“Moreover, people who are taught that learning is a struggle that often involves making errors will go on to exhibit a greater propensity to tackle a tough challenge and will tend to see mistakes not as failures but as lessons and turning points along the path to mastery.” – Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel
Buena Vista, Colorado, E.H. Uminn, 1997
“The biggest adversary in our life is ourselves. We are what we are, in a sense, because of the dominating thoughts we allow to gather in our head. All concepts of self-improvement, all actions and paths we take, relate solely to our abstract image of ourselves. Life is limited only by how we really see ourselves and feel about our being. A great deal of pure self-knowledge and inner understanding allows us to lay an all-important foundation for the structure of our life from which we can perceive and take the right avenues” – Bruce Lee
Buena Vista, Colorado, E. H. Uminn, 1997
“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”- Roald Dahl
“There are no ‘ifs’ in God’s world.”- Corrie ten Boom
Collegiate Peaks Wilderness Area, Colorado, E. H. Uminn, 1997
“We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” – C.S. Lewis
“I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.”- J. D. Salinger
Rocky Mountains, Collegiate Peaks, Colorado, E. H. Uminn, 1997
“We like to imagine that it’s possible for life to be one eternal summer and that we have uniquely failed to achieve that for ourselves. We dream of equatorial habitat, forever close to the sun, and endless, unvarying high season. But life’s not like that. Emotionally, we’re prone to stifling summers and low, dark winters, to sudden drops in temperature, to light and shade.” – Katherine May
“The faith to move mountains begins with the patience to sift sand.”- Rigel J. Dawson
Rocky Mountain backpacking trip, Colorado, E. H. Uminn and her aunt, 1997
Mary Oliver said once, “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took years to understand that this, too, was a gift.”
All of it, all the dark and hard parts, are gifts.
The Sinks, Smoky Mountain National Park, E. H. Uminn and her cousin, 1998
“I live in a world where I was cushioned, protected, to the fullest extent. I knew there were difficulties, but I didn’t think they would touch me. And as I grew older, I came to the realization that they don’t just touch us, but they seep out of us, out of me.
My priest spoke today of God is love, not merely showing the action of love, but was, is, as His very nature and being, His essence. And that He became Love in His sacrifice, on his utter humiliation on a cross, despite the fact that I crave my own selfishness. He is utterly unlike me, but someone I am utterly captivated with because He is unlike me, giving grace to the humble, giving power over death to those who believe.
He walked into the darkness, victorious, and cast about the commanding light.” – E. H. Uminn
Tahquamenon Falls, Upper Peninsula Michigan, E. H. Uminn, 2000
“Why do we still strive for perfection and fain disbelief and shock when it doesn’t exist? Why are we at all surprised by human nature or our propensity to sin? Why are we equally, after the shock, willing to let it take over? Why do we wallow in the melodrama of how hard something is, only to tire and bore of our own inner turmoil?” – E. H. Uminn
“Complaining about a problem without proposing a solution is called whining.”- T. Roosevelt
“And here’s the real important thing. Grit is about working on something you care about so much that you’re willing to stay loyal to it…it’s doing what you love, but not just falling in love—staying in love…Grit has two components: passion and perseverance.”- Angela Duckworth
Tahquamenon Falls, Upper Peninsula Michigan, E. H. Uminn 2000
“Be patient with all that is unresolved within your heart, and try to love the questions.”- Rainer Maria Rilke
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”- Viktor Frankl
Devil’s Marble Yard, Lexington, VA, E. H. Uminn, 2012
McAfee’s Knob, Virginia AT, E. H. Uminn, 2020
“Being positive in a negative situation is not naïve, it’s leadership” (anonymous)
“Sometimes the fear won’t go away, so you’ll have to do it afraid” (anonymous)
“I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that’s how you grow. When there’s that moment of, ‘Wow, I’m not really sure I can do this,’ and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough.”- Marissa Mayer
“Wishing Rocks” from Warren Dunes, Lake Michigan, E. H. Uminn, 2021
E.H. Uminn Underdog Achiever 