Martha Temple Todd was born December of 4th, 1956, the first child of John Earl and Roberta Bell Temple. Roberta was from Kentucky but she and her husband lived in Florida. Because tUncle Johnny (as I called him) and Aunt Roberta were teachers they had time off from their jobs during the summer months and also two weeks of vacation time at Christmas. At least twice every year their family loaded up the car and traveled to Kentucky. Martha was the second grandchild and I was the first. We became best friends from the moment we met. The only time we didn’t get along was when Martha swiped my new doll at Christmas and proceeded to rip it’s clothes off and mess up it’s hair.
The trips back and forth to Kentucky continued as the years went by. When we weren’t together we wrote each other long detailed letters about such weighty matters as which boy they had a crush on and the best way to get rid of zits. Before we turned sixteen we talked Grandpa Bell into letting us practice drive with his jeep. The jeep was not known for having good brakes, or any brakes, and the only way we knew to stop it was to run it into the barn wall. Luckily we didn’t knock the barn down and Grandpa Bell didn’t seem to care.
After high school graduation we became roommates at David Lipscomb University. Martha loved college life but I was homesick. Every weekend I would drag Martha back to Kentucky where my mother would wash our dirty laundry and fill us full of home cooked meals and Italian Creme Cake. One weekend Martha decided to stay at Lipscomb while I went home. When I returned Martha said, “I met this boy … His name is Glenn.†And the rest is history.
Martha and Glenn married in 1977 and all the Kentucky cousins and family came to Florida for the wedding. It was late summer and as the newly-weds left their decorated car began to reek of a strange and smelly odor. By the time they had traveled an hour or so down the road they had to pull over to find the source of the smell. The boy cousins, with the assistance of Martha’s brother Mike, had hidden an open can of sardines in the car and the summer heat had intensified the smell until it reeked. But being the christian woman Martha was, she forgave the culprits who placed the sardines there. Glenn still doesn’t think it was funny.
The next years of Martha’s life were busy with babies and bottles, church, teaching, and homemaking. I had also married and Bill and I began our family. When Martha’s three girls and my five children all got together — chaos often ensued. Martha and her girls loved to play board games and had a whole closet full of assorted games. When the our twin boys were left alone with access to the closet the games, boards, and 100s of individual pieces, all went flying. By the time they finished the room looked like Toys R Us had exploded. But being the Christian woman Martha was, she forgave them.
When Martha was first diagnosed with breast cancer she tackled it with intensity. She gave the phrase “Fight like a girl†new meaning. She was determined she was going to watch her girls grow up, get married and have children. And she did. There was nothing Martha wanted more than to be a Nana. When the first grandchild, Austin, was born she and Glenn could not have been more delighted. Eventually there were eight grandchildren and she opened her arms to every addition to their family,
She fought through multiple sessions of chemo, radiation, mastectomy, medications, and neuropathy. She lost her hair four times and laughed about it. The last time she had to shave her head she and her youngest grandchild sat together in the tub while Glenn shaved off her hair. She didn’t want Braxton, her grandson, to be scared when we saw her with a bald head. Martha’s biggest complaint during all the years of her cancer battle was “frustration.†“I’m just so frustrated!†she would say because she wanted to feel good enough to spend time with the people she loved doing the things she loved.
This year her body began to show the wear and tear of the treatments and medication but it didn’t affect her sweet spirit or her faith. When Martha was undergoing brain radiation she took book marks to the people at the radiation center with her favorite Bible verse printed on them. She’d pass them out and say here’s something for you, this is my favorite verse. She may have been receiving brain radiation but she was giving off Christian radiation. You couldn’t know Martha and not know Jesus. You couldn’t know Martha and not know her faith. You couldn’t know Martha and not love her.
Martha told me that she didn’t want people to be sad at her funeral. She wanted them to be happy. I told her that there was no way her friends and family could not be sad. That even though they would know where she was going, they would be sad because they would no longer get to see her sweet smile or share their lives with her. Martha thought about this and said, “You’re right. I guess it’s okay for them to be a little bit sad.â€
There is no way to get around the sadness I feel after losing her. My heart physically hurts with my loss and for her family. With her passing, those of us who knew and loved her must wrap our arms around each other and try to be as strong as she was. We must give thanks for the privilege and honor of knowing and loving her. We must share our stories of happy times and sweet memories with her grandchildren so that her legacy of love lives on.
The world will keep turning. Life will go on, but I know without a doubt that the sun shines less brightly now than it did when Martha was in this world. And I know that for as long as I live, I will miss her.
Earlier on Huff/Post50:
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The CNN news anchor and journalist attended a weekend-long mindfulness retreat with meditation expert Jon Kabat-Zinn this year.
Speaking on ’60 Minutes Overtime’ after his experience, Cooper said: “I don’t feel I’m very present in each moment.
“I feel like every moment I’m either thinking about something that’s coming down the road or something that’s been in the past.
“I meditate. Like, I try. Not every day, but even if I’m not doing that meditation, the moments of my day have changed because I’m not on my phone so much. I’m intentionally not checking my phone every two seconds.â€
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Speaking to Rolling Stones magazine in August 2014, Katy Perry explained why she’s such a big fan of transcendental meditation.
“For people that are so creative and have this kind of creative faucet that never turns off – it just continues and continues – it can be a little exhausting,†she said.
“And, you know, with the continual responsibility of having 127 people on the road, and always being the point person for everything, my subconscious is going even when I’m sleeping.
“I’m dreaming about whatever I’m creating next, or relationships, or blah, blah, blah. So I’m never really off. And meditation is actually the one time I get to really reset.â€
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This year Virgin Group founder Richard Branson has been more outspoken than ever about putting employees’ wellbeing first.
Speaking to Inc in August he said: “If the person who works at your company is 100% proud of the brand and you give them the tools to do a good job and they are treated well, they’re going to be happy.
“If the person who works at your company is not appreciated, they are not going to do things with a smile. Effectively, in the end shareholders do well, the customers do better, and your staff remains happy.â€
In September he went on to implement what is without doubt the
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Despite being just 16 and 14, respectively, the siblings (children of Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith) gave one of the most mindful interviews of the year.
Speaking to New York Times, the pair spoke about meditation and being present:
WILLOW: Breathing is meditation; life is a meditation. You have to breathe in order to live, so breathing is how you get in touch with the sacred space of your heart.
JADEN: When babies are born, their soft spots bump: It has, like, a heartbeat in it. That’s because energy is coming through their body, up and down.
WILLOW: Prana energy.
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Mohamed El-Erian resigned as CEO of investment fund Pimco in January 2014. The true reason for his resignation was revealed in September.
El-Erian’s 10-year-old daughter confronted him with a list of all the important moments he had missed because of his job, including his daughter’s first school football match, her first day of school and her parent-teacher evening.
El-Erian’s resignation reminds us all that success can’t always be defined by money and power.
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In September a cross-party parliamentary group said wellbeing should be the top priority.
The all-party group’s chairman, Labour MP David Lammy, said: “It has been eight years since David Cameron first declared his intention to measure wellbeing, and in that time the financial crisis has shifted many people’s priorities. But in fact wellbeing matters more, not less, in times of economic difficulties.
“Fundamentally this is about creating the conditions for people to live better lives, which should be the primary objective of all policy.â€
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Comedian Ruby Wax has long been a fan of meditation, but in 2014 her open discussion on how the practice helped her combat depression brought the topic to the masses.
As part of her 2014 Sane New World tour, she explored the topic of mindfulness and in an interview with The Telegraph in August 2014, she said: “I wake up around 9am then meditate for 20 minutes.
“I practise mindfulness, which involves letting my garbage go through my brain but always bringing my focus to my breathing. It’s not something I ‘believe in’ – I know from brain research what’s going on, so it’s not a holy thing.
“I try to do it every morning, or failing that I do it in a taxi or on a train.â€
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During a Commons education select committee hearing on child wellbeing, Siobhain McDonagh, Labour MP for Mitcham and Morden, asked Liberal Democrat Daid Laws: “What part do courses in mindfulness play in raising child wellbeing, does the Department for Education plan to promote such courses?â€
In reply, the minister said: “I think we are very interested in promoting this and we certainly think that it’s an area that merits consideration based on the evidence we’ve seen to date.â€
Laws was then asked by committee chairman Graham Stuart, Conservative MP for Beverley and Holderness, to explain the concept of mindfulness.
He told the cross-party group of MPs: “It’s about trying to impact on people’s motivations, their attitudes to life, it’s about trying to get at some of the things we don’t always get at through our crude technical interventions and I think it’s an area that we should take seriously while making sure that there is proper evidence-based scrutiny of it.â€
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Hilaria Baldwin became more well-known for yoga in 2014 than being the wife of the famous Alec Baldwin.
You can see some of her insane poses here or watch her video on yoga poses to help you sleep here.
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London mayor Boris Johnson makes sure his staff at City Hall receive free help to help with mindfulness.
A spokesperson told HuffPost UK: “We have a wellbeing portal on our intranet which provides resources to staff on a range of topics to do with health and wellbeing.
“These include mindfulness podcasts which we have promoted to staff since May 2014.
“As an employer we believe improving employees’ ability to maintain their health and wellbeing, handle pressure and balance work and home life is commonsense, because ultimately it leads to improved individual and organisational performance.â€
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A number of leading footballers were reported to be receiving help and support from psychologists and practicing mindfulness before and during the 2014 FIFA World Cup.
The players wanted to find balance and the inner strength to cope with the pressures of the game.
England’s Daniel Sturridge is known to have devoted one hour of his pre-match preparations to psychiatrist Steve Peters before his World Cup debut in June.
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Even Miss Moneypenny knows the value of sleep.
In a recent interview with the Evening Standard, actress Naomie Harris said: “When I’m filming Bond the most important thing is getting enough sleep.
“I wear cosy monogrammed pyjamas and a silk eye mask, apply Dr Gowri Motha night oil and listen to a hypnotherapy sleep CD.â€
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Bert from Sesame Street and actor Zachary Levi know we all need to switch off our screens in order to reconnect with ourselves once in a while.
They released this pro-digital detox video telling fans to get off Facebook and enjoy the great outdoors during the summertime.
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Former head of the civil service Gus O’Donnell warned politicians that they should consider wellbeing as well as the economy when making policy in March of this year.
Gus O’Donnell proved he’s a man who understands that success is more than money and power when he said: “GDP alone is not enough. To measure a country’s progress, we also need to look at how satisfied we are with our lives and how worthwhile our lives are.â€
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Goldman Sachs became joined other financial firms in the City of London in offering meditation and mindfulness sessions, so we though it was only fair to add its CEO Lloyd Blankfein to our list.
In May, Sally Boyle, head of human capital management at Goldman Sachs, said: “In years to come we’ll be talking about mindfulness as we talk about exercise.â€