Today, This Pub Begins a Whole New Chapter!

With a new look and a renewed commitment, let’s get this party started!

“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” — Desmond Tutu

My dear “Hope, Healing and Humour” Community (and anyone else who happens to stop by to say hello!)

I hope all is splendiferous in your world?

It’s about time I gathered all of us together for a little connecting time. I hit the ground running when I started here on Medium three months ago and haven’t stopped since.

Adding to my “running,” I threw myself into starting three pubs (two of which accept submissions), not really having a clue about any of this, or what a pub owner should or could do. Typical of me, I threw myself in head first at the deep end of the pool before checking to see if there was water in it.

Oops. 🙄

I just knew that I wanted to build a community of like-minded souls. And I wanted pubs that weren’t so overloaded with writers that you had to wait several days or (heaven forbid!) weeks to be published — only to have your story disappear waaaaay down the list under a hundred others the moment they publish the dang thing!

(Okay, that might be ju-u-u-u-ust a teeny tiny exaggeration. Or perhaps not?!)

Now that I’ve found my feet and am settling into this whole super-cool Medium thing, it’s time I reached out to all of you and said “Hello!” And probably a little bit more than that. 🤗

I’m still learning how to operate a pub. Please forgive me for that…I will be much more involved from now on. Mind the learning curve... ⚠️

And of course, I have Shorties But Goodies, too, and many of you have been added as writers over there. Now that I’ve figured out there’s more to owning a pub than just adding content by wonderful writers, I’m not sure how I will manage to properly maintain two of them 🤦🏻‍♀️ …it is a puzzlement. 🧐

Please continue to send your submissions to SBG; I just mean that I’m not sure how to nurture my SBG writers who aren’t on HHH, and focus on the growth of that pub. Hmm.

For now, I must focus on this one. And I’ll tell you why in just a moment…

Although we’re getting ready to shut down 2021, it seems like a great time to shift things here on Hope * Healing * Humour. It’s an opportunity for us to reflect on what we’re leaving behind and what we want to take with us into 2022.

That means something extra powerful for me right now…It’s an especially poignant time because a few days ago, I lost someone very dear to me. Her illness came up rather suddenly and it was a beast.

We went from celebrating an event one moment, to preparing for her death the next.

Why am I telling you this?

Because watching her journey through this dark and painful time solidified why I started this pub, and why it’s so important to grow this community. I supported her in clinging to hope. I prayed with her about healing — even if that meant that the only healing she could have was for anything in her life that needed completion.

And we continued to use humour to face what lay ahead, no matter how ugly we knew it would get.

“I fully expect you to visit me from the Other Side.” I was a little pushy about how I said it.

“I’ll haunt you, how’s that?” And she laughed as we talked about what that might look like. I would never have guessed that she’d be gone just a few days later.

Two days after the “haunting” discussion, we had our last conversation. She was barely able to whisper a few breathless words and couldn’t keep her eyes open but she knew I was there. I shared some of Witchy’s dopey jokes (and if you haven’t met Witchy yet, she is my beloved alter-ego):

In spite of barely managing to speak, there were small smiles. On the brink of death, she never lost her sense of humour.

In life, and even as she faced her death, she was such an inspiration to anyone who knew her.

Hope, healing and humour were the cornerstones of her life, as they have been in mine, too. They got both of us through many terrible storms.

That’s why I started this pub. And her death has only strengthened my resolve to continue building up this pub and growing this community.

Our words are powerful, and if we can inspire others to choose hope, to seek healing, and to embrace humour even in the darkest times, we can save lives in more ways than we can count.

I thank you — with all of my heart — for carrying that torch with me, and for helping me honour the memory of one of the most beautiful souls I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. 💜

Now…on to some more cheery stuff…

Like the fact that HHH now has 52 followers! I know…a drop in the bucket compared to many — and I thank you for being willing to publish your beautiful words in my tiny (but growing!) pub. (Even the Really Big Pubs had 52 at one time!)

Please check to see that you’re following, too, okay? It’s one of those things that’s easily missed 🤗

Thank you for your contributions to HHH and helping get it off the ground. Are you as excited as I am to hit that first milestone of 100?!

Need a prompt?

For the next week (and beyond, of course!), I would love to see your submissions about someone who has inspired you?

And how has that person changed you and/or your life?

Stories like that will lift anyone who reads them! Please share and light up HHH!

Super Cool New Thing!

Because I’m ready to dive in and make this pub a fantastically successful community, I’m going to take a page from Winston’s book and add another submission “must”:

From now on, please tag at least one other writer in your stories/articles.

Let’s get good at shout-outs! Let’s support each other and look to each other to expand all that’s great about friendship, about writing, and about Medium! Let’s clap and cheer and happy-dance for each other’s work on this pub!

Let’s crank up the energy of Hope, Healing and Humour so that all of Medium thinks it’s a magical place and everyone wants to hang out with us!

Thank you, Winston, for the excellent idea to create the Coffee Times pub — the Coffee Times movement — with a huge emphasis on building and supporting a community of writers. It was a stroke of genius!

Thank you, my dear friend, Sandy Peckinpah, for urging me to get into Medium (if only I’d listened to her when she first tried in 2016…)

Thank you to another dear friend, Sharon Sayler, Author, for the daily check-ins and weekly Zoom chats, encouraging and supporting me through our mutual Medium adventure.

And to pockett dessert and Liz Porter who have also played a huge role in nudging me along, sharing their wisdom and all they’ve learned about this magnificent platform so far.

Thank you, Trista Signe Ainsworth for the inspiring way you move in the world and in your pub. I’m learning from you (as I guess you can see…). I appreciate your wisdom and kindness.

Thank, Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles, for your endless warmth, humour, gentleness and positivity. Your support means the world to me. I adore you…but I guess you knew that.

Dr. Preeti Singh, thank you for being such a wonderfully inspiring role model and for your ongoing encouragement of my work. I appreciate your presence in my life!

I am so thankful to many others, too, for their kind support. It’s just such a loooong list…! We would be here for months!

Highlighting Great Stories!

Some of you will have seen my Daily “5 Under 5s” that I did for a month but recently had to give up. I had fun doing them — but soon realised they were taking me a solid 5–6 hours (or more) every day. I was promoting lots of other writers’ work and had little time to write my own!

So…I’m going to transfer that love of sharing great stories and building community to this pub. I’ll highlight stories that have been published right here in our own little happy place, “HHH.” Sounds like a fun plan to me, how about you?

Okay — here are some wonderful “HHH” stories to get you started:

…like this absolute GENIUS 1-minute read by Carrie Kolar. She has a different title for it, but I would call it “Ode to Needlefeets!” I laughed all the way through! And I could relate to it…being a cat lover!

She is so funny and has such a delightfully quirky writing style! Thank you for yet another brilliant read, Carrie!

Wendy S. Bradfield, who up and moved to Egypt without ever having been there (yes, really!! Can you believe it??) shares a wonderfully inspiring story:

This is a fascinating story by our beloved Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles — Not at all what I expected when I began reading…

And Sam Branstner has published a brilliant and entertaining story about a conversation with his son, who just made too much sense.

Sharon Sayler, Author is the host of one of OM Times Radio’s most popular shows, The Autoimmune Hour.

After interviewing a wide range of fascinating guests for 355+ episodes, she’s got loads of great information related to health and wellness. Like this snippet of a transcript from episode #350:

This is an introspective week for me. I’m being gentle with myself after my recent loss but still want to stay connected.

Here’s to our respect and appreciation for hope, healing, and humour and what these three powerful words can do in our lives.

And here’s to a new chapter for all of us, the one where I’m beginning to figure out how to be an inspiring presence in my pub so I can be a better support you on your writing journey.

Gotta love a learning curve!

Oh, before I dash — every other week, I write a short newsletter that contains an intuitive Oracle Card message and usually one or two other little tidbits, happy music or something fun.

If you’d like to sign up for that, you’ll also get my free 5-Step Guide to Getting Unstuck (complete with some colouring pages! Yay!)

I am so thankful to all of you for being a part of Hope * Healing * Humour! I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the wonderful stories that we’ve published here and I’m excited to see more.

Especially with today’s prompt about someone who inspires/inspired you!

No doubt this “Newsletter-ish” post will morph over time but here’s where we’re beginning.

A huge and heartfelt “Thank you” to all of my lovely writers (below). I haven’t heard from some of you yet and hopefully you’ll submit something soon.

Dr Andrea Polzer Kris Bedenian Bethan Coady Rodney Brazier Patti Murray Voncannon Carrie Kolar Croix Sather Deb Fiore Dina Alexander DL Nemeril Donnette Anglin Loren Lieberthal Jimmy Misner Jr. Judy Millar Julie Gaeta Pene Hodge Karen Schwartz James Knight Laura Izquierdo Liz Porter pockett dessert Dr. Preeti Singh Radhika Iyer Sam Branstner Sharon Sayler, Author Umme Salma Susie Kearley Tamil T Mann Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles Lion~ Wendy S. Bradfield Yana Bostongirl

See you soon!