By Grace Oborne My name is Grace and this week is my first week working with the Echo. I’ll be here throughout the summer, and I could not be more excited. Despite that excitement, I’m…
Highland Wood and Hyland Crest love
By Lynda Shadbolt Greetings readers of this column! I hope you are well and finding ways to stay connected, safe and focused on being positive and hopeful in these unique times. We all inspire, support…
Happy Stories – story starters
By Lynda Shadbolt Thanks for coming to this page to get inspired to write or tell your story about the goodness that is around you in these times of COVID-19. You can do this! Your…
Happy (AH) Part 2
By Lynda Shadbolt In my last article I asked how you are doing and talked about the practice of noticing the goodness that is around you every day. I’m really interested in the little and…
Happy (as hell), part 1
How are you doing? How is your spirit in this first week of November? If you are anything like me, you have moments of worry, doubt, feeling disconnected, fear, grief, loneliness, anger, sadness and more.…
Seven hearts
By Lynda Shadbolt I was having a “terrible, horrible, very bad, no good day” (have you ever read the children’s book by Judith Viorst – it is a good one!). It was early September and…
Combatting misinformation
By Erin Kernohan-Berning Throughout the pandemic we have been made to think about something that we normally don’t really think too much about – how things like viruses spread. It might feel strange to some…
The outdoor potlucks
By Lynda Shadbolt In his book, Embers - One Ojibway’s Meditations, Richard Wagamese has a chapter on Gratitude. In one of his entries he says “he is learning that happiness is an emotion that’s a…
Day 87
By Lynda Shadbolt Published June 16 2020 We all have stories we’ll tell about our time in this pandemic. How we spent our time what we learned about ourselves what was important every day and…
Olive
By Lynda Shadbolt We are all given a lot in life that we don’t understand. Things that we don’t necessarily want. Life is not always fair even or just. We can’t control everything. What we can do is…
Hope
by Lynda Shadbolt Published May 19 2020 By the time this article comes out we will be in about day 57 of our social distancing. All of us have had moments or days of fear…
Welcome to the Haliburton Club
By Janet Trull Special to the Echo I am starting a club. As a kid I belonged to a comic book club. Everyone brought their favourite comic books to swap. We talked about who would…
An educated society
By Lynda Shadbolt Like thousands of students across Ontario our daughter was sent home from university in mid-March. With three weeks of classes still to be had her professors were quick to organize Zoom and…
When the cottage is off limits
By Janet Trull In troubled times the family cottage seems like a sanctuary. But last week Doug Ford asked people to stay away from their seasonal residences so they do not overwhelm small communities with…
Together apart
By Lynda Shadbolt The world needs music and art now more than ever. We need the beauty the inspiration the creativity the aliveness the hope. We've been physical distancing for two weeks and we are…
Choose love
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Calm and centred
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Little bits of good
By Lynda Shadbolt It seems that everywhere I go in the county these days I run into another young interesting and interested person who has come back from college university or travelling to live in…
Yell peace!
By Lynda Shadbolt In yoga and meditation we often talk about working with the two dimensions of our being “the form and the formless.” Eckhart Tolle talks about this at length in his teachings. “The…
From a Kolomeyka to Lemon Bucket Orkestra
By Lynda Shadbolt Published Jan. 28 2020 Sometimes in life you do things just so you can be around certain people. Perhaps they inspire you or are fun or have great energy and you just…
Column: Joyful effort
By Lynda Shadbolt Published Jan. 14 2019 Jim and I were on our way home from Kingston on the weekend and as we drove north on Highway 62 he spotted a barred owl sitting in…