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This Little Light Of Mine
By Christine Durrant
 You know that song, “This Little Light of Mine”? That’s my “theme song”. I’m Chris and I’d like to share my light with you.
My childhood was horrendous. My father was an animal lover but as far as humans, he was a tyrant. He was a raging alcoholic, extreme racist and just plain rotten to society. He was afraid of no one and always ready for a fight. He would do so much for animals but abused and neglected his family. I’m not here to judge him or dwell on his behavior, I am sure he has his demons and I’m sad about that but I’m just trying to paint the picture. He was violent and unpredictable and I would hide in the closet, usually with one of our dogs. He would never hurt an animal so I was usually safe with one of them. My love for animals blossomed from this life I was stuck in. Read more
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Expert Series: Nothing In Your Life Is Wasted
By Noelle Sterne
 Do you find yourself too often shaking your fist at God and asking, “When, oh when? . . . When will I finally get published or called back? . . . When will I be able to quit my day job? . . . When will I have enough money to write or paint or design or dance full-time? . . . When will I meet someone who will support me in the creating I must do?” The answer to all such questions may seem illogical at best and outrageous and barely palatable at worst. But it’s simple.
The Squirming Truth
The truth is this: Each of us, no matter how dire or sad or frustrating our circumstances, is where we want to be. No, I’ll be more accurate: each of us is where we need to be.
We are where we are because we need to learn certain things. And we can’t get to the next place without learning them. This principle applies to everything in life, including your chosen mode of creativity. Read more
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An Angel Sent Across My Path
By Leo Donaldson
 In February of 2006, while teaching my 10th grade computer science class, a call on my cell phone interrupted us. The school had a strict policy that all cell phones must be off in class, but for some reason I simply forgot to turn mine off on that specific day. Amid the jeers and Ooooooh’s erupting from the students, I decided to defy the powers that be, take the call and explain later. Little did I know that this single call would be a turning point in my life. Not only would it change it forever, but would plunge me into what would seem like a never-ending roller coaster ride. Read more
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You Are Enough
By Heather Klem
 When I was a high school freshman I was tender and malformed.
I ached for acceptance and validation. I had received the message, as many of us had, in our formative years that we must always be in the business of doing more and doing it better. Behaviors were moralized and the nebulous “good enough” always seemed right outside my grasp, just beyond the next honor roll or cheerleading squad slot. Read more
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I Want To Breathe
By Elida Vinesett
 “Leda, do you want to drown?” Mom yelled. “Come here, now!”
I was terrified whenever the water rose above my waist, her screams warning us to stay near the water’s edge. It happened every time we went to Lynnhaven Beach in Virginia.
Mom, herself, had never learned to swim, although she grew up in a small town near the Atlantic Ocean in Puerto Rico. Born in 1923, she experienced natural tragedies, like the hurricane in which the family lost all their possessions. Decades afterwards, apprehension of the ocean passed on to her offspring. Read more
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Dear Support Person
By Johnny Mackay
 It was all unexpected. Sure, life wasn’t grand but you know it was pretty good, I thought. In retrospect it seems like the changes took place overnight though I am not sure that is true either. My best friend and lover of 5 years decided to take up relations with another man. This was enough to force me to explore my own personal difficulties, shortcomings and relative commitment issues. I discovered that I loved her more than I loved life, more than I loved myself. Unfortunately, my new found passion for a life of solid relations with her and her alone, fell on deaf ears and I was told it was too late.
More than anything the ‘weight’ of the hole inside me was incapacitating, the darkness was unbearable, the pain relatively inescapable. Read more
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Making It Through A Sad Day: PTSD
By Josie Sanders
 November Fifth. The date approaches again. Every year, like the first frost, it appears and passes. I have measured the years – and my progress through them – by this mid-autumn number on the calendar. As a person with PTSD, or post traumatic stress disorder, I find that the date on which the worst trauma in my life occurred is for me a day permanently etched in my subconscious.
No, I never served in a war zone. My PTSD is the result of what I jokingly call “domestic combat.” I am a five foot tall, one hundred pound person who was beat on for years. There were days when I thought that surely I would be killed. The most traumatic day of my life was not any of those events, however, but the day a judge set free and rewarded the person who hurt me. That may sound strange, but the effects of PTSD rarely make sense. Read more
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John Volken’s Welcome Home Program: A Second Chance For Addicts
By Emily Rose
 I always thought faith was the ability to believe in something that cannot be proven, some intangible element woven into our lives like threads we can sense, but never see.
As I grew older my belief in faith was questioned, as is often the case for people during difficult times. It has only been recently that I learned there is much more to faith than finding the answers to questions that are not based on evidence.
Real faith takes courage and trust. Often, it requires the helping hands of others to provide you with faith when your own supply is running low. And, as I learned during an evening spent with John Volken, real faith takes determination, and the desire to succeed. Read more
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Twitter Saved My Life
By Salvatore Stefanile
 I’m not really much of a Twitter guy and rarely use it to ramble random life musings. I mainly use Twitter to follow Dan Harmon, Kurt Sutter, Norm Macdonald and pretty much every sports Twitter feed imaginable.
I never imagined I’d stick with Twitter for long. Figured I’d just sign up, check it out and delete my account eventually.
Was I ever wrong.
On April 15 of 2010, Twitter helped save my life.
One of the most prolific writers of today’s generation is Deadspin writer Drew Magary. I don’t know where he gets the time to write for all the publications he does, not to mention write a book, too. I give him credit for that. He was one of the first people I followed on Twitter.
He kept complaining how he needed to lose 50 pounds and instead of just bitching about it to faceless internet followers, he came up with a plan: announce to the world how much he weighed and keep people on Twitter informed of his progress.
He dubbed his plan the #twitterpublichumiliationdiet. 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….
*******
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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Transformed By The Re-Newing Of The Mind
By Marilyn Hurst
 It was a quiet spring day in March 1990, the day my father died. I had visited him at home just the day before and though it was apparent he was in the last stages of the “disease”, I was still expecting that any time he’d reverse the diagnosis and pull out of this horrible thing that was consuming his life. His passing hit me so hard I could barely remember to keep breathing myself.
Over the following months, slowly at first then like a speeding train coming at me, the past, present and future closed in and I felt I was staring into a black hole. I could see no light at the end of the tunnel. Although it appeared to everyone around me I had lapsed into depression, I knew that a major life-altering event had occurred and the pain was so intense, I wanted to die myself.
I looked at the shambles of my life and realized I’d been sleep-walking through it for the better part of 40 years. My marriage was only held together because of our 9 year old son and were it not for my job as a flight attendant, which took me away for long periods every month, I probably would have ended it years before. This empty void wasn’t just the passing of my father; something within me was desperate to “get out”. At the time I didn’t recognize this as a symptom of a transformational process that was in the beginning stages. Read more
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Bipolar Disorder…And Me…Discovered & Embraced
By M. LaVora Perry
 For almost 40 years, I struggled with depression and a nagging feeling that something was “wrong” with me.
In 1983, at age 21, I’d dropped out of college because I had been too depressed to get out of bed and attend class. A few months later, I spent seven weeks in a mental hospital because I’d abused LSD and other drugs, including the bottle of antidepressant medication I’d tried to overdose on. The drugs had made me manic and psychotic. I didn’t sleep, I had excessive energy, and I thought God was telling me to do things like set my high school photograph on fire, which I did.
In my mid-twenties, I stopped doing drugs. Read more
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Life Goes On
By Sean Cameron - 18 Years Old
 Everyone says divorce is hard. They have no idea. I remember as a kid hearing about parents getting divorces and getting scared that the same thing would happen to mine. I would see it on the television, or see my friends heading to their father’s house for the weekend. So I made sure I kept a close eye on my mom and dad. I was always on the look-out for any signs of arguments. I would make them promise me over and over that they would never get a divorce. I knew it was immature and silly, yet I couldn’t help but worry. However, my parents always seemed so happy together. And of course, my mom and dad promised me they would never be apart. So what did I have to worry about? I guess even parents can be wrong sometimes… Read more
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Inspired By A Life Of Travel
By Debbie McKeown
 My passion for travel and outdoor adventure began at an early age. Growing up on my family’s farm in Ontario, Canada, I spent my days exploring the great outdoors and my evenings reading Nancy Drew mysteries and action books that featured lots of horses. Big adventures beckoned. I loved my surroundings but always felt a sense of restlessness and a desire to experience places and meet people beyond our small farming community.
Fast forward many years … with my husband Jack, I have currently visited 43 countries (and counting) and all of the continents. Each destination has left me with a lasting impression of the beauty of the world, whether it be through the landscapes, people or animals. As I consider my evolving travel portfolio, I realize that travel has really shaped who I am today. 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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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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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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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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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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