Susan Mary Malone

Failing just sucks.  Doesn’t it?  No matter how you couch it, and all the positive (yes, to follow!) attributes that stem from it, failure just sucks eggs. We live in a world that worships success. Whether on the playing field, the art world, running a Fortune 500 company, we glorify those who win the game.  […]

Man, am I ever the Queen of this.  The World Champion.  Overthinking has been my nemesis for quite some time, and while thinking things through helps us to organize and plan, continuing to carry this out to infinity only serves to drive us batty. At least, it does me.  Not to mention, my friends.  They […]

Sometimes it seems like life just stagnates.  You know how that is?  When you’ve been working toward something, or perhaps just working.  When you’ve been trying to get off of high center, whether in your personal or professional life.  When it just seems like nothing is happening, to get you closer to your goals. What’cha […]

That just doesn’t seem to make sense, does it.  How can you live life happy if you aren’t always happy? Webster defines happiness in two ways: a :  A state of well-being and contentment :  joy b:  A pleasurable or satisfying experience We all know that b brings us happiness, no?  Something fabulous happens.  You achieve a desired […]

Ah, Pagan.  Isn’t that just a loaded word?  It has come to be synonymous with heathen (or, heathern, as we say in the South!), savage, even devil-worshipper, although the latter is such a 180-degree stretch it boggles the mind.  There were historical reasons for that, but it would take ten blogs to explore!  So we’ll […]

If I told my younger self many things, I wouldn’t have believed me. You know that feeling, no?  And how often have you seen interviews where the question is always asked: “What would you tell your younger self?”   I think I’ve seen a hundred of those posed recently. Or, as Toby Keith sang, “Wish I […]

The Today Show aired a week-long series called “Do You Believe,” and I watched the segment entitled: “Who Is God?” They interviewed a rabbi, a new-thought minister, and a christian pastor, all of whom spoke of their outreaches, and the numbers of people coming to their congregations. The newest statistic is that 3 in 4 […]

We know that our thoughts determine our emotions, how we see the world, how we react within it.  We know this.  From just about every source we trust. All the way back to the origin of printed words, we have sage after sage telling us so.  Proverbs 23:7 (KJV) says: “For as he thinketh in […]

I’ve had a lot of people tell me after the Quest series that they didn’t have anything that important in their lives.  That their lives were filled with the mundane, with driving kids to various functions, toiling at their jobs, volunteering, etc., etc., and none of that was worthy of a quest. Really?  Yes, most […]

I am so blessed to know so many readers!  In this day and digital age when a plethora of ways exist to spend free time, from social media of all sorts to gaming to watching movies on our iPads, and everything in between, readership in this country has declined. Book sales are down—not just percentages […]

Since I posted The Quest series, I’ve had so many women contact me about how freeing it felt to look at their goals in light of a hero’s quest. Of course, when we were growing up, women weren’t seen as heroic! We were born into the era of: “Behind every great man there’s a strong […]

It’s a normal human emotion.  No matter how spiritual one is (or professes to be!), anger will come calling.  It’s just part and parcel of what makes us human. Some folks just hate it.  And will do almost anything not to feel it.  But all that does is stuff it down, ensuring it will stay […]