Category Archives: origins

Podcast Episode: Exploring Gratitude In Daily Life

Pip: There's a site out there asking what gratitude actually is, where it comes from, and whether you can lose it over a lemon of a motor home — and the answer, it turns out, is yes, but you get it back.

Mara: That's Gratitude Squared, and today we're moving through the personal practice of building a grateful life, the emotional weight gratitude carries, how music channels it, and how one writer is architecting a whole project around it.

Pip: Let's start with the practice itself — what it means to actually live inside gratitude day to day.

Finding the Source of Gratitude

Mara: The post "Our Gratitude Stream" opens with a set of foundational questions: where does gratitude come from, can anyone find it, and is it rooted in giving or receiving?

Pip: And the answer the post lands on is surprisingly personal — it traces the whole thing back to one woman. The writer reflects on gratitude described as a "moral virtue" and then writes: "my mother was very instrumental in molding me, my character, my outlook on life, and my belief system, and for her teachings I am very grateful."

Mara: That lineage becomes the frame for everything else. The mother, Marian Elsie Blake, wrote over a hundred poems found after her passing on napkins, in drawers, in pockets — and her son published them in a collection called A House Inside of Me in 2013.

Pip: So the gratitude stream is literally inherited — a well, as the post puts it, you can return to whenever you need it.

Mara: "Self Study: How Do I Find Gratitude?" extends that inquiry outward. It draws on researcher Robert Emmons, who describes gratitude as an affirmation of goodness whose sources lie outside ourselves. The post asks whether materialism, entitlement, or a failure to bond with others blocks the path to that goodness.

Pip: Finding gratitude, it argues, takes real work — longer-lasting than happiness, but not automatic.

Mara: "Gratitude Is A Teacher To Moderate Desire" gets honest about that difficulty. After a year of anticipation, a brand-new motor home turned out to be a lemon and had to be returned. The post sits with the grief of that — focusing on what you don't have rather than what you do.

Pip: The recovery comes through Cyndi Rooney's idea that gratitude and desire aren't opposites. You can be thankful and still want more. The post lands on: "gratitude teaches us, sometimes, what is enough" — but not as a reason to stop striving.

Mara: "Staying in a State of Gratitude Is Not Easy" turns that tension into a practical list. Notice every good thing around you. Thank people for their services. Begin and end your day with gratitude. The writer frames it from personal stakes — having been given seven to nine months to live years earlier, every ordinary day registers as a gift.

Pip: The image of rippling waves appears here: each small positive act radiates outward, touching people you may never know you reached.

Mara: The emotional weight behind all of this leads naturally into the next territory — what gratitude feels like when the stakes are highest.

When Gratitude Meets Fear

Mara: "Managing The Emotionality Of Gratitude" opens after a health scare — the writer had faced breast, ovarian, and peritoneal cancers in 2017, and a recent lung nodule scare brought all of it back. The post is direct about what gratitude looks like from that vantage point.

Pip: The line that carries the most weight is this one: "the gratitude that is derived from the experience of cancer provides the generosity of time. Use this time wisely to move into gratitude."

Mara: What that means in practice is that a slower illness, unlike a sudden one, gives you space to reorient — to get affairs in order, to say goodbye, to move deliberately toward peace rather than being overtaken by fear.

Pip: "Sacred Gratitude: Social-Cultural Meanings" picks up the depth question from a different angle — arguing that the deepest gratitude is transcendent, shaped by parents, teachers, and mentors, and carries social and cultural responsibility far beyond a momentary pleasant feeling.

Mara: Both posts point toward the same conclusion: gratitude at its most serious is something you build over a lifetime, not something that arrives on its own. That building can happen through unexpected channels — including music.

A Song as a Vehicle for Hope

Pip: The post "Gratitude for Power, Hope, and Optimism in a Song" was written while watching coverage of Russia's attack on Ukraine — specifically the images of people singing together in the streets.

Mara: The post reaches for a biological explanation. USC's Margaret Schaper is quoted directly: "Singing is the cheapest therapy you can find." The argument is that singing has evolutionary and biological roots — it creates solidarity, releases emotional pain, and bonds people across otherwise impossible distances.

Pip: Communal song as grief infrastructure — that's not a small claim.

Mara: The post frames it as a specific form of gratitude: being grateful for the human capacity to sing at all, for the fact that voice and brain and emotion converged in a way unique to us. And that it's free. That thread — gratitude as something shareable and freely given — runs directly into the project itself.

The Architecture of Gratitude Squared

Mara: "Guide to Gratitude" is a one-year retrospective on the site itself. After 174 posts, 6,759 views, and 128 followers across 64 countries, the post reflects on what the project has actually built.

Pip: The writer chose the name gratitudesquared because, as the post puts it, "gratitude is multiplied when shared and experienced" — and the site's reach across 64 countries is the proof of concept.

Mara: The organizational logic behind it is explained in the earlier post "Organizational Model for Gratitudesquared.com Site," which introduced the three-tier framework: gratitude zero for surface-level pleasure, gratitude lite for reflective moments, and gratitude ultra for the deeper academic and emotional inquiry.

Pip: The site is deliberately non-linear — built for different learning styles, different entry points, different needs. As the Guide to Gratitude post puts it: "gratitude is deep and wide."

Mara: What holds all of this together is the idea that gratitude isn't a destination — it's a practice you return to, especially when it's hardest.

Pip: A moral inheritance, a cancer diagnosis, a failed motor home, a song in a war zone — it turns out gratitude has a surprisingly wide range of on-ramps.

Mara: Next time, more from that stream.

Part Seven: Picking Hope From Your Garden Within

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As you traveled through these six conversations, what question has been quietly growing within you?

Can I still trust my own body?
What is really happening within my body?
How do I live with uncertainty?

An experienced Gardener knows:

Growth happens when nothing is visible.
Every garden has weeds.
It’s important to spend more time cultivating than worrying.

This knowledge is similar in biology.

Gardeners do not expect perfection:

Flowers bloom and fade.
Branches break.
Bugs arrive.
Weeds appear overnight.

Yet every spring, gardeners begin again.

Our bodies are not so different from a garden.

DNA repair is pruning.
Immune cells are gardeners pulling weeds.
Stem cells are new seedlings.
Scars become new pathways.
Sleep becomes nighttime cultivation.
Exercise becomes tending.
Nutrition becomes soil.
Medicine becomes tools.

Our metaphors begin organizing our conversation.

Not explaining. Organizing.

They organize the way we think.

Once we see biology differently, we begin living differently.

Another metaphor might be a lighthouse! Think of the beauty from the light shining in the distance, guiding you to safety, security, perhaps to your home. The lighthouse provides orientation for us. This is a remarkable vision from which we continue our discussion on hope and health.

People facing illness desperately want resolution. It may not always be possible. Orientation is.

This framework offers something more immediately attainable.

Orientation.

Knowing where you are.

Knowing what your body is attempting.

Knowing who the repair crews are, coming to help you.

Knowing that uncertainty does not mean abandonment.

That is a profound distinction.

You are probably reading this now because you are experiencing uncertainty at this time in your life.

So, I ask one favor of you. When you are finished reading, I invite you to come with me into our gardens as you continue your life. Within these six blogs we have discussed possibilities for your reflection:

The biology is important.

The science is important.

The repair crews are important.

But underneath all of these blogs in the series is my quieter message:

You don’t have to face uncertainty alone.

These conversations within will accompany you through one of the hardest experiences of your lives without pretending to have all the answers, if you are willing to walk alongside me.

Choices

There are differences between owning a garden… and loving one.

Many people stand in their garden saying,

Why aren’t you perfect?

Gardeners don’t.

They ask,

What does this plant need today?

That question changes everything.

Similarly, the body is not an enemy. Sometimes we need to ask what does my body need today?

It is entrusted to us. There are many variations but it is really a miracle and functions constantly even though you are not often aware of such. When your body has a misfire, you also may choose what you wish to do next to protect and facilitate your overall health.

Always remember that you typically have choices in life that move you toward healing.

During my years as a rehabilitation professional, I learned that healing is rarely a straight line. Sometimes the greatest victories were measured in inches…

or one more spoken word…

or one spoon lifted independently… To someone else, it was only a spoon.

To us, it was independence returning.

or one smile after months of discouragement.

Gardeners understand this.

Tiny growth matters. Tiny accomplishments matter.

Revisiting Biology in the New Framework

Our discussions have assisted you in considering that biology is doing what you may never have seen before.

Consider that you are now visualizing misfires, and the work by various repair crews healing your body. As a part of something unimaginably larger than yourself,

Wonder begins when we finally see where we are.

Not just geographically.

Biologically.

Emotionally.

Spiritually.

In the universe.

Expanding Your Choices in the Presence of Illness

I hope you are now considering the expansion of choices you might have now that you have learned more about your biology.

You, as the reader decides:

Will I continue living in fear?
Will I become more curious?
Will I ask different questions?
Will I become an active participant?

The responsibility shifts now, very naturally to you.

Humanistic Biology

The vision of biology described within this framework includes – repair crews to fix misfires, accumulation of changes, and partnerships with medicine. Our multi-condition model of lived biology has layers:

Normal repair
Persistent misfires
Long-term adaptation
High-intensity medical intervention

Biological Misfires and Hidden Healing

As I recovered during the past decade, I remember thinking: I had no idea my body was accomplishing so much without my awareness. I purposefully began to focus on what was around me and within me. I thought about the words AWE, NOVEL, and WONDER.

I listed a few relevant statements as I recovered and continued to live:

Most biological misfires are repaired silently.
Our bodies employ remarkable repair crews every day.
Medicine joins and becomes an extension of the body’s own repair crew.
Fear is natural, but it does not have to guide our decisions.
You are encouraged to move away from an initial fear response to one that is more hopeful.
Remember: Living is your end goal.

Discovering Hope in Your Garden Within

When I began this journey through illness, I thought I was learning about disease. Instead, I found myself learning about life.

I discovered repair crews I never knew existed.

I discovered resilience that had been quietly working long before I noticed it.

Most of all, I discovered that wonder can exist in the same place as uncertainty. That is the journey I hoped to share with you.

Listen to the message: Come With Me…

This is an invitation to continue living, your best life!

The garden is a companion image in which you have control over the flowers you plant and tend. The choice to plant wonder is yours, just as it is in your garden,

I hope you find peace and joy in your journey toward healing.

#gratitude ultra

Podcast Episode: Part Six: Living

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Pip: Gratitude Squared has been building a framework for understanding biology, medicine, and what it means to live inside a body that keeps surprising you — and this episode sits right at the center of that project.

Mara: The territory today is what the series calls living with uncertainty — how healing works when it isn't clean, how treatment becomes part of the biology itself, and what it looks like to stay a participant in your own care.

Pip: Let's start with what that actually means when the stakes are real.

Living with Uncertainty: When the Body Becomes the Whole System

Mara: The central question in "Part Six: Living" is not whether healing happens, but how you orient yourself when it can't be guaranteed — when repair is probabilistic, not perfect, and you are living inside that gap.

Pip: The post names that gap directly. Here's the framing: "We don't promise to remove uncertainty, rather we are hoping to give people moments of clarity, perspective, and perhaps even wonder while they're living with it."

Mara: That's the anchor of the whole piece. Not resolution — orientation. The goal is not to eliminate fear but to replace enough of it with knowledge that you can participate in what happens next.

Pip: And participation turns out to be load-bearing here. The post argues that understanding your biology changes your emotional experience — that when you're a member of the intervention team, informed consent becomes something you actually inhabit rather than just sign.

Mara: The model the post builds is four concentric circles: biology at the center, then medicine, then human experience, then meaning at the outer ring. Each layer depends on the one inside it, and meaning only becomes available once you understand what the inner layers are doing.

Pip: Which sounds tidy until lived experience breaks the diagram open entirely.

Mara: That's exactly what the post does next. It introduces a fourth response to the existing three — repair, persistence, response — and that fourth is simply experience. The model has to expand because real lives are more complex than any framework drawn in advance.

Pip: The sepsis story in the post is where that complexity stops being theoretical. A Friday text to a physician's assistant becomes a hospital admission, then a sepsis diagnosis, then a surgical team pushing for immediate intervention, then an oncologist arriving on a Sunday morning to stop it.

Mara: And the detail that lands hardest is this: the chemotherapy keeping the cancer in check was the same reason surgery was dangerous. The treatment had become part of the biology every physician now had to consider.

Pip: Two sets of doctors, different hospitals, a weekend, a port in the chest that ruled out standard home IV care — every proposed solution was contraindicated by something else in the system.

Mara: The post walks through those conditions methodically, asking the reader to identify the repair crews, the conflicting interventions, the conditions of significant medical risk. It's structured as a teaching case, but the stakes in it are entirely personal.

Pip: What comes out the other side isn't a cleaner model — it's a more honest one. The post lists the emotional responses that tend to follow serious illness: fear, grief, frustration, uncertainty, and hope coexisting. And then it offers this: "another perspective may become available — one grounded in curiosity, collaboration, gratitude, and wonder at the extraordinary work still taking place within us."

Mara: The post closes by widening the frame beyond cancer — heart disease, autoimmune disease, neurologic disease, serious infection, unexpected diagnosis. The biology differs, the post says, but the uncertainty does not. This framework is for anyone whose confidence in their own body has been shaken.

Pip: And the final note is that the series isn't finished — a closing piece is coming, framed around the invitation to "Come With Me," with the reader choosing an image that helps them continue living.

Mara: The body, the post keeps insisting, is always working for you. Even when the repair is complicated, even when the crews are arguing — it's still working.

Pip: Living inside uncertainty, staying curious about the biology, keeping yourself in the room where decisions are made — that's the thread running through all of this.

Mara: And the next piece in the series promises to take that somewhere new. Worth staying close to what comes next.

Podcast Episode: Biological Misfires And Hidden Healing

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Pip: Gratitude Squared has been building something quietly unusual — a series that asks you to feel wonder about your own biology before it asks you to feel anything about disease.

Mara: That's the territory across these recent posts: what biological misfires actually are, why the body succeeds so overwhelmingly often, and how wonder might be a more durable response to a diagnosis than fear.

Pip: Let's start with repair — and what happens when the crew can't finish the job.

When the Repair Crew Hits Its Limits

Mara: The question anchoring this segment is what happens when the body's own systems are overrun — and what that actually means for a patient sitting with a diagnosis.

Pip: The post frames it plainly, after walking through DNA repair, immune surveillance, and protein quality control: "Misfires occur. Repair crews usually succeed. Sometimes they fail. Medicine helps."

Mara: So the upshot is that medicine isn't foreign to the body's project — it's a late-arriving member of the same team. That reframe matters practically, because fear often comes from treating a diagnosis as an attack rather than a repair problem that needs outside help.

Pip: Part Five extends this into time itself — asking why some misfires persist while others disappear. The answer isn't failure; it's accumulation. Aging, genetics, inflammation, chance — none acting alone, all interacting continuously.

Mara: Right, and the framing shifts accordingly. The question moves from "why did my body betray me" to "how does a living system carry its history while continuing to repair itself." That's not softening the science — it's placing biology inside time where it actually lives.

Pip: Which, it turns out, is also where resilience lives.

The Biology You Never Thought to Notice

Mara: The deeper argument running through this series is that fear gets its grip partly because we've spent no time noticing how overwhelmingly well the body works before anything goes wrong.

Pip: Part Two makes that case with a line that carries the whole argument: "Disease is memorable because health is so abundant."

Mara: Seven words, and the logic holds. A diagnosis feels catastrophic partly because we've never built up any counter-weight — no felt sense of the trillions of events that succeeded quietly while we were doing something else entirely.

Pip: The introduction to the series lays the conceptual groundwork for that shift. It draws a distinction that sounds simple but isn't — diseases have two parts, the biological event and the emotional weight the patient carries, and those are not the same thing.

Mara: That distinction is what the companion metaphor "misfires" is designed to carry. It acknowledges that something malfunctioned without implying the whole person is broken. The series is careful to say this isn't a replacement for medical language — physicians keep their terms — but it changes the emotional landscape in which medicine takes place.

Pip: And then there's the podcast episode on biological misfires and hidden healing, which pulls the whole arc together — from the philosophy of what a misfire even means, through the repair systems, and into how we replace fear with something more useful.

Mara: What the series keeps returning to is a three-circle model of awe: the world is extraordinary, the miracle is also inside you, and health might be better understood as an ongoing symphony of successful events rather than simply the absence of disease.

Pip: Wonder, apparently, is more durable than fear as a long-term operating mode. The evidence is a decade long.

Mara: The series is candid about that. Ten years of living with cancer, following the Human Protein Atlas, pushing for additional biopsies, sitting with results marked indeterminate. The framework is tested against a real, ongoing situation — not a thought experiment.

Pip: What stays with me is the insistence that health is the baseline — and that noticing it changes what a misfire actually means.

Mara: The next stretch of the series moves into living without blame, and what it means that human beings are never reducible to their biology. There's more ground ahead.

Part Five: The Persistence of Misfires Over Time

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We have seen that the body is remarkably successful at repair, and that medicine often extends that success.

Yet one question remains.

Why do some biological misfires persist while others disappear?

This question shifts our attention from discrete events to a focus on time itself.

The Biology of Time

Biology is often described as a series of events: a change occurs, a repair begins, a system responds. But this view is incomplete. The body is not a snapshot in time. It is a continuous, living process unfolding across years, decades, and a lifetime.

When we begin to ask why some misfires persist, we enter the biology of time.

Several well-known forces influence how biology changes over time. These include: aging, inherited genetics, environmental exposures, inflammation, changes in immune function, and random biological variation.

These influences are not separate explanations competing with one another. None of these influences act independently. They interact continuously throughout life. There is interaction, not isolation.

The supporting actors are aging, inflammation, genetics, and so forth, but the main character is TIME.

Everything happens because of time: cells divide, DNA changes, proteins wear, immune systems mature, repair continues, medicine adapts, and healing continues. Time is the constant, not aging. This is a subtle but important distinction for understanding the persistence of misfires.

Biology is not a snapshot. It is a continuous process.

Aging is often the most visible of these influences, but it is not the only one. Genetic makeup provides a biological starting point, but not a fixed outcome. Environmental exposures accumulate gradually. Inflammation may persist beyond its initial trigger. The immune system changes across the lifespan. And chance events, though unpredictable, are part of every biological system.

Together, these forces shape how effectively the body maintains repair.

It is important not to think of these influences as failures of biology. They are part of biology itself. The body is always responding, always adjusting, always repairing. But it is also always living through time.

And time leaves traces.

This is where the idea of persistence becomes clearer.

Some biological misfires resolve quickly. Others take longer. And some persist, not because the body has stopped working, but because biology is a dynamic system influenced continuously by multiple interacting forces.

Persistence, in this sense, is not separate from repair. It exists within the same process.

We can begin to think of this as accumulation over time. Small biological changes may build gradually, not as a sign of failure, but as the natural outcome of a system that has been active without pause since the beginning of life.

The body does not reset. It adapts.

From this perspective, persistence is not simply something that goes wrong. It is something that unfolds. Biology is not static, and neither is repair. Both continue across time, shaped by history, environment, and internal change.

Even when a misfire remains, the story is rarely finished.

Understanding persistence in this way is important. As we continue to seek deeper knowledge, a quiet realization emerges, i.e., an understanding of persistence moves us to expanding our metaphor. We no longer think just about the repair crew, we think about resilience.

The Biology of Resilience

The repair crew explains how biology responds. Resilience explains why life continues.

What happens after years of repair? Resilience!

Time changes biology, but resilience persists alongside it.

The universal idea is that our biology does not exist apart from our lives. Chronic stress, disrupted sleep, grief, fear, caregiving, aging—these all become part of the biological environment in which repair is taking place. That idea is well supported by science, and it doesn’t require focusing on any particular conflict or tragedy.

Every person’s biology has a history.

Not just a genome.

A history.

Years of infections.

Years of healing.

Years of joy.

Years of loss.

Years of sleep.

Years of stress.

Years of adaptation.

Every cell carries part of that story.

Before I became ill, I was always busy and rarely slowed down enough to notice the small things. Now, through my illness, I have time to reflect, and read, and to encourage people to slow down and notice the extraordinary work our bodies are doing every moment.

Let me help you see your biology with more wonder and less fear.

This promise to you is universal. While we start with biology, we invite gratitude. Through gratitude a patient may integrate ideas and beliefs relevant to their own cultural and spiritual understanding. My blog site gratitudesquared.com includes a discussion relevant to “from where does my gratitude come?” Resilience definitely partners with biology.

A Humanistic Biology: Understanding Accumulation Over Time

Accumulation over time is what is happening to our cells every minute. These biological changes should not make us fearful. We should not feel as though we’re being blamed, or taking blame for what has happened to us. Our history influences our biology, but it does not define our worth, nor does it mean we caused our illness. Meditate on resilience itself.

In earlier postings, we noted that understanding biology must be paired with a philosophy of health. Focusing on biological processes is a discrete action; focusing on the human experience is an expansive action, a continuous reflection.

As we focus on persistence in Part Five, we expand our framework to a humanistic biology. That is:

Not biology stripped of emotion.

Not emotion replacing biology.

But biology presented in a way that honors human experience.

My professional background has included decades advocating for persons with disabilities. These individuals, whose voices were often overlooked, merited assistance that kept each person at the center of any discussion, not just a focus on their physical diagnosis or communication needs, but a genuine person-centered plan.

Expanding our framework from a companion metaphor to beyond. Is a natural extension because it causes one to examine how human beings experience vulnerability.

How do we preserve the dignity of this person while understanding their reality?

Viewing biology and health from a humanistic perspective is not an imbalance. Rather:

Some see it as an opportunity for spiritual growth.

Some trust physicians completely.

Some trust elders.

Some trust traditional healers.

Some trust no one.

Our challenge, then, is not merely to explain biology. It is to offer a framework that can be meaningful across many of different worldviews. I have participated in focus groups to examine how each of our lived experiences impact our perceptions of health care. Although beyond the scope of these brief postings, I wanted to simply inject that the proposed framework, and newly defined vocabulary introduced does not compete with people’s deepest beliefs. Using the metaphor of a “repair crew” does not tell someone what to believe about God, destiny, or purpose. Contrarily, this framework simply says:

Your body is working for you.

It’s an invitation to pay attention.

That’s a statement almost anyone can appreciate, regardless of culture or religion.

It is written with the intents to be biologically grounded and philosophically generous.

When I was first confronted with cancer, having advocated for Persons With Disabilities through the United Nations, I searched for answers from around the globe:

I searched for humanity’s answers about illness.

That was my instinct as a scholar for decades. I had spent a lifetime listening before concluding. That was my training through qualitative research methods.

A Humanistic Biology Framework lets me see my biological misfires and the persistence thereof with more wonder and less fear. Advocating for others gifted me with various insights regarding the many ways people make meaning of illness. The vision of biology I describe – the repair systems, the accumulation of changes, the partnership with medicine-provides common ground.

My career, unknown to me at the time, provided a lifetime of learning about humanity. As I unfold these propositions about biology and health, I continue to live within my own model. Most importantly, my lived experiences continue to become more complex than some parts of my model. As I continue to be a survivor, you will note the model keeps expanding to include new experiences.

Throughout this series I have tried to develop a way of speaking about illness that reduces threat without sacrificing scientific truth. I have tried to balance scientific precision with accessibility. I hope these essays invite curiosity without sacrificing accuracy, and offer compassion without abandoning evidence. Because I have a dually of life experiences, as a cancer survivor as well as a teacher-scholar, researcher, I wish to balance the essays:

I want to be both emotionally rich, but scientifically loose for the lay person who might find scientific writings boring and uninteresting or not applicable to them; as well as scientifically precise, and meeting the highest standard as I know it, but emotionally cold. I strive to hold the attention of anyone who may find themselves a new patient who is afraid of a recent diagnosis.

Overall, some misfires persist while others disappear because biology unfolds through time, and various influences accumulate. This is our anchor concept.

In Part Five we have shifted from a static to a dynamic biology.

Persistence is part of how biology unfolds, not simply a failure of repair. Biology is remarkably successful, and medicine often extends that success.

An understanding of how the accumulation of misfires persists is more easily understood when we place biology inside time. The forces of aging, genetics, and so forth are continuously living and adapting. Understanding persistence in this way shifts the questions from blame to observation, and from fear to curiosity.

Here we have built a conceptual model with three pillars:

Repair
Time
Accumulation

This is the basic expanded framework, our architecture. Everything else (emotions, fear, gratitude, medicine) sits on top of this structure.

Parting Thoughts

Persistence becomes understandable when we place biology inside time.
What persists is not simply a failure—it is the result of ongoing interaction over time.
Small influences may accumulate, not because the body is failing, but because it is continuously living and adapting.
Instead of asking, “Why did my body betray me?”
we can begin to ask, “How does a living system carry its history through time while continuing to repair itself?”
This is not a question of blame. It is a question of observation.
Observing opens the door to a different kind of understanding—one that holds both realism and respect for the extraordinary work the body continues to do, even under changing conditions.
Persistence does not mean failure. It means biology is still in motion.

Conceptual Model for the series thus far:

Part 1
Language changes perception.

Part 2
Repair is normal.

Part 3
Medicine joins biology.

Part 4
Repair is probabilistic rather than perfect.

Part 5
Time explains persistence.

Part 6
Human beings are never reducible to their biology.

As we end our discussion for Part 5, I look forward to the next section, Living Without Blame (Part Six). Human Beings are never reduced to their biology. Part Six will include descriptions from personal journeys. Until then, I hope you may view your life with wonder and find peace.

Practical suggestion:

If you’re joining this series for the first time, you may enjoy beginning with Part One, where we introduce the idea of “intermittent biological misfires,” and/or listens to the Podcast listed below.

#gratitudeultra

The Miracles We Never Notice Within Our Bodies: Misfires Part Two

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When I introduced the Misfires series I emphasized our biology and our emotional health. Biological pathology and human experience are not identical.

Healing requires attention to both.

Perhaps our journey now takes an unexpected turn: understanding emotion through biology.

Today I want to talk with you about health. Specifically, I will focus on your emotions as you focus on your health.

While we focus on emotion, will you trust me enough to take a momentary journey towards “awe”? You may ask, “Mary, where are you taking me?” “What does awe and wonder have to do with biological misfires?” What does wonder and amazement have to do with my emotions and my health?

Please think along with me for a brief second. In my opinion, before we can understand a biological misfire, we must first understand the miracle of your biology. Disease is memorable because health is so abundant.

A misfire matters only because your biological success is so overwhelmingly common. We spend enormous energy thinking about disease, yet we rarely notice the trillions of successful biological events occurring every second that make life possible.

Biology works.

Quietly ….

Shhhhhhh.

Listen

It is working for you even now.

Health Surrounds You All The Time

Health is the quiet success of life occurring within us every moment.

A miracle…..

When you are diagnosed with a disease (a term I don’t particularly like), your emotions typically race towards shock and fear. I’m unsure how fear emerges with the diagnosis, but it typically does. I have a sense that our fear is linked to our probably impending concern that we might die.

Within this essay, one of my goals is to encourage you to move away from your “fear reaction” to a response that is more hopeful, maybe even joyful, towards a reaction that is one of wonder.

Wonder

Gratitude

Perspective

Hope

Less fear

Consider if you move very slowly, and mindfully toward a feeling of gratitude, hope, and eventually less fear, when possible. May your emotions immediately trigger a mindset that encompasses a focus on health and positivity regarding all of the various developments in science that have emerged in recent years.

I want to argue that if you receive a diagnosis of a disease or an illness from your doctor, your response will be less emotional if you move your mind away from the immediate trigger of the fear response.

How Do I Change My Fear Response?

How may I change my initial emotional reaction to the diagnosis you ask? Well, that is the basic thesis within this blog.

I want to help you change your emotions when you receive your diagnosis. My recommendations are derived from my own 10 or so years of living with cancer, and from numerous ongoing conversations with patients whom I have met over the years.

As a researcher at heart, I ask many questions to everyone around me, and I analyze their replies. What follows are my conclusions regarding the miracles which are all around us.

I am not writing a cancer series.

This is not a biology series.

It is not even a philosophy series.

I want to take you along with me on a guided emotional journey.

Focus on Systems, Processes, Natural, Nature-Made, Man Built/Designed

When I began to reflect upon the words and those semantics and metaphors, I focused on the word “AWE”. What is awe to me?

I had no idea my body was accomplishing all of this without my awareness. I purposefully began to focus on what was around me and within me. I thought about the single word AWE.

I first thought of awe as moving in three circles (TC). The first circle is Everyday Awe: The world is extraordinary.

A newborn baby moving their tiny fingers around my own.

An ocean wave arriving where physics predicts.

A hummingbird sampling my flowers.

The second circle is Biological Awe: The miracle is not only out there. It is also within me.

Millions of your immune cells quietly protected you while you admired the sunset.

While you were sleeping, damaged DNA was repaired, proteins were assembled, old cells were recycled, and new ones quietly took their place.

Sometimes I sit quietly and think about the extraordinary systems that surround us.

I think about an orchestra. Dozens of musicians reading different notes, entering at different moments, yet creating one piece of music.

I think about a forest. Thousands of living organisms—trees, birds, insects, fungi, streams—existing together in delicate balance.

I think about the space shuttle. Millions of individual parts designed to work together with astonishing precision.

Each fills me with awe.

Then I remember something even more extraordinary.

Every one of those systems exists outside of me.

The most remarkable system I know is the one quietly working within me.

My body.

Without asking for applause.

Without asking to be noticed.

It simply continues.

This realization takes me to the third circle.

The third circle is Philosophical awe. This captures our beautiful destination.

Rather than to think of health as the absence of disease, perhaps to begin to think about health is something much richer. Maybe health is the ongoing symphony of countless successful events within our bodies that occur so faithfully that they rarely ask for our attention.

My own body is one of the most astonishing living systems I have ever encountered. My body is among nature’s most extraordinary creations. My body is a miracle. The biology within my body is a miracle.

I should take the time to celebrate this fact more often, and not be dismayed when rarely I find an intermittent biological misfire. So I did. I changed my thinking.

How Do I Move From Fear to Joy?

My own reality is that I have learned to find joy, comfort, and gratitude in the science and medicine that might find those occasional misfires and immediately begin to correct such. When my own biology does not have necessary repair systems available at my time of need, my doctors, pathologists, nurses, and other scientists and researchers are ready and able to help me. This will be our focus in Part Three.

My 10 year journey leaves me in awe of my biology. I have become mesmerized by the medical sciences that rebuild me, when necessary. Just as nature creates the beauty of snowflakes, ocean waves, trees and forests; and people create symphonies, space shuttles, and freeways; science has evolved to assist in my healing, to locate, understand, and repair my misfires.

Medicine is not fighting the body.

Medicine is helping the body.

Modern medicine is not an enemy of nature. It is one of humanity’s greatest expressions of nature’s own desire to heal.

Why should my emotions rush towards fear? How did I modify my immediate reaction from sadness to awe? How might you reduce your own feelings of fear, blame, and despair when paired with a negative medical diagnosis? Read and re-read the examples on the remarkable human body.

I invite you to challenge my assumption that this is possible. My friends and I discuss the “fear” that accompanies the diagnosis. How does it emerge? What causes this emotion to appear and nearly dominate a patient’s ability to listen and think immediately. Where does all this fear come from? One bit of information from my own background that my be relevant here is that I have studied various cultural differences in how people view health, and make decisions. Perhaps each of our own lived experiences contribute to our reactions as tragedies emerge in life? Remember yourself as a little child. What happened when you felt sick? How did the adults around you react?

Part Two is really about your attention. I am asking you to pay attention to something you probably ignored all your life. I am asking you to:

Learn to Notice!

Every moment you have spent reading these pages, your body has quietly continued its work.

Cells have communicated.

Proteins have folded.

DNA has been repaired.

Your immune system has stood watch.

Your heart has continued its faithful rhythm.

Life has gone on inside you without asking for recognition.

Perhaps that is the greatest miracle of all.

So… Before Our Next Conversation

Keep Looking!

There is more health…

More wonder…

More hope…

Than you first imagined.

In gratitude, and hoping for your peace of mind.

#gratitudeultra

Note: In our next conversation, we’ll meet one of biology’s quiet heroes—the body’s remarkable repair systems. Every day they search for problems, repair damage, and protect us in ways we rarely notice. Understanding this “repair crew” helps explain why most biological misfires never become disease.

Arousing Joyful Hope: Footbridges to Healing

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Why is Disneyland’s official slogan (since 1955) “The Happiest Place on Earth”? Because for years a day at Disney provides a joyful, magical memory for all attending. But, in gratitude I want to tell you about another special complex in Orange County, CA, very near Disney, which exceeds the joy, arouses hope, and creates life saving miracles and memories for those visiting – the #CityofHope specialty hospital in Orange County, CA.

With the deepest gratitude, my life continues because of the care I receive at this City of Hope. This parklike campus is to me another happiest place. It is special for many reasons which I would like to explain to you. My observations have been collected over the past three or so years.

As many of you may or may not know, I am an observer (researcher/scholar) by training. I watch, analyze and write about people and their experiences. With each day, I am more impressed with my observations while at #TheCityofHope. Here are a few examples:

The staff and leadership are special, caring human beings. I wondered and asked how they were interviewed and selected for their jobs. They smiled and stressed that the patients have enough to deal with, so their job is to make patient’s lives easier. I overheard that one staff used to work at Disneyland, while another used to work at the Queen Mary. Yet another rescued dogs. How fun to have such people loving staff, in addition to their medical skills!

The vision and mission of the organization are holistic, and all encompassing. Personally, I have never seen a hospital so diverse in its outreach or offerings. I regularly participate in a drumming class. Patients were invited to a #PacificSymphony 4th of July event honoring Veterans, Beach Boy songs and fireworks. An interfaith Spiritual Care Center Blessing Broadcast with various Clerics and the Pacific Chorale is soon. #TheCityOf Hope (COH) has an ongoing agreement with the South Coast Plaza, a global shopping destination and largest shopping center on the West Coast, for regular entertainment and permanent space in the center of the mall. While at the #ThisisHope Event, the President of COH, #AnnetteWalker, welcomed everyone to come and take one of her business cards if they ever needed help for their health. She will personally facilitate action for each of us. Who does that?

The physical location of COH is peaceful, with perfect visibility within the typically crowded populations of Southern CA. The buildings’ windows face the mountains and during infusions one may watch the trains as they pass regularly through the beautiful CA landscape. When there, I am reminded of the religious analogy of the city set on the hill, symbolizing the idea of being a beacon for persons seeking guidance.

The approach to health is inclusive of international health practices, from typical Western to inclusion of Eastern philosophies, as well; the facilities and knowledge bases of the doctors are state-of-the art, the very best evidenced-based practices.

People matter at COH. Recently, they held a #CityofHopeOCInauguralCelebratingSurvivorshipEvent. During that event they created a #festivebluecarpetwalk. As all patients walked the carpet – we noted staff, service providers, executives, and others on each side of the roped walkway, holding signs, ringing bells, applauding us, and cheering to our health. What an uplifting memory! Later we ate with various survivors of various cancers, eagerly sharing their stories and experiences, exchanging information between young and old, newly diagnosed, and old timers survivors. It was so positive for all.

The posts in #gratitudesquared focus on different types and levels of gratitude. We should all be ever grateful when we have good health. If you ever lose such, I wanted to share my gratitude for one place where one might go.

The COH was built to beat cancer. I hope these few examples help explain why these practices arouse me to hopeful joy. My life continues because I choose to continually cross the COH footbridges to healing…. These are not typical medical practices. I am observing and tracking a holistic model in real time with each and every visit. This is not an ordinary medical facility with depressing oncology waiting rooms and sleepy, ill patients. It is a place with joy, light, promise, and hope.

Move over Disneyland…. you may make me happy for a day, but the COH keeps me joyfully alive for many days. With sincere appreciation and deep felt joy, I share this gratitude for COH today. I end now with the ringing of my bells from COH!

#gratitudeultra

Grateful to Understand When It Is Enough!

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It seems that some people strive for more and more within their daily lives which is both a good attribute (for education, a better job, to become a model parent, to help within their communities, etc.) as well as a nearly torturous trait, as seeking materialism, or more attention from others, or more money does not typically equate with happiness and joy, does it?

Such desires for MORE often lead to unhappiness at times. Therefore, the point of this posting is to encourage one to find gratitude through knowing when YOU find “It is enough”!

Finding “enough” is a peaceful experience. Finding “enough” may lower your blood pressure. Finding “enough” may allow you to really “see” your world and life in a new way because finding “enough” gives you the time you have not had.

Finding “”enough” may be compared to:

Existing in a more blissful state of peace and tranquility.
Accepting/appreciating what one already has.
Discovering the benefits within the non-materialistic activities in life.
Acquiring a thankfulness for opportunities around you.
Deepening your spirituality.
Evolving your human spirit through soulfulness.
Becoming a new and better YOU.

Learning when “It is enough” develops a new YOU, from within.

Just like the new tree in the image above, pausing to appreciate “enough” reveals the deeper, more reflective YOU. This concept is but one description of walking the pathway to GRATITUDE – knowing that you have enough.

Try it, and experience your emotion from within your new inner nature!

#gratitudeultra

The Weight of Thoughts : Grateful Thoughts (An Essay)

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Recently, my dear friend shared a photo of “The Weight of Thoughts”, Bronze Sculpture by the Belgian artist Thomas LeRooy. The word “Thoughts” and the “big head” caught my eye.

Why are people talking about this sculpture?

How are “thoughts” and “Gratitude” linked?

Look at what has happened since LeRooy created this work of art around 2008.

Thomas LeRooy, when planning for his 2009 Braindance exhibition, discovered he could not plan this work… he felt such a fight between his head and body when thinking about his ideas, he ended up creating four sculptures, big and heavy, to express what he felt inside, his “Thoughts”. Those sculptures (big heads) continue to take on new meanings by people as they view the art. People discuss the WEIGHT of thinking. Why?

It is difficult to define or explain “What are thoughts?” and “Where do Thoughts Occur?”

The answers to these questions are relevant to GRATITUDE . Fields of Embodied Cognition and Cognitive Psychology discuss the thinking process in the brain, in the body, through sensory and physical experiences, and so forth.

In my opinion, experiences leading to descriptions of GRATITUDE also are derived from physical experiences, sensory events, through connected thoughts, and out of body experiences.

The WEIGHT of posting about “gratitude” is hard, as gratitude is not the same for everyone. Within this blog, #gratitudesquared.com, the reader will find there are three levels of gratitude: #gratitudezero, #gratitudelite, and #gratitudeultra, defined in an earlier post.

This topical essay (the Weight of Thoughts: Grateful Thoughts) falls under the #gratitudeultra category, and leads to HEAVY THINKING as well.

Why is this sculpture a pivotal image for gratitude readers?

Because along your journey to gratitude you may find you will go deeper and deeper into exploring how gratitude impacts your life with very meaningful and positive outcomes. Spend some timing thinking about your journey thus far. List meaningful outcomes you have experienced.

You may also discover, as did LeRooy, that your capacity to describe your gratitude feels limited by your own words, or by what you will feel inside. Take a moment to try to describe, What exactly is gratitude to you? Give several examples of your own gratitude.

You may only discover a particular image, captured through a snapped photo, or an emotion expressed through a particular song or poem can adequately express a profound moment of gratitude. I have found recently that my gratitude best comes through the music I hear from my distant past I shared with my parents years ago. Why I am returning to old songs I have not heard for years, I do not know, but when I am full of joy or feeling exceptionally blessed, I go to music lately. What do you do emotionally that you can not accurately describe to others in words and how do you capture such? Do you choose an art form? If so, which one?

It is not uncommon to hear lectures talking about the mind, body, and soul experiences with regard to healing, as but one pathway to gratitude. There is a rich literature on these topics, beyond the scope of this post, but healing is more than just treating one’s body, isn’t it? It includes a State of Mind, and a Belief System, plus the medicine. Often when people think about their own illness, they describe it through expressions of gratitude.

The WEIGHT OF THOUGHTS sculpture, by LeRooy, stimulates conversation regarding our minds (thoughts), our bodies (with regard to illness, healing, and health for example), and souls (with regard to how we connect to other human beings as well as to God).

Thoughts are connected to gratitude: I see no other pathway. I hope you will continue to set aside some time to THINK about your own Gratitude.

This sculpture indeed seems to promote WEIGHTY THINKING. One of the readers within Facebook or Twitter noted that thinking about this sculpture gave him a headache or made him feel like his head was aching because it was growing so much larger than his body from so much thinking.

When looking for a description of this art form on Goggle it stated:

The Weight of thought by Thomas LeRooy depicts how everyone feels-a mind bogged down by its own thoughts. How our thoughts can weigh us down, eh? If only we become aware of how our thoughts. If only we could detach ourselves from our minds.
Feb. 17, 2021 Google

I imagine this is what LeRooy felt when trying to plan his work.

What do you think?

#gratitudeultra

How Does The Actual Healing Process Interact With the Body Versus How it Engages With the Soul?

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Many people seem to become more spiritual when faced with a serious illness. Why I wondered? The last time I visited the City of Hope (COH), I noted the quote on the huge glass wall at the entrance.

I was pleased to see the COH mention the “body” AND the “soul” as I believe one’s spiritual or soul’s journey is as important for healing, if not more so, than the medical (surgical, chemo, pills, radiation, alternative medical practices, etc.) actions selected.

Since I typically analyze most events, I continue to wonder why my interest throughout this recurrence focuses mainly on my listening to old hymns from my father’s (a minister) tent meetings? Exclusively, I claim that old hymns like “His Eye Is On The Sparrow” seem to be healing me more during this recurrence than all the latest medical practices available. To put this phenomenon in context, I have never listened to these old gospel/spiritual songs since I was a young child. Yet, after six years of no need for treatments, it appears as if my spiritual side is out performing my bodily functions to keep me alive. In fact, I requested that my doctor write such in his medical notes in my files recently, and he did.

I pondered further regarding an explanation for my positive outcomes during this recurrence. While I appreciate all the pills, scans, and chemical infusions I am receiving, I believe in the music that my soul is listening to these days as an explanation for my continued life. In particular, there are old, old hymns from my father’s youth that I am enjoying. I have not listened to these songs for more than 50 years, but I listen now, and I remember the old fashioned church meetings I witnessed as a child.

A few days after taking that photo of the COH sign regarding “body” and “soul”, I was driving in my car, and listening to various songs on Pandora, when I heard the old hymn “Blessed Assurance”. As I listened to the lyrics of that song, I realized that my doctor had never given me any “assurance” regarding my treatments. He said “probably I would live X long”, or “we would hope that your treatment will give you more months or years!” When I asked him to be more specific, he declined and said “we never know”.

A LIGHT BULB CAME ON!!!!

That is, while listening to the lyrics of that particular song, I concluded that when medically trying to “cure the body”, there is no ASSURANCE given by the doctors and staff.

Patients, myself included, constantly hope and place their trust in their doctor, even in the face of ongoing collateral damage from their various treatments. Patients continue on with hope, or decide to stop when they can no longer have (or withstand) further treatment for a variety of reasons. But the actual ASSURANCE patients hope for is always missing whenever one is focusing on healing the body. This is probably due to medical licensure, FDA regulations, pharmaceutical guidelines and so forth.

For myself, a patient who wants ASSURANCE when undergoing all the experimental treatments, I understand that I will never get it from the typical western medical practice. Rather, I will get absolute ASSURANCE when I rely on healing through my SOUL.

Listen to the old hymn, Blessed Assurance! This was an absolute message as well as an explanation, on that day, provided to my spiritual side! Persons who practice within their various religions, or who are spiritual do believe in their future. As they practice and believe in their faiths, they are given absolute assurance as to their soul’s futures.

The COH is a great facility and I am grateful to be their patient. I love all the activities the COH provides for their patients to feel included. For example, they have a “Wishing Tree” where they invite people to leave messages of hope and inspiration tied to the trees. It is a beautiful collection of their patients’, hope, love, and prayers on the various branches of the multiple trees. See the photos with the messages tied to the trees. But this wishing tree does not give assurance. It gives hope.

These are messages of HOPE, not guaranteed outcomes.

So to answer the question I asked at the top of this blog:

How Does The Actual Healing Process Interact With the Body Versus How it Engages With the Soul? My answers regarding “outcomes” are explained through two parts:

Healing outcomes (or not) of the BODY are based on BEST MEDICAL PRACTICES and HOPE;

Healing outcomes when engaged through the SOUL are based on ASSURANCE, and FAITH.

HOPE is the stimulus for carrying on….. but ASSURANCE gives one PEACE and UNDERSTANDING from the beginning to the end of treatment.

I am grateful for healing assurance through my soul!

#gratitudeultra