Life Learning Empathy For the past several weeks I've felt a calm in my heart and soul. Sadness has been creeping in - thinking about Kevin, putting down our oldest dog, coming up on the due date of the child we lost in miscarriage - but over the past several weeks
Local Brenda Lee Free's Guide to the #ExtraGive It's the annual Extraordinary Give hosted by the Lancaster County Community Foundation stretched by at least $300,000. The day to give is Friday, November 20th. It can be overwhelming to go to the website and see all the various nonprofits in need of donations, so here'
Life 7 There are few memories ingrained in my like my last 12 hours with Kevin. 7 years ago this morning Kevin's breathing slowed and he passed away after an intense four month battle with a rare cancer - angiosarcoma. It is a moment etched in my life and a
Life Miscarriage and Remarriage When I began bleeding, I honestly didn’t think it was a big deal. I figured it was just over-exertion from the weekend before. I figured this was just part of it. My very first ultrasound of Dave and I’s baby proved that the baby’s heart rate was
Leisure Natural Healing Even when my lungs burn up the trail and I remember how deeply out of shape I am, I put one boot in front of the other and remind myself that this is healing in so many ways. I know that my muscles are building, fat is melting, lung power
Life I'm Grieving My brain is on overdrive. I want to shut it down. It’s like it’s trying to catch up after months of neglect. After months of depression. I’m seeking, trying to find the change that will fix me. New career. Going back to school. Moving into a different
Life Where I'm at I want to anywhere but here, but for right now, I'm meant to be here. When the grief swallows my heart and dreams I'd do anything I can to be somewhere else Living an easier life without so much pain and distress. What looks on the
Life Open the Book This past weekend I was able to attend the keynote at Hippocamp and it was exactly what I needed to hear. I've written a couple pages of proposed book #2 and wasn't "feeling it". It felt like a lame account of memories that weren&
Local Hippocamp - a writers' camp that includes the novice I recently asked Donna Talarico, founder and publisher of Hippocampus Magazine and Hippocamp - A Conference for Creative Nonfiction Writers, the benefits that novice writers would find in attending her upcoming camp which is next week right here in downtown Lancaster, PA. I have friends and readers from all levels
Life Peace, Love and Happiness in Undone Things Buckwheat Zydeco had us singing "Peace, Love and Happiness" over and over at the end of his set at this weekend's Xponential Music Festival in Camden, NJ. It was our fifth year attending, and one of the best. We even made it the whole way through
Life Hearts in Harmony 5 Years Later Today I celebrate the first time I (remember) meeting my husband Dave. I love sharing the story of how we met because I (mostly) don’t believe in coincidences. I believe in things happening for a reason and a purpose, and our meeting was definitely one of those moments. January
Life The Year of the Book It's been an amazing year. 112 backers. 443 books sold or donated. 1 book award. 12 events. 1 year ago was book launch day. Thanks to 112 Kickstarter backers, my memoir was brought to life a year ago and since then, 443 books have been sold, donated or
Life The Injustice Challenge There's something beautiful and safe about being humble, but I'm learning not to mistake humility for complacency. My eyes have been opened to the world of injustices and part of it makes me want to take action, but most of it just pisses me off. I&
Leisure Explore the Elements I've felt like most of my blogs as of late have been very broad, sort of, where's life heading? kind of posts. I'm happy to take some time this evening to post pictures that represent the 4 elements: Earth, Fire, Water and Air. My
Local Pecha Kucha Presentation - Unearth: Restoring my spirit protecting the lands of my birth Below is the breakdown of my presentation at Tellus 360 tonight for their Pecha Kucha event. I hope to have video up of this soon, but in the meantime, here are my thoughts and photos: Good Evening, I’m Brenda Lee Sieglitz and I’m here tonight tell you about
Life The Right Opportunity About a year after I lost Kevin I signed myself up for every opportunity possible in the hopes that my life's dreams would align and I would be presented with the perfect situation. It wasn't a bad plan and it sent me on a ton of
Life The Plight of the Self Published Author I wish I had made my Kickstarter goal $10,000 so I could have hired an agent and pitched my book to publishers and have let them do all the work. I'd still have had to market it myself, but then all the logistics of actually being able
Local Social Justice Social justice has always seemed extreme to me. Something I wouldn't do. I'd sign petitions, like or follow the social media outlets of causes I believed in; I still do. It's a comfortable way to feel involved without being extreme, without putting myself in
Life Owning My Future The end of the year always gives me a pause to reflect on my life and where I am, even if there’s really no time for things like that. I’ve been weighing out a few “life options” with my husband and friends and last week I realized I
Local Fighting a Pipeline, Letting Go of Grief, and Celebrating a Book Understatement of the Year: It's been a chaotic 2 weeks. 2 Tuesdays ago I passed 2 anniversaries: that of funding my Kickstarter publishing project and 6 years since losing Kevin. [embed]http://instagram.com/p/utg6-hNWAX/?modal=true[/embed] Amongst the emotions of that anniversary I become deeply
Life Testing my Character I think we all like to believe we are moral and decent human beings. Even if we don't always do the right thing, we try to. At least, that's how, I think, I live my life. But lately I feel called into question and I keep
Life Camp Widow Canada - Facing Our Grief on the Dance Floor A week ago I made the drive north to Toronto from my home in south central Pennsylvania. Once north of Harrisburg, suburbia begins to fall away and my views are filled with endless miles of streams that cut through vast valleys of deciduous trees just beginning to turn to colors
Life Furthest Out Amongst my widowed friends I am one of the furthest out, meaning, that I've been widowed longer than most of the others in my grief circle of friends. I see their struggles, I feel their pain, yet I can't go "back there". On that
Life Becoming Humble Tonight's full moon reminded me of the small spec that I am on this earth. This past week I studied rocks in my second week of PA Master Naturalist training and we went through the timeline of how the world was created. I could see on paper the
Life The Hardest Job in the World I've always heard that the hardest job in the world is parenting. Mothering in particular. I'm not a mother. For many different reasons, I probably will never be a mother. But I have been a family caretaker and I believe that would be the better description
