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Her Hands
By Emily Rose
 When I was very young, my mother’s hands were as white as porcelain, as smooth as silk, with each long slender finger tipped with fire engine red. I loved their beauty and inherent strength, their ability to dwarf my own, and the fine cursive handwriting and pencil sketches they could do.
They looked nothing like my own hands. Mine were tiny and insignificant, always dirty from playing in the garden and scratched from climbing trees. I wanted mine to be more like hers. I wanted to be more like her. I admired her for her courage, her beauty, and most of all for her strength. I thought she could handle anything. Read more
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Walking The Walk
By Joseph Longo
 My bronze baby shoes had been on my desk for years, collecting dust. One day, I shoved them in a box with other tired tchotchkes. Recently, looking for something else, they jumped out at me. Some of the bronze had turned green and had begun to flake. But the shoes looked remarkably alive, as if a child could still step into them and walk. Read more
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Chocolate
By Mary Holland Woodward
 As a baby, I could have died from my medical condition which was not well-understood.
Classic Galactosemia had already taken the lives of most – if not all – similarly-diagnosed babies before me.
Classic Galactosemia primarily affects the health of the liver and kidneys.
Mom and Dad were told early-on that, even if I lived beyond a few months or years, I would be severely developmentally disabled. After 47 years in this life, I can tell you, “I’m not!”
In my own non-technical lingo, here’s what I’ve learned so far about Galactosemia:
It’s the simple sugar galactose that is the culprit. I don’t have the enzyme GALT (galactose-1-phosphate uridyl transferase) that is present in most healthy bodies to naturally convert the simple sugar galactose into the simple sugar glucose.
I grew-up knowing that I should never eat anything containing the simple-sugar lactose. I could never eat chocolate! Read more
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Expert Series: Learning To Live My Light
By Amara Rose
 One of the hallmarks of any spiritual journey is that at some point, you will be asked to surrender who you think you are. The Call seldom comes in an obvious form. For me, the invitation to reawaken to my true essence, to reclaim the sacred feminine within myself, wore a brilliant disguise: debilitating arm pain. I was being asked to lay down my arms, to relinquish all the roles I’d been taught that had enabled me to arm myself against knowing who I am, in order to embrace something I couldn’t outwardly touch.
It was a colossal summons. And I wasn’t willing to answer — at least, not without putting the caller on hold a few times, letting it go to voicemail, or pretending I’d erased the message.
I lost the use of my arms for over a year at the start of 1993. The pain had been building for some time but, stoked on my burgeoning marketing communications business, piano lessons, and a ninety-miles-an-hour lifestyle that spelled “freedom” from the drudgery of nine-to-five, I ignored the warning signs. I was too busy; business was too good. Read more
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An Interview With Olivia Newton John
By Michelle Morgan
 From clean-cut singer of ‘Country Roads’ to leotard-wearing disco diva in ‘Physical’, Olivia Newton John has had a career that’s spanned nearly five decades. She is loved by everyone from school children to grandmas and yet still remains as down-to-earth as she ever was. Here Olivia talks about yoga, life, and her trek along the Great Wall of China….
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Say the words Olivia Newton John and most of us will automatically think of her most famous and successful role – that of Sandy in the hit movie ‘Grease’. But while ‘Grease’ was – and still is – a worldwide phenomenon, there is so much more to Olivia Newton John than dancing with John Travolta. Read more
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Yes You Can!
By Michael W. Michelsen Jr.
 If Dick Hoyt is trying to guilt me into being a better father, I have to admit that he’s accomplished his mission very well. That’s not to say that I’m not a good father, I am, but if it came down to comparing the two of us, he leaves me in the dust. Literally. Read more
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The Day My Dad Died — Part Two
By Diane Schachter
 October 11th – a Friday, one of those perfect fall days. The air is crisp and the trees are bright as they glisten in the sun. Children are playing on the street. How can all of this be happening while my dad lies in a hospital bed in our dining room, taking what will soon be his final breaths? Read more
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Expert Series: What Are You Willing To Do, That No One Else Is Willing To Do?
By Brad Worthley
 In mid-October of 2006, the love of my life, Melanie, got out of the bathtub and mentioned her skin itched badly and it would not stop. We assumed that it might have been the bath oil that she used, so we dismissed it as a topical issue (as something on top of the skin that created the itch, like the bath oil). The itching did not stop and it progressively got worse so we considered all the possibilities and changed laundry detergent, soap and anything else that we believed could be causing this unusual condition. We even re-washed all of her clothes in allergy free washing soap, which we believed would eliminate the itching, but it did not. Read more
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I’m Going To Live Until I Die
By Ed Griffin
 In the spring of 1996, my doctor, Todd Arnold, sent me for some tests. The normal range for the PSA is .0 to 4.0. Mine was 19.0 Dr. Andreou, an urologist and like Dr. Arnold, a human being, arranged for me to go to the outpatient clinic of Surrey Memorial Hospital for a biopsy of my prostate.
The terror of hospitals began. Only once since my birth had I been in a hospital and that time I was unconscious for twenty-four hours after an automobile accident. As I sat in the special waiting room, my imagination went to work. Strip, and put on this hospital gown. We are going up through your rectum and…. Your chances? Six months at best. Read more
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