Patricia Sands

Author

Social issues

Last chapter syndrome …

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Ooops – Tuesday just slipped right by me! I’m in the grips of what I refer to, in a conflicted  joyful way, as “last chapter syndrome”. Even though I feel a little sad to say goodbye to the characters, it’s such a relief good feeling to be reaching the end of something that has consumed me for the past year my next novel! However, that doesn’t mean that I’m actually right at “The End” yet. That’s the truly difficult part for me.

The main character, a woman named Katherine Price, decided to do something at the last minute which I wasn’t expecting. You would think she might have at least given me an inkling but …nope … there I was, typing away and all of a sudden it was like … OMG,she’s going to do … what? But it turns out it’s a very good thing to do and actually is helping me tie up some loose ends. There are times when our characters really do know what’s best. That’s one of the amazing and surprising aspects of writing fiction. I love it!

The only way my husband can communicate with me at the moment!

However, it also means that I have not been thinking about much else (except golf once a week  for now and, of course, The Adorables, … my salvation after a winter of being stuck to this chair and computer) so please forgive this brief post. I’ve got to get back to work before my husband leaves me and finish this novel.

Next week, I’m going to introduce you to a couple of fabulous women who run a wonderful, and immensely helpful, business, the Downsizing Divas! You’re going to love them AND love how they do what they do!

By way of an intro, here’s their book and the link to find out more about it. Darn! I enlarged the image and now it’s a bit fuzzy. Sorry! Click that link and check it out and I’ll bring it all to you properly next Tuesday!

More Shameless Self-promotion here: I’ve got a Mother’s Day promotion for The Bridge Club running on Kindle Nation Daily’s facebook page. Need a good read for mom? The Bridge Club might be just the answer! Thanks for passing it on to your friends and readers. Always appreciated.

How do you cope when life gets crazy? Do you stay calm or get frazzled? I’ve found that frazzled really doesn’t work for me so I just motor on, leaving a trail of burned food in pots, unreturned messages, and blog posts that really aren’t up to par! Do you join the ranks of the calm or the frazzled? What works for you?

Oh! A gentle reminder – If you haven’t slipped over to CJ West’s blog to leave a comment and be in the running for a $500 Amazon Gift Card, please click here and take 30 seconds to do it. We all need to take a break and be kind of crazy at times and Jillian Dodd is just the writer to get us to do it! This idea is her brainchild so let’s help her out! Then please pass the message on.

Canadian Breast Cancer Support Fund – update

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Back in March, I was so pleased to write about a new organization, the Canadian Breast Cancer Support Fund, and their different approach to cancer support.

I recently spoke with founder, Donna Sheehan to see what was new. In case you missed it the first time, I’m repeating the post a little further down this page.

I’m also including this link to a Toronto fundraising event, Night Of The 9 Muses,  for the CBCSF , June 13th, organized by Canadian entrepreneur ROULA PANAGIOTOPOULOS . Here is their information page about CBCSF. If you are in Toronto, why not consider putting this on your calendar? It sounds like a fab evening!

Here’s the repeated post with a new update about the Holly and Ivy launch.

CANADIAN BREAST CANCER SUPPORT FUND is a new charitable organization. Its vision is to ease the burden of breast cancer patients who are facing financial difficulties. In fact, it’s so new you may not have heard of it yet … but you will!

Their innovative approach is definitely going to attract a lot of attention, beginning with their motto: Green is the new pink.

Toronto native Donna Sheehan was the manager of a peer support program at Willow, a national charity that provides support and information about breast cancer. As she became more aware of the financial pressures that create hardship for many breast cancer patients and their families, she decided to focus on doing something to help alleviate those monetary challenges.

It’s one thing to cope with accepting a breast cancer diagnosis and the required treatment, but often we neglect to think of how the basic needs of an individual or family will be affected.

The cost of food, shelter, restorative therapies and treatments, childcare and even something as seemingly unimportant as parking can add up quickly, not to mention the strain of being off work for 8 to 10 months. Government benefits only provide support for 15 weeks and not everyone has access to private insurance coverage for short-term disability.

Although the funding arm for cancer research is well established, the funding arm for support is seriously lacking.  Donna, along with a very informed advisory committee as well as a board of directors, is doing her part to give this important issue a voice and a solution. Approved for status as a charitable organization, the past year has been spent establishing the framework necessary to allow CBCSF to swing into action very soon.

The “green” in their motto, Green is the new pink™, represents their intention to raise awareness about the links between breast cancer and the environment.

Update:  Donna told me today that the imminent launch is now being planned for the new website, Holly and Ivy. She will send me the venue details once they are confirmed but it will be soon! Yay!

The social enterprise will offer natural and organic skincare, cosmetics and personal care products all entirely free of toxic chemicals.

Keeping  toxic chemicals and carcinogens out of the environment by purchasing low-impact, earth-friendly products is another way we can all contribute to lessening their effect on our health.

Fifty percent of the profits from Holly and Ivy will be donated to the Canadian Breast Cancer Support Fund. The hope is that this contribution will cover the administrative costs and in time 100% of your donation will go directly to providing short-term financial support to needy breast cancer patients.  This is the dream.

Be sure to take time to read their excellent website. It provides a wealth of vital information and suggestions for your support and there’s a Facebook page for you to  *like* too!  To all of you who went to their website and Facebook pages back in March, many thanks! If you didn’t manage to get there before … now’s your chance. Thanks for sharing these links!

In the spirit of paying it forward consider giving up your grande Caramel Frappacino or Expresso Macchiato or your regular coffee (double, double) on Fridays and instead make a $5.00 donation to Canadian Breast Cancer Support Fund. Five Dollar Fridays Rock!

So three cheers to Donna for being a woman with a vision and making good things happen.

I’m adding here a link to a powerful movie, “Pink Ribbons, Inc” , featured at the Toronto International Film Festival last year and recently released and still available at some selected theatres.  It addresses the highly controversial subject of “cause marketing” and informs us about “pinkwashing” and the involvement of corporations in fundraising and the impact this has had on charities.

Follow-up on BULLY-have you seen it yet?

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The jury is still out judging from the wide range of opinions in reviews for Lee Hirsch’s “Bully”, otherwise known as “The Bully Project”.
I have to admit I was a little disappointed but still feel it’s an extremely important film for adults and teenagers to see. Every school should incorporate this film into its programming  even though some of the school staff in the movie are shown to be dismally ineffective. The issue of bullying is one we all need to repeatedly bring into focus and work towards ending.
IMHO, the demographic studied in the documentary should have been more far-reaching  in order to impact a wider audience. This was a great opportunity to make a tremendously powerful statement and somehow it didn’t quite achieve what I had hoped.
Here are some other opinions:
The Bully Project is an intense, heartbreaking movie that every parent and school official should see. Kids may be kids, but abusers are taught. Here’s hoping this movie will have a positive effect and not just be ignored like the kids it’s trying to help. – Click here for the full review. FilmSchoolRejects.com
 But it also reveals Hirsch and Dwyer’s real priorities. Their victims cannot be empowered but rather pitied for their status as social pariahs. Difference is not a good thing in “Bully” but rather a frail quality and a mark of outcasts everywhere. The good intentions of everyone involved in making “Bully” don’t matter when the underlying logic to their film is so latently disparaging. Read the full review – Indiewire.com The Playlist
“Bully,” Lee Hirsch’s moving and troubling documentary about the misery some children inflict upon others, arrives at a moment when bullying, long tolerated as a fact of life, is being redefined as a social problem. “Just kids being kids” can no longer be an acceptable response to the kind of sustained physical and emotional abuse that damages the lives of young people whose only sin is appearing weak or weird to their peers. Read the full review here – NY Times.
I went to see BULLY today with some of my favourite people: our daughter, May and two of our granddaughters, Jessica, 11, and Megan, 13, along with a friend of theirs, Lucie, also 13. Over a post-movie lunch, we had a great gab about the movie and bullying in general.
I asked the girls to e-mail me some of their thoughts. I’ll qualify this by saying they  attend a small private school where a great deal of energy is spent focusing on community and respecting differences. As a former teacher, I firmly believe every classroom should share that focus in schools large or small, public or private. It can be done. Does it take work? YES. Is it effective? YES.
Lucie and Megan – We thought seeing the movie was a good experience because it opened our eyes. At our school there’s hardly any bullying so neither of us have really been bullied. Seeing the movie, it was hard to believe the amount of bullying taking place regularly and the huge impact it has on kids. The most shocking part is that often the school staff either doesn’t know about what’s happening, or doesn’t do anything about it. The number of kids that have committed suicide because of bullying is crazy and completely unnecessary. It’s horrible to think the families of some kids getting bullied don’t even know it’s happening. People getting bullied need to speak up in order for it to get better. We’re glad we saw the movie because it helped us understand the affect bullying has on kids of all ages. At times, Bully got repetitive – it could’ve had a wider variety of families/backgrounds. We’d recommend people see it though, because it gives you a whole different perspective of bullying and how serious it is.

Jessica – I found the movie very sad just because it’s terrible to think that these things actually happen and kids actually take their own life because of what others do to them. I cried A LOT during the movie because I feel like these kids are innocent and they just feel alone because the movie even showed how the parents and teachers really didn’t do much. If I were to change some parts of the movie to make it better, I would make it so that some child counsellor could maybe talk a little about why children bully. Also the ending of the movie seemed unfinished, and it seemed like they didn’t really come up with a solution. 

 
It’s very hard to think of ways to stop bullying because we’ve already done so much to try. Something some schools could do like we have at ours is have the teachers talk to the students about how wrong bullying is on a regular basis. I think this would really help because even though the bullies know what they’re doing is wrong, talking to them and making sure they know it’s unacceptable, how much trouble they could get into and how much damage it can do to the person getting bullied.
 
Overall I think Bully was a very good lesson. I would recommend this movie for children around age 10-16, but it’s good to let anyone know about how stupid bullying is.
Have you seen BULLY yet? What are your thoughts? Are you aware that your schools are working effectively to combat this unacceptable behaviour? You know I love to hear from you so leave a comment and share your thoughts. Thanks!

What’s your take on this?

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WHICH MOVIE WOULD YOU SAY IS MORE IMPORTANT FOR A TEENAGER TO SEE?

THE BULLY PROJECT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjjeHeAzZZM

THE HUNGER GAMES

Why not make this deal with the moviegoers in your life?  If you go see The Hunger Games you will see The Bully Project too.  If you only choose one movie to see in the near future, make it The Bully Project.

Let’s support this important global message. Every person deserves to feel safe.