In memory of my Teddy Cat

Well, the adventure with my one of a kind Teddy Cat has come to a close. He has been missing for 2 weeks and I have stopped looking for him and put his food and his bed away. It's time to face it, he's not coming home. I guess he finally used up all of his lives.

He was a great cat. There was never a dull moment with Teddy around. I'll never have another cat as unique as him. I loved that cat and my heart hurts that he won't be around to make me laugh anymore. He had a good life though - a very happy two years.

Having pets is hard - they always end up breaking your heart.

Women in India banding together to fulfill their dreams

Don't seek to merely get rid of

the negative things in your life.

Instead, transform their energy

into something of real positive value.

Ralph Marston

When Phulbasin Yadav and 11 other women set aside $3 a month to start a business, skeptical elders turned the town against them.

When Ms. Yadav learned to ride a bicycle, traveling between villages to set up health clinics and offer hot meals for children, her husband threw her out of the house, saying she was ignoring her duties at home.

Business in Sukuldhain, India had always been a man's world. But today, Yadav is president of a districtwide network of women's groups with businesses ranging from mines to concrete works -– totaling half a million dollars in assets. And, sometimes, when she comes home from a hard day at work, her husband has tea and a hot meal ready for her.

What has followed is essentially an entire subeconomy run exclusively by women who take loans from banks or the government to fund increasingly ambitious projects. In the village of Moher, five women's self-help groups manage and cultivate 116 acres of farmland that generated a $1,500 profit last year. In Dhaba, a dozen women in brightly colored saris mix cement – stirring the sludge with wooden-handled hoes and pouring in gravel that they balance delicately on their heads.

In short, they have done exactly what they were intended to do, says Dinesh Shrivastava, who championed the groups when he was district collector here several years ago. "Women are the best agents for social change," he says. "They have made a revolution."

But in rural India, where more traditional views of the roles of men and women still hold sway, change has not come easily.

"Because I was getting involved in work, my husband started beating me and saying I wasn't doing any work [at home]." He wanted the wife who had helped him as a cattle herd and served the family. Yadav decided she was no longer that person. "I said, 'What I am doing can help many people in the area.'"

So he threw her out of the house. For good measure, his father also threw out Yadav's mother-in-law, who was a member of the self-help group, too. Remembering nights spent sleeping outside, Radhia Bai can now manage a smile.

"I always felt that she was doing right," she says of her daughter-in-law.
So, too, did the government. There is a room in Yadav's house given entirely to plaques, commendations, and awards that she has won during the past six years. One included a gift of some $2,500 – a significant factor in her husband's decision to let Yadav back into the house.

"My husband understood that what I am doing is helping our family," she says. "Now he respects what I am doing.

The $2,500 is being used to help 35 local children pay their way through school, and now, when Yadav is out, her husband cooks and cares for their four children.

A Novel Achievement for 13 year old

Nancy Yi Fan was too young to know she was breaking every rule in the book when she e-mailed her first manuscript directly to the president and CEO of HarperCollins.

''I was being quite bold thinking I had nothing to lose,'' says Nancy, now an eighth-grader. 'I thought, `Maybe she will give me some advice.' ''

Instead the CEO, Jane Friedman, gave her a contract, passing Fan's allegorical story about warring avian factions and their quest for peace to her children's division, which published Swordbird (HarperCollins, $15.99, ages 8-12) this spring.
Now, Fan, 13, is seeing her name on The New York Times bestseller list.

Her story would be amazing for any teen but has another remarkable twist: Fan came to the United States from China just six years ago, knowing only a few words of English. She says ''Miss Goodwin,'' her first English-as-a-Second-Language teacher, ``lit the spark of literature in my heart. Without her, I might not have written Swordbird.''

She started writing simply to express her ideas about ''the importance of peace and freedom,'' with a tale about a villainous hawk that forces enslaved birds to do his bidding.
me the really hard things. Just teach me the tricks,' and within a week I learned to twirl the sword and do some really magnificent moves,'' she says.

Nancy didn't tell her new classmates about her imminent debut as an author, hoping to be a ''normal student.'' They found out anyway. They read about her in the newspapers and ''they would jump out from behind the classroom door with books for me to sign,'' she says.

In April, she traveled to Beijing and Shanghai for the release of the Chinese edition of Swordbird , which she also translated. ''She wrote the novel and then she translated it as a way of keeping up with her native language,'' Yeh says.

This summer Nancy hopes to complete SwordQuest, a prequel, which Yeh already has under contract.

Check out the entire news article by Sue Corbett HERE

95 year old woman fulfills lifelong dream of graduating from college

Sitting on the front row in her college classes carefully taking notes, Nola Ochs is just as likely to answer questions as to ask them. That's not the only thing distinguishing her from fellow students at Fort Hays State University. She's 95, and when she graduates May 12, she'll be what is believed to be the world's oldest person to be awarded a college degree.

She didn't plan it that way. She just loved to learn as a teenager on a Hodgeman County farm, then as a teacher at a one-room school after graduating from high school and later as a farm wife and mother.

"That yearning for study was still there. I came here with no thought of it being an unusual thing at all," she said. "It was something I wanted to do. It gave me a feeling of satisfaction. I like to study and learn."

"We should all be so lucky and do such amazing things. Her achievement challenges us all to reach for our own goals and dreams," said Tom Nelson, AARP chief operating officer in Washington.

Ochs started taking classes at Dodge City Community College after her husband of 39 years, Vernon, died in 1972. A class here and there over the years, and she was close to having enough hours for an undergraduate degree. Last fall, Ochs moved the 100 miles from her farm southwest of Jetmore to an apartment on campus to complete the final 30 hours to get a general studies degree with an emphasis on history.

Ochs hasn't complained about the work, nor has she asked for special considerations.
In her one-bedroom apartment, books are open and papers and notes are within easy reach when she sits down at her computer to research and write.

"I came up here with that purpose. No, I never doubted it. Other people did it," she said. "I came up here to work, and I enjoy it." An added joy for Ochs is that her 21-year-old granddaughter, Alexandra Ochs, will graduate with her.
After that?

"I'm going to seek employment on a cruise ship as a storyteller," she said, smiling.
The determined look in her eye leaves no doubt she's serious.

Fulfilling her Dream . . .

Robin is 56 years old and fulfilling her dream of riding across the country and raising money for 2 great causes.

Check out her story here

What is your dream??

Dreams

So, I've been really busy with this Life Coaching thing, which by the way, is AMAZING! I can't believe I get to do this for my job!

I've been putting on some classes to introduce the work that I do, and one of the classes called "Dream Discovery" - it's a class and a 30 day journal to walk through to help you uncover what your dreams might be. I believe that dreams are tied to purpose, so this is a very important topic.

So, in honor of my ladies that are the Dream Discovery class and taking a next step to live a life of purpose, and in honor of you who might be reading this - I will be posting lots of true and inspirational stories of people who are chasing after their dreams.

I hope you'll be inspired to chase after your dreams - check back often in the next couple weeks!