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Thoughts on 'never give up & how to keep your dreams alive' crystallize for me in one word - determination.

My grandmothers were monuments to making their way despite obstacles that would have stopped lesser people cold. My grandmother Pearl had polio when she was 6 years old. Doctors told her she would never walk again. She insisted on braces and crutches and used them for 8 years. One day, she woke up with the thought that it was time she got rid of the braces and crutches and walk without them. She threw them away, and made herself walk with 2 canes for a couple of days, and then she threw the canes away. She learned to run again, and could run like a deer when she had to. She danced (and danced, and danced).. I grew up on polkas and powwow music, thanks to her.

My foster grandmother and I were closer in many ways than Pearl and I were. We called her Nana, which means 'nurse' in Italian. She raised 5 children alone through the Great Depression; ran a bakery, taught her children to be productive, and otherwise 'made it' despite such obstacles as: her former husband left her in a fit of pique and she refused to take him back later; he cleaned out their savings, which eventually cost her the house they had been buying; banks refused to lend her money to buy the bakery where she worked, despite proof that she had been running it for years and making it profit when the owner couldn't.

Both women told me more than once that I am "too independent". It is to laugh, and I still do. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

When I was 19, I got a concussion in a horse-related accident. A western doctor prescribed a medication for an unrelated condition 10 months later, and it triggered a stroke. He and other "experts" told me there was "no hope" for recovery. The neurologist went so far as to say (in an offhand manne), "At least you're female so you can still have children, and not too bad looking. If there's some nice young man who wants to marry you and take care of you, you'd better let him before your face starts to sag & your looks start to go."

I was aphasic - could not speak. I could not respond then, but I struggled to my crutches & dragged myself out of the room, snarling as I went. The words weren't there, but the music was clear enough..

My grandmother Pearl taught me then, "My girl, you can do anything you want to, if you make up your mind to it. You must just want it more than you want your next breath." That defines the kind and degree of determination you need sometimes, and it has carried me through many events in life that would have stopped others in their tracks, and have. They detoured me; they slowed me at times; but they did not stop me if I wanted to get past them "more than I wanted my next breath. If I set my mind to it." as Pearl said.

In ancient times, when people worked magic to encourage good crops, or to get a bad situation to turn around such as a drought, they didn't evaluate the amount of work involved. They simply made up their minds they had to have improvement in the situation, and they worked until it came. The "magic ingredient" in working magic is - WORK. The key within work - the force that makes the magic work - is determination.

That is how you keep your dreams alive, and how you bring them to live in your life.

Learn more about this author, Carel Two-Eagle.
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