Karen Ward Optimum Health

27/04/2025

15/02/2025

Me and the gang out for our morning constitutional.

They are as unimpressed with the weather as I am
The joys of coastal living. 🙃

🌧️🌧️🌧️🌧️🌧️😶‍🌫️😶‍🌫️😶‍🌫️

18/01/2025

There will be days my friend,
When you feel like you just can’t go on.💔
Just keep swimming.
Breathe in and breathe out and wait for the light of a new day to dawn.

There will be days, my friend....
When nothing seems to be making sense.
It’s not supposed to.
Clear your mind and open your heart, the answers will come in time.

There will be days, my friend...
When the pain rises up and engulfs you.
Be kind to yourself.
Lay low and let the tears flow like a river, release, open the floodgates, let it out.

There will be days my friend...
When it feels like the whole world is against you. When it feels like you cannot do right for doing wrong.�Just sit it out. �Tomorrow is a new day and these feelings will pass. I promise.

You see, life is all things, from one day to the next.
It is beautiful at times, wondrous, amazing and joyful - then it is awful, miserable and heart-breaking.
And the cycle goes around.
It is as it should be.
Everything is as it should be and you, you will be okay.
Have faith.
Keep hope in your heart.
Tomorrow is a new day.

R.I.P my beloved friend 💔

❤️

06/12/2024

For the most part, grief is not a problem to be solved, not a condition to be medicated, but a deep encounter with an essential experience of being human.
Grief becomes problematic when the conditions needed to help us work with grief are absent. For example, when we are forced to carry our sorrow in isolation, or when the time needed to fully metabolize the nutrients of a particular loss is denied, and we are pressured to return to “normal” too soon. We are told to “get on with it” and “get over it.” The lack of courtesy and compassion surrounding grief is astonishing, reflecting an underlying fear and mistrust of this basic human experience.
Whether for a human or a pet I hope you find a place where your grief can find a quiet corner to lay it’s weary head 💔

— Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow

18/11/2024

Our new kittens only here 2 weeks and my beautiful koko as expected has adopted them as her own ❤️as she always does 🤗
I’ve been absolutely 💔since Ben my gorgeous Tom disappeared at the end of September and up until today finding v little reprieve from daily floods of 😢but seeing this tonight must admit felt a pang of joy for the first time in weeks 🤞


💕

01/11/2024

WELCOME NOVEMBER…

There is something about November that says ‘keep going’.
We are not quite through the year, yet the finish-line looms.
We are plunged into darkness by Mother Nature.
We are faced with the ‘season of joy’,
and yet many of us wonder where we will find it.

And I think November is a great time to take a little peek behind you,
and see just how much you’ve done.
To take stock of your achievements, your endurance,
your survival.
To rest, reinforce, before the festivities envelope us all.
Before beautiful new beginnings.

And most importantly, November is a time to seek out light.
As the natural order darkens, we must find it ourselves.
We must do whatever we can to brighten our day,
our home, the world.

Seek out light wherever you can my friends,
and pay no heed to those who condemn your sparkle.

You are much-needed.

Keep showing up, in that special way only you can do.
And show up for yourself too
(which can sometimes mean not showing up at all).

This year has been hard.
Again.
But beautiful.
Again.

As is the way of life.

As is the way of life.



Art by the beautiful Bettina Baldassari

18/10/2024

Life may never be as easy as we hope, and its challenges can feel relentless, but sometimes, it’s the smallest joys that breathe life back into you..

LJ Blossoms ✨ Writer’s Blossoms

Artist Credit : Jungsuk Lee