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All These Gifts Are Given

Acknowledging our gifts and good fortune encourages us to live more creatively, more authentically: with truer purpose, greater compassion, deeper appreciations and a resolve to cultivate those gifts.

Our lives are journeys, adventures into the unknown. At each juncture we make decisions about the paths we choose to investigate and those we leave unexplored. Sometimes our decisions are made out of adversity, but often we direct our lives through a creative process, one that utilizes our gifts of intelligence, experience, curiosity, flexibility, courage and our unique view of ourselves and of the world.

On this journey, we are faced with options as to the lives we desire -- and ultimately design for ourselves -- and the kinds of people we aspire to be. We needn't look far to see the dichotomy of the human existence: the rich and the poor, the sick and the well, those at war and those at peace. As we navigate along the path we formulate our philosophies. There are those who embrace a life dedicated to helping the less fortunate, and those who devote themselves to self-fulfillment. While others seek a balance between sculpting out a life that serves personal needs and desires, and exploring avenues that lead away from themselves in order to appreciate and reciprocate some of what has been so richly given.

My greatest joy in life has been participating in the lives of my children and watching them grow -- from two adorable, mischievous towheads into two remarkable, gifted young men. Gabriel and Christian, better known as Gabe and Kit, are blessed with creative minds, strong backbones and generous hearts.

My husband, Don, and I chose to raise our boys in small California communities with good neighborhood schools and where our modest fixer-upper homes would hold their greatest value. In our search for peaceful lives and real estate investment, we were unintentionally limiting our sons' exposure to the diverse and textured life that lay outside the boundaries of these bedroom communities. We realized our boys' incipient ideals would be more richly nurtured if we exposed them to other cultures.

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