• Columnists

Cari Shane Parven, Writer

COLUMN = PARENTING

Based in the Washington, DC, area, Cari Shane Parven, a former television and radio reporter, writes for The Washington Post, Cooking Light, The Washington Examiner, Fromer’s Budget Travel, MYBusiness Magazine, Swimmer, Maryland-Life, Home & Design and more. She is also a contributing essayist in the new anthology, “Knowing Pains: Women on Love, Sex, and Work in Our 40s.”

Her dream as a child was to be like Jane Goodall sitting in the forest among the chimps, or Margaret Mead observing the natives in Samoa. As a mother of three and wife to one, she can do neither, so instead she blends into the culture around her and writes about what she sees. Her observations can be found in her blogs, “Inside the Beltway and Under the Radar” and “Keepin’ It Real,” where she writes about mental health issues for Gannet’s WUSA-TV. Parven is a frequent contributor to The Huffington Post and the “Friendship Examiner” for examiner.com.

Before her return to print journalism five years ago, Parven was in front of the camera working as a television reporter and weekend anchor at the NBC affiliate in Hartford, Connecticut. Prior to that, she was a features reporter for the ABC affiliate in the Roanoke/Lynchburg, Virginia, market, a news writer for Philadelphia’s Fox station, and a weekend anchor at the NBC affiliate in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Parven began her broadcast career in radio in Poughkeepsie, New York, and worked for many years as a radio anchor and reporter in Hartford and New Haven, Connecticut. Her print career began at The Poughkeepsie Journal in New York.

In the 90s, Parven ran a successful media-tour company representing a variety of well-known national clients, including Hunts, General Foods, Accutane, and TJ Maxx. Parven not only created the media campaigns for her clients, placing their products on national and local news programs, but also acted as spokesperson for several of her national media campaigns.

A graduate of Vassar College and a Manhattan native, Parven currently lives in Potomac, Maryland. She is writing her first novel, “A Winter’s Spring.”

Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.”

– Leon Joseph Suenens

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”

– John Quincy Adams

To find what you seek in the road of life, leave no stone unturned.”

– Edward Bulwer Lytton

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity.”

– Ray Bradbury

Why am I whispering when I have something to say?”

– Eve Ensler

Do not be afraid of mistakes, providing you do not make the same one twice.”

– Eleanor Roosevelt

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.”

– Abraham Lincoln

Do you believe it is important to give back some portion of your wealth to support charitable causes?”

– Steven Schussler

This is the age when magical technologies make more and more radically fun ideas plausible, even easy. You’re only limited by your creativity.”

– Martha Beck

Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do.
 Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.”

– Ella Fitzgerald

There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”

– Leonard Cohen

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently.”

– Steve Jobs, Apple, Inc.

I can’t go back to yesterday—because I was a different person then.”

– Lewis Carroll

We are perfectionists. We are hungry to work all the time. We are entertained by every aspect of business and we never want to stop working.”

– Suzy Welch

Destiny is a name often given in retrospect to choices that had dramatic consequences.”

– J.K. Rowling

The best reason to start an organization is to create a product or service to make the world a better place.”

– Guy Kawasaki

A lot of people have ideas, but few decide to do something about them now. Not next week. But today.”

– Nolan Bushnell, founder, Atari

The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer.”

– Nolan Bushnell, founder, Chuck E. Cheese's

If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.”

– Anna Quindlen

If you do not tell the truth about yourself
, you cannot tell it about other people.”

– Virginia Woolf

Hope sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible.”

– Helen Keller

The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity.”

– Marcel Proust

The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.”

– Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., U.S. Supreme Court justice

Running that first shop taught me business is not financial science; it’s about trading.”

– Anita Roddick, founder, The Body Shop

4oz tequila + 1oz TripleSec + 2oz lime juice + 1oz simple syrup (sugar=water), 1 cup crushed ice. Shake + dance around the kitchen.

– Avenida Margarita

I’m not afraid of storms,
for I’m learning to sail my ship.”

– Louisa May Alcott

There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way.”

– Christopher Morley

Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.”

– Arthur Rubinstein

An entrepreneur tends to bite off a little more than he can chew hoping he’ll quickly learn how to chew it.“


– Roy Ash, co-founder of Litton Industries

The important thing is not being afraid to take a chance. The greatest failure is to not try.”

– Debbi Fields, Mrs. Fields Cookies

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”

– William Shakespeare

Never cut what you can untie.”

– Joseph Joubert

The gem cannot be polished without friction; nor man perfected without trials.”

– Chinese proverb

You only live once. But if you do it right, once is enough.”

– Mae West

Almost anyone can start a community, but it takes real talent and commitment to get people to show up and keep coming back.”

– Andy Sernovitz

‎No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of another.”

– Charles Dickens

Part of your destiny is to live in the zone of maximum satisfaction.”

– Martha Beck

Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. 
Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow.”

– Mary Jean Irion

The only way to compel men to speak good of us is to do it.”

– Voltaire

I have spent a good part of my life convincing people that a blank sheet of paper is the greatest opportunity in the world, and not frightening at all.”

– Marty Skler, executive vp, Walt Disney Imagineering

Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.”

– Leo Jozef Suenens

They who give have all things. They who withhold have nothing.”

– Hindu Proverb

Some things are destined to be—it just takes us a couple of tries
to get there.”

– J.R. Ward, Lover Mine

Things don’t change. You change your way of looking, that’s all.”

– Carlos Castaneda

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.”

– Thomas Carlyle

You must learn to be still in the midst of activity 
and to be vibrantly alive in repose.”

– Indira Ghandi

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

– Leonardo da Vinci

We need to learn to set our course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.”

– General Omar Bradley

No matter how difficult and painful it may be, nothing sounds as good to the soul as the truth.”

– Martha Beck, from "Leaving the Saints"

Do you have the desire to create something new; the strength of conviction to believe your creation will be successful, and the reservoir of energy necessary to thrust it into the marketplace?”

– Steven Schussler