One morning Toby Freedman received a phone call that would change the course of someone’s life. The ID was unfamiliar. He almost didn’t answer.

“Hello.”

“Toby? It’s Allison.”

She sounded distressed. Did she know about mom? “Allison, I needed to talk to you two years ago!”

“I’m sorry. I don’t have my own phone, and they don’t like me to use this landline. It’s for their business.”

He could ...

This joy laid to waste, these mountains, lakes, plains, forests, destroyed by the poison from the sky. We call it farang, it means ‘home stealer’, we call it that because it stole our home, our lifestyle. There will be no more travelling from place to place, following the season. There will be no more hunting or foraging.

‘They stole our homes, they poisoned our skies, they caused our people to d...

The sky is dark

just like my heart

Joy has become a waste time

a poison in the virgin wine

the sky is dark

my life has barely a start

and yet i feel so void of art

and now i’ll sit as my thinking starts...

i know you have regrets.

small ones: like saying the wrong thing, tripping, wearing the wrong shoes.

big ones: waiting; ignoring; wasting; hating.

regrets are like poison.

if i told you, that you could go back and change them, what joy you would feel. how ecstatic!

there is a condition.

there is always a condition.

you cannot cling to the regret, to that moment. you cannot think ab...

The stars were beautiful tonight. They spanned the night sky; glimmering like jewels on black velvet. In this moment I stood in awe of the majesty before me. A sense of pure childlike joy washed through me. I am alive. I’m all of the universe, among the hundreds of thousands of galaxies, I am here. My existence can’t be a waste because it is a miracle that I am even here. It would have been easy ...

I’ve tried to wipe the image from my mind— of her, in that casket, pale and dead as a ghost.

I try and I try, but it won’t go away. The emotionless face, the eyeless sleep.

_That wasn’t her._ I tell myself, cold. _It_ wasn’t her. I knew her— a living, breathing being, with flowing blood and flowing laughte_r. I knew her. _

The sky is always cold and grey— at least, that’s what it is in my e...

Joy.

Pure joy.

I'm not sure how long it's been since I've felt that. But I feel it now. And it's real.

I'm not sure how long I've stayed with Jasper. Maybe 2 years. Maybe 3. But that's all it took for him to do his damage on me.

I look at the sky and take a deep breath. I haven't taken a deep, cleansing breath in what feels like forever. I’ve finally done it. I’ve finally left that toxic life ...

I‘ve been stuck in this desert since ages. Wandering around with no direction in mind. My water resources are slowly being drained. I‘m left with my thoughts with only the afternoon sun.

The more I walk the more I feel how my thoughts turn into poison for myself. They make me feel worthless. The voices started to tune in. Screaming and begging me to give up. Has it always been so noisy inside my ...

Poison clung to every life form around me, draining the joy from their eyes and replacing it with death. The sky thickened with smog, stinking the air around me. I’m unable to remember what it was like when I looked up and saw the beautiful shade of blue.

My grandfather clock gonged ten. Curfew began on Rosecourt Avenue, and no one in my dilapidated apartment complex dared to make a sound. While ...

When the weather grows dark and cloudy, it is hard to see the sun. Likewise, when bad times come, sometimes, we become overwhelmed and lose our **joy**.

What do we do when we lose our joy? Well, don’t let your life or your time go to **waste**. Trust in the Power greater than yourself and cling to Him with everything you have!

It is wrong to blame Him for trials and hardships that come our way....