Eden Alternative Tip of the Week

On your home's journey toward culture change with the Eden Alternative, you also experience seasons. You experience times when everything is just right to plant the seeds of change. You invest heavily in educating, involving, planning and implementing those new ideas. Then, if you have done well, you reach the time of harvest, when you can see those efforts pay off in benefits to all the care partners.

Just as we take time to breathe a little deeper and enjoy the fall warmth and explosions of color in the out-of-doors, do not forget to do the same within your home. Do you remember the Foolish Gardner: What Gardener would diligently weed, water and prune even as the fruit becomes overripe and falls from the vine? We definitely want to learn from this lesson.

What harvest has your home been reaping from its efforts at change and growth this summer? Are you noticing, sharing and celebrating the successes you are seeing? Sometimes when we as leaders have our eye on the bigger vision of where we are leading, we forget to stop and breathe deeply, and celebrate what is happening right before our eyes. that is what can make us a Foolish Gardener.

Recognize and celebrate the harvest you have sown in your home's journey! It is what keeps people energized and motivated to move forward, to dig deeper, to try to take it to the next level. You are making a difference everyday in the lives of so many others ... celebrate!

Eden Alternative Tip of the Week: The Culinary Caregivers at Rolling Fields want to share a story about choices and the happiness that comes with having them

We have had a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables from our very own gardens this year. The Elders bring these treats into our restaurant (aka Kallimos Café) and ask us to do different things with them. Paul likes to have a fresh tomato cut up and put on a nice garden salad with Thousand Island dressing! Yummy! Peggy likes to have yellow summer squash specially breaded and she gets them cooked up just the way she likes. Recently we had an Elder named Sadie ask for a tomato from the garden to be sliced up and given to her with two slices of white bread and a little bit of mayonnaise. She was very excited to be able to make her own sandwich. This prompted the Elders around her to go into a tomato eating frenzy! One Elder in particular who wanted a tomato sandwich was Jean. The problem was, Jean can't eat seeds. So for days Jean watched the elders around her enjoy these tomato sandwiches and she would try to eat other things like tomato soup to satisfy these desires. One day we decided to slice a tomato from the garden and rinse all the seeds out of it. We made it into a sandwich and gave it to Jean. She was so happy and her craving was so satisfied that she began to cry. We asked her if something was wrong and she said "these are tears of happiness!"  This shows that it truly is the simple pleasures that make daily life here worth living!

Respectfully Shared,

Kebby Kitten

What simple pleasures are you honoring today? This is Eden Alternative's Principle Six in action.