to the train station six weeks before he died; I had never noticed how beautiful his hands were until I saw them, for the first and last time, entwined in mine.