Tag: faith

A Swan Song for an Expectant Mother

Mary Novaria

I used to read my horoscope occasionally just for fun, but I didn’t put much stock in it. In fact, I was skeptical of anything I considered to border on divination or the occult. Sure, as a teen, there were slumber parties with séances and Ouija boards, but I never Read more

Mary Novaria

Mary Novaria's is a two-time Writer's Digest award winner whose work has been featured in Oprah Daily, Washington Post, Spirituality & Health, Cosmopolitan, Feminine Collective, FF2 Media, HuffPost, and elsewhere. She and her husband are empty nesters who live in the mountains of Colorado with their rescue dog, Rooney. She is currently working on a novel.

Finding God: My Journey Begins

Julie Anderson

No matter what your current state of being with “faith” happens to be, I am sure that you would agree that having a truth to hold on to is comforting.  Most of us need to believe so that we can manage our lives. Our beliefs solidify the reason for being, Read more

Julie Anderson

Julie Anderson is the Creator and Publisher of Feminine Collective. Julie was inspired to create this safe place for women to share their secrets, desires, triumphs and pain as the antithesis of what mainstream media offers women today. In her column Pursuit of Perfection, she explores the importance of rectifying the balance of inner and outer beauty through essays, poems and articles on self-esteem, shame, family, and self- acceptance.

Should Freedom of Speech have Limits? Maybe.

Nathalie Findlay

After two harrowing weeks in Paris, it behoves me to make a few enlightened comments. I use the word ‘enlightened’ not as a means to flatter myself into brilliance but instead to indicate that I am making observations based on the thinkers of the Age of Reason or the Enlightenment. Read more

Nathalie Findlay

After completing a degree in Fine Arts and another in Interior Architecture, Nathalie began modelling in New York, Hamburg, Munich and Paris where she eventually decided to base herself. Always on the lookout for opportunities to grow, she combined her modelling career with other areas of interest, working for the Canadian Embassy, Christian Liaigre, A Small World and Sotheby's. She has also enjoyed appearing regularly as a presenter and speaker for television and media events and as a pit-lane reporter on Eurosport. Exposed both personally and professionally to the intricacies of etiquette and protocol, Nathalie now focuses on applying her extensive knowledge-base practically, addressing matters of refinement, image and manners for individual and corporate clients with Lifestyling, a consultancy she created in 2007. Nathalie lives in the French countryside with her husband, their baby and two Korthals.

Born Again: One Woman’s Journey Out of Religion

Kaleesha Williams

“No thank you, we’re atheists,” I respond with a smile to yet another invitation to church. It happens a lot here in southeastern Missouri. I wasn’t always an atheist. For many years I was what you might call a hyper-fundamentalist, but I wasn’t always that, either. My parents did the Read more

Kaleesha Williams

Kaleesha Williams accomplishes her musing, writing, and goat-wrangling in rural southeastern Missouri—that is, when she has time between homeschooling and adoring her seven children, gardening, making goat milk soap, planning projects with Denny, and trying to get her sourdough English muffins to cook up properly. Her family moved to Missouri in 1990 when her parents realized that the answer to the riddle, “What’s green and goes backward?” was their current state and the state of her birth, Vermont. Now that she’s out of her religious bubble and in her right mind (eh, questionable), Kaleesha is considering that Vermont is actually one of the few states thinking and acting progressively. Regardless, she anticipates calling Fredericktown, Missouri home for a good long while. Though Kaleesha is a homeschool dropout, since high school she has worked as a teacher, nurse, accountant, CEO, mechanic, plumber, electrician, carpenter, landscaper, gardener, photographer, veterinarian, goat breeder, counselor, dietician, chef, baker, dishwasher, laundress, seamstress, event coordinator, chauffeur, diplomat, painter, decorator, fitness coach, masseuse, astronomer, and nanny, all within her own home and among her family, often performing many of these roles in the course of a single day. For peanuts. And brownies. And foot rubs. And she loves it. The first bits of writing Kaleesha had published were some poems as a teenager. Most recently she has published articles in the Countryside And Small Stock Journal and the Astronomical League’s Reflector magazine.

Craigslist, Sex, and One Woman’s Intuition

Michele Rigby Assad

No one is ever ready for this to happen. We can’t even entertain the possibility it could happen. It sounds like a story out of a seedy gossip magazine, not real life, right? Unfortunately, the below scenario did happen to a close friend of mine—We’ll call her Kate. She was Read more

Michele Rigby Assad

After obtaining a masters degree in Arab Studies at Georgetown University, Michele applied—along with hundreds of others from the university--to work for the CIA. After a long and grueling hiring process and a year of intensive training, she became an intelligence officer for the National Clandestine Service, the covert (operational) arm of the Agency. Serving for a decade as a counterterrorism officer, Michele worked in all of the awful places you hope you’ll never visit, including Iraq during the height of the war. To date, Michele has traveled to 45 countries, lived in six of those, and has a lot of crazy stories to tell about life overseas. While working for the CIA, Michele initially decried the traits that made her different from senior male officers, but later realized that these traits were what made her a great intelligence officer (empathy, intuition, strong interpersonal skills). Now she’s on a mission to show women that they have the elements to be a Femme Fatale—the incredibly intelligent and operationally astute woman that gets stuff done. After years of service to her country, Michele has left the undercover life behind and now works as an international management consultant focused on Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. She has a more “normal” life now and a lot more time to do the things she loves: writing, cooking, traveling for pleasure, walking on the beach—and most of all, inspiring others!