Pamela Leavey

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Category: Birds

Reflection: Who Am I and Why Am I Here

Who am I and why am I here? Let me fill you in on what I am up to… I’ve been working on my website for a couple of months now. It had fallen by the wayside while I was in school for six and half years. A month ago, I had written here that I was working on “getting back on track with my writing.” I have to say, it feels good to be back at it. One of the focuses I have had in the past two weeks now is to get back on track with writing Daily Affirmations.

Snowy Egret at the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge.

I’ve been sharing other writers affirmations and then writing my own Daily Affirmations online now for over 20 years. I initially started sharing affirmations online daily on my first business website, the now defunct AromatherapyGoddess.com. The business was a new age aromatherapy and bath & body business. I made my own products and built my website and taught myself to self-market my products online reading everything I could about how to market products online. One of the common themes was that the more content you had online the more traffic you would receive and the longer you would keep someone on your website. That still holds today.

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Food for Thought: Being Different is Awesome

Sometimes we worry about how other people view us. We might hear from people on occasion that we are “different” and that might make us feel uncomfortable or sad if we feel like we want to fit in.

But, I have to say, being different is awesome! We are all unique and absolutely perfect as who we are. We are all filled with love, and light. We are all creative and stand for things we believe in. We’re all awesome!

Know this in your heart and mind – we are all awesome! Embrace who you are. Be different. Be unique. Be your best badass self every day and dance to your own song!

Snowy Egret en Passe

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Creative Writing and Finding Joy in Nature

In 2015, while working on my undergraduate degree in Digital Communications and Creative Writing I did an Independent Study in Nature Writing. During the class, I had substantial reading list (some of the books are listed below) that I worked my way through. However, I found that the most valuable and instructive time that I spent, while working on my independent study, was actually done outdoors in nature observing it in the area of the Merrimack River estuary lands where I lived in Amesbury, Massachusetts.

At the time I rented an apartment in a historical shipwright’s house on Pleasant Valley Road. All around the house there were woods and wetlands that are protected by the Massachusetts Division of Conservation Services. I needed only to sit at my desk to and look out the window in front of it to see bald eagles and blue herons fly across or even through the front yard.

One day returning from my frequent walks along the river I watched a sharp-shinned hawk dive from a sugar maple tree in the front yard into a yew shrub in front of my living room window (where my desk sat) and lunch on a sparrow.

Sharp-shinned Hawk
Sharp-shinned Hawk
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Food for Thought: Fear is a Subjective Emotion

Fear is a subjective emotion. We can choose to be ruled by our fear or we can choose to reach beyond our instinctive, individual emotions that drive our fear and look outside of ourselves and all of the things in the world that drive our fears, and see beauty in world.

Everyday the news is subjecting us to the latest stories that fill us with worry, concern, outrage, and fear. Constantly following the news, feeds our fear and plays on the subjective aspects of fear because we a choosing to let our fears control our lives. Not long ago the communication industry was not a 24/7 industry that played so heavily on our psyches.

Step back. Spend less time on social media. Disconnect. Turn off your devices. Free yourself from the outrage machine. Take a break from the news. Get outside. Take a walk. Breathe in the fresh air. Listen to the bird song. Connect with nature. Do anything that is not connected to following the latest news that pummel our senses and leaves us senseless and sometimes riddled with fear.

You can control your fear by replacing it with healthy thoughts and emotions. Be in the moment. Choose happiness over fear.

Namaste

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Food for Thought: On Being Busy

Saying I am “Busy,” can signal the need to avoid something unpleasant.

Many people use “busy” as their catch all buzz word to hide their preference to not respond or discuss something that might make them feel uncomfortable. I know I have used it myself on more than one occasion. It is the perfect excuse to get out of anything we don’t want to do.

But using that “busy” excuse gives rise to beg these questions: (more…)

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Hawk Breakfast

There is a small Hawk up in the Shagbark Hickory tree just outside my desk window. I was looking out the window gazing at the River, as I am often wont to do, when it flew onto the lowest branch a few minutes ago and settled in. The sun is behind it and as such, it is hard to make out its coloring and markings, but I knew it was a hawk by the shape of its head when I watched it land.

What I did not see, when it landed, was that it landed with a small bird in its talon. Ah… Breakfast.

Hawk has been busy, sitting there on the tree limb shredding the Small Bird, sending its delicate little feathers to flutter and tumble-down to the ground below the tree.

Given the relatively small size of the hawk, I am thinking it is the same Sharp-shinned Hawk that I have seen in the yard in the past. A Sharp-shinned Hawk is America’s smallest hawk. It has a long tail, long legs and short wings. They are very agile fliers who easily zip in between trees to grab they prey.

One day a few months ago, I looked out the window in front of my desk, to see a hawk sitting in the yew bush right in front of the window. It was quite the surprise for the two of us, actually as I looked out saw the hawk staring in the window at me. “Oh,” I exclaimed, as the hawk ducked back down in the bush and then made its exit through the front of the bush.

A Crow landed in the Maple tree to the left of the Hickory that Hawk sits busily eating breakfast. Now Crow is shrieking at Hawk, demanding that Hawk leave it some dregs of Small Bird. However, Hawk has been up there so long with Small Bird I can’t imagine that he has not stripped the bones clean. There seem to be no more feathers fluttering to the ground. There is just Hawk and his breakfast. He is fastidious in making sure he does not leave a morsel behind.

Finished now, he hops to another branch and sits facing the sun. Pleased as he is to have had a healthy breakfast. Perhaps not as hearty as he liked or needed, his wings lifted and he flew off in the direction of the bird feeder on the other side of the yard. The cycle of nature and life itself, never ceases to amaze me.

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