Category Archives: Relationships and Family

Seize the Merry and Miserable Moments

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Whether your current moment is merry or miserable, you must let go of it if you are to move on to the next.   The miserable moments are only that when we label them that way. The merry moments are only that way because we decided that they were.  This morning I was reflecting on last December and the changes that have occurred since last year this time.  There have been so many.  For one, there were people in my life last year that are gone this year.  Last year at this time, we were mourning my nephew’s tragic and untimely demise at age 32.  Everyone was wishing that they’d spent more time with him and said and done things to let him know how much he was loved.  This year it is my step-mother who passed in July. She lived to be 85-years old.  This morning I was reflecting on how she did not spend the holidays with us last year.  There were many reasons, but mainly our collective somber mood and the weather.  Little did I know that we would not have another opportunity.

“Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” -C.S. Lewis

While there has been significant loss, at the same time there has been significant gain.  I am not the same person I was last year. Last year this time there was a fear and hopelessness that has now been replaced by faith and expectation.  I have new relationships, new opportunities, and a new sense of valuing life’s little moments.  I am better, mainly because I chose to be better.  I know from my more than a half century of living that we must seize every moment.  We don’t love, laugh, and enrich the world in the past or the present, we do it ONLY in the current moment.  So seize it.

“It’s not life’s big planned events that make the big difference, it is the simple, intimate, and sometimes spontaneous things we do for each other.” Barbara Talley

I’m Barbara Talley, the poet who speaks and inspires.  To find out more about me check out: What Does Barbara Do? or visit  my website.
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I Lead: I Serve

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I attended the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) last month and am still processing the overwhelmingly high number of  distressing statistics and information that was presented.  From unprecedented unemployment and foreclosures, unequal application of justice, distorted and stereotypical images that lead to esteem issues, the critical importance of astuteness with technology, the politics of fear, the importance of entrepreneurship for wealth creation, to the guiding and protecting our young folks, the challenges facing people of color far exceed those of white America.

The theme of the CBC was I Lead: I Serve.  True service is in finding a need and filling it.  The topics presented at the CBC offered many paths of service for anyone who wants to make a difference.  Most people have grandiose dreams of being successful and great, but real success comes from being a leader.  And, if you want to be a leader, the path is through service, just find a need and fill it. Too much of present day propaganda pushes us toward looking out for self only.  But true fulfillment comes from meaningful pursuits, and those usually  involve serving others.  As the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, ” Anybody can be great because everybody can serve.”  Although all the topics are worthy of discussion now, it is the sobering plight of our youth that haunts me the most.  If you think the adults have it bad, check out my next post about the children whose future is even more dismal if we don’t do something now!

I’m Barbara Talley, the poet who speaks and inspires.  To find out more about me check out: What Does Barbara Do? or visit  my website.

Don’t Put It Off!

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My mouth dropped open.  I was speechless.  I couldn’t believe the words I was hearing over the phone.  I was thinking about rescheduling my lunch appointment for the second time, but now I was the one being canceled.   I’d rescheduled our lunch from the previous week to the following week thinking it would be better, but it wasn’t.  After all, it was only one week.  The decision was perplexing me so I decided to just call my friend, explain the situation, and we would make the decision together.   But, now it is too late.  The woman on the phone was telling me that my lunch companion had died suddenly the day after our canceled lunch.  This happened over a year ago but I remember it as if it were yesterday.  I would never see my friend again and that opportunity would now be loss forever.  I couldn’t help but think about how precious time was, and that the only time we really have is now.  It is only in the current moment that we can count on and live.  This incident brings new meaning to the saying, “Don’t put off for tomorrow what you can do today.”

What’s the Lesson?

I had to ask myself, “What is the lesson I am to learn from this?”  In every situation it is important to learn the lesson, otherwise our tests are repeated.  Upon reflection I realized the importance of not taking anything or anyone for granted.  I learned that what we do in the moment creates our past and helps us to realize the futures we dream of.  The past is gone and tomorrow is not promised to anyone.  I needed to focus on that statement, “Tomorrow is not promised.”  All we really have is here and now.

So, what are putting off right now, that really should be done today?  Better still, if you knew you wouldn’t have tomorrow, “What would you be doing differently today?”  What would happen if you really lived like there would be no tomorrow.  What would change?

I’m Barbara Talley, the poet who speaks and inspires.  To find out more about me check out: What Does Barbara Do? or visit  my website.

Are You On Purpose?

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“Until thought is linked with purpose there is no intelligent accomplishment,” wrote James Allen, author of ‘As a Man Thinketh.’  There have been times in my life that my excitement and energy were so pronounced that people have asked, “What are you on?”  I’d respond with, “I’m on purpose!” At those times I was undoubtedly thinking about things that excited me, motivated me, and uplifted me. My vision and perspectives were uplifting and clearly I was thinking about meaningful things, purposeful things, or things that brought me or someone else joy.   At those times, I tended to have absolute hope in the future, faith in people, and understood that divine grace was guiding and protecting me.

Elevate Your Thoughts and Elevate Your Reality

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote: “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”  I can say for sure when my energy, vision, and excitement are high that I am most certainly NOT thinking about events or gossiping or complaining about people.  When my thinking was skewed, I’d fear the future, distrust people and their intentions, and feel all alone and hopeless in my doldrums.  But when my thinking is right, that faithful feeling of knowing and of being connected sparks my creativity and solutions to whatever problems I have become clear.  The right person, thought, idea, or circumstances seem to appear before me.  I’ve learned that if I listen to my guidance and act immediately, that solving whatever problem is before me becomes an exciting journey rather than anxiety driven mission.  Even more importantly the “problems” are no longer debilitating but instead become opportunities for growth.  Just changing my perspective changed my focus and changing my focus changed my reality.   You are the driver and your thoughts can take you anywhere, so be careful and stay alert.

I’m Barbara Talley, the poet who speaks and inspires.  To find out more about me check out: What Does Barbara Do? or visit  my website.

Listen for Your Inner Wisdom

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We each have an inner knowing that we must learn to trust and rely upon. On Sunday afternoon I got the inspiration to call my stepmother who is recuperating in a nursing home.  It was just a spark in the middle of the day, at a time that thought she’d be at the church service and I almost talked myself out of calling right then.  But the impulse was strong and I listened.  I called her and she didn’t sound good at all.

She said, “Make the nurses stop drugging me.  They are giving me too much medicine. They have me in the hall.”  I asked her did she want to be there and she said, “No.”  I told her my sister and I would work on it.  Then there was silence.  The last few conversations we’d had she’d fallen asleep in the middle of the conversation or just asked me to call back because she was tired or sleeping, no matter what time of day it was.  When I questioned the nurse I found out she was not in the hall at all, but something was wrong.  She was obviously disoriented.  I reminded them of her bad heart.  They ended up sending her to the hospital for evaluation and deduced that she had had a heart attack.  In addition as a dialysis patient she also had elevated calcium and potassium levels.  And if that were not enough, she had a bladder infection.  So many things were wrong and yet had I not called, they perhaps would have been calling me with that final dreaded call.

I am so grateful that I listened.  I had a few deadlines at the time and it was not the best time to stop and spend the afternoon on the phone with nurses, caretakers, doctors, and family.  But I’ve learned that when we care, we are guided.  When we listen, the eternal source of wisdom speaks to us.  When we are “interrupted from our mundane reality,” it’s because something MORE important needs our attention right then.  It’s so great to not have to live with, “I wish I would have….”  Today’s lesson is to listen, appreciate the intuition, trust it  and act on it.  Now she’s recuperating in the hospital and on the road to health, we hope!

I’m Barbara Talley, the poet who speaks and inspires.  To find out more about me check out: What Does Barbara Do? or visit  my website.