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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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COMMENT (1) | addiction, renewal, self growth, spiritual, thriving
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Second Chances
By Cindy Gundrum

Everyone has experienced it. At least once in their lifetime, we all do, and say, things that we wish we could take back. This is one of mine.

My beautiful Golden Retriever Ruby died of cancer in May 2002. I swore to myself, I would never get another Golden.  She was my best friend for 11 years. I couldn’t ask for a better dog. It would be impossible to replace her, and I resolved to never try. In 2007, along came Dory. A beautiful golden puppy who was sweet as could be. I was in love. In 2008, just as Dory was turning one, we re-located from Saskatchewan to British Columbia. We packed up our lives in Regina, including of course, our two dogs. Dory, and Murph, our wiener dog.  We moved in with relatives, who were not dog lovers. Dory went into heat and bled all over the floors in the house. This distressed the family who we were staying with, and to make matters worse, we were finding it very difficult to find a place to rent with 2 dogs.

I decided that maybe we should rehome Dory. I was kidding myself, “Ah, she’ll be OK, she’s young, she’ll adjust and move on.” Truth be known, I couldn’t have been further from the truth. Read more

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COMMENT (1) | animal communication, animal wisdom, spiritual
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Through And Beyond AIDS
By Deirdre Rhodes (Patwant Kaur)

In 1997, my world radically shifted. One day while my partner Mike was at work, I was packing his ironed clothes back into his cupboard. From underneath this pile slipped a hotel bill. This was nothing strange as he had just returned from Swaziland, where he had played a gig. He was an engineer by day and a musician by night. On closer inspection of the bill, I saw that it was for two, not one, as it should have been. This was all starting to feel like an episode out of “Days of Our Lives.” It perturbed me, but I still thought there must be a logical explanation for this. For the whole day I sat with this information, mulling it over and over in my overactive mind. I said nothing.

The next morning, I asked him whether he had had an affair. I showed him the hotel bill. He had just opened his eyes and was steeped in sleep, a hard time to lie. He admitted that, yes, he had. I felt my heart shred, explode and crumble, my breath lost somewhere between the inhale and exhale, my thoughts blazing in a trillion manic directions. My illusion shattered. Read more

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COMMENT (0) | AIDS, relationships, self growth
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Passing It On
By Delores Liesner

My dad was a quiet and gentle man – kind of a woodsy All-American hard-working man. His hands were muscled, showing his strength, but his eyes revealed a gentle soul.

He had a grocery store in our living room during and after World War II, and an appliance store in another home’s garage, later moving it to a rented store in the nearby town of Norway, Michigan, and for years he harvested cedar and pulpwood. Daddy travelled a lot so any time I got with him was special, but the times I had with Daddy in the woods influenced me the most.

No matter what other challenges were going on in my life, with other family members, at school, or any other area of life, Daddy was able to help me to feel loved and valued. Read more

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COMMENT (1) | family, heritage, inspiration, parenting
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Familiar Faces
By Dawn Lyons

I recognized the moment as one that I would always remember. I was watching a children’s movie and my dad had settled into his favorite chair to watch it with me. He didn’t judge me for being a 17-year-old girl who was still in love with a literary character who had become animated on film. Maybe Dad wanted to check the guy out in case I found a real-life version someday. I’ll never know why he chose to sit and watch with me that day. I expected he would make some sarcastic comments, but instead he was quiet. After a while, I glanced over and saw him staring at the screen, enthralled. His face held an expression of joy and contentment, and seeing him like this held me awestruck.

I had never seen Dad with such an expression before, and I was very aware that this was something I needed to focus on so I could remember the details with clarity.

Maybe somehow, I knew something, or maybe it was one of those moments you look back upon and think that “someone” was trying to tell you something. Because in the short span of a few weeks, I found myself sitting in Dad’s chair, devastated by his unexpected death.  Read more

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COMMENT (0) | loss, parenting, self growth, self realization, self worth
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How Much Fighting Is Too Much?: A Couple’s Guide to Fighting Fair
By Vanessa Voltolina

If you’re in a relationship, you’ve most likely had a spat or two. And according to recent research, arguments about small, nagging things may happen as often as 312 times per year.

Some research even shows that how you handle conflict in your romantic life may have less to do with your relationship and more to do with how you were raised. But regardless of all the small arguments, or how your mother messed you up, enduring screaming matches multiple times a day with your spouse, or stonewalling your boyfriend post-argument may mean that your disagreements have gotten the better of your romance. It’s helpful to know the hot button issues in relationships, and the red flags indicating that it’s gone from lovey-dovey to knock-down, drag out. Read more

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COMMENT (0) | learning, relationships, self improvement
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Expert Series: The Need For A Men’s Liberation Movement
By Joel Brass

It’s tough to be a man. I know. I’ve been one all my life.

Though extremely varied in the circumstances that have brought them to seek help, the men who I see on a daily basis in my counseling practice are all living one common story. They have spent their adult lives doing their utmost to live up to a script that was handed them a long time ago about how to be a good man.

At the core of this male instruction manual is one central “commandment” – to serve, to provide and to protect others (originally territorially, these days materially). They have placed all of their focus and every ounce of their energy and strength into its achievement. While certainly necessary and beneficial, this has compelled them to be warriors in action on the battle plains of the outside world; to know, deal and prepare for only that which is outside themselves. Do this. Fix that. Be successful. Make money. Wield power. Keep your eye on the competitor. Anticipate the next curve ball that the world can throw at you.

It is with shock, and inarticulate but deep and real confusion, and disillusionment that a horrid realization has come to the men sitting across from me in the counseling session. It is the mind-numbing realization that the very methods and strategies that they have been praised and rewarded for in the marketplace, have failed them miserably in their private lives. No one wants a boss of any kind at home. Read more

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COMMENT (0) | enlightenment, relationships, self growth
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Worth The Wait
By Bev Schellenberg

It’s taken a long time for my two children to meet my family: 13 years and 10 years respectively. That’s because my family’s been dead that long. My mother and brother died when I was pregnant with my eldest child, my 13-year old daughter. Years before that, my father died of cancer.

For two evenings my children spend time with my family as we sit at our dining room table. “Here’s a picture of my mother and father when they were young,” I explain as I take the old black and white photos from the envelope.

These are what remain from my life with the family who raised me: stacks and stacks of mostly untitled photos that span 50 years, many years that I wasn’t alive. For years I’ve dreaded going through the pictures, afraid I’d remember what I wanted to forget, or perhaps that I’d forgotten what I’d hoped to remember, and have no one to ask. But now it’s time to sort, to accept and to embrace the past. Read more

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COMMENT (1) | family, parenting, self growth
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Kaloo, The Black One – Endless Loyalty And Love!
By Ernest Dempsey

I am running with all the excitement and energy of a child, and the playful dog is running after me. He is the child of my beloved pet dog Kaloo – the one who died years ago. I have the feeling that Kaloo’s son is a continuation of his loyalty and dedication to me. He is playing with me as Kaloo did years ago. I have only a very slight awareness of the large house I am in, and am indifferent to the setting sun and growing darkness of the evening. Running with Kaloo Jr. has left me breathless, and as I sit on the roof of the house, the dog snuggles at my side. I embrace him, and breathing heavily, I think what a bliss it is to have Kaloo with me in another body, just like his own. Suddenly, I feel how long it has been since Kaloo died. The thought brings an instant feeling of loss. I look at the dog snuggled beside me, and he is no more there. Read more

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COMMENT (0) | animal communication, animal companion, spiritual
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Silent Wednesday
By LuLu Johnson

When the grocery cart caught the back of my heel, I didn’t say anything. And when the lady said, “I’m sorry” in a tone that voided her words, I held my tongue. She was being sarcastic, paying me back for cutting in line. I didn’t think I had, but I also didn’t argue my innocence. I couldn’t. It was a Wednesday.

I don’t talk on Wednesdays. Read more

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COMMENT (1) | humour, self improvement
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Betty Shirley
By Sandy Caldwell

I remember when I was little and would visit my grandfather in his big house. I would make my way up the stairs to the hallway full of family pictures. There in the middle of the wall was a grand portrait of a beautiful woman with dark wavy hair, big black eyes, full red lips, high cheekbones and a look of longing on her face. That was my grandmother, Betty Shirley. Although I have never met my grandmother, I am influenced by how she lived her life.

She was born Betty Jane Smith, an only child deeply loved by her parents. But when she was in her early teens, she lost her mother…that didn’t hold Betty back.

When she was older she headed for Colorado, not knowing anyone or where she was going to live or work. She just fell in love with the place. She thoroughly enjoyed skiing on their great snowy mountains and was taken aback by its beauty.

She found a job working in a resort running their small train up a mountain to the zoo. She lied about being able to drive a stick shift so she could get the job. Read more

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COMMENT (0) | family, inspiration
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Getting To Know You, Getting To Know All About You
By Sharon Carmichael

Discovering the truth about ourselves isn’t easy. Too often we suppress our emotions, leaving them dormant in our minds awaiting to pop out at us when we are most vulnerable. I know firsthand – I’ve spent most of my life avoiding my feelings. My father was murdered when I was fifteen-months old, and I traveled through life imagining it didn’t bother me. I told myself things like, “I was too young to remember him,” and “I never knew him so there’s no way this could affect me.” Little did I know this resistance was shaping itself inside of me forming a home within my identity. Read more

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COMMENTS (6) | empowerment, enlightenment, self worth
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Reflections Of A Non-Traditional Student
By Cassandra May

It was November of 2008 when I received the email from my boss. They were letting me go; my services were no longer needed. I would be contacted if I was needed in the future. This was crushing. How could this be? I had never been without a job; I’d been working straight since I was 15, and sometimes holding two or three part time jobs when one wouldn’t cut it. How many times could I count on this happening?

Then it struck me that while I was upset about the loss of income, I wasn’t so much upset about the loss of my occupation. It wasn’t horribly interesting, or even very challenging. Looking back on my young career, it seemed as if I was typing the same thing, day in and day out, into a computer with nothing to show for it. It was at that point that I did what I always do when confronted with a tough choice, and broke out a pen and piece of paper. I proceeded to make a pro and con list, detailing the pros and cons of going back to school. The pros won out. Read more

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COMMENT (0) | education, self improvement, unemployed
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How A Brown Baby Bunny Changed My Destiny
By Sarah Goodwin-Nguyen

A little brown bunny changed the path of one human life–mine, specifically. But on the day we took him home, my fiance and I just thought he was really cute. We had a mimosa buzz after a holiday brunch, and walked into a pet store on New York City’s Lower East Side “just to look.”

Mama bunny and her litter were all adorable, of course, with their pointy ears and gangly back legs all jostling for room in the too-small glass tank. Read more

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COMMENT (1) | animal companion, animal wisdom, self realization, thriving
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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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COMMENT (0) | animal companion, animal wisdom, renewal, unemployed
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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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COMMENT (0) | relationships, renewal, siblings
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Much More Than A Hearing Dog: The Story Of Jane And Sita Biehl
By Julie Flanders

Jane Biehl resisted getting a hearing dog for years. Biehl, a counselor and professor in Canton, Ohio who has been deaf since childhood, felt that she had managed fine without a hearing dog for decades, and she could easily continue to do so.

Her attitude changed after a friend was robbed and beaten in his own home. Biehl felt vulnerable, and set out to change that by getting a hearing dog. As with so many things in life, the timing was fortuitous. If Biehl had decided to get a dog sooner, she wouldn’t have been partnered with Sita. And if there is one thing that has become clear in the nearly four years they have been together, it’s that Sita and Jane were meant to be. Read more

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COMMENTS (9) | animal companion, animal training, deaf, empowerment
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