Katharine's Story:

I have decided to share my personal journey as an example as to why we should not judge others. It has negative effects on our health and society. 

I have also seen first-hand how positive emotions affects us, within our body systems. I have experienced the benefits of working through barriers and Being still. I hope that my sharing will offer others hope. 

We all have our own challenges to face and overcome, and overcome. My life quickly entered into lack at a very young age. I lacked security and family, and this became the cornerstone for my development. 

My mother left my father when her mother had passed very quickly and very unexpectedly. Rather than return to England, she took a night job with Bell and helped the draft dodgers who landed in Toronto make it to Vancouver. 

Earlier, In the 1960s, we had weekcare; akin to daycare I was there when mom was late returning and I was removed and placed within foster care.    (My mother did fight for years to have me back, but this was not to be) 

I was adopted some years later and encountered the confusion of a name change at the age of four. This home had predators within it and life was based on survival. 

Survive I did but in that mode, the brain takes little else in. I was unable to tap into the gifts of intelligence and instead rebelled, as many do. 

Again I was removed and placed into foster care. It is quite unique to be adopted and a decade later I returned to the system as a Crown ward. Unique I am! 

Foster care over the next years was fraught with difficulties: I became quite forlorn and alienated. I viewed society with suspicion, while yearning to belong. I always wanted to help others but lacked connection education and a sense of self. I was lost. 

I left foster care and school at the age of 16 and stayed lost for another decade. I was all gruff exterior; masking an extremely vulnerable person inside. 

In my mid 20s I was advised (by the man who became my husband) that I might enjoy reading the oldest history book in the world. Over the next five years I read the King James version of the Bible and began a social worker. 

My courses were all through correspondence which made them all the more difficult keeping me disconnected from a busy society I needed to be part of. 

The Bible gave me knowledge and a connection with the world regarding many common challenges we all face. I saw myself as one of many verses a unique victim. I began to view challenges as potential strengths. I was without the prejudices toward the oppressed after being one in a sense. 

I began to see this as a gift. I felt akin with the marginalized. I always had, but now saw it in a more mature and worldly manner. Some of the traits that had set me apart were now viewed as gifts. 

During this time my penchant for physical fitness and my ongoing desire to stay current with science also took flight. Being inclined towards physical activity gave me a love for walking and hiking as this was a saving grace in my youth.

In grade seven I was found coaching and encouraging others who felt exercise was a waste of time or that they were inadequate to the task. In my late teens I helped many of them connect with a healthier lifestyle. 

This aptitude served me well in my early 30s. Combined with finishing my social worker course and reading thru the Bible, I began to host a (light) weightlifting /yoga class in the community center of our mountain home. I was told and recognized that I had a gift for teaching and inspiring others and began to feel this was more my calling than social work. 

In conjunction with this wonderful 'season' of my life I suddenly had bowel difficulties. I had been plagued with this my whole life and once more it was rearing its Continued at Right