Author: AmySafford
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Dusting off the Ghosts of my Maine Ancestors in my Debut Novel
Image: Malaga Island Residents with Missionary, 1909, Harper’s Weekly, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons “Never let your family read your work. They will either think you’re a genius or a fool, and neither is good for your writing.” –unknown (often attributed to John Steinbeck) I recently launched my first novel, Goode Vibrations of the Wresting…
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From Wilderness to Order: Violence Against Wolves
Eastern Wolf Image Credit: Michael Runtz, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons In the great forests of Maine, my home state, the wolf population is completely eradicated. Today there are coyote-wolf hybrids, but Eastern Wolves have not roamed our woods and shores for more than a century. In the early 1800s, coastal sheep farmers…
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Harmonious Vibrations All Around Us
Image Credit: Author When I walk in the woods of the state park near my home or take a stroll down to the seaside, I somehow become more connected to my own body’s natural rhythms. My tension lessons, my body relaxes, and my mind clears. Is this a psychological adjustment to walking away from my…
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Our Attraction to all things Supernatural
Image Credit: Author Belief in the supernatural is common across cultures to help us understand things that are beyond our physical or natural reality. Any force, being, or realm that transcends the laws of nature, that we cannot explain with a scientific understanding, is considered supernatural. These beliefs include God, the devil, spirits, the afterlife,…
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Get a Grip, Go with the Flow
Image Credit: ID 1430865530 by Stock Photo and Image Portfolio by Iam_Anuphone | Shutterstock As the famous golfer Jack Nicklaus explains, “A good grip allows everything in the swing to happen naturally.” And so goes the game of life. Gateway to the swing I enjoy golfing for relaxation and exercise, and just being outside on…
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Dreams: Our Spiritual Gateway to the Universe
Image Credit: Author Around the time my father passed away, I had a dream that he met me outside in a parking lot during a snowstorm and asked me what I was doing there. We spoke briefly and, in my dream, he seemed happy, at peace with the world. I remember a feeling of content…
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Memorial Day: Boothbay, Blooms, and Battlefields
Image Credit: Author For many years, my family celebrated Memorial Day by heading to Boothbay on the mid-coast of Maine for what we called “work weekend.” My grandparents owned cottages they rented out to folks from away who came every summer to nestle into the sturdy old wooden cabins for a week or two, finding…
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Reincarnation, Rebirth, and Redemption
Image Credit: Author Some cultures believe that souls are reincarnated into another existence—human, animal, or spiritual—after death. This religious philosophy, rooted in the culture of India and widespread in Asia today, is quite ancient and can be traced back to Greek mythology. Orphic mythology In the fifth century BC, priests of the Orphic religion believed…
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Long Live the Spring Birdsong!
Image Credit: Bachkova Natalia at Shutterstock 2259151695 We all know the magic of spring when birdsong miraculously fills our mornings during the warming weather. Their sophisticated and poetic singing is just one of the remarkable talents that birds have fine-tuned over thousands of years. Flighty barometers of change Birds are indeed a harbinger and a…
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The Mind: Our Heavy Bundle of Bias
Image credit: Heavy Backpack by Everest on shutterstock_747066787 There is no question that the human mind is a bundle and a burden of bias. Believing what we want to believe or relying on false memories or placing blame on others are all ways we gravitate toward what we have been taught throughout our lives. These…