Eileen Bodoh and Katherine Scherer

Katherine Scherer was trained in counseling at Family Service and the Women's Crisis Line. Having been an active community volunteer facilitating self-improvement and parent education groups, she also served as an elementary and high school religious education teacher. She is a past protege of authors Mark Victor Hansen and Robert Allen. Katherine is retired as a partner in a 30-year-old family business in Milwaukee, WI.

Eileen Bodoh is involved with various Austrian cultural events in Milwaukee, WI and received the Decoration of Merit from the Republic of Austria. Eileen created a successful holistic health conference, and served as a hospice volunteer, influenced by her studies with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Both Katherine and Eileen participated in "The "Twilight Brigade/Compassion in Action" training, founded by Dannion Brinkley. Eileen is a retired Professional Legal Secretary.

Katherine and Eileen are authors of "Gratitude Works: Open Your Heart to Love," a day-by-day recap of gratitude. Their past projects promoting gratitude include donating books to The I AM FOUNDATION''S MILLION BOOKS FOR KIDS CAMPAIGN in San Diego, and to women prisoners in Texas to inspire and motivate them.

Together with 100 others, including Dr. Joseph Mercola and Dr. Julian Whitaker, Katherine and Eileen were contributing authors in "101 Great Ways to Improve Your Health" published by Self Growth. As guest authors in publications, newsletters, and radio broadcasts, their articles were featured in Florida, California, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota and Canada. In 2025 they authored "Blessings Abound: Awaken to the Gifts at Hand," a tour guide through the land of blessings and the different forms they take.

Through their writings, Katherine and Eileen hope to inspire a new appreciation for life's everyday blessings.

​Your book beautifully encourages readers to “awaken to the gifts at hand. What inspired you both to focus on recognizing blessings in the ordinary moments of life, and how did that awareness change your own day-to-day experiences? 
Katherine and Eileen were involved with a church committee and assisted with creating a holistic health conference. From the variety of the vendors who presented, they were inspired to create something positive which led to the writing of their book "Gratitude Works: Open Your Heart to Love." The writing of their book raised their awareness as to how many good things constantly flow into our lives. 

Blessings Abound draws from Native American wisdom, Christian teachings, and the works of great thinkers like Thoreau and Tagore. How did you weave together such diverse spiritual and philosophical influences into a unified message for readers? 
Katherine and Eileen both are readers of a variety of authors and have listened to many motivational and spiritual speakers. Eileen's love of inspirational quotes led to a collection she cherished and was able to draw 
from for their work. As they were writing, they realized great teachings and great thinkers do weave together a powerful and meaningful message for readers. 

Having previously written Gratitude Works, how do you see gratitude and blessings as connected yet distinct themes? What deeper dimension does this new book explore beyond gratitude? 
Having written Gratitude Works which is a collection of five things a day to be grateful for, for an entire year, they began to see that all of life is a blessing to be thankful for because so many adversities turn out to create good lessons to be learned. It is hard not to see that life itself is a blessing. The deeper dimension the book explores is this: what we think is what we are, and we do have choice about what we think. When we think of goodness and are thankful, goodness continues to come to us, and our lives feel better.
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Both of you have devoted much of your lives to service--through counseling, hospice work, and community education. How have those experiences shaped your understanding of what true blessings are? 
The experience of service opens one up to the fact that all life has adversity in it. At the same time all life has the ability to handle that adversity. Sometimes we handle adversity with help and sometimes by ourselves. Our service experiences helped us realize how people can and do better themselves in spite of their adversity. Women who participated in our prison book program developed a greater sense of appreciation after practicing gratitude for a very short amount of time. Two of many comments received were: “...your book has opened my eyes to the beauty that's in our world instead of all the ugliness I've seen." "It helps me open my heart to love others and to love myself." 

If a reader were to take just one practice or mindset from Blessings Abound to transform their outlook on life, what would you want that to be-and why? 
By setting aside time each and every day to recognize our blessings, readers realize that life itself is a privilege and a blessing. In the short amount of time it takes to recognize our blessings and to give blessings to others, we can create a powerful energy that extends far beyond ourselves. This powerful energy is nothing short of love. Blessings given even in silence, have an effect in creating the peace and harmony we all want to enjoy in our lives. 

How can your book help someone enjoy the spirit of the Holidays? 
Thanksgiving gives us the opportunity to focus on positive thoughts. Having gratitude for our blessings moves our enjoyment to a deeper level because we are privy to peace and harmony through gratitude. The Christmas magic of giving gifts to others carries into the new year and stays with us when we simply remember the joy we received from it. By seeing happiness in another, we enjoy more happiness in ourselves, and we and world are better off for it. 

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Featured Article by the Authors: 
​KISS - Keep It Simple Sweetheart
The Two Most Beautiful Words

Purchase the book here:
https://www.amazon.com/Blessings-Abound-Awaken-Gifts-Hand/dp/0974855014