I’ve been facilitating healing and touched the lives of hundreds of people through my work as a massage therapist and workshop instructor over the last 15 years.

But now I’m facing the ultimate healing challenge – healing myself.

I worked as a massage therapist for 11 years, specializing in Hawaiian mind-body massage and Lomi Lomi, but five years ago needed to cut back when I decided to focus on being a mother. It was wonderful to be able to stay at home with my children while offering a few massages a week.

But on February 1, 2010, my perfect world changed. I woke up that morning feeling numb and tingling on one side, having slurred speech and altered vision. My husband, Robert, called the ambulance and met me at the hospital with our two children.

In a CAT scan, they found a huge brain tumor. The next day they followed up with a MRI and the surgeon had terrible news. He explained to us the area of the brain that was affected so far and what the possibilities were, with the recommendation for surgery.

I started to have an increasing number of mini-seizures on a daily basis, so I began anti-seizure medication and therefore could no longer drive a vehicle. I also started receiving numerous alternative healthcare treatments, working with a chiropractor, naturopath, homeopath, craniosacral therapist, massage therapist, Reiki practitioner and intuitive healer.

Unfortunately, a MRI in March showed no sign of shrinkage so I surrendered to an upcoming surgery for a biopsy. One month of strep throat and challenges with the mini-seizures led up to six more visits to the hospital emergencies.

My Mom, realizing how difficult this crisis was for me, my husband and my children, came from Manitoba to help out with everything. Whether it was organizing daycare for my children, or being there waiting for me after my surgery, I was so thankful for her there.

In May, after the biopsy brain surgery, I was provided with the name and magnitude of my challenge – I have a large Oligodendroglioma, Grade II Cancer, currently labeled as incurable by the medical community.

This sounds very discouraging, yet there is some hope if we can find ways to stimulate my immune system and fully detoxify my body. I’ve found an alternative healthcare doctor who is helping me in this process, with access to detailed testing in the United States. However, the tests and prescriptions are extremely expensive, between $10,000 and $15,000.

My husband, Robert, is self-employed as a Massage Therapist in an office in our home and he’s also an instructor at MH Vicars School of Massage Therapy. It’s been extremely challenging for our family to deal with these huge test costs, medications, daycare fees and loss in Robert’s income (due to taking time off work in order to help me).

Robert’s students, particularly Erin Stevens and Crystal Dunn, created an incredible fundraiser for us on July 17. They organized a full day of massage therapists volunteering their time with massages to raise money for us. It was followed by a BBQ, a band and dancing, as well as a huge Silent Auction. There were numerous donations and so many other massage therapists, clients, and friends who assisted. What they did for us was beyond belief and we’re so very grateful to have this kind of support from everyone here in our community.

Now there is enough money for me to begin my path of healing and we would be extremely thankful to anyone else who would like to help. Donations can be made to the “Haviar Family Fundraiser” at any Royal Bank in Edmonton.

Both Robert and I feel so completely honored and grateful for all of the wonderful support we’ve received in this process. Of course, I would love to heal so I can have ‘healing hands’ to offer again as a massage therapist and to be fully available for my beautiful boys and husband.

If you would like to contact us our email is srhaviar@telus.net and Robert’s work number is 780-498-2864. The Facebook title is “Healing Hands for the Haviars.”

“Your magazine is a work of art,” Angele told me when I ran into her a few months ago at an event.

I wasn’t having the best day and her words immediately touched me as she is the publisher of a mind/body/spirit magazine, Issues, in Kelowna, B.C. She’s someone who knows all about the work that goes into every aspect of publishing a magazine like this one and so her compliment was especially meaningful to me.

According to Webster’s Dictionary, art is: “The use of skill and imagination in the production of things of beauty.”

By that definition, I do think Mosaic is a work of art as I strive to make each issue of Mosaic more beautiful than the last. And one of the ways I do that is by featuring page after page of amazing local artwork in it.

When I first took over Mosaic six years ago, we only had clip art in the magazine. I quickly had the inspiration to feature local art to show off and help promote the gifted artists in our community, while also bringing a unique beauty to each page of Mosaic. Since then we’ve featured the artwork of so many local artists and hopefully helped a few of their careers along.

Everyone always tells me how much they love the art in Mosaic. One reader recently wrote me, saying that Carol Breen’s art (that she’d first seen in Mosaic) helped her through her husband’s cancer and death. I feel emotional just writing that so I can’t imagine how Carol must feel when she hears how her art touches people.

Good art does that – it invokes our emotions and senses. I have to confess that there was a time before Feng Shui and Skye MacLachlan, when I didn’t get what all the fuss about art was. I just bought things to match existing things that matched older things.

When Skye did Feng Shui on my home, she explained the importance of having meaningful things that I really love surround me. She said that art is considered to be magical in Feng Shui. Art has the ability to bring an energy or vibration into our homes and every time you look at it, the vibration of that art starts to blend and shift the vibration of your own energy field. In this way, art has the ability to magically transform us just by looking at it everyday.

Over two years ago, I was driving down 124 Street from Ascendant Books when I had to stop at a red light. I looked over and there in a gallery’s window was the most mesmerizing painting I’d ever seen. I was just lost in it…well until the driver behind me started honking.  

A few months later I was looking for a feature artist for the next issue of Mosaic and remembered that amazing painting I’d seen in Bear Claw Gallery’s window. Although it was no longer there, I did find other paintings by a remarkably gifted artist, Aaron Paquette. That night I looked up Aaron’s website (aaronpaquette.blogspot.com) and you’ll never believe what I saw there – that painting that had mesmerized me! It was called: My Spirit Guide Brings a Message.

While I’d loved the painting months earlier, now it took on much more meaning for me as my Mom had just died. Now this painting seemed to magically tell me that, although my Mom was now part of the world of Spirit, she was never that far away. She would always be part of my life, just in a different way.

I emailed Aaron about the painting to find out that someone had bought it, but oddly recently returned it because it didn’t ‘fit their space’. I was so thankful because this painting was meant to be mine!

As I write this article, this magical painting is right in front of me, across from my desk. When I look at it I feel comforted and deeply connected to my Mom, my Dad and Gene. It’s a very emotional painting for me, a link across time and space to all the people I love who are now in Spirit.

Our next Mosaic’s Delicious Book Club Dinner is at the Naidoo family’s new Indian restaurant, NARAYANNI’S, 10131 – 81 Avenue, on Wednesday, August 18 at 6:00 p.m. We’ll talk about: The Cow in the Parking Lot (A Zen Approach to Overcoming Anger) by Leonard Scheff and Susan Edmiston (Workman Publishing Company, 2010). Email me at mosaicmagazine@shaw.ca by August 17 if you can come.

My sincere gratitude to every artist whose work I’ve featured in the magazine. Your art has made it possible for Mosaic to be a ‘work of art’. Thanks for sharing your magic with all of us.

Connie

“You’re an old soul.”

A woman in Medicine Hat told me that when I was about 25 years old, after I tried on a pair of her shoes and they fit me perfectly.

Intrigued, I asked her why she said that. She told me that a guru told her that she was an old soul based on how she fit her shoes (soles), and seeing as I fit her shoes perfectly, I must be an old soul too.

I hadn’t thought of that woman or her shoes or the age of my soul in a long, long time. But I did one Saturday when out of the blue, I decided to go through my shoes in a cleaning spree.

I often clean and de-clutter when I’ve got something on my mind that I need to work out. I was trying to decide whether I should go to the blessing of the graves of my Mom, Dad and Gene the next day in Iron River (about 2½ hours away).

I’d missed the blessing the first year after Mom and Dad died, so I really wanted to go this year – not because I believed they needed any blessings from the priest or me for their souls – but because I wanted to honor my Mom and her respect to this tradition, as this was something she faithfully did for all family graves every year she was alive.

But my weekend was very busy and although I knew I could twist myself into a pretzel to drive out to Iron River on Sunday and participate, it felt overwhelming to me, considering all the other things I also needed to get done.

That night Gabbey had her year-end dance recital in St. Albert. While there, Jill Burt (one of Gabbey’s friend’s mother) asked if I could help the next day to pack up shoes for their charity called: The 10,000 Shoe Project. I thought it was synchronistic that Jill should ask me, considering my spontaneous shoe cleaning blitz earlier that day.

We got home late and the next morning I woke up tired, with no energy for a long trip. Feeling a little guilty, I mentally sent a little message to my Mom to tell her that, although I wanted to honor her, I was going to help with this shoe charity instead that day.

I arrived at Jill’s farm with a bag of my shoes and, as all of the helpers shared a lovely pot luck lunch, Jill told us about how this shoe charity began.

One of her dear friends, Carol Majeau died of cancer and a year later Jill had a gathering with all Carol’s friends to honor her. She was inspired to ask everyone to bring a pair of their favorite shoes to give away as Carol was well-known for her love of beautiful shoes. From that gathering The 10,000 Shoes Project was born. Shoes seemed like the perfect way to honor Carol, and in some small way, meet the needs of so many around the world. Jill then serendipitously found HART, a Calgary organization that collects and distributes shoes to the poorest women in the Ukraine. HART also funds many other endeavors that help people in the Ukraine (please go to www.HART.ca for more information).

This immediately touched me deeply. I’m Ukrainian, with both my Mom and Dad’s parents either born here or arriving from the Ukraine before age one.

Anne (with HART) was with us and when she talked about her experiences of helping women in the Ukraine, I had a memory as a young child of watching my Mom work with other women from her church to do the bookkeeping and other tasks involved in caring for the church, hall and grounds. I remember feeling very proud of her because this was one of the only times (at that age) I saw my Mom interacting with other women in this way. There was a lovely camaraderie about what they were doing to help others that a big impression on me.

At Jill’s, we all proceeded outside to a row of tables where we wiped, sorted and packed hundreds of pairs of shoes to ship to the Ukraine. It was simple work, but yet wonderfully rewarding.

Somewhere between wiping shoes and talking with my new soul/sole sisters there, I had this intensely emotional moment where I really felt I was honoring my Mom and her life so much more by being with this group of women on this day, to help other women in the Ukraine, than I would have by going to her grave.

I don’t know if I’m an old soul or not. In some ways I am old and wise, but in others ways, I’m just a young student. I wear different shoes in different situations.

But one thing is for sure. It isn’t just the shoes we wear, but the tracks we leave that mark our lives.

Death has taught me more about love than I ever imagined.

I just turned 37 years old when my brother Gene died. He was my first ‘big’ death. I know a lot of people deal with a big death a lot sooner than that and I’m so very grateful to have been older when it came to me.

Gene was 46 years old when he died of cancer and I didn’t believe it could possibly ever happen (in a Pollyanna kind of way) until the absolute very end, maybe two months before he died. It was at Christmas at my Mom’s house, when he came around the corner into the kitchen and I looked at him… and I knew.

This year Gene’s been gone 10 years. People always say it gets better the more time that goes by and I do think that’s true in a way … but now another part of me knows that it’s not.

I feel his loss as much today as I did the day he died. I think logically that I should have gotten over this by now. It’s been a long time – yet my heart still grieves for him, still remembers his crisp humor and wit, still hears his voice and laughter in my head, still looks for him sitting in every backhoe I pass by. I just miss him.

My Mom and Dad have also been gone for almost two years. Although I had a good relationship with both of them, it wasn’t like we were exceptionally close. And as they were both in their 80’s and had lived full lives, I thought I would have an easier acceptance and peace once they were gone than I did with Gene.

But I was wrong. My Mom and I really didn’t have amazing, in-depth talks about things and only lightly glided over the surface of most matters – which always bothered me. Somehow I thought that losing her would not be as hard because I’d never really been able to share many of my deepest feelings, thoughts and experiences with her or found my emotional support there.

But time has taught me that that you don’t necessarily need to have a really ‘deep’ or ‘perfect’ relationship with someone to miss them dearly. Almost two years later, I don’t miss our conversations or our lack of them. I just miss her.

I miss just sitting at the kitchen table with her looking at the hummingbirds outside her patio window. I miss watching her in the kitchen making cabbage rolls or other traditional Ukrainian food. I miss seeing her in her garden, walking through it, watering it. I miss her laugh so much and the way she easily cried whenever she laughed. She’d whip off her glasses and wipe her flowing tears as her head would go backwards and her contagious laughter would fill the room.

As time goes by, I see that we did share a deep love even though I thought something was missing because our relationship wasn’t the exact way I thought it should be.

I’m not 100% sure what unconditional love is. I’m not sure I ever had it or that I’m giving it completely. I think I really started to understand it when I had my daughter Gabrielle. Once you have a baby you really see what it’s like to love someone, truly, no matter what.

And there’s nothing Gabrielle can do that could change my love for her or stop me from loving her. What she does or doesn’t do, becomes or doesn’t become in life, isn’t what matters. Just her being herself is what matters.

That’s a big ‘aha’ for me. Growing up, I never felt that. I was always the horse trying to get the carrot – always striving to do better or be more or be great in order to be accepted or loved. The simple idea that what really matters in the end is not what you do that makes you someone loveable or special, but just who you are inside, was a big one for me.

And I know it’s true because when I think about Gene, Mom or Dad now, I remember the essence of who they were. That’s what I miss. I don’t think about what they did or didn’t do, although those memories are also there. But that’s not what I miss. I miss the things that were unique to just them – their colorful quirks, defining characteristics and soft vulnerabilities that made them different and lovely.

Everyday I learn more about love – about loving what is, just the way it is… It’s a sweet and humbling journey.

Connie

I wanted to make a difference.

When I took Mosaic over six years ago, I had my own vision of how I thought it could help people. I wanted it to be an interesting, avant-garde magazine that was a professional, credible and beautiful resource.

AND I wanted it to provide readers with an opportunity to learn about the many life changing therapies, people and businesses available right HERE.

At that time I was already trained in many levels of CranioSacral Therapy and that therapy really marked the beginning of my healing journey. It changed how I looked and experienced both my past and present and because of that, it also changed my future.

However, I knew that if I had just seen ‘CranioSacral Therapy’ on someone’s business card, I wouldn’t have called them because I wouldn’t have known what it was. But if I’d had the opportunity to read about it, heard examples of how it changed people’s lives, then I KNOW I would have tried it.

And, my only wish is that I would have known about it sooner. If I knew then what I know now, my daughter and I would not have had such a difficult time following her birth. If I knew then what I know now, I would’ve done everything I could to help my brother Gene with his cancer, to have hopefully prolonged his life or even just made him more comfortable. But I just didn’t know then what I know now.

So when I tell you I want you to learn about things in this magazine you may not have otherwise known about, that have the possibility of changing your life for the better, I sincerely mean it.

Mosaic is not a typical magazine and I don’t want it to be. I’ve been asked why I don’t do what other magazines do and print those same types of articles or follow ‘usual’ magazine protocols. It’s really because I don’t want to duplicate what’s already being done well; it’s simply not what I feel called to do.

My vision for Mosaic is very clear. I want it to provide the many service providers in this community with a respectable and professional place to educate others about whatever it is that they do – to highlight the wide variety of personal development, alternative health and healing therapies/services available here. AND I want our readers to learn, try and then be changed by things they wouldn’t have even known about any other way.

I want the information in Mosaic to be a catalyst, a stepping stone to change whatever is not working in your life or to explore new parts of who you are. I want you to see what’s in Edmonton and surrounding areas and then go and experience it for yourself. Why? Because experiencing something can change your life in a way that reading words can’t.

You can gain insights and knowledge from reading what Martha Beck thinks (in Oprah’s magazine) but if you need help with your own situation, then I want you to be able to talk to someone real – right here – in Edmonton. Martha is not going to take your call☺, but there are Life Coaches here like Youmashni Naidoo who will.

I’ve read a lot about Feng Shui, but it’s no comparison to what I’ve learned having Skye MacLachlan go through my home, room by room, making me aware of the impact of each one and teaching me how to transform what isn’t working for me in my life by changing something there. Ten years (and three different houses) later, I know Feng Shui works.

When I joined Liz Garratt’s Inspired Business Planning Circle I was looking for her business expertise, but I’ve honestly had more big “aha’s” about myself there than in any self-development course I’ve ever taken. And the list goes on. We’ve got amazing people right here and I want you to know about them and benefit from it.

I want you to find what’s right for you and I want the right people/services to have a place to communicate, educate and reach you. That’s what Mosaic is about for me – a community resource that links the right people together for everyone’s highest good.

We are all making a difference by doing whatever it is that we love to do. Turns out, Mosaic is my way.

For upcoming Mosaic Book Club dinners, Catherine Potter’s monthly astrological forecasts, deadlines and more, go to www.iLoveMosaicMagazine.com and sign up for our bi-monthly ezine/newsletter that arrives as an email. While you’re there, post a comment about what you love about Mosaic (or this issue) and I could be taking you out for a delicious lunch. One good deed deserves another. ☺

Connie

I’ve always loved fairy tales and myths.

As a kid, the fairy tale that captured my heart the most was The Princess and The Pea (by Hans Christian Andersen). While I wasn’t sure how that princess could feel that pea under all those mattresses, I instantly related to how sensitive she was, to her ability to feel and know things that other people just didn’t. And although someone else might think she was weird, I thought she was special.

While other princesses were singing with mice and birds, or cleaning up after dwarfs or step-sisters, here was a princess that could do what I could do and was even going to live ‘happily ever after’ for it. I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to be that princess – to be rewarded for what was different about me.

Growing up on a farm in a rural community in northeast Alberta in the 1960’s didn’t expose me to a very cosmopolitan life. No one was celebrating ‘different’ where I came from. Like a chameleon, I tried very hard to fit in so I wouldn’t be noticed for all the wrong reasons. Then as I got older, I just decided it wasn’t worth it to openly share the parts of me that were unique (and maybe a little weird J).

I was in my late 30’s when I came upon CranioSacral Therapy (CST) and found the kind of magic that existed in fairytales. Whether I was on the bed receiving a CST treatment or the practitioner giving one, this was as close to magic – to different, weird and enchanted – that I’d ever been. It was about being sensitive, feeling energy, listening to intuition and deep inner healing.

When Mosaic Magazine came to me, I was so excited to share these magical, transformational and life changing things with everyone else. And although it’s been six years since I took the magazine over, and there’s nothing that I believe in more than self awareness and personal growth/development, I have to confess there were still rare moments when I was visited by that little young farm girl in me who feared being seen as weird for the different things that I believed in.

This was surprising to me because I’m absolutely certain of this one thing: that it wasn’t until I started to accept, explore and embrace those unique parts of me (that others might label as weird) that my soul began to awaken and flourish. Whether it was through transformational bodywork like CST, taking other self awareness/energy courses, working with Feng Shui, falling in love with crystals and then creating my own line of transformational gemstone jewelry or writing for and publishing Mosaic, I felt like I had discovered a lost treasure – and that treasure was inside of me.

Whatever ‘normal’ was, I just didn’t want it anymore. I had died a little every day when I was normal. Over here… way over here in the land of weird… that’s where the real spice was. ☺

So when Liz Garratt recently asked me (in her Inspired Business Planning Circle) if there was anything holding me back from giving 100% in my business, I guardedly made my ‘weirdness’ confession. But then (as it always does when we share from these deep and vulnerable places) something wonderful happened; I discovered I’m not alone. Each person there had their own version/concern about being different. These were all successful business women who are doing their own thing, their own way, so it shocked, and then delighted me to learn of our kinship. I’d told this big secret and then I found out that EVERYONE has the same secret – the fear of being different, weird or not accepted.

In Norse mythology there are the Three Norns also known as the three Fates, The Three Wyrds or the Wyrd Sisters. They appeared just after a child’s birth to determine the course of its life, its destiny. Urd (or Wyrd) looked backwards to the past, Verdandi oversaw the present and Skuld determined the future.

I loved this play on words of weird and Wyrd. What if, at the time of our births, some wonderful force (whether it be God, our Higher Self or even the Wyrd Sisters) blesses and bestows upon us an unusual gift of ‘weirdness’ that enables us to heal our past, live with presence in our present and becomes one of our dearest treasures before we die? What if we carried this gift of weirdness throughout our lives, initially as a wound (of raw places not yet understood and accepted) and then later as a coveted trophy (of places conquered and admired)?

Yes… What if weird was good?

Connie

Happy Anniversary Mosaic – it’s our 50th issue!

Catherine Potter and Brenda Mottram started Mosaic Magazine in the fall of 1995 (almost 15 years ago), publishing three issues a year. When I took it over in 2004 on issue #27, my daughter Gabrielle was just turning four and this January she turned 10!

Just before that, in late 2003, Marcel and I decided to try for another baby. Gabrielle was an invitro baby and we therefore tried that again with high hopes. We went through all months of preparation, hoop-la, drugs, infertilization and all seemed well at first. Then, I knew something was wrong. When the tests confirmed it, I was heartbroken. Our only option was to try once again but I didn’t know if I could do it another time, either physically or emotionally.

That same week Catherine Potter called me to see if I was interested in being the new publisher and editor of Mosaic Magazine. It was a bittersweet moment when I said ‘yes’ to Catherine. Did I want this magazine? Absolutely! But, for me, the decision was mixed with the melancholy of letting go of the dream of having another baby.

Yet, it also meant the fulfillment of other, older dreams. I had graduated from Journalism in 1985 and basically given up on writing because I really disliked working as a reporter for weekly newspapers. I wanted to write stories that inspired and helped people to change their lives and I dreamed of a magazine that would allow me to do that.

This was an odd dream because in Journalism we didn’t learn a lot about magazines – almost nothing at all. Yet somehow, at the back of my mind, in a city where there are very few magazines, I had dream of a magazine that would allow me to write stories that would change other people’s lives. In fact, Catherine and Brenda hadn’t even started Mosaic Magazine at that time (they would create it 10 years later)! And, I didn’t learn about Mosaic Magazine until many years after that.

Mosaic came to me almost 20 YEARS after my initial dream. And what I really want to tell you is to NEVER let go of your dreams. Whatever it is that you want – whatever it is that is in your heart – just keep dreaming it. There is nothing more powerful in the art of manifesting than dreaming and imagining. And if one door closes or one dream ends, it only means that the Universe has something else, just as wonderful or better, in store for you.

For me, the dreaming and imagining has never ended. After the first year, I began to publish Mosaic four times a year. Later I had the dream of changing Mosaic from newsprint to full gloss and then, another year later, to full color. Each change was scary/exciting/rewarding and I’ve loved making this magazine shine.

Now what I’d really love is to meet you! I’d love to hear WHAT YOU LOVE about Mosaic (and to talk about anything else you want to) over lunch, just you and me! So every month I’m going to pick someone who has posted a comment on my website at www.ilovemosaicmagazine.com under ‘Let’s Hear From You’ tab, for a fabulous lunch at a convenient location and time for both of us.

So go (right now☺) and post your comment about what you love about Mosaic, or what you loved about this particular issue, and your name will be entered into a monthly draw for a free, delicious and fun lunch avec moi! This invitation is open to everyone including all my wonderful and amazing friends, readers, colleagues and advertisers – so write in please! Tell me what Mosaic means to you…

I’m also very excited about our next Mosaic’s Delicious Book Club Dinner to be held at my dear friend Youmashni’s new Indian restaurant, NARAYANNI’S, 10131 – 81 Avenue, on Monday, February 15 at 6:00 p.m. While enjoying some delicious samosas and naan, we’ll be talking about Don Miguel Ruiz and Don Jose Ruiz’s The Fifth Agreement (Amber-Allen Publishing, 2010). Email me at mosaicmagazine@shaw.ca by February 14 if you want to join us.

Also, I want to bring your attention to the lovely Catherine Potter’s quest to help the people of Haiti after their devastating earthquake. Read more about this in her article on page 26.

To keep informed about everything MOSAIC (our upcoming book club dinners, Catherine Potter’s monthly astrological updates, other body/soul/spirit articles and deadline updates), go to www.ilovemosaicmagazine.com and sign up for our bi-monthly ezine that will come to you as a convenient email.

AND, thank you for being part of my dream. ☺

Connie

As a young child, starting at age seven, I dreamed every night (for three years) about picking up unwanted children from ditches.

I would tell my Mom and she would say: “It was a dream, honey. Nobody throws children away.” Well, back in the 1950’s and 1960’s nobody knew that they did.

One night I was having the same dream when I found a briefcase full of money and I knew I would be able to look after all those children. Then the dream stopped.

I grew up, got married and divorced, and had four beautiful children (three boys and a girl). Then in 1989 I was in a terrible car accident and had a ‘near death experience.’ During it, I walked and talked with God and then chose life – to come back and do more.

In 1999, my baby girl (and my last child), married, leaving me with empty nest syndrome. On a Tuesday night I prayed and cried, wondering what I should do with the rest of my life.

I was unable to work due to the brain injury from the car accident and my children had always been my focus so I asked God: “What now?” In an audible voice that I took to be God, he asked: “What has been the best part of your life?” “My children,” I answered. Then in my mind’s eye I saw World Vision movie stars helping children in Africa, in the poorest countries of the world, and I knew that these children would love me and need me.

On Wednesday I went to the Immanuel Lutheran Church Alpha Supper (near my home in Stony Plain, Alberta). I learned the Youth Group was going to Africa and I asked if I could go along. Soon after I bought my first (of many) tickets on my credit card and went.

I worked at an orphanage in Malawi and while I was there I came upon an abandoned baby (about 1½ years old) sitting in a ditch. It was like those dreams from my childhood.

In May 2002, with only $75 Canadian, I started my own orphanage in Malawi for this abandoned baby and a few other children. Fifty years after the fact, God made true the dream I had as a child.

After almost 10 years I am on my third house in Malawi, each one larger than the last, to accommodate more children and I still have some of the children from the beginning.

Dixon was six or seven years old when he was found naked, bleeding, raped and screaming in the street 500 miles from his home. The Police thought he was bewitched and put him in jail. The Catholic nuns brought him to me and he is now finishing high school.

The family of a newborn child walked 17 miles to find me after the baby’s mother died in childbirth. She had not been nursed or even had so much as a sip of water. She now has a loving home in Canada.

There are children dropped off to me with full blown AIDS, TB and malaria but so far we have had only one death this year. Ralph was eight years old and weighed only eight pounds. He looked like Humpty Dumpty. I held him in my arms as he died.

Robin, at one year old, weighed four pounds and was abandoned in a hospital where she was neglected. She was HIV positive and had TB but she is now 4 years old and thriving despite her illnesses.

There have been mostly hard times but I choose not to dwell on those. Some of them are too painful to remember or talk about. I consistently surprise myself at what a strong woman I have turned out to be, but with God all things are possible.

One day I was walking the four corners of our yard with several of the children, praying for safety, when all of a sudden I felt like I was really home – where I belong.

With the donations from wonderful, caring people and my own money, I look after up to 50 children with a staff of 14. The house has running (cold) water, electricity (when it works) and we use candlelight at night.

During this economic downturn a bag of rice has gone from $40 to $95 a bag. It takes between $3000 – $4000 a month to run the orphanages. But here I am – a woman past middle age with a brain injury, limited education and restricted resources – yet I feel like I’ve been chosen to do God’s work. It’s as if God is telling me I am one of His people like the fisherman or Mary Magdalene.

I started The Agape Orphanage Foundation and the Earth Angels Care Center Malawi to provide a safe and healthy environment for these orphaned children. It is a federally licensed, registered charitable, non-profit fundraising organization. It provides a secure home with food, fresh water and basic education for orphans in Malawi with 100% of all donations go directly to the children. Therefore every dollar makes a huge difference.

The children that come to us are truly helpless when they arrive. They may have been brought to us by a parent who is dying of HIV/AIDS, a relative too poor to feed one more mouth or the Police. Some are sick themselves and although they may suffer the same fate as their parents, we do what we can by giving them a home, food and medicine if needed.

Once they have shelter, are fed and healthy, it is time to feed their minds. With your help we will educate each child to a grade 12 level. They will learn to read and write and while doing so, they will develop a sense of self worth. Providing adequate education will mean that someday these children will be the teachers, health workers, builders, spiritual leaders, and business people of their community. Their education must not separate them from their culture. Their education must build a respect for who they are and they come from and build in them the desire to improve the world around them.

My dream continues. I dream of having a farm, run by the orphans themselves, being self-sufficient with no welfare mentality and an attitude of empowerment so they can carry on the work when I am gone.

Every day is a new experience and a new challenge to provide the basics of life to these children. Yet my dream is coming true with the help of people like you. If you feel drawn to, please donate to these children who need your help so much and know that your money is going directly to them to better their lives.

If you have the same dream I have – to save as many children as possible – then help if you can.

To learn more or to donate please go to www.agapeorphans.com or email info@agapeorphans.com or Dianne@agapeorphans.com Interested people can make donations via PayPal using their credit cards.

It was tragically sad news.

When I recently heard that someone I knew from high school had committed suicide, it stunned me. I’m from a small town and while you don’t know everyone well, you do know them a little.

I couldn’t help but think of what he must have been going through inside. I thought about his family, his wife, his kids and the enormity of it all.

Then I humbly thought: “There but by the grace of God, go I.”

I had to look it up, but that phrase comes from John Bradford (in the 1500’s) who was imprisoned over something trivial, and after witnessing a group of prisoners being led to their execution, remarked: “There but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford.”

For me, that saying means that by the grace of God, I’m still here; that by the grace of God I came through some of the hardest times of my life, not due to cleverness or careful planning, but instead due to grace.

There have certainly been times in my life that were very difficult, when I wasn’t sure how it could ever possibly work out, but it always did. Thankfully, looking back on it all, my life has always had elements of grace.

I had a friend once who told me that she had a theory about life. Either the first half of your life was good and then the last half was challenging, or vice-versa. I told her, if her theory was right, the last half of my life would be endless days of bliss and joy. ☺

Certainly the second half of my life has been so much better, with Marcel and Gabrielle as the sparkling highlights. But the thing that has changed my life the most has not been my deep desire to fix everything including myself (because that has always been there), it has been finally finding a WAY to do it – a way to heal my inner wounds and find peace inside.

When I grew up I didn’t feel that the universe was so friendly and I felt I had to continually toughen up to cope with what life seemed to throw at me. So after each crisis, I just learned to build a stronger armor so I would be even more prepared for the next battle. But I never felt free. If there was a better way to live, I didn’t know it.

I was 37 years old when I finally came across CranioSacral Therapy and I instantly saw that this was a powerful way for me to release old memories, demons, patterns and I spent the next few years taking every course I could on it.

One of the things that I really liked about CranioSacral Therapy was that I didn’t need to know what was wrong with me to get results. I didn’t have to have it all figured out in my head. Just letting my body gently release its stored memories, traumas and tensions was enough. I could immediately see and feel my life changing from doing this. The more peaceful my body was, the more peaceful my mind was and … the more peaceful my life was becoming.

CranioSacral Therapy was just the beginning for me. Since then Mosaic Magazine has been my doorway into so many other wonderful therapies and healing moments. I’ve been in many sessions and workshops where I knew that the practitioner or facilitator had ‘saved my life.’ Not literally in that moment, but in a future moment.

When I get an awareness and clarity (that a certain thought, belief, memory is what was holding me back and attracting my crap), it ALWAYS feels like someone has given me my life back. It is life altering because we are creating from these unconscious places whether we realize it or not.

When you get it that the arrows your life is poking you with are only there to show you what you need to heal (and not just randomly falling from the heavens) the universe changes from being a battlefield where you need to protect yourself, to a friendly and supportive friend.

I’m so very thankful for all the therapies and methods we talk about in Mosaic, because these therapies do save people’s lives in big and small ways. When we have no hope, when we think things can never change, then we are lost. I’ve been there; we all have. But when we heal ourselves and our pasts, the future is full of hope.

“There but by the grace of God, go I” also means that I didn’t know what I was looking for to help me on my journey – it just found me. And by God’s grace, or the universe’s compassion, what we need DOES find us. Have faith.

My Mom has been gone for one year now. And it’s taken a year for the loss of her to really sink into me, into my bones, into my everyday life.

Yesterday I opened a bag of store bought peas and as I began to shell and eat them, I instantly thought of being in my Mom’s garden.

My Mom always had great, big, abundant gardens full of vegetables and flowers. She spent hours every day out there. She loved her gardens.

Each summer when I would visit her, I would go out to her garden, at least once, and just eat her fresh peas to my heart’s content. There would be pea shells carelessly flying everywhere as I enjoyed the contents of each one. It was a ritual for me. And when I would leave, she would always have a box of her fresh vegetables for me to take.

Last year Mom was in the old age home and that was the first year that she didn’t have a garden. It was apparent, by her dramatic weight loss and her frail body, that she would be leaving us soon and she died on July 20, 2008.

And as I was standing by my sink, shelling and eating my store bought peas, I started to cry. I missed her so much. I wished that I could go to her garden and see her just one last time.

Suddenly I realized how important that inconspicuous memory of her garden and eating her peas was to me – and yet, it had been such an ordinary moment.

And then it hit me that there are NO ordinary moments – all moments are so precious. When I was eating her peas, I never thought it was a special moment or that I would ever remember it. It was just so ordinary. And yet here I was, missing that ordinary, or should I say extraordinary moment, because it was a link to her.

There’s something very bountiful and powerful about a mother’s garden. I am part of my Mom’s garden and my daughter is part of my garden. Gabrielle is one of the most magnificent parts of my garden and I am so thankful she’s part of my life. As I watch her growing up, I realize that what we grow in our lives is so much bigger than us.

Mosaic is also a part of my garden. For many years I worked at jobs that didn’t feed my soul. I always felt I was in the wrong place; that I was meant to accomplish something more. When Mosaic came along, I knew it was part of my purpose.

Now my ‘work’ has meaning. Each issue I put so much time and love into every aspect of Mosaic: the articles, artwork, layout, ads, ezines, website. I put my heart and soul into this garden that you get to see each issue.

And what I truly wish is that there will be something really nourishing for you in each issue – a story that will change you, help you, ‘grow’ you. As you read this magazine, I hope you’ll enjoy some delicious moments that feed your soul and that you find a few new seeds you can plant into your garden.

In this issue, we have a great interview with Dr. Steven Farmer about everything from animal spirit guides to power animals and drumming to DNA. In fact, we talked about so many different things that we couldn’t possibly fit it all in the magazine so please go to www.iLoveMosaicMagazine.com and click on the ‘Interviews’ tab to hear or read the complete interview.

We’ve got some amazing prizes to give away when you post a comment about what you love about Mosaic on our website under the ‘Let’s Hear From You’ tab. Prizes include free tickets to: Dr. Steven Farmer’s upcoming workshops, Deva Premal and Miten’s concert in Calgary and Michael Bernard Beckwith’s talk in Edmonton or Calgary. If you love to win, sign up for our bi-monthly ezine (at our website) and you’ll be the first to know about great prizes as they continue to come up.

And for those of you who love a little pasta and want to talk about the Law of Attraction, our next Mosaic Book Club Dinner will be on Tuesday, August 18th at Sorrentino’s Little Italy restaurant at 6:00 p.m. Email me if you can come. I’ll see you there!

Connie