Loved this one Maria. So much that can be unpacked from this carry-on suitcase. "So love the people who treat you right. Forget about those who don't." I agree. Not all of the latter can be forgotten but we can detach, with love, to whatever degree is necessary for our self-care, even if they are immediate family members. "Believe everything happens for a reason." This one can cause cognitive dissonance when people expect the reason to be at some point for their own easily recognizable benefit, when often that is not the case. "If you get a chance take it. If it changes your life let it." In a recent piece by Helen Mueller (aka You, Me and Happiness), ( https://medium.com/illuminations-mirror/the-first-step-toward-enlightenment-8062f43f715 ) she wrote "In any given instance there is an infinite number of probabilities of what direction we can take, yet there is a clear difference between following our excitement and our heart and staying in the safe zone, in the familiar." I commented "I agree with one caveat. I have learned that excitement can lead me to make not the best decisions if I act too quickly. I have been appropriately cautioned to practice discernment over resonance. If the excitement lasts while I sit with the decision long enough to make sure it's not just an emotional reaction as opposed to an unadulterated feeling, then that is a good direction for for me to take...." A lengthy thread ensued between us over several days that you and your readers can click through if you're interested.

If I keep parsing the quote this already probably too long comment will not end. I want to conclude with I love that she decided to ignore the doctors' advice and complaints of her kids. I think I would do the same thing as I believe that our dates of death are predetermined ( https://medium.com/@marcus17043/my-takeaways-from-news-that-alec-baldwin-charged-with-involuntary-manslaughter-4381d31637 ) but how we live and how we die is very much the product of free will and unless I felt that treatment would improve the quality of the rest of my life, I would go in a non-medical direction as Miriam did and as one of my favorite and most impactful upon me Medium writers did: https://medium.com/grab-a-slice/returning-to-the-scene-of-the-joy-e9f664cdc056