“Clean out a corner of your mind,
and creativity will instantly fill it.”
—Dee Hock

Let’s give creativity some airtime. The theme of this month’s issue is “Creative Minds” and features mega, talented, creative women and other ways to perk up your life via creativity. However, I can’t tell you how many times I have heard people exclaim: “I don’t have a creative bone in my body.”

Please allow me to set the record straight: Almost everyone has a creative bone in their body, including you! If you cook, clean, sing (even if it’s only in the shower), parent, garden, read, smoke, you have creativity. Yes, I meant to say smoke; how do you think smoke rings came about? Someone got very fancy and creative with the toxins leaving their body.

For the most part, I gave up judging people about the same time I gave up perfectionism. When I finally got old enough—actually wise enough—to realize I’m not perfect, nor do I need to be; I also relinquished that expectation of others. With the freedom of being released from the shackles of trying to do right, be right, look right and act right all the time, I learned judging others, just like judging yourself, is usually premature and always unloving. In addition, it is binding to persons on both sides of the bench.

“Women’s friendships are like a
renewable source of power.”
—Jane Fonda

I was handed two lucky lots in life: 1. I am Southern; and 2. I am a woman. I haven’t always thought these two things were great. When I was young, people outside of the South (a.k.a. non-Southerners) viewed Southerners as slow, dumb, countrified—even if you didn’t live in the country. And, on the woman front, I was in the generation where women were supposed to lag behind, though opportunities were getting better. I remember thinking how lucky boys were. They got to play poker, and spend Saturdays hunting, fishing or boating with their buddies. They over drank, laughed and misbehaved all while the women cooked, cleaned and planted flowers. Honestly, playing poker was much more my style than tossing a salad.

Here’s a conundrum: We have a teacher shortage, and it’s only getting worse. Not only are college graduates choosing education as their major in record low numbers, but college graduates who majored in education are also leaving the teaching profession in droves within the first three years of teaching.
What does the world’s most powerful country do when none of its adults want to teach our youth?

In speaking with a member of the Board of Trustees for the University of South Carolina, I learned only 149 students graduated with an education/teaching degree this past May. This amount of new teachers barely covers the needs of one or two school districts.

“Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.”
—Robert Browning—

I believe the majority of the greatest lessons we learn in life come from our mothers. Not all of us have the fortune of a good mother’s wisdom, but most of us have experienced wonderful lessons from strong motherly figures somewhere along the way.

For years, I have written about how our parents teach us how we want to be and how we don’t want to be. I stand by this and firmly believe both are equally important lessons. Of course my mother had some ways and traits that taught me how I did not want to be, but her positive lessons far outweigh those.