Roger, thanks for passing the following inspirational email message on to me. Yes, it certainly does put things into perspective:

Imagine that you had won the following prize in a contest:

Each morning your bank would deposit $86,400.00 in your private account for your use.

However, this prize had rules, just as any game has certain rules.

The first set of rules would be:

1) Everything that you didn’t spend during each day would be taken away from you. 

2) You may not simply transfer money into some other account. 

3) You may only spend it.

Each morning upon awakening, the bank opens your account with another $86,400.00 for that day.

The second set of rules:

1) The bank can end the game without warning; at any time it can say, “It’s over. The game is over!”

2) It can close the account and you will not receive a new one.

What would you personally do?

You would buy anything and everything you wanted, right?

Not only for yourself, but also for all people you love, right?

Even for people you don’t know, because you couldn’t possibly spend it all on yourself, right?

You would try to spend every cent, and use it all, right?

ACTUALLY, THIS GAME IS REALITY!!

Each of us is in possession of such a “magical” bank.

We just can’t seem to see it.

THE MAGICAL BANK IS TIME!

Each awakening morning we receive 86,400 seconds as a gift of life, and when we go to sleep at night, any remaining time is NOT credited to us.

What we haven’t lived up that day is forever lost.

Yesterday is forever gone.

Each morning the account is refilled, but the bank can dissolve your account at any time…

WITHOUT WARNING.

WELL, what will you do with your 86,400 seconds?

Aren’t they worth so much more than the same amount in dollars?

Think about that, and always think of this:

Enjoy every second of your life, because time races by so much quicker than you think.

So take care of yourself, do only what is good and right, be happy, and enjoy life!

Here’s wishing you a wonderfully beautiful day!!!

~Author Unknown

Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
Read an excerpt now
TV Shows and Clips about the Death of Cindy James

Despair is suffering without meaning.

~Victor Frankl

Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
Read an excerpt now
TV Shows and Clips about the Death of Cindy James

“We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road running through the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor’s arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his hand behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: ‘If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don’t know what is happening to us.’

“That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another on and upward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look then was more luminous than the sun, which was beginning to rise.

“A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way—an honorable way—in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life, I was able to understand the words, ‘The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.’

“In front of me a man stumbled and those following him fell on top of him. The guard rushed over and used his whip on them all. Thus my thoughts were interrupted for a few minutes. But soon my soul found its way back from the prisoners existence to another world, and I resumed talk with my loved one: I asked her questions, and she answered; she questioned me in return, and I answered…

“My mind still clung to the image of my wife. A thought crossed my mind: I didn’t even know if she were still alive, and I had no means of finding out (during all my prison life there was no outgoing or incoming mail); but at that moment it ceased to matter. There was no need to know; nothing could touch the strength of my love, and the thoughts of my beloved. Had I known then that my wife was dead, I think that I still would have given myself, undisturbed by that knowledge, to the contemplation of that image, and that my mental conversation with her would have been just as vivid and just as satisfying. ‘Set me like a seal upon thy heart, love is as strong as death.’ ”

~Excerpt from Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning

Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
Read an excerpt now
TV Shows and Clips about the Death of Cindy James

“He who has a why for life can put with any how.”

~Frederick Nietzsche

Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
Read an excerpt now
TV Shows and Clips about the Death of Cindy James

Can we find meaning in what has happened to us? (As Victor Frankl, Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, suggests we can with his logotherapy—due to his and others’ suffering in WWII Nazi concentration camps, Victor came to the conclusion that even in the most absurd, painful and dehumanized situation, life has potential meaning and that therefore even suffering is meaningful.)

Can we find meaning—as gifts, lessons and opportunities—to find strength, confidence, wisdom and solace?

Or is that just something we need to believe in order to feel happy and not blame ourselves (or other people…or even life itself)—in order to feel safe moving forward in life so that we don’t think maybe it’s just us who is the unlucky one or think that life is just a game of chance?

But how do you find the meaning in the things that happen when life is so complex?

Let me be the devil’s advocate for a minute by saying, “Why ask why?” —Maybe you should just make the best of what you have!

Maybe it’s all about moving forward in life and learning not to be fearful—about feeling more alive…about realizing you have been given an opportunity to be awakened to life (if you choose to see it that way) and about having a new lease on life.

Perhaps it’s about finding what the meaning is for just you (a similar thing can happen to someone else and have a different meaning for that person).

So can you have any control over your life?

Maybe it’s about creating your life (and making you who you are) based on how you choose to see what’s happening in your life (your thought patterns guide you).

I’m going to suggest you break out of your negative thoughts and choose to react in a positive way.

And open up your heart.

Maybe bad things happen sometimes for no reason at all (at least for no reason we can find because we are ignorant of details) —Or because there are evil people in the world—Or simply because there are natural disasters.

And just because we can attach reasons doesn’t mean those are the real reasons.

Hmmmm…

You can’t go back and change time and undo something that has been done…but maybe you can create a future for yourself that is better than your past!

Why not try!

Use your free will.

Your mission in your life is your responsibility!

Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
Read an excerpt now
TV Shows and Clips about the Death of Cindy James

We are all a part of a family system, and each system has a role and a level of functioning with historical roots.

And my family, like most families, had “the black sheep” (my middle brother), “the prodigal son” (my youngest brother), “the smart one” (me, according to Cindy’s 1986 autobiography), “the good-looking one” (Cindy), “the clown” (my middle sister), etc.

When dealing with grief, my family struggled and changed along with me, and all our roles changed too—the family dynamics. For a time I became the black sheep and was criticized because I voiced my opinions and insisted on digging for facts, and now I realize some people had not wanted some facts revealed.

I didn’t go along with what I was “supposed” to do—that being what other people wanted me to do (keep quiet and agree with them). And when my research uncovered new facts, family members had to revisit their grief in order to fit that information into their belief system of what they thought happened to Cindy.

Every family has its own way of coping. Some families use silence, passive-aggression, humor or a combination. In my family it was a combination of strategies with a heavy emphasis on silence (we were not to share too much). Privacy was sacred.

But in order to honor my own grief process I had to follow my heart, my needs and my own beliefs and values. Otherwise my spirit would have lost its energy and I would have died inside and never healed.

Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
Read an excerpt now
TV Shows and Clips about the Death of Cindy James

At the time my sister (Cindy James) died and her body was found (on this day twenty-one years ago), it seemed that some of my family members weren’t sharing the same sorrow that I felt, or at least they weren’t showing it the same way.

But, I now realize, none of us were ever psychologically at the same place at the same time because our experiences, personalities, expectations, and needs were different. Everybody was grieving in his or her own way, and according to Hospice none of it was right or wrong. It just was what it was.

And while compiling my book, I realized family members had different knowledge and beliefs about Cindy’s harassment, and that colored each of our ways of grieving.

I have learned it is so easy to be judgmental of others, yet so necessary to be respectful of their personal journeys and choices of coping.

Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
Read an excerpt now
TV Shows and Clips about the Death of Cindy James

For five minutes at the end of your day, sit quietly in a quiet place.

We all carry some unfinished grief with us, resulting from our incomplete re-connection to life.

When we trust our own innate ability to grieve, in our own way, we learn to trust life again, and reconnect with it.

Sometimes this takes time, as we discover how deep our feeling of disconnection seems to be, and how much we long to return to life.

Sometimes it takes repetition, as we uncover multiple ways we have disconnected from life.

Here is the thought that will carry us through the healing process we call grief tonight: “Love has not left me; I am surrounded by it now. Life has not left me; I am supported by it now.”

For the remaining time, feel the grief you carry, and see if you can find that part of your grief that longs for the return to life in this moment.

Trust yourself to feel ‘just such as it is’.

And trust yourself to re-connect with life.

For the final minute, repeat slowly to yourself:

“Love has not left me; I am surrounded by it now. Life has not left me; I am supported by it now.“

Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
Read an excerpt now
TV Shows and Clips about the Death of Cindy James

Meditation – Terry Lang

“‘Grief is praise for what you have lost.’”

“These are the words of Martin Prechtel, a Guatemalan shaman. In his village, as in many indigenous cultures, community grief rituals are common.

“I will describe for you a grieving ritual of the Dagara people in West Africa as depicted in Malidoma Some’s book Healing Wisdom of Africa. While I was studying ritual with Malidoma in this country I participated in an abbreviated version of such a ritual. I came to see that my long-held anger at my father, who died 20 years ago, was grief for what I had lost, possibilities lost and never to be realized. Acknowledging and releasing this grief allowed me to move from anger and resentment to a place of forgiveness. At the end of the ritual I felt a great burden lifted from me.

“As I describe this ritual, if it feels comfortable to you, you may wish to close your eyes and imagine yourself in a favorite place in nature surrounded by your own community.

“So imagine: The people of the village gather as a throng in an egg-shaped space, one end of which is designated as the village where the people will gather, and the other end as the shrine. The egg form represents life in formation. The village area is the place of gathering emotion. The shrine is where the highly charged emotion will be released.

“The shrine is built carefully by the people of the village using elements freshly borrowed from Mother Nature such as: tree branches, plants, and flowers. Its form depends upon the creativity of the village but it will often look like a gateway with an arched form atop a wide base. The surface of the base serves as the doorway to the Other World, and as such it requires the reverence and respect due such a gateway.

“Once the shrine has been prepared at one end of the shape, the villagers begin their inner preparation. Gathering together in small groups they tell one another what causes them grief. This is because grief does not necessarily come on demand. It is something that can be evoked through stories and images. One of the ways of triggering emotion is to speak about it or hear it spoken about by others. Each person will have brought an object symbolic of his or her loss, which they will describe in the form of a story to the rest of the group. Every grief story has similar elements. This is why one story invites another. This process can take hours.

“After everyone has shared their story, the small groups rejoin to engage in the ritual proper. A strong feeling of emotional tension has been built, propelling the grieving process forward. There may take place a procession toward the ritual village space which will symbolize this forward movement emphasizing the depth of the internal journey required in order to heal—a pilgrimage, which encourages the flow of emotions even before the cleansing transformation produced by the ritual itself.

“Upon reaching the ritual space, a rhythmic song of grief supported by drums will be taken up by the entire village singing in unison, allowing their bodies to move with the music. Responding to music and rhythm allows emotion to build so that it can be unloaded at the shrine.

“Shortly after beginning the song each group will place their objects of grief upon the shrine. Because they represent the sum total of the losses of the village, together these objects constitute a magnetic point that pulls the emotional self toward it.

“As emotion builds up in the people, they move to the shrine and release it, then return to the village to build up again. There is no prescribed way of releasing these feelings. People follow their own instincts. Any person, who moved by emotion, begins to head toward the shrine will be discreetly accompanied by someone who is not emotion-filled at that moment in order to protect and watch over them and to ensure that the emotion stays at the shrine and the person returns to the village where she or he belongs. The space between the shrine and the people filled with the back and forth motion of people symbolizes possibilities and hope.

“There is no telling how long the period of commuting between the village and the shrine will last. As long as there are emotions to be expressed, the ritual must continue. In the Dagara tradition such a ritual usually takes three days while other life functions are either suspended or operate at a minimal capacity. The ritual does not end until it feels as if the emotional force is dissipating.

“At that time the village chants its way to the shrine while a task force collects the objects of grief and carefully buries them into the ground like a spiritual form of composting. After purification, the village disburses returning the next morning to undo the shrine and return every piece of it to nature.

“A periodic return to this kind of ritual has positive consequences far beyond what words can express. Villagers gauge the amount of grief that is built up in them by the barometer of their joy. When emotion has been fully unloaded, the rush of joy that fills you up can last for weeks. When that feeling of joy subsides, grief is again building and soon will require another release.

“Achay and Amen.”

Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
Read an excerpt now
TV Shows and Clips about the Death of Cindy James

Thanks for sending this story on to me Vera:

A farmer had some puppies he needed to sell.

He painted a sign advertising the four pups and set about nailing it to a post on the edge of his yard. As he was driving the last nail into the post, he felt a tug on his overalls. He looked down into the eyes of little boy.

“Mister,” he said, “I want to buy one of your puppies.”

“Well,” said the farmer, as he rubbed the sweat off the back of his neck, “These puppies come from fine parents and cost a good deal of money.”

The boy dropped his head for a moment. Then reaching deep into his pocket, he pulled out a handful of change and held it up to the farmer.

“I’ve got thirty-nine cents. Is that enough to take a look?”

“Sure,” said the farmer. And with that he let out a whistle.

“Here, Dolly!” he called.

Out from the doghouse and down the ramp ran Dolly followed by four little balls of fur.

The little boy pressed his face against the chain link fence. His eyes danced with delight. As the dogs made their way to the fence, the little boy noticed something else stirring inside the doghouse.

Slowly another little ball appeared, this one noticeably smaller. Down the ramp it slid. Then in a somewhat awkward manner, the little pup began hobbling toward the others, doing its best to catch up…

“I want that one,” the little boy said, pointing to the runt.

The farmer knelt down at the boy’s side and said, “Son, you don’t want that puppy. He will never be able to run and play with you like these other dogs would.”

With that the little boy stepped back from the fence, reached down, and began rolling up one leg of his trousers.

In doing so he revealed a steel brace running down both sides of his leg attaching itself to a specially made shoe.

Looking back up at the farmer, he said, “You see sir, I don’t run too well myself, and he will need someone who understands.”

With tears in his eyes, the farmer reached down and picked up the little pup.

Holding it carefully he handed it to the little boy.

“How much?” asked the little boy.

“No charge,” answered the farmer.

“There’s no charge for love.”

The world is full of people who need someone who understands.

~Author Unknown

Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
Read an excerpt now
TV Shows and Clips about the Death of Cindy James