Anne Frank continues to be an inspiration to all of us; a sign of hope even amidst the most horrible and frightening of circumstances. For Anne, the tree outside of her window was a sign of hope; a tree that still remains:

“From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind,” she wrote on February 23, 1944. “As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be.”

The tree that reminded Frank of the promise of life still looms high above the courtyard behind the Anne Frank House, now a museum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, that just marked its 50th anniversary. But at about 170 years of age, Anne Frank’s tree is dying.

The spring before her family and the others hiding with them were captured, the girl focused on the tree’s budding life — and her own.

“Our chestnut tree is already quite greenish and you can even see little blooms here and there,” she wrote on April 18, 1944. Two days earlier, she’d recorded her first kiss.

Frank died of typhus in Bergen-Belsen just weeks before the Nazi concentration camp was liberated in 1945. But her name, story and message live on through her diary and, also, through her ailing tree.

The tree that keeps giving

The tree has been sick for 10 years; a fungus has left two-thirds of it hollow, said Anne Frank House spokeswoman Annemarie Bekker.

A battle began in late 2007 between city officials who wanted to chop it down and activists who insisted it stay. But a court injunction, a second-opinion analysis and a committee mobilization later, it still stands, barely alive and supported by steel.

About five years ago, the museum began collecting chestnuts from the tree to grow seedlings, so that pieces of the original tree could take root and flourish elsewhere. The tree is a horse chestnut, which is often called a buckeye tree in the United States and a conker tree in the United Kingdom.

Its saplings have been distributed to international parks and schools named for Anne Frank. One will be planted later this year at Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

Through a project and contest launched last year by the Anne Frank Center USA, a New York-based educational nonprofit working with the museum in Amsterdam, 11 sites in the United States will see Frank’s tree blossom. They range from the White House and various museums and memorials to a high school that changed U.S. history.

A handful of winning applications were driven by youth inspired by Frank, who would be 80 if she’d survived, and her diary.

One girl in Boston, Massachusetts,12-year-old Aliyah Finkel, felt an immediate connection to the writer, so much so that she chose to have her bat mitzvah — the coming of age ceremony for Jewish girls — in the synagogue Frank’s family attended in Amsterdam before they went into hiding.

“It wasn’t just a diary written by some person, it was written by a 13-year-old girl,” Finkel said. “I was interested in the story of her life. She had so much hope. There are some parts [of the diary] that are really sad, but it’s more inspiring.”

With the help of her family, and contacts they have with local officials, Finkel’s inspired push will bring a tree to Boston Common and lessons about tolerance to the city’s public schools.

Source: CNN News

The power of the Internet can be an amazing and daunting thing. In the case of blogger Eva Markvoort, she used it as a tool to inform people about her debilitating disease. Thanks Gimundo for taking note of her. Please check out their page for Eva’s video as well.

Read on about this special woman:

Eva Markvoort, a beautiful, vivacious 25-year-old woman with dyed ruby-red hair from Vancouver, wrote a popular blog by the name of 65 Red Roses. Contrary to what you might think, the blog wasn’t about gardening: the title was her childhood mispronounciation of the disease she suffered from throughout her life, cystic fibrosis.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a hereditary disease caused by a gene mutation, and can cause extreme difficulty breathing, sinus infections, and many other painful side effects. It affects about one in every 2,000 people. Although CF can often be managed by medications and medical treatments, most people who suffer from the disease live in frequent discomfort, and often die in their 20s or 30s.

Although Eva spent much of her life in the hospital, kept away from other patients because of the risk of infection, she was a constant presence in the lives of friends and strangers alike through her blog. She began posting on her blog in 2006, and began connecting with CF patients around the world through her writing. Soon, her blog drew an even larger audience, and she used it as a platform to show the world what it was like living with CF. It’s now reached over a million readers.

Despite the pain the disease caused her, Eva felt constantly blessed. She loved her family, her friends, and the readers who embraced her. Nearly every day, she’d post messages sharing her happiness for all the ordinary moments of life that so many of us take for granted, as well as her fear and frustration in coping with her disease.

In 2007, a group of filmmakers took an interest in Eva’s blog, and created a documentary movie of her life, also called 65 Red Roses, in which Eva allowed to see the harsh realities of CF like frequent coughing, vomiting, and month-long hospital stays. The film had a happy ending: Eva, who had been progressively sicker over the course of the shoot, got the double lung transplant she had been waiting for. She would be able to breathe again.

Sadly, things eventually took a turn for the worse, and her body began to reject the new lungs. In January, Eva uploaded a YouTube video to her blog: “I have some news today. It’s kinda tough to hear, but I can say it with a smile,” she said. “My life is ending.”

But Eva had none of the self-pity that you would expect from someone who’d been handed a death sentence at such a young age. “I think I’m very lucky, because I’ve loved more than you could possibly think, could possibly imagine,” she said. “So I’m celebrating that: celebrating my life.”

Eva passed away on March 27th, but before her death, she was honored with the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s prestigious Doug Summerhayes Award for her work raising awareness of the disease through her blog and documentary. She was also awarded a college diploma from the University of Victoria, which she had fallen a few credits short of graduating because of her constant illnesses. But neither of these honors meant as much to her as her “wall of love”: the thousands of letters, pictures, and gifts she received from her supporters around the planet, many of whom suffered from CF themselves.

Many of us try - and perhaps we succeed - for a few minutes, maybe an hour. Living in the present is great in theory but often tough in practice. Life is harried and we’re often “future tripping” about a million things at once.

Here are some quotes to remind you of your natural state, the state you existed in as a child - living in the here and now:

With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future.  I live now.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no distance on this earth as far away as yesterday.  ~Robert Nathan, So Love Returns

You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.  ~Jan Glidewell

Would you keep a chive on your tooth just because you enjoyed last night’s potato?  ~From the television show Boston Common

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.  ~Oscar Wilde

It’s but little good you’ll do a-watering the last year’s crops.  ~George Eliot, Adam Bede, 1859

We seem to be going through a period of nostalgia, and everyone seems to think yesterday was better than today.  I don’t think it was, and I would advise you not to wait ten years before admitting today was great.  If you’re hung up on nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a time.  ~Art Buchwald

Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today.  ~Cherokee Indian Proverb

The past is a good place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.  ~Author Unknown

Living the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles, causing you to bump into people not going your way.  ~Edna Ferber

I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.  ~Carl Sandburg, “Prairie,” Complete Poems, 1950

Waste not fresh tears over old griefs.  ~Euripides, Alexander

The past is a guidepost, not a hitching post.  ~L. Thomas Holdcroft

We cannot carry our father’s corpse with us everywhere we go.  ~Guillaume Apollinaire, The Cubist Painters, 1913
People are always asking about the good old days.  I say, why don’t you say the good now days?  ~Robert M. Young

Having spent the better part of my life trying either to relive the past or experience the future before it arrives, I have come to believe that in between these two extremes is peace.  ~Author Unknown

“Old times” never come back and I suppose it’s just as well.  What comes back is a new morning every day in the year, and that’s better.  ~George E. Woodberry

Opportunities fly by while we sit regretting the chances we have lost, and the happiness that comes to us we heed not, because of the happiness that is gone.  ~Jerome K. Jerome, The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, 1889

Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead.  It is going on all the time.  ~Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Forever is composed of nows.  ~Emily Dickinson
Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are.  Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart.  Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow.  Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so.  One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return.  ~Mary Jean Iron

You have to wake up a virgin each morning.  ~Jean-Louis Barrault

With a weekend ahead of us, we have the opportunity to rediscover relaxation. And this is no easy task; sometimes relaxation can seem quite the elusive state of mind. Here are a few quotes to remind you how great nothing can be!

(How amazing is this first quote? Man was a genius!)

“Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.” Leonardo da Vinci

“Relaxation means releasing all concern and tension and letting the natural order of life flow through one’s being” Donald Curtis

“It is requisite for the relaxation of the mind that we make use, from time to time, of playful deeds and jokes” St. Thomas Aquinas

“The happiness which brings enduring worth to life is not the superficial happiness that is dependent on circumstances. It is the happiness and contentment that fills the soul even in the midst of the most distressing circumstances and the most bitter environment. It is the kind of happiness that grins when things go wrong and smiles through the tears. The happiness for which our souls ache is one undisturbed by success or failure, one which will root deeply inside us and give inward relaxation, peace, and contentment, no matter what the surface problems may be. That kind of happiness stands in need of no outward stimulus.” Billy Graham

“One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed.” - Oscar Wilde

“My ideal relaxation is working on upholstry. I spend hours in junk shops buying furniture. I do all the upholstery work myself, and it’s like therapy.”

~ Pamela Anderson

The instinct to survive is strong - even at a young age. This story is a truly amazing tale of how an infant managed to stay alive amidst a horrible ordeal:

On January 12th, when the earthquake struck Haiti,  Nadine Devilme saw her 2-month-old daughter Jenny Alexis collapse through the floor of the house while in her babysitter’s arms. Both the sitter and the baby were buried beneath the rubble, and there was no reason to believe that the fragile infant would have survived.

But five days later, rescue workers came across an astonishing sight beneath the debris: although Jenny’s babysitter had died, the baby was still clinging to life.

“She had a fracture to her skull, she had broken ribs, she had difficulty breathing,” Jenny’s doctor, Dr. Arthur Fournier, told The Times. “So the first miracle was that she had the heart, the courage, to survive by herself for five days.”

However, odds were slim that Jenny would survive if she stayed in Haiti, where many of the medical facilities had been damaged or destroyed by the earthquake. So Dr. Fournier fought through red tape to allow the injured baby to be airlifted to the US, where she would have the greatest level of care.

With medical attention, Jenny’s condition soon improved, but that wasn’t the end of the trouble: her parents were forced to take DNA tests to prove parenthood, but even after finding that they were a match, they were not permitted to come to the US because they didn’t have the necessary visas.

Finally, the State Department permitted an exception, and allowed Jenny’s parents to come to Florida for one year on humanitarian parole. Yesterday, they were overjoyed to finally hold their baby girl again, covering her in kisses.

“Everything that happened here was a miracle,” Jenny’s father said through a translator. “Jenny faced death and when we learnt Jenny was alive we were very happy and couldn’t stop crying. Every day after that, we have thanked God that she was alive.”

Source: Gimundo

Positive news starts with yourself. When you feel more positive, a ripple effect takes place, with far-reaching consequences.

Here are a few pointers from an article in Stepcase Lifehack. They may seem rather basic but essentially, feeling positive is pretty simple if you allow it to be so. The great part? Some small changes can make a big difference.

1. Appreciate as much as you can. This is one of those very simple things you can do to bring more positivity in to your life. I have also found appreciation to be a great way to turn an angry, sad and frustrated mood around to a more positive one.

2. Stop comparing yourself to others. If you don´t then you´ll just create a lot of unnecessary pain in your life. If you pass one person then you´ll just find another person more successful than you. And your brief sense of being a winner will transform once again into anxiety, fear, tummy-aches and possibly heart-attacks.

3. Realize that it is possible to choose how you react. You don´t have live your life in reaction. You have a choice. There is always a gap between stimuli and reaction. If you focus on that gap it will widen and although it might seem in the beginning like stimuli and your reaction are tied together that is not the case.

4. Educate yourself. Self-education can be a great help to live a more positive life. Read great books on the areas of your life you want to improve. Maybe it’s it your financial situation. Or your health. Or your relationships. Ask people with more success in that area than you what they did to improve.

5. Act as if. Your emotions work backwards too. So even if you don´t feel positive, confident, calm or decisive you can act like it. And after you have done that for a few minutes, guess what happens? You will actually start to feel positive, confident, calm or decisive.

6. Live in the now. Don´t let your thoughts drift into the past or future more than necessary. It’s often a sure-fire way to start negative loops of thoughts in your mind.

7. Do some mental rehearsal. This is great way to improve your performance and decrease anxiety in any upcoming situation. Maybe you´re heading into a meeting soon. Then visualize now how great the events will unfold – see and hear it – and also how great will you feel at this meeting.

8. Redefine failure. Michael Jordan once said: “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

9. Focus on what you want, not on what you don´t want. One common problem is to focus your thoughts on what you don´t want rather than what you want. If you do that then it will be hard to get what you want in life. If you want to improve your finances then focus on having a great financial situation rather than your lack of money and your debts.

Recently Steve Jobs gave the 2005 Stanford University Commencement Address. He relayed three stories to his audience which seemed rather simple on some levels but had far-reaching implications. Watch it online at the link above or read below for an excerpt from Psychology Today:

The first story he told was about dropping out of Reed College. More exactly, he stopped paying tuition for classes he didn’t like but stayed on campus, dropping in on classes he did like. One of these was a calligraphy class. The relevance of this chance event is in front of me as I write this blog entry and in front of you as you read it: different fonts for computer text and proportional spacing, innovations introduced by Jobs years later that made the first Macintosh computer the apple of so many people’s eye. The point? Jobs told his audience to connect the dots in life, appreciating that you cannot do so looking forward. You can only do so when looking back. And you need faith - optimism? - that someday the dots will connect.

The second story he told was about getting fired from Apple Computers, the company that he had co-founded. Talk about coupling insult with injury! But hurt and dismayed though he was, Jobs realized that he still loved what he was doing, so he kept doing it. He founded Pixar. He founded NeXT, which was then acquired by Apple, and you know the rest of the story. The point? Find something that you love to do, because “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

The third story was about his experience with pancreatic cancer, which made his own mortality more than an abstraction. According to Jobs, “Death is very likely the single best invention of life” because it allows you to sidestep the trap of thinking you have something to lose. The point? Jobs reported that he often asks himself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” When the answer is no for too many days in a row, he knows he needs to change something.

"To me it was a total God thing," said Nelson

Sometimes Mother Nature intervenes. Whether it’s a storm that keeps you happily housebound or a walk in the woods that soothes your harried soul, nature can pop up and aid you in more ways then we probably even notice. In this case, she was more than noticeable!

Last Sunday, professional surfer Jodie Nelson took to the water for a grueling standup-paddle ride from Santa Catalina Island to Dana Point—a distance of almost 40 miles—as a fundraiser to fight breast cancer for the Keep A Breast Foundation. The nine-hour paddle was difficult, but during her journey, Nelson received moral support from a completely unexpected source: a 30-foot minke whale.

The whale, which Nelson nicknamed “Larry,” surfaced while she was fighting off exhaustion during her long trip. And he didn’t just pop his head up once—Larry obviously took a liking to Nelson and her 14-foot paddleboard, as he decided to splash and roll around her for a full two hours while she paddled. Providing endless entertainment, Nelson’s huge new friend made the journey go far more easily.

Although minke whales aren’t often spotted off the coast of Southern California, Nelson believes that Larry visited her for a reason. “We prayed at 4 that morning that God would reveal his beauty and creation and nature, and allow me to endure this long trek, so for me it’s not such a huge surprise that this happened,” she told Grind TV.

Breast cancer is a cause near and dear to Nelson’s heart, as both her mother and sister are survivors. Before Larry’s arrival, she’d been disappointed that she’d only managed to raise $6,000 for the Keep A Breast Foundation. Some of the celebrity endorsements she’d been counting on had fallen through, and she thought she would fall far short of her $100,000 goal.

But Nelson’s new whale friend could be all the star power she needs. “I thought, ‘I don’t need so-and-so,’” she. “Because I honestly feel like Larry is going to help us reach the $100,000 mark with our fundraising effort.”

Looks like she was right: as of today, Nelson’s donation page shows $100,333 in contributions. If you want to contribute even more to the cause, you can make a donation at FirstGiving. (Larry will thank you for it.)

Source: Gimundo

That’s right - after years of debating and in-house feuding, the United States of America has passed a healthcare reform:

The US House of Representatives has narrowly voted to pass a landmark healthcare reform bill at the heart of President Barack Obama’s agenda.

Under the legislation, health insurance will be extended to nearly all Americans, imposes new taxes on the wealthy and bars restrictive insurance practices such as refusing to cover people with pre-existing medical conditions.

They represent the biggest change in the US healthcare system since the creation in the 1960s of Medicare, the government-run scheme for Americans aged 65 or over.

President Barack Obama:

“It’s a victory for the American people.”

Damn straight.

President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and senior staff, react in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, as the House passes the health care reform bill, March 21, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Source: BBC News

Sometimes we hang on to pain so dearly, it begins to define us. We don’t know what we’d do without it. We get used to it, like an old, moth-worn blanket that never really keeps us warm.

This week, we offer up quotes on letting go:

“True love doesn’t have a happy ending, because true love never ends. Letting go is one way of saying I love you.”

“Letting go doesn’t mean giving up, but rather accepting that there are things that cannot be.”

“There are things that we never want to let go of, people we never want to leave behind. But keep in mind that letting go isn’t the end of the world, it’s the beginning of a new life.”

“When you become good at the art of letting sufferings go, then you’ll come to realize what you were dragging around with you. And for that, no one else other than you was responsible.” Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

“It’s all right letting yourself go, as long as you can get yourself back.” Mick Jagger

“People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.” Jim Morrison

“Some people think it's holding on that makes one strong- sometimes it's letting go.”

Image Source: TheEnvisage