Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Author: Debra Basham

  • Flat Tire

    No one appreciates a flat tire, but this time that gift might just have protected him and his family.

    They had been out of town for the Easter holiday when they had the flat in the driveway. Taking the car in for service, they discovered a t-pin was in that tire.

    More importantly, however, when the service was performed, another tire on the vehicle was found to be seriously defective.

    He instantly realized the blessing. That tire could have resulted in a dangerous blow out at highway speeds. His family had been protected by a flat tire!


    flat tire

  • Poker Table

    Her mother had recently transitioned and so she went for a healing session to support her through the grief process. The image of a poker table popped into the healer’s mind immediately.

    “I get the image of a game table, you know the kind people play poker at, and my sense is that your mom is doing well. I would say she is letting you know she is enjoying herself. Your dad’s energy pops in, too. That all sounds promising to me.”

    They went on with the session and at the end she said, “The dining table in our home when I was growing up was a poker table. It came out of a saloon. In fact, after my dad died, when my mom sold the family home, I got that table. It is still in my house now.”

    You can appreciate when information comes that you know you could not have gotten through your intellect. You are being guided!


    poker table

  • What People Remember


    People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.

    This has been a very nostalgic week. I received an email message from a woman I worked with some time ago. Her email message:

    I don’t know if you remember me or not. I was a patient in the early 2000’s, and you helped bring me out of a dissociative stupor. 
    I would love to see you again, to say thank you if nothing else. I will be in the your area in a few weeks.
    If it’s not possible, please know that I’m thinking of you every day with tremendous gratitude.
    My heart was so touched, I was brought near tears. 
    Maya Angelou said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” 
    I assured her, yes, I do remember her… 
    After all of these years, I still keep the hand-made afghan from her in my car, and this lovely needlepoint she made sits by my massage table here at the house. 
    Later in the week, my partner (co-developer of Subtle Communication Systems), Joel Bowman, and I met one of his former students as we walked through the WMU Engineering Campus. When she realized who he was, she said to him, “We had to do a presentation and I had been painfully introverted. I realized I had to overcome that to be what I wanted to be. Your class changed my life.”
    Not everyone we touch will come back into our lives to say thank you, but whether someone is in our life for a lifetime or for a season, there is always a reason!

  • 108 Beads

    She had gone into the bead shop to purchase beads for a prayer necklace. There are 108 daily recollections, along with section beads, and intention beads, and marker beads. She wanted to stay within her budget, so she and the shop owner both had their eye on the prices, but it was vital that the beads not only looked right, she wanted to be able to feel where she was when she was praying.

    The marker beads needed to feel distinctive from intention beads, and the daily recollection beads needed to be unique from the section beads. They finally determined the round beads would best serve for the 108 daily recollection beads. There were four strings of that type of bead, but how many single beads were on each, and were there enough?

    Most strings in the shop had 25 beads on them….

    The shop owner picked up one string and began to count, then announced, “Twenty seven.”

    She counted the second string and said, “Twenty seven.”

    She grabbed a calculator, hit some buttons, and whispered, “Four times 27 is 108.”

    They each picked up a strand and counted.

    “Twenty seven,” they said together.

    Sometimes we notice that everything has been laid out for us!

  • Daily Om

    As she sat at the keyboard writing an upcoming newsletter article about not comparing yourself to others, the Daily Om popped in with that exact subject!
    daily om
    Notice your own thinking about coincidences. When you notice how often things like this happen, it does confirm that we are part of a larger picture, doesn’t it….

  • My Mother


    It turned out to be a beautiful day, even though it started out cloudy and sprinkled a bit at the end of the Memorial Day Parade. The sky is now ribbons of blue and pink. 
    It has been a day of memories for me, for sure, as May 25, 2003, we had my mom’s Celebration of Life ceremony. It was the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend that year. 
    Most of us have heard the story about the woman who cut the end off the ham, put both pieces in the pan, and put the pan into the oven. When asked why she did that, she realized she did not know why, but she would ask her mother (who had done that). 
    Three generations back, the truth comes forth—her grandmother’s pan was too small for the ham to go into without cutting the end off! 
    Socrates once stated: “The unexamined life is not worth living,” and that certainly applies in this situation. Perhaps it applies to much more in our lives as well. 
    Today I discovered an amazing woman. Her name is Meggan Watterson, and she has traveled the outer world of religions in search of the divine feminine before going within to find it. Here is a powerful excerpt from the Introduction of  her book, REVEAL: A Sacred Manual For Getting Spiritually Naked (Hay House Inc., 2013):
    What I want the spiritual process revealed in this book to give you is what it gave to me: a sense of empowerment that allows you to shed any feeling of being a victim and own everything that has happened to you; a feeling of embodiment that allows you to let go of every notion about the body except that it’s sacred; an awareness of true love as a limitless source within you, not something or someone outside you; a feeling of self-worth that lets you accept that love is your birthright, not something you must prove yourself worthy of; the audacity and authority to know that you don’t need to keep your power hidden, that we all have a direct connection to the Divine; a belief in service and meaningful work in the world that doesn’t deplete you but rather demands that you receive as much as you give; an experience of the love and support of spiritual community to remind you again and again that you’re not alone—that women do the work of saving each other’s lives.
    The readers of this blog who know my birth story have supported and nurtured me as I faced the inner pain of learning my mom discovered she had syphilis at the same time she learned she was pregnant with me. My dad had had an indiscretion. She and I spent my first trimester with her being treated at a syphilis sanatorium. She was understandably embarrassed, afraid, and angry. While this was not known by me until I was forty-something, her thoughts and emotions and beliefs about all of that affected me. 
    I am so thankful she was able to share with me before she passed from this life. I remember telling her about the vague sense of womb trauma resulting in not feeling loved or wanted. The gift she gave me was worth more than fortunes: “I could not have not wanted you, I did not even know you. I have loved you since the moment I laid eyes on you.”
    Louise Hay (sometimes called the Queen of Affirmations) said, “You’re the only thinker in your head.” 
    Yesterday, awash in many emotions, two wonderful women friends again held my tender heart and assured me I am loved and wanted. 
    Yes, women do the work of saving each other’s lives. Today, as I remember my mom’s passing from this life, I remember the gift of love she gave me and I vow to pass it on.

  • Kitty Cat Love

    She received a request for prayer support from a friend. Her friend’s partner was facing heart surgery. Before responding to the request, she sat quietly thinking about his upcoming surgery, and holding her friend in love and support.

    As she sat there, she kept having the sense of a cat. When she sent an email back, she included that information.

    “I have an image of you being held by I’m going to say a kitty cat’s love. I have never known you to have a cat, but that’s the image that came through. I love cats, so it’s possible that my joy at their purr would be part of supporting you, too.”

    This response came back: “We had to put down my beautiful 20 year-old cat this winter, who had shiny long black fur & green eyes. And always purr, purr, purred.”
    black cat

  • Should Have Had a V-8


    I look at the post date of my previous blog entry and I realize it was 13 days ago. Where has all the time gone? These days are extra busy. I find myself doing laundry after ten and making soup before nine.

    We brought my mother-in-love home from the hospital on oxygen where she will now be getting support. What an intense time of meeting nurses and social workers and learning to operate machinery and setting up systems to keep things organized.

    On Saturday when I picked mom up at the hospital to bring her home, the nurse/aide helped her into the front seat while I was opening the hatch for loading in the oxygen tank. Coming around to the passenger side of the van to buckle her seat belt, I noticed the seat was in a reclining position. 
    “Lean forward so I can bring your seat up,” I told her. 
    As she leaned up, I pushed the handle. The seat flew forward smacking her in the back. 
    She immediately popped out with, “I should have had a V-8!” 
    We both laughed. 
    We laughed later when we realized we had carefully put her oxygen tube on her, set the concentrator to “2” as we had been duly instructed, but I had never turned the oxygen on! 
    My sister-in-law also shared a funny story about one day when they were racing to the doctor and my sister-in-law ran through on a yellow light. Mom’s quick-witted quip was that they could stop twice the next time! 
    These are tender times for so many of us. One dear friend has her mom in the our local hospice residence. Another is bringing her younger brother home with hospice care today in a city in a nearby state. We are each facing the long journey of the only inevitability of our lives: our transition from these physical bodies. 
    Speaking at a nearby church next Sunday morning—Memorial Day—the title is “The Last Minute” and I will open with this: 
    Way back in the days of full-service gas stations, a minister waited in line to have his car filled with gas just before a long holiday weekend. The attendant, a member of the church, worked quickly, but there were many cars lined up ahead of the minister. 

    Finally, the attendant motioned the minister toward a vacant pump. “Reverend,” said the young man, “Sorry about the delay. It seems as if everyone waits until the last minute to get ready for a long trip.”

    The minister laughed and responded, “I know what you mean. It’s the same in my business.”

    Whatever is present in your life right now, it is best to remember we are each getting ready for a long trip every moment of our lives. Take a lesson from my mother-in-law, and don’t wait until the last minute. Let’s all make every day one filled with heart-felt laughter.

  • Lessons from the Light

    She was traveling with a good friend when she got the upsetting news of the death of a neighbor’s son back home. His death had been suicide….

    The book she had brought along with her was George Anderson’s Lessons from the Light: Extraordinary Messages of Comfort and Hope from the Other Side. According to Publisher’s Weekly, Anderson is widely considered the world’s greatest living medium, and remains the premier voice among those who communicate with lost loved ones.

    Later that evening, still shaken by the news, she opened the book to the spot where she had previously left off and turned the page to see a chapter on suicide!
    snip-lessons from the light

  • There’s An Angel for Everything

    house for rent2
    She had recently relocated to Florida, and her son and family had already moved there, too. Her adult daughter so wanted to come join the family, but she was having a challenge finding an appropriate rental home (within her budget and one that would take pets!).

    After weeks of searching, on a particularly frustrating morning with no success, she threw her hands up, saying out loud, “I am going for a walk. If there is a real estate angel who can work on this while I am gone, I would be very grateful.”

    Nearing the end of her walk, and very nearly back home, she struck up a conversation about Florida plantings with a man who was working out in the yard. One comment led to another and she confessed her frustrating morning and her need for a house for her daughter. The man said, “I am here working today getting ready to put this house up for rent.”

    The house was charming, the rent was in their budget, and the owner welcomed pets. That house has been her daughter’s home for many years now.

    She titled this wonderful story, “There’s An Angel for Everything!”