Life Lessons: Guidance for All Ages

By Nancy Blodgett Klein

This non-fiction book is an anthology of 34 stories from a variety of authors sharing experiences that happened to them and concluding with what they learned as a result. Each touching story begins with a quote related to the subject, shares the experience or events, and concludes with a moral. This collection of stories is geared towards younger people who may need some guidance about how to successfully navigate their lives. However, people of all ages would find this book of interest because of the variety of wonrderful stories and moral guidance shared. Some stories are happy while others are quite sad. In all cases, these mature writers share lessons from their own experiences to help others naviage through the ups and downs of life. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nancy Blodgett Klein
• Release date: Feb 24, 2024
• ISBN: 9798523824357

Nancy Blodgett Klein

Nancy Blodgett Klein worked as a journalist as well as a magazine editor in the Chicagoland area for much of her career after receiving a master's degree in journalism from Boston University. Later on, she went back to college and earned as master's degree from Roosevelt University in Illinois. Then she worked as a bilingual teacher to mostly Mexican students. In 2016, she retired to Spain with her husband Rick Klein. They are the proud parents of two adult sons named Alex and Andy. While living in Spain, Nancy keeps busy with yoga, singing in a choir, participating in a writers group and two book groups. She also writes a blog on a variety of topics called spainwriter.home.blog. Nancy Blodgett Klein worked as a journalist as well as a magazine editor in the Chicagoland area for much of her career after receiving a master's degree in journalism from Boston University. Later on, she went back to college and earned as master's degree from Roosevelt University in Illinois. Then she worked as a bilingual teacher to mostly Mexican students. In 2016, she retired to Spain with her husband Rick Klein. They are the proud parents of two adult sons named Alex and Andy. While living in Spain, Nancy keeps busy with yoga, singing in a choir, participating in a writers group and two book groups. She also writes a blog on a variety of topics called spainwriter.home.blog.

Book preview

Life Lessons

Guidance for All Ages

Nancy Blodgett and Torrevieja Writers' Circle Members

Copyright © 2021 Nancy Blodgett Klein

All rights reserved

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 9798778324749

Cover design by: Art Painter

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309

Printed in the United States of America

For Alex and Andy and all young people that they may remember these life lessons all the days of their lives

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

About the Contributors

The life lessons begin...

Make a Difference By Helping Others

Try to Find Good in Everyone

Sometimes It’s Best to Just Look Away

An Obsession with Money Can Make You Miserable

Be the Change You Wish to See in the World

Some Questions Don’t Have Answers

Connect to the Sacred

Live Each Day as If It Were Your Last

How to Find Meaning in Life

A Prayer for Healing

The Golden Rule Doesn’t Always Apply

Explore Your Roots to Understand Who You Really Are

Life Should Be an Adventure

Step With Care and Tact into Life’s Great Balancing Act

Be a Good Listener

How To Turn Dreams into Reality

We Are All Connected

Let Your Intuition Guide You

Volunteering is Valuable

Be Open to Signs from the Spirit World

Please Patronize Thrift Shops

Pursue Your Dreams Whatever They May Be

Connect with Animals to Find Joy

Ask for Directions

Mourn losses, accept life’s fragility, but embrace living anyway

Retirement Requires Rebirth

Attitude is Everything

Don’t Make Fun of Other People

Beware of Online Imposters Posing as Big Stars

There is Something Special About the Irish

Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover​

Famous Ancestors Can Inspire You

Be Grateful for Little Things, Especially When Life Isn’t Going Well

Don’t Play Favourites with Your Children

A Loving Relationship Can Make Life’s Last Stages More Enjoyable

Acknowledgement

About The Author

Praise For Author

Books By This Author

Introduction

by Nancy Blodgett Klein

Why did I want to publish this book? As we live and have a variety of experiences, we learn and grow. Ideally, by the time we are in our sixties, we have learned many lessons about what works and what does not in terms of having a meaningful life.  By this point in our lives, many of us want to share what we have learned with younger people so they can avoid the same mistakes and make better choices. So my original intent in this book was to pass along my own life lessons to younger generations, to share my wisdom gained from life experience.

But one of the life lessons I have learned is you cannot do it alone. We always need help from others to be successful in life. That’s why I asked other members of the Torrevieja Writers’ Circle (TWC) to also contribute. Like me, they are mature people, many of them retired expats, who also have wisdom to share with others. This kind and talented group of writers encouraged me to finish my previous book, Torn Between Worlds: A Mexican immigrant’s journey to find herself.  Without their encouragement and suggestions for improvements, my book would never have been published. That would have been a shame, too, as it has received many positive reviews. People who have read it said when they finished it, they were sorry it is over because they so enjoyed reading it.

Clearly, we need each other. That being the case, I knew that if other TWC members shared their own life lessons in this book it would make for a richer, more powerful experience for the reader. We hope you agree and that you find some wisdom here that will help you have a more meaningful life going forward, whatever your age. Remember each lesson is specific to the writer’s life and you may not agree with all of them. That’s okay, too.

At least half of the profits of this book will go to Paul Cunningham Nurses Charity, a registered charity offering terminally ill patients free hospice care at home. Paul Cunningham Nurses Charity was the vision of Jennifer Cunningham, who on her return to Spain after losing her 33 year-old-son, Paul to spinal cancer, was shocked to learn that there was no hospice care nursing available in Spain. She had promised Paul to do something worthwhile in his memory and established Paul Cunningham Nurses in 2008 on the Costa Blanca. One of the stories I wrote in this book, Please Patronize Thrift Shops, is about my experience as a volunteer at one of these  shops.  For more information: www.paulcunninghamnurses.com

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Editor’s note:

For writers who are British or Canadian, the British spelling for words has been used, such as metre, rather than meter. For American writers, the American spelling of words has been used such as humor, rather than humour. At the same time, word usage has also been respected according to one’s native country. For example, the word torch is used for British writers rather than substituting the American word flashlight.

About the Contributors

All contributors are native English speakers and members of the Torrevieja Writers’ Circle on the Costa Blanca in Spain. Several are British, two are Canadian and two are from the US. We meet on a weekly basis (via Zoom or in person) to share our writing, critique each other’s work and give each other encouragement and support in the writing craft.

Contributors to this Life Lessons Anthology include:

Sue Champion

Susan was educated mainly in Kenya, East Africa. At age seventeen she returned to her native England with her family and attended a catering college. A few years later, she returned to Kenya and worked in a beach resort. From there she travelled to South Africa and then Rhodesia, (now Zimbabwe), intending to continue working her way to Australia. However, that was where she met David, and from then on, they worked together, mainly in the hospitality industry. Susan began writing after retiring to Spain, where she joined the Torrevieja Writers’ Circle, and discovered a love of writing, especially poetry. Her first book of poetry was published in 2017, entitled Prayer, Praise and Poetry. She lives on the Costa Blanca, in the Alicante province of Spain.

Geoff Cooper

Born in 1937, in industrial Tyneside, England, Geoff is a retired school teacher, head teacher, school inspector and now a writer. He lived most of his life in small town Northumberland in the north of England. He served in the Royal Air Force for two years, enjoying the privileges of travel: mainly to Cyprus, but also visiting Iraq, the Arabian Gulf States and Aden. He then attended St John’s College, York and qualified as a teacher. All his teaching career was spent in Northumberland. At age thirty, he was head teacher of a tiny village primary school. Then for many years before retirement, he was head teacher of a large middle school. After that, he served with the school inspection service, The Office for Standards in Education (OfSTED), working full-time all-over England until the age of 71.  He lives in the Alicante Province of Spain with his wife, Jeanie, a church minister.  Geoff has three children, two of whom are headteachers in England. The other child escaped to the USA, where she manages a medical clinic in California.

Brenda Darling

Brenda was raised in the East End of London. She says she is Cockney born and bred. In England, she worked as a support worker with adults with learning disabilities. She now lives on the Costa Blanca in Spain with her partner Derek. As a long-time member of the Torrevieja Writers Circle, she has found much inspiration and encouragement to achieve her ambition of publishing her own book.

S. Lee Follender

Lee is a consultant and author with expertise in communications, transformational studies, curriculum design, copywriting and training. She has served as Director of Management Training to major corporations and ghost writer for authors and individuals. Her experience has spanned multiple industries from high tech to beauty and government agencies to educational faculties. Her experience coaching entrepreneurs and individuals in looking for what purposeful action is next in their lives has brought her much joy and satisfaction.  She lives in Austin, Texas, where she writes, paints, sculpts, and manages a lively coaching practice.  She is author of The Book of Being.

John Edwards

John grew up in Herefordshire, a very rural county in England. That’s where his roots still remain. Wildlife was all around and this created the interests that he still has to this day, such as birdwatching. He also enjoys writing poetry and short stories.  He is a member of Stanza Mar Menor, San Miguel Writers and The Poetry Society in London.  From 1964 to 1994, he was a police officer in The Metropolitan Police in London.

Darlene Foster

Darlene grew up on a ranch in Alberta, Canada, where her love of reading inspired her to see the world and write stories about a young girl who travels to interesting places in the Amanda Travels Series. Over the years she worked in rewarding jobs such as an employment counsellor, ESL teacher, recruiter, and retail manager, writing whenever she had a few spare minutes. She is now retired and has a house in Spain where she writes full time. When not travelling, meeting interesting people, and collecting ideas for her books, she enjoys spending time with her husband Paul and entertaining rescue dogs, Dot and Lia. https://www.darlenefoster.ca/

Anthony Jones

Anthony was born in Winchester, England in 1948. He was raised in Sussex, left for London and never went back, working for thirty years in graphic design and later on in education. Now living on the Costa Blanca with his wife Bobbie, he devotes his time to writing and is a contributor to Boxing News. His days are spent sipping martinis on his solarium while jotting down bon mots on this laptop. 

Nancy Blodgett Klein

Nancy was a journalist and magazine editor in the Chicagoland area for many years. She has published hundreds of magazine articles on legal, social and political topics, including for the American Bar Association Journal. Later on, she was a public school teacher, including eight years teaching mostly Mexican bilingual students. She has masters’ degrees in both Journalism and Education. Her first novel was published in 2021 and is titled Torn Between Worlds: A Mexican immigrant’s journey to find herself.  She also write s a blog called spainwriter.home.blog covering a wide variety of topics. She now lives in Orihuela Costa, in the Alicante province of Spain, with her husband Rick.

John McGilvray

John has lived in Torrevieja, Spain, for twenty years and have been a member of San Miguel Writers for seven or eight years. He writes mostly poetry and has had several poems published in various anthologies. His interests are badminton, running, chess and reading. He has competed in two London Marathons including the very first one in 1981. He lives with his partner Carole in Spain.

Maureen Moss

Maureen lives in a small seaside town called La Mata, near Torrevieja, in the Alicante province of Spain. Before becoming a Tour Leader/Guide, she was a personnel consultant, languages teacher, travel agent, management trainer, travel writer, and a book publisher, in roughly that order. Also, throughout her early career, she frequently organized and led group and family tours in Europe. She has a consultancy business specializing in training tour guides and Destination Marketing Companies, including communication and management skills.She loves learning languages and speaks six foreign languages, to varying levels. In her spare time, she loves walking her dogs on the beach, listening to world music, and trying to learn Spanish dances. She loves reading and writing