Welcome to PennySTee.com!

Welcome to www.PennySTee.com  Let me introduce myself; my name is Penny S. Tee. I’m a writer.  Throughout my life, I’ve written many different pieces including blogs, website content, business proposals, press releases, some poetry and now I’m writing a book.  The S is for Schwartz, my maiden name.  Yes, I’m Jewish and so is my husband.  As the story goes, my husband’s family name was changed at Ellis Island when his relatives emigrated here from Russia.  The family name was Tilkin and I’m firmly convinced that the guy was daydreaming about how he would much rather be playing golf.   I also have a beloved teenaged son.  I’m sure he’ll make his presence known throughout my writing, because once you become a mom, well, they’re always on your mind.

Besides being a wife and a mom, I’m a life-long learner.  I was always the kid that loved school.  I think it’s because school was where I’d get the “at-a-girls” from teachers, unfortunately not from home.  When I think of my childhood, Maya Angelou’s famous quote comes to mind, “If they knew better, they’d do better.”  I believe teachers are the unsung heroes of our communities.  I will always be grateful to Mrs. Hernansky for her kindness and Mrs. Borden who taught me to love to read.  Can you relate?  My son is mystified (see what I mean about him popping into my thoughts), that I actually take lots of classes and read books out of choice.  “There’s the rub,” as William Shakespeare would say.  We all make choices in life and even choosing not to make a choice is still a choice.

Well, many of the spiritual teachers I have studied throughout my life, like Jean Houston, have spoken of patterns that keep repeating in your life.  Reading and writing fall into this category for me and math sure as hell doesn’t, but in my mind, that’s why calculators were invented.

My book, War Wasn’t On Our Itinerary, A Mom’s Search For Peace, begins with the true account of our family’s Israeli vacation when we found ourselves at war.  It was in the beginning of Operation Protective Edge, in the summer of 2014. Let me tell you, there is no chapter in a parenting book on what to do when a war starts when you are on vacation!  Think touring by day and bomb shelters at night.  As you can imagine, there was a lot of second guessing about whether we should stay or get out of dodge.  The book continues on with the remainder of the war, the results and finally who is working on Peace, in Israel, at the grass-roots level. “A Mom’s Search for Peace,” is two-fold.  On the one hand, it literally is a search for Peace – who are the heroes working on Israeli and Palestinian Peace?  I couldn’t just end the book in the ugliness and devastation of war.  I had to find some hope for my son’s generation and for all of our families.  I have been blessed to meet some amazing people in my research and I talk about their efforts.  I’m sure I’ll be discussing them in my blogs as well. On the other hand, the search for Peace was also an internal one.  As Joseph Campbell said, “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”

Almost four years ago I painfully shut down my website called WeRMoms.com – hopefully some of you, remember it? I loved having it, writing blogs, providing “Mom-i-nars, etc. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the knowhow to run it with financial success, so I made a decision to shut it down and stop the financial bleeding. At that point, feeling dejected, I thought what now? What will I do? I started on a long personal growth journey. Now I realize that too is another pattern in my life. I’ve been looking at improving myself and personal development work since I was in my twenties. I’m sure my husband and son wonder at times, What’s taking so long? So I’ve spent the last four years reading and rereading books, taking classes, teleseminars, attending a coaching group and learning to meditate.  All of this learning got me to here and my latest adventure of self-discovery, PennySTee.com my new website, my newest version of Me.

Along the way, I’ve discovered and met some incredible teachers.  The themes of www.PennySTee.com authentically reflect who I am.   Blogs will include topics such as information I’ve learned from my research for War Wasn’t on Our Itinerary, A Mom’s Search for Peace, Israel, parenting, travel, spirituality of many types, personal growth, some religion (given the topic of my book), and some blogs just for fun. I’d love to have conversations about them with you.

Over the years, I’ve learned that no one achieves anything worthwhile without the help of other people. I’m very grateful for the family and friends who have supported me along my sometimes bumpy path.  I’d love for you to continue to Join Me On My Journey.  Help me be a stronger writer, mom, wife and friend.  Let’s learn and grow together.  Please subscribe to my blog to stay in touch : )

I don’t know who we’ll be tomorrow, but I can assure you that change is the only certainty.  Changing consciously is what I strive for.  Deepak Chopra says that every few weeks due to our cells changing, we all are actually new people.  He continues that “you will never be exactly who you were yesterday or who you will be tomorrow.”  I hope you like who you see when you look in the mirror, and if not, remember, you have the power to change that.  It’s definitely not easy, but always worth the effort!

To my traveling companions, I say “L’Chaim,” which means To Life! Let the journey begin…