MSI Press Blog

Into Adult Years Latin did not end with high school. It simply changed shape and followed me into adulthood, showing up in places I never expected and proving itself useful in ways no guidance counselor could have predicted. During my international consulting years, I found myself needing French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian—even a bit of Moldovan. All those Romance languages, all those verb systems and noun patterns, were instantly familiar because Latin had already laid the tracks. Once you’ve internalized conjugation and declension, the rest of the Romance family feels like meeting cousins: different personalities, same bones. And it wasn’t just the Romance languages. When I later encountered German and Russian—languages that left many of my college classmates bewildered—their case systems made sense to me. Declension wasn’t foreign; it was simply another variation on a theme I had learned at nine. Latin had quietly prepared me for linguistic terrains far beyond its ...

  There’s a kind of strength that doesn’t come from pushing harder. It comes from listening deeper. It’s the strength of a tree that bends in the wind but doesn’t break. The strength of a river that flows around obstacles and still reaches the sea. To be the source of your own life is not to dominate the forces around you. It is to work with them. To move in rhythm. To shape your path through attunement, not resistance. 1. Harmony begins with noticing You can’t work with what you ignore. Notice the seasons in your body. Notice the patterns in your relationships. Notice the signals in your environment. Notice the invitations life keeps offering. When you notice, you begin to dance instead of fight. 2. Harmony requires humility You are not the only force at play. There are tides. There are currents. There are ecosystems of energy and timing and grace. Humility doesn’t mean shrinking. It means aligning. 3. Harmony honors both resilience and surrender Resilience...

  Chris Richards' book,   Nothing So Broken , reached  #7 in Vietnam War biographies and #160 in disability biographies. Book description:  In the shadow of loss, a path to healing begins. Chris Richards grew up in a small New England mill town, where life was tough and loyalty ran deep. At just 19, his world was shaken when a close friend was left permanently disabled by a devastating accident. At the same time, Chris’s father began to show troubling symptoms linked to his service in the Vietnam War—unseen wounds that would slowly unravel the man he once knew. The weight of watching two people he loved unravel under the strain of trauma and physical decline left deep scars—ones Chris carried silently into adulthood. For years, he buried his grief and fear, never imagining that one day, facing his own crisis, he would turn to their stories for strength. This powerful and moving memoir explores the enduring impact of trauma, the quiet power of resilience, and how...