A page of links to other things Noreen Braman has written

 Stories, Poems, Essays - with more to come

 

Did My Father Die for His Country?

A Retreat to Contemplate 70 

Retirement is a Numbers Game - and you won't like how they add up 

 My Stories on Biz Catalyst 360 Nation

Because Sometimes I have to Repeat Myself 

My Stories on Medium - Some May Require a Fee 

 

Because February is the Month to Repeat Myself

 

 

 

©2017 Noreen Braman

 

 

Because

Because of the priest who told my mother she was doomed to hell

for a tubal ligation after life threatening childbirths,

almost leaving three daughters motherless. 

 

Because of the man who cornered me in the boathouse

attempting to remove my clothes while laughing,

knowing my adolescent self would be too ashamed to tell anyone.

Because of the knife held to my throat

at the workplace where I was the only woman on the floor,

working too fast and making the men “look bad.”

 

Because of the men in the office addressed as “Mr.”

while women were addressed by first names,

and paid significantly less for doing the same job.

Because those same men felt entitled to grope women in the hallway,

make job security contingent on sexual favors they demanded,

or withheld them to punish your noncompliance.

Because of the insurance providers holding the key to healthcare

denying treatment for my children and myself,

until a protracted fight was engaged.

Because women who came before me fought so hard to get here

bequeathing me a country where I can raise my voice,

continuing to demand that we don’t go backward.

Because it is too easy to get comfortable

allowing erosion to do its deadly work,

destroying the firmament under our feet.

Because the women that come after me 

should never suddenly find themselves

back in the dark places that exist in cultural memory,

 

but rather go only forward,

reaching their hands down to pull other women up,

and with them humankind as a whole.

©2017 Noreen Braman

 

©2025 Noreen Braman

 

 

 

2026 - Endings and Beginnings

As 2025 was coming to a close, I sat down and spent some time thinking about life, sucesses, failures, and taking a deep look at the years to come. I realized that what I was expecting to "one day" become my full time work was really only going to be a hobby. A hobby I loved, but one that was taking too much time, and costing too much money. 

 

More and more groups were no longer paying for presentations, and even being paid as a Keynote Speaker didn't quite cover expenses. Whatever the reason, whether the fact that I was also balancing a full-time job, maybe not hitting the speaking mark I thought I was, or even the lack of educational credentials to boost my laughter yoga and laughter wellness training. The Smile Side of Life of a business is just spinning around in a circle. So, last October, I wrote this, which eventually would move the Smile Side of Life into a solely graphic design business at www.njlaughter.com

 

 

 

It is the Laughter We Will Remember

 

To all my friends and followers, including everyone at the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor (AATH), there comes a time when, even something you love, may have to be set aside, or at least reduced in attention.

The Smile Side of Life has been my baby for more than 25 years, and I have an office full of the proof! I've loved the speaking, and met so many people that I would never have crossed paths with, if not for the Smile Side of Life. But the sad reality is, the traveling, the "promotioning", the conferences, the books - all add up to what accountants would call "a hobby."

 

So for now, while I will always live on the Smile Side of Life, it is time to step back, clear out that office!! and choose a new path. (I'll be a little slow while getting my toes fixed). I look forward to a cruise of the British Isles next spring, meeting cousins on my Scottish Grandmother's side, and hopefully going to each and every archeological site the cruise has booked. There will be pictures! 

 

Thanks again for all your friendship - and that remains steadfast!

 

With fond memories,

Noreen Braman

NO EXPLANATION NECESSARY

 

SEE ALSO: MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL

 https://youtu.be/en28Dankfd4?si=YhUCcHo_0wV1IvHB

 

NOREEN BRAMAN • JOY IS MY WATCHWORD – WHAT"S YOURS?

The Laughter We Remember

 

 The Laughter We Remember

I viewed the CBS Morning July 22,2025 story about Gilda Radner and Allan Zwiebel, and how, despite her grave diagnosis, still wanted to laugh. I cried, and smiled watching the story. I’m sharing my 2019 LinkedIn column to remind us all that laughter is a powerful force in our lives, that can be used for both good and evil. Teams that laugh together succeed together. Cruel jokes and laughter can end careers. If necessary, bring in someone to your workplace who can help you learn the difference. And, coincidentally, both Gilda and I referred to this well-known song – remember: “It is the laughter we will remember, when we remember, the way we were.”

---

The song is bittersweet, about love found and lost, and the memories that remain. All that is left after years and years is the laughter they shared. And it comforts them.

Yes, laughter is what we remember. A universal expression, it may actually have served as language for primitive man. Not to indicate humor, but to show mutual harmlessness, openness, and friendliness. Babies laugh before they speak, not because anything is funny. Instinctually, a baby knows that laughter helps two brains sync together, and hopefully that other brain belongs to someone who is going to care for him, bond with him, protect him. It stimulates endorphins and oxytocin, creating what we call love. Love that grew from laughter. It is biology, evolution, magic – a precious gift shared by few other species on earth.

But laughter has a dark side. There is laughter that is not meant to show friendliness or bonding. It is meant to demean, belittle, and objectify.

Those who use laughter as a weapon are often very skilled at it – the bully who makes someone cry, then convinces the rest of the kids to laugh. The sociopath who laughs when inflicting pain. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the person using laughter as a weapon knows that that laughter not only causes pain in the moment, but repeated pain, time and again. For some victims, they cannot tolerate hearing laughter, even when it is joyous. Others are so traumatized they feel that they do not deserve to laugh.

I know that feeling. Laughter was used as a weapon against me more than once in my life. There were the mean girls who didn’t let me into their group when we moved from New York to New Jersey. They laughed at my clothes, they laughed at my accent. Laughter that I could hear sitting inside my house, watching them walk by, sure that they knew about the chaos I was living with.

I carried other laughter with me. The laughter that came with the nickname “The Brainless Wonder.” The laughter that came after, being forced to sing into a tape recorder (you like to sing? Then sing!) a song that had lyrics something like “until I die…” For what seemed like years, I had to listen to that tape, and the voice that cut me off – “with a voice like that, you’re dead already!”

I was easily embarrassed, felt self-conscious, and was overly sensitive to laughter for most of my school years. Someone threw a firecracker at my feet in a school hallway, and the noise momentarily deafened me. But I could see the laughter on the face of the person who threw it.

It was music that saved me, and a music teacher who tolerated my hypersensitivity and tendency to storm out of a room and slam the door. I found the courage to sing again, and in my senior year, I spent the entire year studying humor and satire. The pain of laughter began to fade – not completely, it will never be completely gone, but it is locked away.

I thought it was locked away for good. But the brain is capricious with memory. Things will happen that launch you right back to the most uncomfortable moments of your past.

Like many, I had been sexually assaulted as a teen. A family friend cornered me in a boathouse, groped me, put his hands inside my bathing suit and laughed loudly as I broke free and ran away. I now know that laughter burns into the amygdala. That laughter remains a sharp memory when other details may become fuzzy. I found out that laughter, used as a weapon, lies in waiting, ready to come roaring back to your conscious mind when you experience just the right situation.

Today, when I see laughter used as a weapon, I feel that my voice of laughter’s joys and benefits is weak and unheard. In the hands of a bully, a person of power, or an entire society, laughter as a weapon can cause unrelenting trauma.

Then I remind myself that laughter has become a mission in my life. I know its importance and power. Laughter can heal, bond enemies, reduce pain, and lighten depression. Laughter may highlight social ills and announce to the crowd that the emperor has no clothes. In some societies, it is even culturally or officially suppressed because it might build up the oppressed and topple dictators. Truly, the survival mechanism that humans have relied on for eons.

And that is the laughter I remember.

Yes It is Still 2025. Have I worked on my "retreat plan"?

 

 While commemorating my landmark birthday, 

I spent some time in solitude and contemplation. 

Today I reviewed what I wrote over that time. 

I still have a lot of work to do.

 

https://www.bizcatalyst360.com/contemplations-at-70/