From Terah...

There are few things in life more exciting to me than encouraging creativity and seeing hearts and minds -- my own and anybody else’s -- open to new possibilities, potentials and awarenesses.  My vision for the Milestones Connect website is to showcase the original works of all kinds of artists to help inspire and move us to those openings and to connectedness -- within ourselves and with each other.  So it is a great joy for me that this project has been built on foundations of friendship and collaboration with some very talented people who have been in my life for a long time, as well as some great new folks who magically showed up! Two people I am particularly grateful to are Art Labriola and Gittel Price.   Art, who has composed all the music for the cards, is a longtime friend and collaborator whose music has always thrilled and moved me.  His talent is as great as his infinite heart, and his belief in this project has meant so much -- we are fortunate to have him working with us!  I’m also very grateful to my longtime friend, artist-photographer Gittel Price, whose heart-provoking and thoughtful images inspire me endlessly to words!  With the three of us soon joined by more wonderful artists (see Our Artists and Writers), we had what we needed to get started on the creative end.  In the meantime, thanks to Kim McElroy and Lisa Dee, we found our unique and highly creative graphics, web and logo designer Davina Andree – along with her team at Arrowhead Graphics, including IT wizard "Farmer Fred," who prefers to be blamed anonymously.  Together with some help from Randi Schlessinger, owner-designer of RS Identity Design -- all contributed their minds, hearts and talents to create a wonder of virtual matter which I am so pleased to share.

         Then another bunch of folks showed up to take us the rest of the way, and they deserve some BIG gratitude.  So…thanks to Wendy Bounds for the article that sparked the “lightbulb” idea; to Barry Orms for the push; to Jennifer Berkun, Patrick Pigott and Howard Berkun for taking the first leap; to Stephen & Nancy Gross, Diane Budds, Edie & Dick Hanley for chasing me down with your enthusiasm; to Janet Bogenschultz for helping to give the dream a plan.  We couldn’t have done it without you all!  Thank you also Kathy Glass, Teri Barr, Jodi Tomasso, Teresa Peppard, Hannah Zeno, Donna Zucchi, Connie Hicks, Domenic Petrillo, Mia Tomic, Amy Zachary, Stacy, Lindy & Sara Labriola, Betsy Thomas, Laurie Raphael, Arnie & Tanya Roman, Mimi Longo and Deborah Walker for your love & friendship, artistic consults and encouragement. And bless you, Harriet & Ken Appleman, for caring so much. Finally, much appreciation to Cindy Cox (love you!), Sherri Hughes, Rich Syrek, Bill Malgieri, Howell Bramson, Harvey Zucker, Phil Fulco and Mike Vanderwerker for your good will and expertise on all the business fronts.

Before the beginning...      

                                      "Dare to want."  Bold words spoken from one of those tiny inner voices shortly after the idea came to me in early Spring 2007 to create an e-card site.  This Big Idea, which emerged from a series of synchronicities (of course), was not a far cry from what I had been doing the last few years.  In fact, it was such a natural next step that I was amazed I hadn't thought of it before -- or heard the people who had suggested it to me.  Back in September 2001, two weeks after 9/11, I abruptly left the music business as a long time lyric writer and began what would evolve into a poetry products and greeting card business.  Writing, creating and learning “Business 101,” I built up a roster of stores that carried my work, eventually opened my own gallery in Cold Spring, NY, and put up a website (www.heavenandearthworks.com).  As anyone who works in retail knows, it can be both a magical and a grueling life. Despite the friends and customers who frequented my shop, after four years of 14/7, I found that most of my time was spent doing managerial, admin and grunt work, leaving little of me for the writing I so loved and upon which my business was based.  After months of indecision, I finally closed the shop in January 2007.  I spent the winter unpacking and ruminating about a more doable next step that would give my lofty dreams both ground and wings.

                                      Like a lot of us, many things I had wanted in my life had not come to fruition in a way I had hoped.  And so, somewhere the joy of wanting had waned as wanting came to mean only hard work and disappointment.  Then suddenly, at the cusp of ending one thing and the search for another, there was the challenge -- Dare to want!  I soon realized that an e-card site was a vehicle that could accommodate my dual urges for writing and sharing without having to physically make everything my heart and head could create.  I LOVED this idea!  And so I dared to want, and while I wanted, I just kept loving it.  It was a different kind of wanting than I’d been doing for years. This wasn't a wanting full of longing and the misery of lack.  Doubts and fears suddenly had no hold on me and simply floated away like feathers on the wind.  I wanted with a sense of joy and anticipation. I wanted with a great love for this thing that had begun to fully exist in my imagination.  And I saw that I was literally loving it into being, as everything and everyone needed in order to create it was attracted to me, to IT, to help make it happen!  It all seemed an amazing miracle -- and the sweetest part of it was to experience the joyful, freeing change in my own inner environment.  As much as I had read for years about this stuff, now I was actually experiencing how powerfully and quickly a positive shift -- not only in thinking, but in feeling -- could profoundly change my life circumstances on every level in a matter of days and weeks.  And yes, of course I'm talking about what we moderns call the "law of attraction!"

                                      So, for everything that we who have come together to share with you through this dream-in-progress called Milestones Connect, I say again from the sky of my heart, to yours, from which all things are reachable...

Dare to want!