HOLIDAY PROMOTION!

Dear friends,

Few gifts are ever appreciated more than a book. By giving a book you are gifting the recipient with hours or reading pleasure – definitely a lot of value for your hard-earned money!

This holiday, I would like to give you a gift of my own: If you suggest my books to at least five of your friends, or spread the love through five of your social networks or e-mail, I will send you a free Kindle download; if you purchase five paperbacks as Christmas presents, I will send you an autographed copy at no charge to you. Whatever you choose to do to spread the love, send me a note through the contact form on my website http://www.sandracarringtonsmith.com and I will send your free copy of the book you prefer.

Here are the Amazon links you can use:
http://amzn.to/aqHlpM
http://amzn.to/tZacdu

May you and yours have a wonderful Holiday season!

Building Blocks and Dinosaurs

I remember watching my children, when they were little, put a lot of time and energy into building something only to break it down and build it again. Over and over. As grateful as I was for the time they kept themselves entertained, I was also a bit puzzled that they would invest so much time creating a building, and then turn around and knock it down with a plastic dinosaur or a GI Joe’s airplane. It never occurred to me at the time that they were simply training for real life adventures.

Although as adults we create situations with real people, and we have no easy access to dinosaurs or airplanes, the majority of our adult life is spent in creating events, dramas, and relationships that regularly blow up – not too differently than the Lego bunkers my children so painstakingly built. So, it is fair to ask in a moment of drama-free sanity: Why do we go through the cycles of creation and destruction?

No, we are not trying to recapture the child within, and we are also not losing our minds. The answer is much simpler, and yet, way more profound: Through those cycles we learn who we are; we learn who other people are; most of all, we learn that even when everything crumbles around us we are still able to pick up the pieces and build anew. And this time – since we learned where the weak spots were in the past – we can build a sturdier structure that will last through time; one I would challenge any dinosaur to destroy.