It’s my Birthday!
That means cake and balloons* for me, but I mention it here because it also means today is the last day to get a discount on your LHF Greenhouse membership.
If you have a project that is stalled, or long for a community of visionary people to help you figure out how to find and do the work you are called to do, I hope you will join us.
Click here for the full invitation, or here to skip straight to the membership levels.
Hope to see you inside!
*Well virtual ones at least.
This week’s summer showcase post is from my friend and LHF Greenhouse member, Jade. In addition to being generally awesome, Jade blogs at the Madness of Monotony and recently had a piece about creative uses of snap-pops featured on Freshly Pressed.
Do make time for regular trips to Oz?(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There was a time when my life was overflowing with creativity. Not simply my own, but everyone around me. Writers, artists, actors, musicians, songwriters, designers … I couldn’t throw a paper airplane without hitting someone whose talent filled the space. My spare time was filled with art shows, community theatre in all its forms, or performances of local musicians.
At the time, I didn’t realize how unusual my life was, or how fortunate I was to be surrounded by so many incredibly talented people. I didn’t realize that most people’s reality was so much more … mundane. I know that may sound judgmental, and I truly don’t mean for it to, but it’s like seeing the Wizard of Oz and going from Technicolor back to Kansas in plain old black and white.
Sure, I worked, but it was secondary to everything else. My job didn’t interfere.
Until it did. Continue reading
Posted in Creativity, Guest Posts, Summer Showcase
Tagged creativity, lhf greenhouse, self-care, summer showcase, Wizard of Oz
One of the things I love most about the summer showcase is it gives me a chance to share the stories of people using their lives to prove that no matter what you hear on the news, humans have a great capacity to love and support each other– even through the most difficult of circumstances. Thanks Mary for helping to make humanity look so good! 
I’m 33 years old. I’m healthy. My blood pressure is 100/65. My BMI is 21.3. My “bad” cholesterol barely registers on the charts. I eat nutritious foods – lots of fruits, veggies, chicken, yogurt. I do have a sweet tooth, but I try to balance it out with some exercise.
Oh yeah, and I’m a brain cancer survivor.
**Cue screeching tires, deer in headlights look, and one or more of the following reactions:
“Are you ok?”
“But you look so healthy…”
“That’s terrible. You don’t deserve that!”
I am OK. I do look healthy and I feel healthy. And, there are over 600,000 people in the United States living with a primary brain tumor and not a single one of them deserves it. Continue reading
I am surrounded by people (especially women) who have so much to offer the world. They are amazingly dedicated, talented, generous and kind.
Many of them are also almost completely blind to their own brilliance.
Because of that blind spot, they choose to play small, to sit in the shadows, and teach themselves, day by day, to ignore their dreams.
That madness must end.
The world needs the dedicated, talented, generous, and kind among us to stand up and be counted– to be ready and willing to do what only we can do to make the world a little more beautiful, a little more safe, and a little more free.
That’s why I created the LHF Greenhouse.
The greenhouse first opened last January. Since then the site’s pioneers and I have been working together to create an online community for people ready to recognize their own awesomeness and start using it to change the world (or at least a corner of it.)
Now, we are ready for you to join us.
If you are reading this, chances are good you have untapped awesomeness that the greenhouse could help you access. I hope you will choose to join us.
That having been said, it’s probably going to be easier to identify your friends and colleagues who could use to have their amazingness reflected back at them.
Do you have a friend in mind? Will you please make sure she sees this post and knows that she is personally invited to join us inside?
Here’s the invitation: You are invited to join the LHF Greenhouse!
Can’t wait to see you all inside!
Posted in LHFGreenhouse
This week’s summer showcase post tells a difficult but important story about how one woman is using what she learned through her own personal tragedy to make sure her children, and children like hers get the care they need to break the cycle of domestic violence. Thanks for your bravery, Heather! For more information about Heather’s work, visit the Generation Hope website.
On the evening of March 11, 2011 my life and the lives of my children were changed forever.
I was brutally attacked, strangled, and beaten so badly by my ex-husband that friends and neighbors didn’t recognize me. It was highly publicized by the media because my injuries were so graphic. During my ex-husband’s sentencing hearing the county attorney stated “that it was the worst beating she had seen in 11 years of doing domestic violence prosecution and that I had looked worse than some victims in homicide cases she had prosecuted.” I was lucky to be alive.
Unfortunately, our children were all present during the attack and watched their father beat me, and then kick and stomp on my face repeatedly. They could do nothing but scream in terror and beg their father to stop hurting me. They were 1, 3, and 5 at the time. At some point during the attack my five year old daughter knocked on a neighbor’s door and they came to our aid saving us physically from the attack.
We had survived….physically. And yet we were so broken emotionally that making it through the day was difficult for all of us. I was forcing myself to take my kids out to do things to get their mind off of things but inside we were all suffering. My children were exhibiting behaviors that were damaging to them and I could see that they needed help I was not able to give them so that they could cope with the damage that was caused from witnessing domestic violence. Continue reading
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