• 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.”

If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.”

– Robert Fritz

It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.”

– Alfred Adler

A person who learns to juggle six balls will be more skilled than the person who never tries to juggle more than three.”

– Marilyn vos Savant

Inspiration and genius — one and the same.”

– Victor Hugo

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”

– Robert Frost

Anything not worth doing well is not worth doing.”

– Warren Buffett

A discovery is said to be an accident meeting a prepared mind.”

– Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

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

– Thomas Carlyle

With ordinary talents and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable.”

– Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton

The follow-your-gut mentality of the entrepreneur has the potential to take you anywhere you want to go or run you right out of business.”

– Bill Rancic, "The Apprentice"

By your stumbling the world is perfected.”

– Sri Aurobindo

Tolerance and patience should not be read as signs of weakness. They are signs of strength.”

– The Dalai Lama

A man without a smiling face
 should not open a shop.”

– Chinese Proverb

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

– Nolan Bushnell, founder, Atari

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.”

– Henry David Thoreau

To follow, without halt, one aim: There’s the secret of success.”

– Anna Pavlova

Destiny is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”

– William Jennings Bryan

The journey is the reward.”

– Greg Norman

If you were independently wealthy and never had to work a day in your life, would you still choose to spend your time attempting to become a successful entrepreneur?”

– Steven Schussler

We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.”

– Charles R. Swindoll

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

I may not be able to change what takes place, but I can always choose to change my thinking.”

– Michelle Sedas

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

– Debbi Fields, Mrs. Fields Cookies

The quality of your life is directly related to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably live with.”

– Tony Robbins

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

– Charles Darwin

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

– Edward Bulwer Lytton

Are you willing to help other people succeed even when it’s not a requirement of your job to be of assistance?”

– Steven Schussler

Traveling is one way of lengthening life, at least in appearance.”

– Benjamin Franklin

If it isn’t good, let it die. If it doesn’t die, make it good.”

– Ajahn Chah

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”

– Thomas Edison

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

A people who mean to be their Governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

– James Madison

It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy.”

– J. Kristnhamurti, The First and Last Freedom

Success is about finding a livelihood that brings joy, self-sufficiency, and a sense of contributing.”

– Anita Roddick

Happiness is an attitude. We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. The amount of work is the same.”

– Francesca Reigle

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

– T.S. Eliot

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.”

– Robert Louis Stevenson

The great use of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.”

– William James

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”

– Anais Nin

Your own words are the bricks and mortar
of the dreams you want to realize.
 The words you choose and their use establish the life you experience.”

– Sonia Croquette

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Letting go of expectations is a ticket to peace. It allows us to ride over every crisis—small or large—like a beach ball on water.”

– Martha Beck

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

– Anita Roddick, founder, The Body Shop

A diamond is a lump of coal that stuck with it.”

– Norwegian proverb

Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.”

– Albert Einstein

Entrepreneurs are willing to roll the dice with their money or reputation on the line in support of an idea or enterprise.”

– Victor Kiam

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

– Abraham Lincoln

You don’t love someone because of their looks or their clothes or their car. You love them because they sing a song only your heart can understand.”

– L.J. Smith

Look at everything as though you were
seeing it either for the first or last time.
Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.”

– Betty Smith