Featured Articles from Issue 56
December gave the world a lot to celebrate: Bodhi Day, Day of Our Lady Guadalupe, Hanukkah, Yule, Christmas, Kwanza, Zarathost Diso, and New Year’s Eve. Colorful lights and crackling fires against a crisp winter canvas always help me find time to ponder spiritual connections and how humanity has attempted to make sense of and, perhaps ironically, immortalize our understandings. The written word and art have always been equally powerful mediums for capturing abstract yet visceral emotions. Even tentatively opening the door to a museum or a used bookstore makes me catch my breath in anticipation and reverence for the sheer energetic power combined in one space from so many inspired, deeply affected souls.
“That’s life,” Jasmine Hampton reports cheerfully from training camp. If she is anything, she is a good sport. Hampton is a two-time Junior Olympics champion boxer and 11x national champion with a record of 106-17 or so. She was enrolled in the Olympic Training camp with US Boxing in Colorado Springs as an alternate, even though she won her weight class. The selection process can seem arbitrary, but she is happy to train in any case. Born and raised in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, I met Hampton as the cool high school kid who lived down the street. I got to know her as she became a champion basketball player and track star first. It has been a treat to witness her devotion to the task every step of the way.
Though Boo wasn’t my “real” grandfather I could not miss the realness of his final days. Despite the sticky doorknob, the smell of last week’s lunch, dead flowers, and the junk pile obstacle course, I made my way to his bedside. The clutter used to spark an uncomfortable itch throughout my body, but I’d accepted it. His 98-year-old body was tired, but his spirit was very much alive as he pondered the end.
It was late October when I moved to Michigan from Alaska 16 years ago. The day I met my new neighbor, he enthusiastically told me some of the reasons he loved Michigan. It was reassuring, as a mom with three young kids, to hear the positive things he had to say about growing up here, but I had to admit that I was probably most excited about living in a place that has four seasons. I said that as much as I loved living in Alaska, the long winters were challenging for me—cold winters when some days the sun would rise after 10 a.m. and set before 4 p.m. I did not mention how much my mood was affected by the scarcity of light, but when I noted that I looked forward to having more sunlight during the winter, he laughed and responded with something like, “I don’t know if you know this, but even though we don’t have the same extreme when it comes to sun up and down, the sky can be gray pretty much all winter.”
Cooking isn’t just about whipping up tasty treats (although that’s definitely a big part of the fun). Empowering and nurturing children’s culinary skills extends far beyond the kitchen. It’s a fantastic adventure where kids explore, create, and learn skills that will stick with them for life. Think of it as a mix of delicious experiments and add a sprinkle of essential life lessons on top. From crafting scrumptious snacks to understanding the fuel that keeps us going, kids learn the importance of nutrition, gain confidence, and feel accomplished. In today’s fast-paced world, introducing kids to the wonders of cooking is an invaluable gift, offering them a foundation for a lifetime of healthy eating habits and a deeper appreciation for the culinary arts.
Anne Biris is a nationally board certified and State of Michigan licensed acupuncturist, Chinese herbalist, massage therapist, and practitioner of Chinese Medicine with offices in Ann Arbor and Dearborn Heights. She holds a Master’s degree in Chinese Medicine and has been practicing for 30 years. She also provides acupuncture on a volunteer basis in the poorest areas of India and Sikkim. Biris likes to fly under the radar, but after much prodding (because Anne Biris is a treasure that readers of CWCJ should know about), s
For as long as I can remember I have had a fascination with quartz crystals. They call to my heart and sing to my soul. I have them in most every room of my home. As a spiritual person, I believe in the metaphysical and healing use of crystals of all varieties. My favorite crystal is clear quartz. I love the beauty and clarity of these faceted wonders of nature.
I have dreams that come true. Not all of them, of course, but enough that I now accept this strange unbidden gift as a natural part of who I am. For example, I once dreamed that a dear friend’s daughter was pinned underneath a huge tree that had fallen on her. In the dream, she was alive, but she was unable to move the tree, and she was hurt. The next day I found out this same 16-year-old girl, had been driving too fast on a gravel road, went airborne over a bridge, and hit a telephone pole in her dad’s Dodge Ram. The pole fell, totaling the truck, and trapping her inside. She was banged up, shook up, but alive and safe. Before she had fully recovered, her dad received a bill from the city to replace the telephone pole.
More from Issue 56
“That’s life,” Jasmine Hampton reports cheerfully from training camp. If she is anything, she is a good sport. Hampton is a two-time Junior Olympics champion boxer and 11x national champion with a record of 106-17 or so. She was enrolled in the Olympic Training camp with US Boxing in Colorado Springs as an alternate, even though she won her weight class. The selection process can seem arbitrary, but she is happy to train in any case. Born and raised in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, I met Hampton as the cool high school kid who lived down the street. I got to know her as she became a champion basketball player and track star first. It has been a treat to witness her devotion to the task every step of the way.
Cooking isn’t just about whipping up tasty treats (although that’s definitely a big part of the fun). Empowering and nurturing children’s culinary skills extends far beyond the kitchen. It’s a fantastic adventure where kids explore, create, and learn skills that will stick with them for life. Think of it as a mix of delicious experiments and add a sprinkle of essential life lessons on top. From crafting scrumptious snacks to understanding the fuel that keeps us going, kids learn the importance of nutrition, gain confidence, and feel accomplished. In today’s fast-paced world, introducing kids to the wonders of cooking is an invaluable gift, offering them a foundation for a lifetime of healthy eating habits and a deeper appreciation for the culinary arts.
Tears run down my cheeks. My right hand, resting on a hand cradle contraption, buzzes lightly. Life and health coach Joy Dettling asks me to continue speaking about my central concerns, as she monitors the correlating reactions on her laptop. “What’s bothering you?” she asked. “What are the blocks between you and your betterment?” With one deep aha moment after the next, I am surprised to be finding the words to express some of my most long-held emotional blocks and self-doubts. As I speak, the ZYTO EVOX hand cradle measures my reactions through the pulses in my fingertips and reports the levels on her screen. With a thumbs-up, Dettling assures me that, “We are on the right track.”
Here’s the thing I’ve noticed about stepping out of your comfort zone: The more resistance you feel about doing the uncomfortable thing, the more learning and transformation you’ll experience when you do it.
By definition, everything on the above list fell outside of my comfort zone, and nothing on this list catalyzed resistance like healing chronic illness. Healing has been the ultimate adventure out of my comfort zone.
I’ve never enjoyed exposing myself to potential scrutiny and criticism. Staying quietly out of the limelight seemed like a good strategy for avoiding these unpleasantries. My friendly, people-loving nature, along with a deep desire for approval, caused me to prioritize putting others at ease, and to do what I could to keep everybody comfortable. I’d always believed that was the right thing to do…the nice thing to do. In many ways it felt good, yet a disastrous cost to me of all this people-pleasing was that I was chronically tense, and I was squelching my own true self-expression.
Fast forward to the summer of 2023, and I stood in an elegant gallery in downtown Saline, Michigan looking at a variety of impressive 2D and 3D artwork. I was there to learn how Whitepine Studios went from that upsetting message in 2020 to a thriving women-founded business that had already outgrown its first studio location (opened in 2021). Here is what I learned about their journey from setback to success.
When I first heard about Dexter, Michigan’s new boutique gift shop called Grace Proper, a memory passed through my mind. It was from roughly four years ago when I worked at a high-end retail store in Ann Arbor. I was getting to know a fellow employee named Breana Jackson as we worked on what the company referred to as standards—tidying up products to display them perfectly folding t-shirts symmetrically, lining up candle labels, and arranging sizes from smallest to largest. In this memory, Jackson told me where she lived and why she and her husband Dan and their two daughters loved the community of Dexter. She beamed about their country home, great schools, and proximity to Ann Arbor that made them fall in love with the town. She said another reason the Jacksons chose Dexter was that she eventually hoped to open a shop on bucolic Main Street which attracts shoppers and diners from surrounding cities.
