Beginnings And Endings

Join clinical social workers Heather and Kristina, as they explore the profound impact of life’s transitions on us and our children. In this engaging conversation, they delve into the importance of honoring both beginnings and endings, with our children. They discuss ways parents can guide their kids through the emotional landscape of change, helping them navigate feelings of grief, gratitude, and excitement.

Through heartfelt personal stories and practical strategies—like creating memory boxes and using calming language—Heather and Kristina offer insights into how parents can model emotional health and create space for children to express their authentic feelings. From the bittersweet moments of a child starting school to the challenges of parents moving on to new jobs, they highlight how these milestones, though often joyful, can also stir complex emotions.

In a world that often rushes through life’s transitions, this conversation serves as a reminder to slow down, be present, and give ourselves—and our children—the time and space needed to truly process and embrace change. Whether we're navigating our own transitions or supporting a loved one, this discussion offers valuable tools for fostering emotional resilience and connection.

Gear Up! Adventures In Parenthood is recorded and edited by Dave Purnell and produced by Jen Plante Johnson for the ODC Network in Holland, Michigan.

The ODC Network is a non-profit organization that strives to advance outdoor education and conservation in West Michigan.

Since 2000, The ODC Network has served over a million people through hands-on, outdoor learning experiences and conserved thousands of acres of native habitat through restoration and preservation projects.

The ODC Network’s vision is building a better community by connecting people, land and nature. To learn more and get involved go to: www.odcnetwork.org.

Transcript

Heather  00:00

Today, we're exploring the world of beginnings and endings, because life is full of them. Oh, and it can feel like a roller coaster ride with all those ups and downs.

Kristina  00:09

We really want to highlight how important it is for parents to be present during these times of transition. 

Heather  00:15

It can be tempting to rush through them. But when we slow down, we're afforded the time to adequately acknowledge that something is ending, instead of racing off to the next beginning. 

Kristina  00:25

And that brings us to a big theme today: acknowledging grief and gratitude. It's a skill that's crucial for our own growth and for helping our kids.

Heather  00:35

Learning how to begin and end well involves acknowledging the feelings that come with endings. We can be compelled as parents to gloss over them, to get to the excitement of what lies ahead.

Kristina  00:46

Exactly. And in doing that, we shortchange ourselves and our kids by skipping important emotional processing.

Heather  00:53

We definitely want to teach our children how to manage those feelings associated with endings. It's a critical component of their emotional development. 

Kristina  01:02

We'll share some stories from our own experiences, like how it felt when our kids started school, or our family routines changed as our kids got older. Those moments can be bittersweet. 

Heather  01:13

We'll also talk about how kids can feel so overwhelmed by changes, especially since they don't quite grasp the concept of time yet.

Kristina  01:22

We'll share some strategies we love, like creating memory boxes and using language that helps kids remain calm and grounded. 

Heather  01:30

It's so vital that we let children express their emotions without brushing them off. Feeling and expressing grief is just as important as celebrating joy.

Kristina  01:40

We'll wrap up by sharing some tips for preparing kids for new experiences and helping them feel safe and secure during transitions.

Heather  01:49

We'll talk about how to balance expressing our emotions authentically as parents while not raising concern or worry within our children

Kristina  01:57

Exactly. It's not always easy, but being present and allowing ourselves to feel all the feels makes such a difference. 

Heather  02:05

It sure does. Welcome to Gear Up! Adventures In Parenthood.

Kristina  02:13

A podcast where we explore the struggles and challenges we all face as parents. We'll share ideas and offer tips and strategies for raising happy, healthy children. My name is Kristina Boersma.

Heather  02:26

And I'm Heather Bouwman. Kristina and I are clinical social workers who've been working with families and children for a good long minute. We're support service directors for the Early Childhood Network of ODC Network in Holland, Michigan. And we get to support parents and children as they navigate the tricky terrain of raising children and growing up in today's world.

Kristina  02:48

We're here to help unpack the hard stuff and connect with the joy of parenting.

Heather

02:54

Are you ready?

Kristina and Heather    02:55

Let's hit the trails.

Heather  03:01

This project is made possible by the ODC Network, an amazing nonprofit organization based in Holland, Michigan where we get to work supporting preschool aged students, their teachers and their parents.

Kristina  03:14

The ODC Network is all about nurturing the community and the next generation through a wide variety of innovative nature-based initiatives.

Heather  03:21

Please visit www.ODCNetwork.org to learn more about the ODC Network's mission and impact.

Kristina  03:31

Welcome back. We're so glad to have you join us again. Today we are going to talk about beginnings and endings.  It's that's what life is full of, right? Beginnings and endings. And what we want to talk about today is, how do you begin and end well?

Heather  03:53

It's tricky.

Kristina  03:54

It is tricky, and it's not something that we always think much about. So learning how to begin and end well is a really valuable skill to build and to grow in ourselves and in our children, because it is what life is made of. Every beginning is also an ending, and we don't have a lot of comfort in experiencing or observing the feelings that come along with endings. 

Heather  04:28

Some of us try to outrun our feelings, and rush to the next thing.

Kristina  04:33

Absolutely. So we short-change the process of dealing with all of those feelings and experiencing all those feelings with endings, and we rush to the next beginning.

Heather  04:45

And sometimes, in doing so, we take our kids along with us on that rushing. And we actually don't just short-change ourselves, we also short change them. And then are teaching some coping skills in the midst of it, and maybe not the coping skills we would want to be teaching.

Kristina  05:05

Exactly. So helping our children and ourselves learn to manage those feelings that come along with endings before leaping to the thing that we're beginning. I remember hearing from a professor at some point along the way, learning from him that all change is experienced as loss and is accompanied by grief. Whether it's a positive change in your life or a negative change, it is experienced as loss and comes with that grief, because a beginning is also an ending to something else. I wished and prayed and hoped to become a mother my whole life, and that was trickier for us for a lot of reasons than I ever could have imagined it would be. Took us a long time. And so I was overjoyed to be able to have a child.

Heather  06:16

And I was an ending of-

Kristina  06:18

I anticipated that all I would have was joy, right? 

Heather  06:22

But it was an ending of a really long stretch of independence. 

Kristina 06:26

Yeah, you never get back right? Like forty years of independence. 

Kristina  06:33

Well, and about forty years before you get it back right? So it was the realizing I will never have two hands free again. I mean, not until the child is older, right? Or being able to really have it be all about spontaneity.

Heather  06:43

You don't just pack up and go away for the weekend. All of it, right? A newborn, a toddler.

Kristina  06:51

I don't. I know some people do, but I don't. And so even in that moment, which was the moment filled with the most joy and gratitude in my entire life. 

Heather  07:08

There was also some grief and letting go of a whole different phase. 

Kristina  07:11

So we want to talk about: how do you begin and end well?

Heather  07:16

And why do we tend to rush past some of those things? And I think we have some pretty solid thoughts on why that happens. We’ll talk about that and how to shift our thinking on beginnings and endings, and realizing that with new beginnings that are very well joyful and exciting, it's oftentimes an ending. This resonates with me right now. Luke is our seventeen year old who just accepted a summer job. And we're in West Michigan along the beautiful Lake Michigan shoreline. And our boat is north of where we live, about an hour and a half. And so we spend a lot of time north in the summer. And I have talked in previous episodes about when my oldest son began working, when he was in high school, and then would stay home. And I affectionately call that the “summer of tears.” Yeah, and I'm heading into “summer of tears 2.0” because now I've got a second son who will more be at home and separated, which is just a…it's different, and it's the beginning of something wonderful. And while I'm so proud that he wants to earn money and that he wants to be responsible and that - he has a wonderful work ethic - the mother in me grieves that this season in our lives is coming to an end with yet another child.

Kristina  08:42

And it's so important to allow yourself that grief. Oh yeah, “summer of tears,” as opposed to leaping forward to what precious time I'm going to have with Ava. Because it's both. And being emotionally healthy is being able to hold both the joy and the sorrow.

Heather  09:04

And sometimes we can't even put words to it. It took me a bit. It took me a while to even, within myself, be able to give voice to that. It's tricky. And maybe that goes back to how we were raised. Quite likely it does, right? I think for both of us, it does. Even as we're trained and all of those things.

Kristina  09:26

It’s not being comfortable with even people being sad. You know, we'll say, “Don't be sad. Don't cry. And, you know, let's go get ice cream.” My daughter feels endings very deeply. And you know, she loved her kindergarten teacher and just would sob and sob about kindergarten coming to an end. And it was much easier to say, “Oh, but you'll still see her every day because your classroom is right next door” and “Yes, you know it's going to be great, because now you can have all the great things about…” rather than joining her in the moment in the grief and being able to say “Yes, you loved her. She loved you. She taught you so many things,” and being able to allow that.

Heather  10:15

It's very healthy to be able to just empathize with those kids and be able to say, “Yeah,” that you're feeling this ending. “You've really had a wonderful year with your teacher.” It goes back to brain states and that with young children, I think with anyone, I don't think it's young child specific. I think many of us, because of how we were raised, when we go back to why do we maybe rush? It was because we didn't know. We didn't know that there was power in being in those feelings of discomfort and reconciling them. Maybe that's why it took me so long to finally give voice to what is bothering me, what is different, and that's what it was. It was the grief of having a son back at home when it had historically been our place where our family went and just had wonderful memories made. So we, in our work at the preschool, will say to parents, “Children have no concept of time.” Right? And so we're in this place right now. We're recording, and it's mid April, and we have three year olds and four year olds at our school that are now four and five, and will be transitioning. Our four year olds will be going to kindergarten. And they're going through this kindergarten registration. But children have no concept oftentimes, unless they have older siblings, of what kindergarten even means. Our adult brain holds that and knows exactly what it means. But if you're a first born who maybe doesn't have older siblings or cousins or what have you, they have no idea. They have their preschool framework, and they know what that means. But they go to kindergarten screening, and then they'll come back and be like, “I'm all done today. I'm going to kindergarten tomorrow. “ And they're packing up and leaving us for good, and they don't understand that actually, you're gonna finish your year here with your teachers and your classmates, and then you're gonna have a season called summer, and then in the fall, we'll head back and you'll go to a new school that is kindergarten. So we write to our families that this is a very common process with children, because they don't hold time and space and they just know what they know. And if they have a limited picture, that's what they're operating from. 

Kristina  12:33

And we offer them some suggestions for how to end well.

Heather  12:38

And the ending, well, because preschool, at least where we do it, is just such a beautiful time in childhood. And we fiercely protect the childhood nature of it developmentally, and it's play based, and for a child to be outside, and they get to hold frogs and chase butterflies, jump in puddles, all of it. They get to play and experience great growth in all sorts of areas because they're just playing, many of them for the first time, with peers and navigating taking turns and sharing and all of those things. But to be able to say “We will remember. We will remember all the times we jumped in the puddles. Do you remember that time we went on that hike and we saw the bunny?” Yeah. “Do you remember the time when we were walking along the trail, and all the turtles were out on the logs, and we got to sneak up so they we didn't scare them, and we could watch them. And then some of them did jump in, and then we could see their little heads in the pond as they swam?” Remembering keeps us in our executive state of our brain, that part where it’s our thinking part of our brain.

Kristina  14:01

Yes, where we hold our language and decision making, all keeps us there.

Heather  14:09

And we say it keeps our peaceful and calm spot nice and big. We want a nice, big, peaceful and calm spot. If we go to our emotion center, where we say things like, “I will miss,” or “we will miss,” that puts us right in the emotion state, which grows more our worry spot. It shrinks our peaceful spot, because we're back in that emotional state. It grows our sadness spot, and sadness and deep sadness. And it's not that we don't want to go there. We can be sad. But it's helpful to kids to use the language of remembering versus missing, just because you can have the same experience, but you're in an executive state versus an emotional state. Does that make sense? 

Kristina  15:00

Absolutely. And you know, my daughter will go to the “but I'll never be able to,” “it'll never be like this again. It'll never, never…” and that's true. And it won’t leapfrog over that. To say, “You're right. It will never be just like that. Yeah, how wonderful that you were able to experience that, and it was so precious, 

Heather  15:24

and that you will remember it forever, and let's write a little something about it, or let's, you know, put that in your memory box, or whatever it might be. This is my oldest who every birthday, every birthday this child had, he would celebrate, but he would also grieve. 

Kristina  15:42

Well, Grace is very much the same way.

Heather  15:46

It's like they're an old soul. And so he would have this great joy of, I'm eight, or I'm ten, or I'm fourteen. Sixteen was a big one. I'm not sure he had as much grief there, because that kid just needed to be able to drive, which is a lot of fifteen to sixteen year old transitions, but he would grieve being that one more year farther from childhood, because he had a great one. And he was such an outdoors kid. And there was something… he's a great young adult. It's not that he didn't want to become a young adult. But he, more than any child I've known or had in my home, grieved that growing up a bit.

Kristina  16:31

Yes, Grace does the same thing. And she'll say “It's going too fast.” I mean, I say it's going too fast as her parent, but she feels like it's going too fast. And my daughter grieves things very deeply. I said that earlier, even things like the car that we had when she was born. When we sold that car, she didn't want us to sell it. She wept and wept and wept because it would never be the same again. She'd say, “Oh, the music we listened to and the fun we had in the white car.” And in my head, I'm like, “Oh my gosh, this is ridiculous. We play the same music everywhere.” It's like the CD will move with us to the new car, right?

Heather  17:14

But that's the mind of a child, right? They don't know.

Kristina  17:17

No. And so to say, she just heard that.

Heather  17:21

She was just so happy in the back seat listening to her music in that car.

Kristina  17:27

And how could it ever be the same? Yep. In another it won't be the same. It will be different. But in those examples, I mean, the same thing: When we got new furniture, she was like, “Can we keep the green couch? Because otherwise I'll never be able to sit on the green couch again.” It's like, “No, we're moving on.” But it's so easy as a parent to hear that childhood grief and to say, “Oh for Cripes sake.”

Heather  17:55

Yes. And it's important that too, for our kids, that is a big part of who they are, even yet today. They are those little old souls, and they have been since they were born. So they're just-that's who they are. It's a big piece of who they are, and to dismiss that would be to deny them access. And it separates a piece of them. And it separates you. Yeah, right, when you allow well-it communicates “I don't understand that,” and therefore I don't understand you. 

Kristina  18:25

Yes, yes, where, if you're able to support them and join them in that grief of acknowledging that “Yes, you're right,” brings you back together. Wonderful times snuggling on that couch. That's the couch you broke your arm on that all of the things that are memories associated with that. To be able to say, “I'll never forget…I'll always remember about that…and joining them in it says “we're together. I'm with you. You are important.”

Heather  18:57

And they don't stay there, right a long time. They're gonna move through. It's just the point that in our society, we wanna rush so many things to get to the next thing. It's kind of like we're here. But are we fully present? Are we enjoying or are we just always going towards the next thing takes real intentionality, at least it did for me, to be in there, to be in the moment, to enjoy this moment and not rush to the next.

Kristina  19:26

Yeah, yeah. It's a really important skill for us to kind of hone within ourselves and then to support our children in growing this skill of being able to acknowledge the grief, acknowledge that that was something really special, and in that acknowledgement, there's also gratitude,

Heather  19:45

I remember for Grace. She's an only and we work with lots of families that have onlys. I have a family member who's very near and dear to me, who she's a single mom. And only at this point, and only have their own grief and childhood. I just remember Grace coming over and wanting to be kind of in the chaos, and then having real sadness with leaving. Do you remember that? Like, “I want to be here. I want to be with friends. I want to be with. I don't want to go home.” Can be so tempting to be like if you behave that way, we're not coming here again, right? And you would always do such a beautiful job of saying, “I know, honey, it's so fun to be here. It is so great to be surrounded by friends. We'll come back again.” And she needed the hope of we're gonna come back again. But so beautiful that it was never “You get in the car, it's time to go. I told you it was time to go, and we're not coming back if you can't handle this,” right? Because that was her life, right? As an only she's going back to Mom and Dad, where not that you're not great people-

Kristina  21:03

Oh, I hear you, sister, it's not the same. Yes, absolutely. 

Heather  21:08

And I just remember many of those. And it was like we had to allow time for the grief when she would depart from us. And there were times we traveled together, yes, oh, and I remember you saying, “This is so great, but I'm gonna have forty-eight hours of hard. Because she's gonna be so sad.”

Kristina  21:30

Absolutely. And being with her in the midst of that sadness taught her that she can handle it. She can survive. She can survive being that sad. 

Heather  21:43

Build that resilience Absolutely. And it's just part of her story, right? She's still an only, and so it's just part of who she is and part of what she had to reconcile. And you didn't short change her in it, and you didn't make her get better at not feeling the grief right?

Kristina  22:04

Or try to do what we tend to do as parents, like, “Oh, I know, I know, but let's stop for ice cream on the way home. We'll go to that special spot and try to again, leapfrog over the sadness and the grief to what is next.” Grace is an only. Children who are in families where there is a sibling or multiple siblings have their own grief upon the arrival. 

Heather  22:29

Because while it's great excitement and I'm gaining a sibling, I'm losing my parents undivided attention, right? Yep. And so that adjustment is huge. And then when you have this new baby, even grandparents and friends and family all want to come and see this new baby, and that's the center of attention. 

Kristina  22:53

Yeah,they've been unseated from the throne. 

Heather  22:56

I remember just handing the baby over and being close with my other kids like “Oh, I'm gonna be with you guys. I'm gonna hang with you guys.” And, you know, just hand the baby off, whoever that was, if it was Luke or Ava. Yeah, that's a very good point.

Kristina  23:13

So we think about things like creating a memory box where our children, or even us, we can keep precious things that help us remember about some of those important times in our life.

Heather  23:29

Memory boxes are a beautiful thing. For Zack, who was my birthday celebrator, but yeah, griever, we could go and look at his photo album. Another beautiful thing that I love about the memory boxes is there are going to be times as you raise your children that there are some divides and there's some tension. And pulling those out and sitting and being in that? Oh, what a tool to diffuse and bring it back to “We are together. We are together.” And being in that space. It's not short changing the grief, but it's bringing it back to “We're together. Look at all this that we've done.” So I love memory boxes for that reason, because in moments like that, they can really bring peace and calm and reassurance. And they can provide that at integral points, I think, along the growth and development journey for kids. And they pull them out on their own, eventually, when they get older, which is really neat, too. I think all of my kids hit a point where all of a sudden it was, like their favorite they had a blankie, like those came out, they had gone away from them, and then all of a sudden, at a certain age, they came back out for security, because kids go through these phases where it kind of rocks their identity or their security, and out can come the blanket out of the Memory Box.

Kristina  24:54

You did something really well. Well, you did a lot of things really well. But one of the things I really appreciated that you did with your kids is you would preview new beginnings. And that's a really effective strategy for some, especially like I have a child that is quite anxious. And that previewing or doing a dry run was really helpful. Because, like you had said earlier, in our adult minds, we have an idea of what all these things look like, and children may have no concept whatsoever. Flying.

Heather  25:25

I know. Like we drove to the airport. We flew when our son was probably about two and a half, but he was verbal and he was mobile, and we could drive to the airport on a Sunday and just watch planes come and go and show them what it looked like. And, you know, bring them inside, and we're gonna, you know, put our bags here, and those people help us. And then beyond that, we go to Security, and they're just gonna make sure everything is all good. And then just watching those planes come and go and telling them what that was gonna feel like, and being prepared for it. And that communicated to him, “We've got you. It's new and it's different. It's exciting. Can be a little tricky, maybe, but we're gonna be fine.”

Kristina  26:08

Yeah, Grace really enjoys taking art classes at a particular little art studio here in town, and it's great. I like, “Oh, I'm so excited to get to sign up for this art class.” But if you've never been there, you don't know what it looks like. You don't know. You don't know anything, right? About what that could possibly be. 

Heather  26:31

So to do that preview, to do that dry run, swimming lessons is another one. We're gonna go to that house. This lady…websites are great for that. Like it was a preschool teacher that was the swim instructor. This is what she looks like. Do you stay? Yes, I stay the whole time. I will be there. I will watch you. I'll be sitting over here. You'll be in the pool there. All of those things. When we would travel, I would at least say, “There's going to be a lot of people there. A lot of legs.” I used to say that, like, “There's gonna be a lot of legs. So you need to hold my hand, because you’re short, and if you get separated, it's just all legs everywhere. So hold my hand. Stay close. Then I know I've got you, or you can be in a stroller, whatever.” But just giving them the lay of the land, that's-

Kristina  27:15

Exactly. It’s giving them something to create an idea, or a picture of what it's going to be like, and

Heather  27:22

And that builds safety and security within them. Yep.

Kristina  27:27

So life is a series of beginnings and endings. We want to pay attention to not rushing through the endings, not leaping to the next thing before we've really been able to end well, something that is coming to an end and gaining comfort in being able to hold both grief and joyful anticipation at the same time because and

Heather  27:56

And give voice to it like even, yes, you know, it was probably four years ago when I was experiencing this with Zack and saying to Ava, she like’s, “Mom, why are you sad?” I'm just, “We're not together. It's okay. It's new. It's different. I'm really, aren't you glad Zack has? I am I'm so glad Zach has a job. It's just different. I'll get used to it.”

Kristina  28:18

Yeah, because I'll hear parents say sometimes, “I don't cry in front of my children,” and I'm not passing judgment on that. I think it's something to unpack. But from my perspective, it's helpful for children to see their parents experience emotions and survive them. Because otherwise, I remember one time seeing my mom really sad about something, and it scared me because I hadn't seen it before, and it felt like a really, really big thing. 

Heather  28:55

And sadness is just a part of life. And it's a piece of, for me and my family, being known and being known by your kids. Like they will joke - I mean, the walking on the dock, right? Another episode, they're like, “Oh my goodness, this is our mother and whatever.” It's also like commercials can bring me to tears when they're very moving. And I love animals. I mean, we have four dogs, a cat, a horse, right? So a piece of that being known that I love. And I love to really know my children deeply. And I love for them to know me deeply. Does that mean that there aren't some things that are just adult things that stay in my adult bowl, for sure? Oh, no, my adult stuff stays in my adult stuff, but I can be vulnerable, and I can model that vulnerability with my children and my husband and have them see that interaction I've said before. We, my husband, I both come from divorced families. It's important for us to demonstrate, for our children, what that good emotional health looks like, and the support we give one another. And I think that for me, it goes back to having my kids know that they can be known, and then they can also know with boundaries we always talk about, you know. It's not the whole thing you give away, it's they have good, strict boundaries around that too-

Kristina  30:21

When we allow our children to see us experiencing emotion, and when we really hold them and are with them, connected as they're experiencing emotion, it communicates to them “I can handle it as your parent. It's not too big. It's not too hard. It's not too scary. We may both weep over it. We may both be frustrated over it, but I can handle it. You don't ever have to keep that from me.” It goes back to when we hear children say things like, “You know, my parents would kill me,” or even things when we have children who've experienced the loss of a parent or the loss of a sibling, say, “I can't talk about it because it just makes my mom cry, or “it just makes my dad cry,” and that they're not comfortable doing that, and so they keep that inside, inside from their caregiver or their parent.Yeah, because they don't want to be responsible for bringing on that emotion. And so when we're with our children in the midst of the grief, not belaboring it, but joining with them as they're experiencing that grief, it really does communicate “I can handle it. I'm here for you. You don't have to hide that from me.”

Heather  31:40

Absolutely. It's powerful. So life will always have beginnings and endings. There will always be grief and loss. There will always be great joy. I mean, it's what was the name of the movie? Oh, “Inside Out?” Where I think in there, it says you cannot fully experience joy without also experiencing sadness, because if you just always avoid the sadness, you're really limiting your joy. You're short changing yourself. Yes. And we may unintentionally do that with our children. So we need to experience the whole gamut, not that we get stuck there in any one place. We're gonna help support and move them through, because that's what we do as parents. That's the guiding, the modeling, the leading, the building of really powerful things and families.

Kristina  32:36

So as you experience those beginnings and endings, be present and slow down. Yeah, there's no rush, right? 

Heather  32:43

There's no rush. Feel all the feels.

Kristina  32:47

So grateful that we had the chance to talk about this today and to share kind of how we like to view beginnings and endings and how to support yourself and your children in doing so. Thank you so much for joining us for Gear Up! Adventures In Parenthood. I'm Kristina-

Heather  33:08

And I'm Heather. And we're so grateful to join you on your parenting journey. Until next time-

Heather and Kristina  33:12

See you on the trails! 

Kristina

The Gear Up! Adventures In Parenthood podcast is brought to you by the ODC Network in Holland, Michigan. It is produced by Jen Plante Johnson, recorded and edited by Dave Purnell, with original theme music by Dave Purnell.

Heather  33:30

The ODC Network is a non-profit organization that strives to advance outdoor education and conservation in West Michigan.

Kristina  33:38

Since 2000 the ODC Network has served over a million people through hands on outdoor learning experiences and conserved thousands of acres of native habitat through restoration and preservation projects.

Heather  33:50

The ODC Network's vision is building a better community by connecting people land and nature. To learn more and get involved, go to www.ODCNetwork.org.