By Barbara Leonhard | Featured Contributor A note to encourage you in these challenging times. May you walk through the new year with grace and ease. May you have strength and resilience. Be safe and healthy. Be filled with joy and lifted up in love.
By Barbara Leonhard | Featured Contributor Dear Friends, most of us would agree that this past year has been extremely challenging if not tragic. Many of you have documented your pain and grief in poetry, fiction, and essays. St. Patrick’s Day is today and Easter is coming up, so it’s […]
By Barbara Leonhard | Featured Contributor [Click for Part 1 and Part 2] ⋅ The bandage torn From new flesh Releases wails The wound still Imbibes air The scab hides deep repair Let it rest. Wait In time the scar Records a fate ⋅ I learned that healing is a […]
By Barbara Leonhard | Featured Contributor Part 1 – Hope Was Not a Loss: A Story About Measles Encephalitis Part 2 – Learning How to Walk Again: Barbara’s Story Back in 1958, the year I almost died from the measles, my parents—unlike the parents of today—did not have to face […]
By Barbara Leonhard, Featured Contributor Robert Frost once wrote: Nature’s first green is gold,Her hardest hue to hold.Her early leaf’s a flower;But only so an hour.Then leaf subsides to leaf.So Eden sank to grief,So dawn goes down to day.Nothing gold can stay. Online, one can find many poets who sing […]
By Barbara Leonhard | Featured Contributor [Click here for Part 1] Depression developed and flourished because I grieved so much over loss of fertility. Women who are childless miss out on a great deal. They never feel what it is like to have a life growing, kicking and wiggling inside […]
By Barbara Leonhard | Featured Contributor As we grow and develop, we learn how to identify with many labels or roles, such as daughter/son, aunt/uncle, mother/father, and grandmother/grandfather, to name a few. It seems as though our stories are written before we are born to conform to these labels. In […]