Diane M. Simard's Blog, page 8

Highlights from Our Recent “Rene Roast”

Rene and I — who share the same birthday — had a blast at our joint birthday bash at Launchpad Brewery in Aurora on September 1.

Since it was his 60th birthday, Rene was the star of the afternoon. So, I put together a “Rene Roast” in the spirit of the celebrity roasts that Dean Martin used to host. Here are some of my favorite excerpts from the roast for this great man I am fortunate to call my companion for life:

Rene Joseph Simard was born in Methuen, Massachusetts on September 1, 1959, to Chanel and Josie Simard. Rene is half French and half Italian, so even though his blood temperature can go from normal to boiling in record time, the French side usually takes over and keeps him out of trouble.

Rene’s father, Chanel, whom we all call “Pop,” jokingly tells the story of Rene’s birth like this:

“Rene was born with a pointed head, like something out of a science-fiction space movie. His mother was teary-eyed after she delivered, and I remembered thinking to myself, ‘I don’t want him, put him back.’ But then the doctor who delivered Rene said, ‘Mrs. Simard, don’t worry about a thing, it’s completely normal.’”

Thankfully, Rene’s pointed head went away, although he still has an unusually large head and wears a 7 ¾ hat. In fact, he always wore the largest hat size available during his time in the Air Force.

Rene’s mother, Josie, always gushes when she talks about Rene as a baby. “He was such a sweet boy, always so happy.” Some memorable events from his childhood include when he was first crawling and pulled on the cord of the iron, which fell on his face, and his parents rushed him to the hospital. Although he had to endure iron marks on his face for months, thankfully he made a full recovery. Then he went through mono at age three, and when he was nine, he spent two weeks in the hospital with pneumonia.

A little over 12 months after Rene was born, Josie gave birth to his sister Cathy, followed by Paul three years later and Cindy, who was born two years after Paul. That means Josie raised four kids under the age of five while Pop worked three jobs. Rene and Cathy were inseparable, and Rene was her protector up until they graduated from high school. In 1964, the Simards moved from Lawrence, Massachusetts to Salem in southern New Hampshire, about 30 miles north of downtown Boston.

Rene liked to play the guitar and took lessons for three years. He also liked to entertain the neighbors with his impressions of Tom Jones. About the time he was 10, Rene became interested in the military and played the song, “Ballad of the Green Berets” over and over. He thought about joining the military, but after watching Perry Mason countless times, he thought about being a lawyer.

During the four-plus years he was an altar boy, he even thought about becoming a priest. As you are about to learn, neither of those aspirations lasted for long.

But first, I want to share a couple thoughts from a childhood friend of Rene’s, Fred Ford, an author and motivational speaker who sends Rene and me an “Our Daily Fred” devotional that we enjoy reading on weekday mornings.

From Rene’s long-time friend, Fred Ford:

“My family (mom, dad, three sisters and one brother) moved from Arlington, Massachusetts to Salem, New Hampshire in December 1973.  It was the middle of the school year and I was in the 6th grade.  I went from Class President to Class Nobody overnight. Gaining acceptance by classmates and peers at that age proved to be very challenging. Thankfully, one of the first kids I met in my home room was Rene Simard. One of other kids I met was Bob Razza, who created a nickname for Rene that thankfully didn’t stick:  Renegade Samoots.

To retaliate, Rene and I came up with a nickname for Bob: Razza-Rica-Roo-Roo. Anyway, Rene was one of my first friends in Salem. He not only accepted me, but took me under his wing, looked out for me, and made me feel at home. We continued to have a close friendship through junior high school and high school. We both fell in love with beer in 10th grade, and then girls. When I look back at the major change in my life, moving at the age of 11 and trying to blend in with a whole new crowd, I can say without hesitation that my friendship with Rene Simard was a turning point. He was a great kid—generous, honest, funny, and friendly—and he became a great man, a man of integrity, truly a family man. It was a joy to read about him in Diane’s great book.  Happy birthday to a very special friend in my life.”

Now, earlier I mentioned that Pop had three jobs while growing up, and one of them was police officer for the Salem Police Department on the weekends and on some weeknights. Rene was proud that his father worked so hard, and Pop had a reputation for being a tough but fair cop. However, it made for some awkward adventures in under-age beer drinking. Pop would always be up when Rene got home from a night out with friends, and when Pop suspected Rene had been drinking, he would make Rene go down to the basement and stay awake to play multiple games of darts. If Rene missed the board too many times, Pop’s suspicions would be confirmed and he would get grounded.

The closest Rene came to getting busted for minor in possession was just shy of his 18th birthday. The only reason he and his of-age friends weren’t charged was because Pop was a cop. However, the officer who stopped and found out Pop was a cop insisted that Rene tell his father. Unfortunately, that conversation did not go well!

Rene graduated from Salem High School with the Class of 1977. He still keeps in touch with his best friend from high school, Ron O’Keefe, and a half-dozen others from his senior class who we try to visit every time we go back to New England.

Although he didn’t much care for school, Rene went to college for a year out of high school, attending Plymouth State in Plymouth, New Hampshire, to study physical education.

He became a better partier than a student, and one day in February 1978 he visited with an Air Force recruiter in the cafeteria, and the rest is history. Unfortunately, Rene was misled during his enlistment process, and ended up in, as he says, “Godforsaken Northern Maine at Loring Air Force Base” during the cold war.

For 5 long, frigid years, he walked around and guarded B-52s loaded with live nukes that were on alert during the Cold War.

One night, he was alerted that a special-mission airplane was making an emergency landing at Loring to repair mechanical problems. As it turned out, it was an SR-71 Blackbird that he guarded all night while it was in the hangar. Rene said he had never seen or heard anything like it.

Finally, Rene was able to switch career fields to logistics planning, and he began his ascent in the enlisted ranks. After loggie training, he was stationed at Offut Air Force Base in Omaha, Nebraska, where he completed his bachelor’s degree in logistics management from Peru State College in Nebraska. To this day, his mother still thinks he graduated from Purdue University.

Next, it was Tonapah in Nevada, home of the F-117 when it was a top secret project. The F-117s were among the first to deploy during Desert Shield in August 1990, and he was stationed in Saudi Arabia for the next 8 months.

From Tonapah it was on to Ramstein, Germany for four years, absorbing the local culture as much as possible. After Ramstein, he made Chief Master Sergeant, or E9, the highest enlisted rank.

On 9/11, Rene was at the Pentagon as the Career Field Manager for Logistics and had just left a meeting on the same side of the Pentagon that was later hit when the first airplane hit the World Trade Center. As events unfolded on that long day, he decided to stay in the Air Force and not retire.

One of the jobs he applied for and got after 9/11 was to be the Command Chief for the 460th Space Wing at Buckley Air Force Base here in Aurora. He claims he got the job because he was taller than the other two candidates.

Rene retired from the Air Force in 2006, but he has never lost the discipline, loyalty, and service-above-self mindset that he gained from his military service. That sense of order and efficiency is one of the endearing traits I adore most about Rene, because he and I are freakishly alike in that way. Up at 4:44 on weekday mornings for PT, after which we hit the showers and the chow hall. We leave the house for our work days, then it’s home for chow at 1800, followed by 90 minutes of chores and email, then TV time from 1945 to 2045.

 

Sounds crazy, but I wouldn’t be as productive and effective as an advocate for the Mighty Many if I didn’t have the Marlboro Man by my side.

Happy birthday, my love!

Here’s to many more years of happiness,

 

More Than Just Another Historical Moment

At the end of a staff meeting at Bye Aerospace a couple weeks ago, our CEO asked anyone who was old enough to watch Neil Armstrong walk on the moon to raise their hand. My hand shot up. The rest of the room was motionless, and my older colleagues kept their hands down.

Great, I thought to myself. Just great.

Despite the reminder that the years are rapidly rolling by, I reflected several times on that magical moment during the 50th anniversary celebration of the Apollo moon landing. I don’t remember watching Neil Armstrong place his foot down or say those famous words, but I do remember sitting on the itchy seafoam green couch in our living room, knowing it was about to happen. Since I was a month away from turning 4 and the first walk on the moon was taking forever, I got bored, gave up and found something more interesting to do. Funny, I exhibit similar behavior today. I simply don’t have the time or patience to wait around for something monumental to happen.

However, here are some brief memories of other so-called historic events I actually did witness. These are but a few of the snapshot moments forever plastered in my memory bank.

Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s wedding in the summer of 1981. I didn’t wake up early enough to watch the procession, but I remember the first image I saw when I turned on the TV in our living room was of the backs of people seated in a high-ceilinged chapel and a white wedding dress train that seemed to stretch most of the way down the aisle. That train! It was obnoxious and over the top and the stuff of royal fairy tales, at least until the fairy tale unraveled.


Nadia Comăneci’s perfect 10s in the 1976 Montreal Olympics. This pixie gymnast was not from the Soviet Union, which was a huge deal at the time. Rather, she was a 15-year-old Romanian. Her bony body reminded me of a frail twig, but she had the strength of a powerlifter and the spring of a catapult launcher. Her moves were fluid and effortless, and I feared she might snap in half every time she whipped around the uneven bars. The first time she scored a perfect 10, everyone was confused because the score on the scoreboard was 1.00 since it was not programmed to display a score higher than 9.99. Once the announcer clarified that Ms Comăneci had indeed scored a 10, the sports world began to hyperventilate, and I realized I had just witnessed perfection. But then she scored six more perfect 10s. When ABC’s Wide World of Sports did a montage of her routines from the Montreal Olympics and used the background music titled Cotton’s Dream, which was later re-released as Nadia’s Theme (The Young and the Restless), someone made a ka-zillion dollars off the music alone. Ms. Comăneci never performed her floor routine to the song during the Olympics, by the way. I purchased the sheet music and played Nadia’s Theme over and over on our piano. Here’s a photo of the actual sheet music I played.
Watching a white Ford Bronco drive down the San Diego freeway in the summer of 1994, being chased by the police. Actually, that white Bronco didn’t belong to OJ Simpson. Rather it was owned by his close friend, Al Cowlings, also a former NFL player. The spectacle was anything but a car chase. The Bronco just kept driving and the cops kept following. Slowly. But I was mesmerized, as were approximately 95 million other people in the U.S. who also watched it live, according to Wikipedia. The slow-speed chase interrupted coverage of the 1994 NBA Finals between the Houston Rockets and the New York Knicks on June 17, 1994. The “chase” eventually ended at OJ Simpson’s Brentwood home, where he surrendered to police after a nearly hour-long wait.
Jimmy Valvano’s acceptance speech in 1993 at the ESPY awards. What I love about this speech is it makes me laugh, then brings me to tears, which was the precise point of his philosophy about life. On March 4, 1993, Jimmy V, who had metastatic cancer, gave an emotionally stirring speech after accepting the inaugural Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award at the first ESPY Awards. For some reason that evening, when I was alone in my apartment in Richardson, Texas, I landed on ESPN while channel surfing. I didn’t know a thing about Jimmy V, but as he started his speech, I could tell he had terminal cancer and was likely not going to live long. He announced The V Foundation for Cancer Research, whose motto is “Don’t Give Up…Don’t Ever Give Up,” and I began to cry. Then his teleprompter started flashing that he only had 30 seconds left to speak, and he said, “I got tumors all over my body and I’m worried about some guy in the back going ’30 seconds.’” He closed his remarkable speech with this: “Cancer can take away all of my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart, and it cannot touch my soul. And those three things are going to carry on forever. I thank you and God bless you all.” Sadly, he died less than two months later.

Those moments are raw and real to this day, and I still listen to Jimmy V’s speech whenever I need a boost.

To forever,

The Year President Nixon Ruined My Summer

In the summer of 1973, every kid in America who survived summer boredom by watching daytime television was devastated when regular programming was pre-empted by the Senate Watergate Hearings.

All three networks televised the impeachment hearings. Fox didn’t exist yet and PBS didn’t count because we only got UHF/VHF reception in central Nebraska on sunny days. I was about to turn 8, so I didn’t understand what “Senate Watergate Hearings” meant. But in succession, men were seated and looked very worried as they talked into a bunch of microphones while a group of men seated at a long table asked them questions and sometimes raised their voices when they didn’t like the responses from the men being questioned. It seemed that none of them could agree whether to give President Nixon a crate of peaches.

Every weekday, all day long and all summer long, the frightened men answered questions asked by the grouchy men at the long table. I kept hearing words like “deep throat,” “listening devices,” “break-in,” and “oval office.” Everyone seemed angry at President Nixon. I was angry at him, too. Why was he ruining my summer?

Summertime was supposed to be 100% uninterrupted fun. Off from school, running through the sprinkler, shooting off fireworks, riding my bike, and working on my 4-H projects. But I wasn’t able to watch daytime TV game shows, which always made me laugh and made the scorching, humid summer days more tolerable.

My warped sense of humor was developed and perfected during the early 1970s when I was off from school from mid-May to late August and watched daytime game shows. Match Game and The Price is Right were my favorites.

The premise behind Match Game, hosted by Gene Rayburn, was to see how many of the six Hollywood stars in each episode could match a word stated by a contestant that completed a simple phrase. My brother, Lee and I, would go nuts every time Gene threw out a phrase that could potentially lead to what we called a “dirty word.”

For example, with a completely straight face, Gene would articulately announce a phrase using the word, “blank,” as the missing word to be determined by the contestant.

Such as:  “Blank you.”

Lee and I would howl with laughter as the 70s background guitar music with the wah-wah pedal commenced while the stars made funny faces, smirked, and rolled their eyes before they picked up their black magic markers and wrote the word on yellow cards that they thought would match the contestant’s answer.

Once the wah-wah guitar music stopped, Gene would walk over to the contestant and slowly say, “blank you” while the contestant tried to keep a straight face. Once the contestant gave his or her answer, Gene would turn with his long skinny microphone to the panel and say, “Nipsy (the great Nipsy Russel), give us a word. Blank you.” Then Gene would keep saying “blank you” over and over to each star, who would roll their eyes, make seductive comments, then eventually come up with some type of non-X-rated answer to what the blank word should be.

What Match Game was looking for was “thank you” or “bless you,” as an innocent, intelligent answer, but the premise of the show was to get laughs off of double entendres.

Completely stupid, yet rewardingly amusing. Even today.

Honestly? We need a lot more Match Game and much less political drama. In the meantime, I’m gonna go place my order for a crate of juicy Colorado peaches…

 

Here’s to summer fun,

Find the Cost of Freedom

Over Memorial Day weekend, Rene and I paid our respects to the over 6,000 Coloradoans killed in action and the hundreds of thousands of American troops who made the ultimate sacrifice over the years by attending the stirring “Colorado Remembers” event at the Colorado Freedom Memorial in Aurora.

I got to know my dear friend, Rick Crandall, and his amazing wife, Di (who calls me her “God Drop,” which I cherish), when I was involved with planning and initial fundraising for the memorial in the early 2000s. Rick is the founder and president of the Colorado Freedom Memorial Foundation, and Di is the memorial’s project manager. After years of sheer tenacity and grit, the memorial was built and dedicated in 2013, and it has become one of the most sacred places I know.

Amidst tears of humility and gratitude during the remembrance ceremony, I reflected on those who sacrificed and gave their lives for our freedom, plus the veterans who have been impacted in some way by their military service. Those veterans include my late father, Milton Moravec, who likely struggled with post-traumatic stress years after his service in the Army during the Korean War. I was reminded yet again that traumatic experiences like war, death, divorce, loss and illnesses like cancer leave emotional scars that seem impossible to heal. My sadness is steeped in the way trauma changes an individual’s capacity to reason, oftentimes erasing the individual’s ability to want to continue living.

This summer begins a year of commemoration to acknowledge the end of World War II 75 years ago. Only three percent of those who served during WWII are still alive, and I am grateful to them and the millions of others who have served their country with their military service. Maintaining world peace and order is a daunting task, and I pray that we human beings remain civilized enough to maintain that sense of order.

My special thanks to Angela Bye for sharing the amazing photos she captured during the “Colorado Remembers” ceremony, some of which are included with this post.

Rene and I recently finished catching up on the current season’s episodes of Seal Team on CBS. Seal Team is not a particularly popular show, but at times the writing is brilliant. Our favorite episode this season by far was episode 19 titled “Medicate and Isolate.” It featured parallel storylines about a former Navy Seal struggling with a previously undiagnosed traumatic brain injury (TBI) and an Army special forces captain who had been killed in Mali during a special operations mission. Bravo Team, the subject of the series, was tasked with bringing the Army Captain’s body back from the battlefield. At the end of the episode, the two storylines were completed as the song, Find the Cost of Freedom, by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young accompanied the video and faded to black in an emotional crescendo.

That show was powerful entertainment, and I encourage you to spend an hour of your valuable time watching the episode off the CBS website, then downloading the song. I guarantee you will be simultaneously proud of our veterans, yet distraught by the level of unthinkable bureaucracy they have to deal with as they attempt to receive much-needed physical and psychological care. Plus, you will wonder why the United States ever considered taking the A-10 “Warthog” close-air support aircraft out of service.

May has been a special month for many reasons, including high school graduation parties and our heroic efforts to save newly planted flowers from snowstorms and freezing temperatures. But, thanks to a book talk and a book signing for The Unlikely Gift of Breast Cancer, I had the opportunity to meet many cancer survivors and caregivers for those impacted by cancer. Longtime friends and complete strangers stood in line to say hello and ask me to sign their books, then the tears started flowing when they explained how grateful they were that someone was willing to invite them to share their cancer stories.

Those two events finally helped me reach the understanding that my blog posts, book-related events, articles and publicity are invitations to gather, to share, to grieve, and to bond. We are waking up to the fact that long after the physical scars heal or we adjust to physical impairments caused by traumatic events, the resulting emotional scars flare up at the most unexpected moments.

On a brighter note, summer finally appears to be here to stay! Yep, in less than a month, we will celebrate the start of the summer solstice, when we will have the longest day with the most hours of sunshine. The day after that, we will begin to have fewer minutes of daylight per day as we head toward…oh never mind.

Thank you, as always, for listening.

To sunny days ahead,

I Want My MTV!

How I Continue to Find My True Self

One evening several weeks ago, Rene and I had just finished watching our evening episode of House of Cards from Season 5 (we are years behind on TV entertainment) and had 30 minutes to spare before our 9 p.m. bedtime. So, for fun we watched MTV, which was playing music videos from the 1980s.

For the next 20 minutes, we watched Blondie’s The Tide is High, Invisible Touch by Genesis and Kyrie by Mr. Mister. Blondie’s video, in particular, was grainy, had no theme, and appeared to be scraped together by combining still photographs that flew in sideways, then twirled. Midway through, the video switched to Blondie lip synching, and eventually to footage of the entire band playing their instruments. It was vintage music video, and the experience reminded me of playing a Pong video game.

Cheesy, yes, but I loved it. Why? Because I was mesmerized, time-warped yet again to a simpler time. To a time when Phil Collins looked young and indestructible, and nonsensical music videos made sense. At 8:50 p.m., I turned to Rene and asked, “What just happened? Why are we watching old music videos?” He just shrugged.

I am a junkie for simpler times, for television shows I can understand because they are predictable. The good guys always escape some form of capture to take the bad guys down and lead them away in handcuffs. I try to catch episodes of M*A*S*H whenever I can, because the show in all its comedic brilliance (at least until Frank Burns was written out of the show) reminds me of my mother, who used to sigh every time the theme song came on before another episode.

House of Cards is brilliantly disturbing because it is crude, unpredictable and disconcerting. The show explores and exposes political life in a frighteningly and (potentially) realistic way.

Am I disturbed by House of Cards because my entertainment is crossing the line to reality, which I prefer to keep light-hearted and grateful, not tainted by power-grabbing, narcissism, and self-absorption?

Probably. Okay, yes. Without a doubt. Truthfully, I would live in fantasy land if I could, which for me was sometime in the early 1970s. My favorite television shows during childhood then were The Brady Bunch, Little House on the Prairie, The Partridge Family, The Six Million Dollar Man, and The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour.

I will likely regret admitting this, but I still watch The Lawrence Welk Show on PBS. Why? I enjoy the musical orchestration, the cheesy costumes, the way Bobby dances, and the way Mr. Welk loved his job and his performers. Like watching an automobile race and secretly hoping for a crash, I wait in anticipation for the men to sing while wearing lime-green leisure suits. Now that’s some priceless entertainment!

Back to today. On April 24, I was asked to fill in at the last minute for my business partner, George Bye, to give a speech during Colorado Christian University’s (CCU) annual Values-Aligned Leadership Summit. The conference theme was “Overcoming Disruption and Chaos as Threats to Business: A View Through the Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity Model.”

Huh?

Fortunately, the summit was not nearly as technical as it sounds. Before the program started, I chatted with some extraordinary CCU business students who told me they dress in professional business attire every day—just to attend class.

During my speech, I shared details of Bye Aerospace’s eFlyer electric airplane project, and how the aviation community was laughing at us a decade ago for believing electric aviation would someday be “a thing,” and how, today, they suddenly want their electric airplanes NOW. I also shared how my faith blends into my business life and how my faith also helped me endure cancer treatment and ultimately helped me achieve unprecedented self-discovery four years ago.

Karl Mecklenburg

Before the lunch break, I was honored to meet a dozen attendees who patiently stood in line to say hello and share their cancer experiences with me. One female student shook my hand, then burst into tears and grabbed me in a bear hug because her aunt had passed away from breast cancer 10 days before.

Those are powerful moments that affirm the importance of calling attention to the psychological impact of cancer on caregivers—in this case someone who already has emotional cancer scars at the delicate age of 22.

During lunch, I sat with Karl Mecklenburg, former all-pro captain of the Denver Broncos, who was the after-lunch keynote speaker. Talk about a versatile player and all-around class act! Plus, he is the only NFL legend to earn the Certified Speaking Professional designation from the National Speakers Association. Impressive, indeed.

The moral of this rambling post is that there is still peace and greatness and humility and love all around us, however difficult they can often be to find.

I am on a quest to surround myself with individuals and entertainment that embrace those attributes.
When I find them, I find my true self.

Warm wishes and bountiful blessings,

Get Ready to Interpret My Weird Dreams!

Hi everyone, My intention was to write an inspirational spring blog about rebirth and daffodils, but the day I started this post, Denver was experiencing a blizzard and category 1 hurricane winds. Given all the flooding and snow-related challenges all over the country, thank goodness the winter of 2019 is officially over—at least according to the calendar.

With that, instead of sharing sentiments about rainbows, unicorns, and hope for a new day, let’s dish instead about one of my favorite topics….my creepy, weird dreams.

Now, for those who have read The Unlikely Gift of Breast Cancer, you know my dreams are essentially my own free psychotherapy sessions. The stuff I successfully repress by day eventually manages to haunt me by night. I don’t mean to make light of bad dreams, as many who have had traumatic experiences struggle with horrific nightmares. Some of those traumatic experiences include the horrors of war, abuse, and—yes—even cancer.

I have only had one cancer-related traumatic dream, thankfully, and it happened last year about this time. I was visiting my alma-mater, the University of Nebraska-Kearney, to speak about—of all things—the psychological impact of traumatic health experiences such as cancer. The details from my nightmare are much too graphic to share, but I woke up barely able to breathe. It took an entire hour for my heart rate to slow down.

This is likely not a surprise, but the only dreams I remember vividly are those that haunt me, like the missing piece of paper dream and the Bimmer dream (“Why did you give me away?”) from The Unlikely Gift.

For the past couple years, I have kept a list of memorable dreams that illustrate just how stressed or uptight I must truly be. So, put on your dream analysis caps, ‘cuz here we go:

I am in a massive shopping mall, but I can’t find my way out. I try walking into restaurants, thinking they must have an exit door out the backside, but every restaurant entrance is blocked. So, I just keep shopping.

While in Vegas, I can’t find an elevator that goes down. All I can find are narrow amusement park slides that look like the inside of an MRI machine to get down. I am carrying a big purse that won’t fit in any of the tubes with me, so instead I keep walking through conjoined hotels on the top floors and end up in an unsafe part of the city, still trying to find a hotel that has a down elevator.

My most common recurring dreams take place on cruise ships. Ships that are configured so that I have to go up to a certain floor, get off and find another up elevator to get to my room. In every dream, an elevator that has the ability to take me to the floor I need to get to in order to switch elevators doesn’t exist, so I keep searching.

In one dream, I actually make it to the floor I need to get to, but then all the elevators I find are only able to go down, not up. In yet another bizarre dream, I need to call 911 but can’t find a phone with the number one. Why do I need to call 911? Who knows. I keep picking up different types of phones—an old flip phone, a phone shaped like a hair brush, even a hand-crank wall telephone. I never find a phone with a number one, so I never call 911.

A man I don’t know has just been promoted to a Colonel in the Army, but now he is retiring and is wearing a uniform from World War I. “No, no, no, it’s all wrong!” I shout in my dream. “He’s wearing the wrong uniform! Plus, he wouldn’t get promoted and then retire!”

Even in my dreams, I can’t stop searching or critiquing.

These dreams are intriguing, but they are also exhausting. Something is obviously missing in my life that I haven’t yet found. I don’t know what I’m looking for, but when I find it, I believe I will know. Perhaps what I’m looking for doesn’t even exist yet.

Perhaps I should just lighten up?

That’s it, lighten up and trust that my purpose and future value on this earth will come naturally. Stop actively looking for something that doesn’t exist and just live in the now. Sounds good to me!

Before I go, a couple quick news updates:

• My favorite retired Air Force Command Chief, a.k.a. that incredible husband of mine, Rene, finished all five years of his allergy shot regimen a few weeks ago! Bravo, my love! I have never known anyone who actually finished before giving up, but he got ‘er done. Now that spring blooms are beginning to pop, we have a good laugh every time he launches into a sneezing fit. Which, unfortunately for him, seems to happen as often as they did five years ago.

• Save the date! Speaking of “the book,” the Graduate School of Professional Psychology will be co-hosting a book launch for The Unlikely Gift at the University of Denver campus the evening of Monday, May 13. It is free and open to the public, and I have been promised that parking will be easy. You will hear an update about the Center for Oncology Psychology Excellence (COPE) at DU, plus I will give a short talk about my writing experience, then there will be time for Q&A. Complimentary adult beverages and hearty appetizers are included, so please join us! I will be sending an invitation to followers as soon as details are confirmed.

Welcome spring! We’ve been waiting a long time for you.

(Hopefully) Your favorite dreamer,

 

June 25, 2019 – Cherry Creek Retirement Village

Diane will be available for a meet and greet conversation.

When:

Tuesday, June 25, 2019, 11:30 AM

Where:

Cherry Creek Retirement Village, 14555 East Hampden Avenue, Aurora, CO, United States 80014

Guest Post from My BFF, Colleen, in Central Nebraska

Hi friends!

I am taking a break this month to prep for some upcoming events and to rest my shoulder and lower back, which have been giving me fits with spasms from a pinched nerve for about a week.

In the meantime, a few weeks ago I received an amazing email from my dear friend, Colleen (Schauer) Hansen, who I mention several times in The Unlikely Gift of Breast Cancer. Like a dear friend would do, Colleen is stepping in with a guest post, allowing me to reprint an edited version of her experience as she received and dove in to The Unlikely Gift.

.Colleen, at right, and me. BFFs at junior high church music camp in the summer of 1979.

Colleen and I met at junior high church music camp, and she is now a farm wife in central Nebraska who has a heart taller, wider and longer than this year’s Colorado winter. I suggested to her that she—not me—should be a writer.

My sincere thanks to you, Colleen, for allowing me to share this recap!

Hope you enjoy….

February 11, 2019

Hello Beautiful!

So…I immediately ordered The Book as soon as I got done reading your email about how to order it. Actually, I ordered two copies of The Book, one for me to treasure and one for my sisters.

I received the confirmation email from BookBaby stating the purchase information, along with the tracking number and approximate delivery date. The possible delivery date was going to be just perfect, as we were expecting single-digit highs for the days, below zero temps for lows and windchills that make everything and everyone stop working. What activity would be more perfect on those kinds of days then curling up with The Book to read?

Colleen driving their 18-wheeler truck, hauling corn.

I watched the UPS tracking number every day, sometimes twice a day—just in case they left the package outside and our new destructive farm dog, named Clyde, got to it before I did! Shipping started out with an UPS number and ended up with a U.S. Postal Service delivery, which was a very good plan since the package fit safely inside our mailbox by the road and Clyde hasn’t yet figured out how to get into the mailbox.

Clyde, the destructive farm dog, proudly showing off some of the toys he has destroyed.

I walked the package to the house, holding it in the tightest hug imaginable, without crushing it—pretending I was holding my arms around you! Once inside my warm house, I immediately opened the package just to make sure the books were safe and were the correct ones. They were. I looked at the picture on the front cover. That beautiful picture that captured everything about what you had just been through. The Christmas card picture that has had the biggest impact in my life! The feeling of pure love swept over me. I cried. With my vision impaired from the tears that freely flowed, I flipped the book over. I saw the back cover picture, and I saw my most treasured friend, my forever friend. A woman who is stronger than anyone I have ever known, so beautiful and very much alive! In that moment I took a deep breath and thanked God for giving me such a wonderful friend. I cried. Again.

I forced myself to not open The Book, knowing if I started reading it, I wouldn’t be able to put it down. Dinner (the noon meal) needed fixing and it was almost noon. I laid The Books in a safe place so they wouldn’t get hurt, but in a place I could glance over at them to know they were here. The next day was another bitter cold Nebraska day and I thought; now I can read it…but it wasn’t until evening when I had control of the remote (TV shut off) and my husband, Harlan, went to bed early.

My world was finally quiet, I was alone to focus and concentrate on every word you had to say. It was then when I got snuggled under my new heated blankie, the one I got from Shane (Colleen’s son) for Christmas, that is so fuzzy, soft and silky grey, just like my new 1-year-old outside kitten, along with my knockoff Yeti full of ice water and a fresh box of tissues.

It finally  happened. I was ready to read and to learn! You must realize, my book reading habits for pleasure stopped after high school. I just don’t make time for books. I enjoy reading, but when there is work to be done, I feel sitting for hours reading for fun isn’t productive when I should be outside doing some kind of farm work.

However, this was The Book. The Book that my dearest friend wrote and got published. The Book I was so excited to receive in the mail. The Book that was going to inform me of all the ugliest things about cancer treatments. Her life before them and her life after them. The Book I knew was going to make me cry.

I was finally ready. And I was right, I couldn’t put it down. As much as I tried to keep my eyes from shutting after three hours straight, 12:30 a.m. was showing on the clock and I had to put it down after Chapter 12 and go to bed.

The next morning, after my outdoor chores, I started reading again. I continued to read about all the things that happened in your life before, during and after treatment. The dog stories, the car stories, the husband stories, the work stories, the friend stories, the family stories. I smiled, I learned, I cringed, I felt nauseous, I cried, I hot flashed, I laughed, I remembered, and I cried some more. I felt so much pride, so much pain, so much joy and so much sorrow. In my mind I was riding on that wicked rollercoaster ride I knew you had just been on.

And then it was over. I finished it. I sat again in humble disbelief. To see my name in your book was heartwarming. When I sent those pictures while you were so sick from chemo, I truly hoped it would bring you some joy. I would have done anything I could have for you!

Our first get-together after finishing treatment in late December 2015.

Now as I sit here and try to write proper words to explain how I feel, I think back to the song we sang at junior high church music camp when we met.

Do you remember when we were on “tour” of the musical, singing the final song for our final time, knowing it was going to be the last time we were going to be together as a group, and possibly the last time we would be together because we lived so far away from each other? We all started out singing normal, then the feelings hit. We were both bawling while trying to finish the song, holding each other’s hands ‘til we had to walk off the stage and left each other to go back home with our parents. The song was, Is There Anything I Can Do for You? It has been the song I have thought of when I think of you and our friendship, the quote that I have lived my life by.

I thank God for you, for your strength, your understanding, your desire, and your knowledge. I love you.

Forever,

Colleen

Thank You, Mom. And You Too, President Lincoln.

All my life, I have pondered this gnawing question: What four people, living or deceased, do I wish I could sit down with and have a conversation? Yes, I am an inquisitive, contemplative dork—but you likely figured that out by now.

When I was in grade school, my list of four fascinating people consisted of Jesus, Joe Namath, Wonder Woman, and Abraham Lincoln.

When I was a young adult, my top four were Princess Diana, Bill Gates, my paternal grandmother, and Abraham Lincoln.

Today, I wish I could hang out with my late mother, Dave Grohl (front man for the rock band, the Foo Fighters), Jesus, and Abraham Lincoln.

Abraham Lincoln quote on the Colorado Freedom Memorial.

Although Jesus is a close second, President Abraham Lincoln has made the cut since childhood. What is it about this legend who continues to transcend time? Volumes have been written about President Lincoln, who was both loathed and adored. He led our country through the Civil War and is credited by some for saving our United States, plus he issued the Emancipation Proclamation before being assassinated. At 6’4”, he was our country’s tallest president to date, and consistently ranks at or near the top in public and presidential historian opinion polls of the nation’s greatest presidents.

Whereas George Washington will always be the father of our country, Abraham Lincoln was the epitome of a leader. He was a great writer, orator, listener, motivator, and strategist, plus he was innovative, he somehow brought out the best qualities in his subordinates, and he sincerely cared about his constituents. I have admired him since my childhood because he was an unshakable role model who was steadfast about his convictions, yet he encouraged others to think openly, educate themselves about the facts, debate intelligently, and make their own decisions. His outlook resonates with me, particularly today where pouty temper tantrums and childish name-calling are common everyday behaviors in politics.

As I continue to (finally) accept and appreciate the wisdom of middle age, I realize that most of what made me who I am was formed during childhood. For example, my maternal grandmother, known as “Grammy Anderson,” who died long before I was born, passed down a timeless piece of advice to my late mother. My mother, in turn, shared it with me many times while I was growing up: “If you can’t saying anything nice about someone, don’t say anything at all.”

“The Look.”

Mom’s advice is sensible, but it’s painfully hard to follow much of the time! Even today, when I am about to launch into a verbal thrashing of someone who deserves it, I time-warp back to my childhood. Mom gives me her somber stare, tilts her head down, and recites those magical words.

Thank you, Mom, for saving me from getting fired from a job more than once, for reminding me that others have a constitutional right (to a degree) to their own opinions, and for helping me accept that sometimes those we invest precious time in mentoring and caring for still disappoint us. Those experiences are the “color” to this magical experience called life.

And to Mr. Lincoln, a very happy President’s Day. Thank you for being my favorite inspirational leader and for continuing to serve.

Salute!

Hello 2019! Welcome to My New Weird

Welcome to 2019! Here’s to hope, optimism, and good health for your new year.

But first, a jolt. Twenty years ago, we were starting the countdown to Y2K, that non-event that had those of us in the information technology industry spooked. I remembered lying awake in bed at 11:58 p.m. on December 31, 1999, contemplating whether nuclear missiles in Wyoming might accidentally detonate and land in our backyard.

Those were frightening days, followed not long after by the terror and destruction of 9/11. Our country’s will and patriotism were tested, and we responded to the call.

Since then, things have been…weird. Economically, politically, and socially. To my own surprise, though, even weird stuff doesn’t get me riled up anymore. Rene will tell you I have finally stopped screaming, “Nobody cares that a cat can play the piano! It’s not news!” at the TV during local newscasts.

Has this journalist given up on the power of the press? Am I beginning to turn a blind eye to the unspeakable acts of violence and corruption rampant in our world? Not at all. I have simply accepted that cat videos apparently appeal to the dwindling number of people who bother to watch network news. As far as the violence and corruption in the world, I pray for peace and understanding, but I am also grateful for those who protect our freedoms and shield us from harm.

Auld Lang Syne

So, here we are again. It’s late December, another auld lang syne, which—according to Reader’s Digest—literally translates to “old long since,” and essentially means “days gone by.” Over the past 12 months of blogging, I have come to this realization:  I don’t wish I could go back to the days of my youth, I just marvel at the level of detail from those experiences that are still etched in my mind. Such as, the smell of popcorn popping in the old gym at Elba High School home basketball games, the taste of savory, crispy fried chicken my Aunt Eleanor Moravec (our phenomenal cook at Cotesfield School Dist. 14) made for our lunches during grade school, and the way Mother Nature created glossy wind-driven snow sculptures against the sides of farm buildings during Nebraska snowstorms.

Update – The Unlikely Gift of Breast Cancer

I stopped setting new year’s resolutions long ago, but I still believe in setting challenging, realistic goals throughout the year. One of the goals I set to help me continue to heal from the trauma of breast cancer was to publish a book about my experience, based on a journal I kept during treatment. Well, late last month, after nearly three years and 13 revisions, I hit “send” on my home computer and submitted the final manuscript to the publisher. My book, The Unlikely Gift of Breast Cancer, will be available in both soft cover and ebook format, and will likely be available sometime between January 1 and March 1. Welcome to the world of self-publishing, where in exchange for a “We’ll get to it when we get to it” publication schedule, I will maintain all the rights to my book.

In the coming weeks, I will attempt to convince you to purchase my book by offering up sample chapters for free. Please don’t feel obligated to buy it, although if you do, I would be extraordinarily grateful if you would post a brief review on Amazon (I’ll send details on when/how). As you may already know, I can do all kinds of public speaking, marketing, and groveling to convince readers to buy my book, but one of the most effective things I can do to help bring more attention to the long-term psychological impact of cancer (the book’s theme) is to entice readers to write book reviews of The Unlikely Gift of Breast Cancer on Amazon.

There you have it. We are about to enter the year 2019, nearly two decades after Y2K, and success at book publishing is determined by how well an author understands the Amazon algorithm. I have already decided to stop fretting about an algorithm and continue to speak from my heart. Thank you for listening.

On a side note, I put up an author page on Facebook. Similar to Amazon, the key to a Facebook author page is to be liked. So, if you are so inclined, I would be grateful if you would “like” my author page on Facebook. Simply click on this link. Thank you so much.

Clink!

Some final random thoughts about 2018 as we clink our virtual champagne glasses:

Congratulations to Chanel (Pop) and Josie (Ma) Simard, who celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in May. These two loving individuals, parents to my amazing husband and soulmate, Rene, have helped fill the void left by my own parents decades ago. Chanel’s and Josie’s patriotism, compassion for others, and love of family provides inspiration for so many.
Electric aviation’s time is finally here, and I am humbled by what Bye Aerospace accomplished over the past 12 months. Some of our accomplishments have not, and may never, be disclosed to the public, but our momentum is strong. Bye Aerospace is striving for our two-seat Sun Flyer 2 airplane to be the first Part 23 FAA-certified electric airplane, and it is an honor to be part of this valiant effort, working alongside such brilliant, caring teammates.
One final farewell to some of the influencers of my life to whom we said goodbye over the past year:  Aurora (Colorado) Mayor Steve Hogan; President George H.W. Bush; Aretha Franklin; my former high school band teacher, Richard Ingerle; Sen. John McCain; and my dear college friend, Genene Wieser Hayden.

Peace and good cheer,