People in my community have experienced a lot of judgement. There is a common sentiment emerging in popular culture right now; the hardest thing about having a mental illness is everyone expects you to act as if you don’t. This makes writing about personal responsibility daunting. It is easy to judge people without understanding or…

OH&WG along with Healthy Minds Around the Loop and our community partners are working to build healthy minds, bodies and increase resilience in our community. Communities are built by sharing so we have found some things to share: gathering space, refreshments, information on low cost and no cost community resources. We are offering guided mindfulness…

When I was sixteen years old my mother informed me that she was taking me out of school to give me an education.  What she meant by this was that I was going to miss two weeks of my first term of grade eleven because we were going to South East Asia.   It was the…

This is the story of  how we came up with the best local present you can give or receive this year.   Two years ago the owners of Witch Haven Farms decided to give back to their community by helping  struggling families grow food. The hope was to help with rising food costs, and increase…

  Adventures In Local Food     Purchase your Food Crate Here  

I read a beautiful book I once named “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron.  She introduced me to the practice of morning pages.  Writing three pages each morning started as just something new to try.  It began so long ago now that I have forgotten my motivation.  It would take me hours, struggling to make…

We do not exist. In the scope of space time our human experience is so fast it does not register as an actual event. We are small. Sometimes by the ocean, in the mountains, we feel it.  We feel it at night staring into to the beautifully terrifying vastness of the universe from our backyard….

When suicide takes one of my brothers or sisters, I hear the world scream why.  Why did they not see how precious life is?  Why did they not see how to get through?  Why did they not ask for help?  Why did the people around them not see that they needed help?  I hear their…

We have all been here.  Some of us drop in briefly, there are others who linger here like shadows.   We journey here and back throughout our lives.  Ours stays, chaotic in their nature of time and comfort.  The darkness is endlessly terrifying, but there is a safety in the consistency of the solitude.   Pain may…

I am not a gamer, unless you do not play video games, then I am a pretty good gamer.   My wonderful, long-suffering husband, has played video games for the better part of forty years, so I decided that I would learn so that we could play together.  For a wedding present we received Guild Wars…