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This is my "annual" photo taken in September, 2011, at the Common Ground Fair wearing my sweet fern hair wreath. I apologize for the poor quality...it is a photo of the photo on facebook...I have no idea where the cd is !

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Kellie Ellsmore’s Free Write Friday…Look in the Mirror, What do you see
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This weekend your challenge is to take a long look in the mirror. Literally.

Go into your room, your bathroom, wherever you have a mirror and you can be alone and look at yourself.

Your beauty. Your flaws. What do you see? What do you think others see?
What do your eyes say about how you feel?
How does what you see on the outside reflect how you feel on the inside?
Remember, your entry should appear as a journal/diary entry.
Free write your thoughts out using no form, no editing, just write what comes to mind.
(This last sentence was the hardest to do…it is what it is. I don’t tend to write in paragraph
form…and the form is “free range.”)

I look in the mirror.
And pause to think.
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Looking in the mirror
is startling to me
as I am today.
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Where has the time
gone?
Where is it going?
Will I use it wisely.
I look in the mirror.
Clearly I have aged…
I look like my father’s oldest sister
and his mother.
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Looking in the mirror,
I no longer have to “frost” my hair,
nature has done that for me.
My eyes are clear,
thanks to the miracle of cataract
surgery.
My vision is more clear than
it ever has been in my life
due to the miracle
of a surgeon who learned
his craft well.
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My internal mirror vision
needs some clarity.
Now that I am retired,
my children have moved
to far away places,
I have time to reflect on
….horrors…
being the matriarch
of a very small family.
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Looking in the internal mirror,
The reflections are blurred
as I try to think if I have
served them well
thru the years.
Set a living example
for them to follow
and to pass on to the
next generation…
the great-grands.
That gives me a pause.
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I worked hard,
but never heard
the message to play hard,
too.  My brother said
that was an important
message he got growing
up..work hard, play hard.
Somehow, I missed that,
and think I cheated two
generations out of that.
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But work I did.
And I think I did it ethically,
with honesty, compassion
and fairness.
I tried to have a sense of duty
to my patients to give them
a life at their highest level
of independence.
And a sense of duty to my
employee and students to help
them perform at their highest
level of competency with
compassion and sense of caring
(even tho when I was a young
nurse, caring wasn’t supposed
to enter the workplace.).
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I followed what I thought to be
a call, to care for the aging and
especially the aging mind,
the confused, brain injured
and mentally ill.
It’s not what my “call” was
“supposed to be” as I saw
it when I was young.
Actually, I don’t think I ever
thought about “call”…
work was work, and nursing
was chosen for me at a meeting
with my parents and a school
counsellor since I remembered
saying I didn’t like children
did not want to teach,
nor be a secretary….I’d taken
the office class and broken all
the machines and typing wasn’t
my forte’.
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Looking in the mirror of today,
I see, an aged lady,
living alone with her cat.
Living with the knowledge
she disappointed her parents,
in her choices of profession,
spouses and where she chose
to live and possibly a lot more.
That is past and done.
I am retired and hoping that the
memories of others will say
she had a sense of humor,
served her fellow men and women
with caring and compassion.
That, raised without a sense of
spirituality or faith, developed both,
and a sense of serving her fellow
man without prejudice or judgement
in their private decisions before I met
them and cared for them.
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I look in the mirror…
and it’s startling to see
me as I am today.
Where has the time
gone?
Where is it going?
Will I use it wisely.
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I look in the mirror.
And pause to think.
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