Welcome to August and an issue that focuses on parenting and family. There are so many things to be grateful for in our lives, not the least of which is family. From our families we often receive our greatest joys, our fondest memories, and even our toughest lessons.

For some, family means those with whom you share a bloodline. For others family means those with whom you share a home. Many of us also have blended families comprised of half brothers or sisters, step parents, adopted or foster children. Some say the definition of family has become more confusing in recent years.

To me, the true definition of family includes those with whom you share your life and heart. Whether your family includes close blood relatives, adopted friends, children (with or without fur), people living or passed over, together we learn and grow, laugh and cry, and share the important events and mundane details of our daily existence.

As I write, my newest children have come in the form of 8 week old lab pups. And although raising furry children does not compare even closely to the demands of human babies, it is challenging and I’ve gone through many of the same introspective questions since we’ve gotten them. Am I making the right decisions? Are they happy? Why do they do that? Exactly what ARE they really doing? Parenting and raising a family, whether furry or human, is exhausting and rewarding. The dynamic of the family changes as everyone readjusts to the newest members.

Even before the puppies, I’d been thinking for some time about the role of parents in the family. Anyone with children can attest that parenting is singularly both the hardest and most rewarding job that can ever been undertaken. There is no set manual for how to best parent, but there is no question that children model their parents’ behaviors and actions. I’ve often thought how wonderful it would be if parents had access to tools that would equip them to help children even from their youngest years learn how to embrace, recognize, and even manage their emotions so they can feel powerful, capable, and optimistic about themselves and their abilities.

So many things in our lives are impacted by our levels of self-awareness, how well we are able to use our emotions to our advantage - from our physical well-being to our ability to succeed in the world. Ultimately we spend the majority of our lives practicing and fully learning how to embrace our emotions and the reasons behind them at any given moment.

Establishing healthy and optimistic views about ourselves and our capabilities early on can greatly impact our ability to meet challenges later in life successfully. This month’s issue features a duo who specialize in just that - teaching folks to embrace what they call moment-to-moment optimism, a term I adore.

When I met with Dr. Russ and Jackie from Moment-to-Moment Enterprises, we began to discuss this issue that has been occupying my brain for some time - how to better equip parents to raise children who believe in themselves, who know they are capable of accomplishing their dreams, and are able to develop meaningful relationships with others. It’s so interesting to me how the universe works - when you find yourself looking for something, it often presents itself to you.

The pairing of Dr. Russ Buss and this topic seems symbolically divine in so many ways. There’s something inherently hopeful about having children and having a family in whatever form that develops for you. It is an aspect of our lives that helps us to feel grounded and loved, to be able to dream as big as we can dream and be supported in what we create. Children and family members are at once the vision and hope for the future and also the most current representation of ancestral history. How divine to have the experts in optimism address the issue of how to raise optimistic children. Dr. Russ and Jackie, our current and future generations salute you for your efforts.

And now for a few notes about CoSozo. As many of you have noticed, we have begun the next phases of our website upgrade to better highlight our columnists and articles. There are many more intriguing features on the way, and we know you’ll like them as much as we do. Thank you so much to all of you for your great feedback and presence - we’ve been listening!

We’ve also started a newsletter, so be sure to sign up for it at www.CoSozo.com to get more information about what we’ve got going on and what’s going on with the folks within our CoSozo community. We’ve got a lot going on so if you’d like to get involved and do some writing, talk about show ideas, get some questions answered, or find a great resource who specializes in a particular therapy or modality, let us know! We love to hear from you!

Some of the feedback we’ve gotten from our fans is that they’d like us to print some of the original articles we featured on our website before we started our print publication, CoSozo Living. We’re listening, and doing just that - from time to time we’ll print some of those articles in CoSozo Living so that anyone who didn’t have a chance to see them on our old site can benefit as well. We hope you enjoy them as much as our original fans!

For new fans, you may not know that I host a weekly health and wellness radio show at the Mientertainment.biz studios here in Lansing. Mi (as in Michigan) Health and Wellness airs each Saturday at noon and rebroadcasts at 1 PM on Sunday at www.mientertainment.biz and on stations around the state. The show features topics and guests very similar to those that we feature in CoSozo Living. The shows are also released to itunes as podcasts each week and you can also find them on www.CoSozo.com and www.mientertainment.biz.

Recently the studio gave me a second show to do, called Enlightening Radio. We just taped our first show and I was honored that my new friend Penny Golden, who is the publisher of the Body Mind Spirit Guide agreed to be my very first guest. We had so much fun collaborating and having another reason to get together to talk more and I think you’ll enjoy the conversation as much as we did.

The new show focuses on the mind, consciousness, and spirituality, and our topics will range from brain studies to dream interpretations, to a variety of consciousness and spiritual topics as well as the paranormal. We’ll be taking email questions and looking for the most captivating topics and guests in Michigan, so be sure to contact us if you have a question or want to let us know about something going on!

We think you’ll love the new show! Keep an eye on www.CoSozo.com and our social media accounts for more information on when the shows will air, what we’re working on, and what topics are coming up. Speaking of family, we are so grateful to have all of you within our CoSozo family, and so honored that we can help in some way. Enjoy your August!