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Why I’m nothing like – yet just like – my mother

11 May

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters

www.myheartsisters.orgA few months ago, my favourite son Ben and I stopped by the annual fundraising luncheon and sale of Ukrainian tchotchkes – цяцьки – at St. Nicholas the Wonder Worker Ukrainian Catholic Church. (Ukrainian churches here in Canada often have fancy-schmancy mouthful names like this: Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Ukrainian Catholic Church or St. Demetrius The Martyr Ukrainian Orthodox Church, or those simply named for obscure saints you’ve likely never heard of – like the churches of  St. Paraskevia or St. Onufry).

We sat doing some first-class people-watching and borsch-eating while observing the women cooking, talking and laughing together in the church kitchen.  I was struck by an intense frisson of nostalgia. “These are my people!” I whispered to Ben. And as I said that, I had a strange and unbidden craving for a piece of pie. Continue reading 

Happy springtime!

20 Mar

flower seed border

She turned to the sunlight
    And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbor:
    ”Winter is dead.”

A.A. Milne

Continue reading 

A year in review: top 10 Heart Sisters posts for 2012

30 Dec

by Carolyn Thomas     @HeartSisters

It’s that time again, when navel-gazing pundits everywhere compile their Best Of or Top 10 lists of movies, political stories, books or bloopers for the year that’s just about to slip away. Same here at Heart Sisters!  So let’s take a nostalgic look backwards today at what I like to describe as this “cardiac rehab for my brain” – and why over 690,000 people like you have visited this site since I launched it in 2009.

First, I wish a very Happy New Year to my readers, especially to:

  • those of you who choose to share what you like here with your colleagues, families or your health care professionals
  • my loyal blog subscribers and Twitter followers
  • those who have generously shared your heartfelt, inspiring and sometimes very entertaining personal comments here – I love them!
  • all women living with heart disease: you are not alone!

Now here’s our Top 10 list of the most widely-read Heart Sisters posts of 2012:    Continue reading 

If December 25th is your birthday . . .

25 Dec

courtesy www.xkcd.com

The Christmas truce – 1914

24 Dec

by Carolyn Thomas     @HeartSisters

Christmas Truce 1914As World War I raged on in the trenches of Europe in 1914, Christmas Eve arrived cold and bleak. But German soldiers put up Christmas trees decorated with candles, on the parapets of their trenches. Although their enemies, the British soldiers, could see the lights, it took them a few minutes to figure out where they were from. Could this be a trick? British soldiers were ordered not to fire but to watch closely. Instead of trickery, however, the British soldiers heard the Germans singing carols and celebrating. One young soldier wrote home about this remarkable event:  Continue reading 

“Is my bra too tight?” – a poem for heart patients

20 Sep

by Carolyn Thomas

Numbness in the lip. Persistent cough. Pain between shoulder blades. Buzzing elbows. I thought I’d heard just about every possible vague or unusual heart disease symptom in women so far, but there’s one that I had never heard about until just recently.  And since then, women seem to be coming out of the woodwork to add that they too have experienced this peculiar cardiac symptom.   Continue reading 

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