By Our proud graduate (middle) from Dohn Community High School! Guests, volunteers, staff and family members gathered to celebrate her success. And, of course, there was a celebratory house dinner complete with homemade hot fudge cake at the graduate’s special request. Proud graduate and son strike a pose. The birthday girl, all smiles, dressed up for her party at Lydia’s House. Groundhog’s Day: A wacky, annual tradition at Lydia’s House. Because who doesn’t need a reason to celebrate in February? We played games, the kids ran around in (lots of) circles. Anne made chocolate mousse with a Groundhog landscape on top
Let them Hear Your Voice
Almost every day there are reports of new ways our elected officials are making the lives of poor women harder as they struggle to find affordable housing, living wage work, childcare, education, and healthcare. Many of us at Lydia’s House have been frequent callers to the state and D.C. offices of our senators and representatives in the last weeks. With the daily calls we are getting increasingly familiar with the answering staffers: “Hey! It’s me again! Just calling back to urge you not to gut healthcare for millions of vulnerable women and children. Also, it’s really important to me that our senator doesn’t
Hope Advent Reflection
By Mary Ellen Mitchell Often when we speak of religious or churchy terms like hope, faith or joy (the kinds of words we use a lot during Advent) we need to remind ourselves that, in some mysterious way, there are two worlds that we live in at the same time. You’re thinking “she’s crazy.” But let me use a metaphor I know my kids are familiar with. In Harry Potter Harry usually lives between the land of muggles and the land of wizards. There are muggle things like telephones that make no sense to wizards and wizard things like Quiddich
Freedom Advent Reflection
By Marykate Glenn Freedom was the topic for our second week of advent reflection. On Sunday afternoon, before our advent dinner, I went downtown to a prayer circle gathering to protest the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline on unceded Native land and through locations that risk the contamination of drinking water, Lake Oahe, and the Missouri River. It was organized by the American Indian Movement chapter of Indiana/Kentucky and supported by Black Lives Matter: Cincinnati and many other groups supporting the activists at Standing Rock. I witnessed leaders and activists with different backgrounds, different issues, from different states, articulating