One of the things that can be hardest about watching our children grow into adolescence and young adulthood is dealing with our own hopes and fears about their sexuality. Will they make choices that are consistent with the values we tried to teach them? Will they be safe? Will they get involved with caring people…
Becoming Life Scribes
When JFS hosted a reading by local poet Esther Altshul Helfgott last fall, she closed the event by asking audience members to write something from their own lives. I was inspired by the notion that we can become the scribes of our lives and the lives of our loved ones. This got me thinking about…
More People Come to Light in the Dark
Thanks to Real Change for allowing this re-print. This year’s One Night Count, the 35th, sets a sobering record: 3,772 people outside without any shelter. A small team of volunteers sank their boots deep into marshy trails and slipped on slick and steep paths through an undeveloped greenbelt in Kent early in the morning looking…
Rounding up: The Central Co-op Partnership
If you’ve shopped at the Central Co-op on Capitol Hill in recent months, you might have been asked by your cashier if you’d like to round your grocery bill up to the nearest dollar for local food banks. This simple question has helped raise more than $6,000 in the past 19 months, resulting in a…
Why Does My Son With Tourette’s Have to Fight to be Accepted?
At my son’s friend’s middle school, a student came down with leukemia after fall semester. Fortunately, he went into remission in spring and was able to return to school. All the students were called to an assembly before he returned to explain why this student would be without hair, what had happened to him, and…
The Yoke of Addiction
Sometimes the most powerful way to explain something complicated is through the use of allegory. In this short film, these animators poetically capture the devastating and imprisoning yoke of addiction using a kiwi bird’s innocent desire for pleasure and flight. Although any single telling risks oversimplification, each of us can connect to the very human…
ABOUT
JFS is a 501(c)(3)
©2014
CONTACT US
(206) 461-3240
