By on saying no to plastic surgery and yes to the b team By Mary Ellen Mitchell, Lydia’s House co-director The night before my partial mastectomy we went to my son Sam’s middle school soccer game. He’s playing for our neighborhood, Norwood, instead of his club team because, with the addition of my mid summer breast cancer diagnosis, we just couldn’t manage the transportation and weekend demands of select athletics. Our neighborhood, while rapidly gentrifying, shows few signs of that in its school sports program, so it’s been a bit challenging for Sam to lose and lose again. When we pulled
Our New Atrium Space
Our new Atrium space is finished and open for children to interact and learn about God! The past month our friends Dan Aerni, Dane Miller, Dennis Bishop and Steve Whitlatch have been hard at work preparing our new classroom space for our Wednesday night Atrium religious education program. We put in a new wall in order to have two separate classrooms to divide up our age groups, repainted, and set up all of the different interactive stations. Putting in the drywall and getting it painted. About two weeks ago, all of the construction was completed and
Summer 2023 in review
Summer fun is a big part of life at Lydia’s House. This summer we were pleased to offer field trips, camps, and parties. We took a day trip to the Cincinnati Zoo. Special thanks to our summer intern, Melinda, for adding some order to this chaos! The boys really loved getting to climb on the gorilla statues there! Before the Norwood Day Parade we had a very nice magician, Richard, come and interact with the kids, showing them some cool magic tricks. We also spent some time at Procter Episcopal Summer Camp and Camp Joy. At these two amazing camps,
Introducing the Lydia’s House Atrium
Laura Menze, Lydia’s House Occupational Therapist A year ago on a staff retreat, we spoke of our longing to introduce more robust spiritual practices into the life of Lydia’s House. We brainstormed and let the ideas simmer in our collective consciousness. In our time of waiting and curiosity, Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (CGS) rose to the surface as a good fit for our community. Mary Ellen Mitchell’s children were part of this formation as young children and she was excited to introduce this to the children of Lydia’s House. Catechesis of the Good Shepherd is a Montessori based religious
(Kind of) Accompanying a birth in a pandemic
By Bethany Kurtz, Lydia’s House live in volunteer Before the pandemic started I was honored to take a doula class. Little did I know what form that would take in a contagious outbreak. In the weeks prior to the birth, before we were too concerned about COVID, Tiana and I spent hours sitting with each other discussing the birth. We talked about how we could make the birth of her baby girl go as smoothly as possible. Of course, implicit in these plans is that her mom would be there as her partner, and I would be there as her
