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My Dear Watson
By Arlene Poma
 I hate to see people cry. Inmates and wards do not cry. They stuff their emotions, and that makes it even worse. I was a prison guard in California and if my inmates and wards had told me how they felt instead of acting out, there would have been some hope for them. In life, only cowards pretend not to feel. These people had suffered abuse all of their lives. All I had to do is open their files and read. Unfortunately, their stories were all the same.
At that time, I also knew about hiding feelings. I knew about a very personal kind of pain. I knew about keeping secrets and feeling alone. For years I had slept with my eyes opened while staying with my first husband. In two fits of rage spaced years apart, he had blacked out and tried to kill me. Read more
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Ailynne
By John Edward Casteele
 It’s a moment like no other.
Seeing your child for the first time on an ultrasound is a major event in any expectant parent’s life; you can actually see that little living piece of you, knowing that he or she is real. Unfortunately, not every child shown on an ultrasound is actually all right. My girlfriend and I had to learn this the hard way.
It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm. Everything that you could possibly ask for in early spring. It was the day that we were scheduled for our first ultrasound, and we were both nervous and excited. The image of my child came up on the monitor and I was blown away… until the woman running the machine told us that something was wrong. She wasn’t picking up a heartbeat, and the baby’s heart should have started beating a few weeks ago. The image on the monitor that my world had briefly revolved around tore my world apart. Read more
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Quotes That Help You Make It Through Today: Addicted To Words
By Keith Needham
 Hi, I am a recovering addict and alcoholic who has also suffered with depression, anxiety and OCD. I enjoy reading self-help books and articles about recovery. These writings give me hope and I wish to do the same for others. I feel that one quote can touch your heart as much as a whole book. I have compiled an article with quotes to inspire one to achieve greatness and maximize their potential.
KEITH’S MOTTO:
Once you begin to believe in yourself, others will begin to believe in you.
Once you place a high value on yourself, others will value you as well.
Your dreams and goals become a reality to the extent that you pour yourself into them.
Create your own belief system and feel the power of the words “I can” and “I will.”
Change your thoughts and you will literally transform your life and the world.
Everyone who has achieved greatness or fulfillment in life started out with a dream . . . an unlimited power to create lies within you.
There is always a way to make victory out of adversity, so long as you keep focused on answers and solutions.
To get to where you want to go, it’s important to understand where you’ve been. But don’t let what happen yesterday affect your positive outlook today or your hopes for the future.
The means create the ends – and the ends will be great if the means is love.
****** Read more
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Expert Series: Too Late For Your Dream?
By Noelle Sterne
Do you feel stuck in your job, your activities, your life?
Do you condemn yourself about what you could have, should have done differently?
Do you yearn for more, even if you don’t know what it is?
Do you suspect you’ve got something to give, even if you can’t identify it?
Or do you know what it is but haven’t been able to let it out?
Have you pushed your secret yearnings into the back of your life, like old photos in the sock drawer?
Like many people, maybe you live for the weekends or retirement. Maybe you promise yourself that then—finally—you’ll do what you really want to. Too often, these envisioned golden times never materialize. Why? Read more
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Expert Series: Ten Steps To Personal Transformation
By Amara Rose
 The quest to discover and live our truth is the Hero’s Journey, a sacred pilgrimage home to ourselves. It’s the high road — and a rigorous one. We may try to camouflage our fear of the unknown with bravado, workaholism, or apathy. There’s another way: following the path of the heart. How do we find it? With a transformational road map. I invite you to join me on a mission to remember and reclaim your life purpose.
Step One: Give Yourself Permission to be Passionate
Our resistance is the Refusal of the Call. Change whispers in our ear, and we attempt a high-tech tune-out: call waiting, call forwarding, on hold, voicemail…
We fight change because acceding to it feels like stepping off a cliff into an abyss. Out of touch with our vital, intuitive nature, we panic and crawl safely back into the shopping center mentality. We resign ourselves to buying the leopard print pants because we’re afraid to be the leopard.
How do we answer this call to reclaim our connection to what’s true for us? We start by giving ourselves permission to be passionate, to dream beyond our self-imposed boundaries. Read more
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Felix The Cat Part IV: The Grey Dragon
By Melissa Roberts
 When my cat Felix decided to tolerate Mum and Dad’s cat Tiptoe in 2010, we had been living there for nearly two years. I never expected Felix to give in, but then again I never expected to lose my job and have nowhere else to go but back where I had come from.
Former stray turned beloved pet, Felix moved with me from St. Louis, Mo to small town Kansas after I lost my job as a hospital chaplain in 2008. My parents and I agreed this would be a temporary situation- six months at the most- until I could get back on my feet. We all overestimated my employability and underestimated the recession. Read more
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Through A Dark Secret And Tragedy To Renewal
By Adam German
 I was driving to a Halloween party on the 31st of October 2001, when my cell phone rang. My stepfather said he had received a call from the police that my mother had been in an accident, and I needed to turn around and head back to the house to pick him up. From there, we needed to go to a hospital in Pennsylvania.
I knew why she was there, but he didn’t. According to him, she was in Buffalo visiting family. According to me, she was in Pennsylvania visiting her lover. She was cheating on my stepfather, the man who resurrected a sense of family from the debris left behind from my father’s abusiveness and neglect. Read more
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How Smiling Meditation Changed My Life
By Billie Criswell
 I have always been the type of person that one might associate with meditation…..or New Age healing and Eastern healing concepts. I was even, at one time, a self-proclaimed “hippy.” But the truth was, I had never so much as tried to quiet my mind– I was too busy being busy to even ponder the concept of slowing down.
At a certain point, though, it seemed that meditation came to me much as other things had in life: on a whim, as though I invented the concept. Read more
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Turning Trash Into Beauty – Kat Nicotera’s Unique Art Therapy
By Ernest Dempsey
 Kat-Fasano Nicotera, an ex-heroin addict, believes, because of her passion for doll making, and art therapy in general, that in order to come out on the other side of addiction a different person, a whole person, we must find something that inspires us more than the pain we’re familiar with. This is her story.
Ernest: Hello Kat! I am honored to be speaking to you about your art and healing! Before we move on to talking about doll making, how long was your addiction period, and how did you put an end to it, returning to normal life? Read more
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Coming Home: Felix the Cat Part III
By Melissa Roberts
 In the summer of 2008, I experienced the nightmare of millions of adults during a recession. I lost my job.
At the time, I lived in a small St. Louis apartment with my elderly cat, Felix. Felix is a special needs kitty with chronic kidney disease. Felix and I had already survived her near death and two years of me working as a hospital chaplain. I wondered what would happen to us next.
I had applied for chaplain jobs in St. Louis, and closer to my family in Kansas, beginning in the spring with interviews, but no offers. That summer, I branched out into positions involving teaching, social service, church work, and indeed anything remotely related to my skills and education. Friends, colleagues, everyone I knew gave me tips, and I followed up with no luck. Anyone hunting for a job can relate to that maddening hunger that nothing, but the security of a permanent income, can satiate. Read more
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From The Ashes: The Phoenix Rises
By Billie Criswell
 My relationship with my stepsister, Laurie, has been a complicated one from its conception. I was six or seven years old when we met; she was two years older than I. I remember being so overjoyed to receive the news that in one fell swoop I would be getting the father I longed for and the big sister I wished for. It seemed to my childhood mind that everything was going to be perfect when my mother remarried.
…of course, as an adult, I know now that things don’t always work out perfectly, and that was the way it happened with our new, blended family. Laurie carried a lot of pain in her young heart. Read more
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