Family Today Forum: 2013

By Valerie Hockert, PhD

Did you miss some issues in 2013? Here are the articles that were published on www.familytodayforum.com in 2013. Family Today Forum is an e-magazine that launched in October 2011.

Family Today Forum is an e-magazine directed toward today’s traditional family, the step family, the single parent family, the dual-income family, and contains articles on how to cope with everyday situations. Family Today Forum contains hot topics and fun for any family.

Statistics show there are many single parent families, blended families, and teenagers dealing with everyday situations. The editorial content of the magazine will be educational and informative. Yet Family Today Forum still recognizes that families need to have fun together, which makes this e-magazine a unique publication.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Justice Gray
• Release date: Feb 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311008008

Valerie Hockert, PhD

Valerie Hockert, was born in the Midwest where she has lived all her adult life. She has had much life experience through her various entrepreneurial life. She has a Master's Degree in Liberal Studies, and a PhD in Literary Studies. Dr. Hockert has been teaching at a college level for many years. She was the first publisher of the Writers' Journal and Today's Family, two national publications. She is also a certified personal trainer, great chef, and the Publisher of an e-magazine: www.realitytodayforum.com.

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Introduction

Did you miss some issues in 2013? Here are the articles that were published on www.familytodayforum.com in 2013. FamilyToday Forum is an e-magazine that launched in October 2011.

Family Today Forum is an e-magazine directed toward today’s traditional family, the step family, the single parent family, the dual-income family, and contains articles on how to cope with everyday situations. Family Today Forum contains hot topics and fun for any family.

Statistics show there are many single parent families, blended families, and teenagers dealing with everyday situations. The editorial content of the magazine will be educational and informative. Yet Family Today Forum still recognizes that families need to have fun together, which makes this e-magazine a unique publication

In 2014, we merged with Reality Today Forum. Their e-magazine has a family section (which is us). So to read more, go to www.realityfodayforum.com for the latest issue online.

To purchase any of the books from Reality Today Forum, go to www.shop.realitytodayforum.com or click on the Book Store button on www.realitytodayforum.com

Features

Putting Together a Future with the Family, for the Family

By Marsha Caldwell

Caregiving is a difficult and seemingly thankless job at times, so why to so many people do this kind of work. Have you ever noticed in families (maybe even yours) there is the one person who is sought out when there is a need to be a stand-in child care provider, an advocate for a sick member of the family, the person who listens seemingly well and interrupts the information into a statement or paragraph the medical professionals seem to understand? Have you ever wondered, how do they do that? Caregivers do seem to have an ability to provide the strong, empathic and calm manner necessary for caregiving when all else is in chaos. Is this a learned ability or a passion for helping or a ‘nurturing soul’?

Caregiving seems to be a response which is born with a person. However, just as there are people who can sit down and produce a mathematical equation to explain why the bridge is going to fall down; caregivers are the people who can take in all the chaos and pain around them only to bring order, compassion and security to a health crisis. I believe these people bring qualities necessary to help us when we need help and met our needs as we go about surmounting a health care issue.

We need to rally around these people and honor them for the human responsibility they are willing to expend to us. Looking around your family members and deciding who has these qualities, we need to acknowledge this intense value and not abuse the qualities and willingness to provide for us. In this modern world of recession, building failure, economic strife, and so many people without housing but rather living on the street; we should look at the members of our family and make some good decisions to take us through the next ten to twenty years.

Yes there are good families and some not so framed ‘in the texture of our lives’. But here is the thing, families need to band together like never before to meet the needs of each member, I am not saying a family unit should take one person (you know the one) and provide hand-outs from now until forever. What I am saying is we should take this person and look at what abilities they bring to the table. Perhaps they were in the construction business before the collapse. Look around and see who in the immediate family can provide a bed, who can provide some of the food, who can provide good contacts for our person to get another job; and then look at what needs to be done to repair or upgrade the homes for the immediate family member and give this person a choice of two jobs, while they are looking for work. This is called building on family values. And we seem to have forgotten how to do that.

Prior to our slump in the economic state (the recession) many people had two or more homes. During the slump, you couldn’t sell so if you held on to them, why not let someone in the immediate family use one. Come on you can’t live in two houses at once. Or here is a thought, have the person out of work in construction; work on bringing the house up to state and federal guidelines for an Adult Family Home. Once done, have our caregiver begin to provide for family members out of this home, bring grandma in and allow her to have a less stressful day in the care of a family member. Help the caregiver by paying a small stipend and provide room and board with food and a possible vacation included. Have you any idea how much money this family will save? Sure this is not for every family, however times have changed and new solutions need to be found. Would it be better living in a nursing home or on the street?

This is the kind of family taking care of family; shared living arrangements and futuristic thinking we can all do. This is how it works in other parts of the world and it would work here, if given a chance. What looked bleak four years ago, now has some merit. Can’t live around your family, don’t have any family left, ashamed to go to family – then maybe you should consider doing this with yourself, DSHS and State and Federal entities. You might find a way to save enough to get by for the time being and see a brighter future.

Marsha Caldwell has experience in human services, advocating for the disabled community and victims of domestic violence and working closely with social workers and law enforcement in these situations. Working with families and helping them walk down a path to recognition, self-healing and closure for events which have taken so much from their lives; specifically, my knowledge of the CASA Program and of the Parenting Guidelines set-up by DSHS for seeking custody of children. She is also a writer for a nationally syndicated column and have a book to help caregivers of the disabled and elderly.

Belly Dance: How Respectable Is It?

By Valerie Hockert

I hear they’re offering evening classes in belly dance at the high school, said the red-haired luncheon hostess.

Belly Dance! gasped one of her guests. Is that respectable?

Of course it’s respectable, scoffed the middle-aged blonde across the table, and I’d take the course if I only knew what I’d be getting into.

Perhaps belly dance classes are being offered in your community, but like the blonde luncheon guest, you hold back because you don’t really know very much about the art. For you, I present this brief introduction.

The origin of belly dance has never been determined, but it is quite likely that it may have been started in Persia around the same time as the oud (an instrument which is used in Mid-Eastern music, and preceding the lute). Wherever its beginning, it wasn’t introduced into the United States until the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, when a woman who called herself Little Egypt came to dance there.

She was neither little nor Egyptian, but Syrian. Her real name was Fahreda Mahzar. She wore bangles of gold and every muscle in her body moved. Victorian audiences were in for a shock!

Interest became big and the belly dance became very popular. It was being done in public and on stage by Americans in the United States. From then on, belly dance was here to stay.

Belly dance has always been a functional dance. It also has been known as an abdominal dance or hip dance. It was used in fertility rites and was the first exercise for childbirth.

It’s been said that the belly dance was performed in Africa by helpful village women when one of their sisters was giving birth to a child. The dance served as a rhythmic, soothing reminder to the woman in labor to use her abdominal muscles to aid in the birth process.

Although it has been used to make women more attractive sexually, it is not a sex dance. Rather, it is a sensual dance and there is a difference. A sex dance is a type of flesh peddling which takes no special skill or art and serves only to arouse. The belly dance, on the other hand, is an art; a means of expression.

The dance can be done by women of all ages, from eight to eighty. Different doctors will even recommend it to 60-year-olds. It is also recommended for certain patients by both physicians and psychiatrists for physical and emotional therapy.

Belly dance includes a preparatory series of exercises to limber up, stretch and condition the body, and to express more naturally. Some of the exercises are also used in yoga, ballet and even physical therapy. This dance, if presented properly, tones the entire body through exe4rcise from fingertips to toes! Through these exercises, you can receive many benefits.

You can reduce tensions. Try working out with the dance after a tough day on the job, or a hassle with the kids or a quarrel with your husband or boyfriend. This is a great outlet to release those tensions. After a few minutes of dancing, your troubles start to disappear and physically too, you will feel so much better.

You can trim your waistline. As belly dance puts great stress on the abdominal muscles, your waistline does actually get trimmer; in fact, you’ll notice in a few weeks that your stomach has begun to flatten.

How we feel and how we look depends greatly on muscle tone and loss of excess fat. The dance alone will not take off pounds, but will help tighten up any excess. Chubbies especially will find that these exercises work for them. Skinnies will find that they can add curves to their otherwise straight figure.

The development of pose, stamina, balance and physical strength are all qualities we want to have. And what a better way than through belly dance?

After a while, you may find that you may seem a little taller. Actually, you have loosened up and stretched the spinal column. This is also due to the improvement in posture.

What should you wear? For beginners, loose pants and shirts, hostess floats or lounge dresses with tie belts are alright, but wearing leotard and tights and perhaps even a matching skirt are best. Once you decide that you are definitely interested in the dance, you can buy or make a practice skirt. These