By: Joe Kowalski
Owner/CEO Empowered Community Services

Most everyone can remember the panic, sudden jolt, and jarring pain of hitting the ground after their friend jumped off the teeter totter when we were kids.

Or that time when you were in a hurry to get home with the groceries. You’re late, it’s raining, and instead of making three trips into the house with the groceries in the rain, you try to carry all 37 bags at one time, only to slip on the pavement sending a week’s worth of groceries all over the garage floor.

What about this one? You are up against a deadline at work, going on 4 hours of sleep and you get a call at 5:30p from your spouse demanding “where are you?”  With everything going on, you forgot to update your calendar with the kids’ recital that you are now going to miss.  
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These lessons on gravity, imbalance, and regret are hard to forget. Unbalanced objects, whether they be playground equipment, people, or the expectations of others, will always fall.
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My wife and I have four children (3 high schoolers still at home,) a new grandson, 3 dogs, and I run my own small business. The demands on my time are many and balance becomes more and more difficult to maintain. By my own admission, I have a lot of work to do when it comes to balance in my life, but the following are a few pieces of advice I’ve come to cherish on this exceedingly difficult subject.

By: Abby Glaser
Encompass Community Advocate


As we continue to dive into our topic this month, "New," I would love to explore some ways that old relationships may have something new! I’ve had some experience with this recently regarding a Christmas gift I purchased for my Mom. If we’re talking about relationships,  there are none “older” than the ones with our parents! I’m sure if asked, I may have said in the past that I know everything there is to know about my Mom. I’ve discovered recently how untrue that is! For Christmas this year I bought my mom a subscription to a platform that facilitates her sharing all kinds of memories from her life in one place. At the end of the year it puts all of those stories together into a bound book about her life, for us to share!  You may remember Lavern talking about his book in a prior blog post,  A Powerful Present of Presence.

By Lavern Nissley
Encompass Executive Director

My Dad and my son, Josh, both have the same birthdays on June 8 - 39 years apart. I always start thinking about this unique historical overlap as the month of June begins. This year Josh and Emily are expecting a son, but my Dad won't get to meet him as he passed last November.

It got me thinking about my future great-grandchildren, hoping I get to meet at least a few. Likely our age gap would be 70-80 years. What would I want to give them that would enrich their lives? What life hacks could I offer them that would still be relevant in their generation? Here goes . . .