by Kai Strand- 2014

How many times a month, week, day perhaps, do you notice something that makes you pause? Maybe it is something you overhear while waiting in the check out line at the grocery store. Perhaps it is something you read that resonates inside your chest. You re-read it two or three more times before continuing. Or maybe it is a person, whose appearance or stance or manner makes you bite your lip and wonder, “Are they okay?”

I think small moments of pause happen more often than we realize. These are the moments in life that combine to make us individuals. No two people hear the mother scolding her child the same way, because they come at it from different perspectives, from different experiences. Our unique histories form the way an action resounds within us.

Most moments that make us pause, do only that. We pause. We consider. We form an opinion. We move on. But now and again, we act or we react.

In those moments we make others individual. By seeing and acknowledging and being a part of something else, we impact another life. Instead of cause and effect, it is pause and effect. Approach those situations with compassion and open mindedness. Avoid judgment. You are shaping the way that individual will react in her next moment of pause, which very well might be caused by you.

When her children were young and the electricity winked out, Kai Strand gathered her family around the fireplace and they told stories, one sentence at a time. Her boys were rather fond of the ending, “And then everybody died. The end.” Now an award winning children’s author, Kai crafts fiction for kids and teens to provide an escape hatch from their reality.

With a selection of novels for young adult and middle grade readers and short stories for the younger ones, Kai entertains children of all ages, and their adults. Learn more about Kai and her books on her website, www.kaistrand.com.