The Stepmom's Toolbox

Join Peggy and Teresa as they introduce you to Jessica Withers - their Stepmom Spotlight for January! Jessica writes book reviews for The Stepmom's Toolbox, she's attended a workshop led by Peggy and Teresa, and she's taken an online class as well. Jessica has been in the stepmom role for 3+ years and we're looking forward to spotlighting her on the our show! Would you like to be in the Stepmom Spotlight?

Join Peggy and Teresa as they dish finding your inner quiet, nothing, and still space with the amazing Nadia Ballas-Ruta. About Nadia: I am a former attorney and former monastic. I left a six-figure luxury life to find meaning and happiness. That journey took me around the world. I was initiated into one of the high orders in India. I left the monastic path because I was not ready to give up on the experience of marriage. I got married and we lived in India for six months where I personally financed the creation of a reading room in a small village. My quest for happiness and meaning was a success because I achieved my goal. It took me 13 years but was worth every minute and every cent. I am currently creating a new site which is rooted in the desire to make people think and to see the world differently. It is very different than my old site. This new site will launch in January/February 2011. I am also in the process of writing a brand new book (an actual book) and creating performance art pieces that are in line with my humanitarian work.

Join Peggy and Erin as we dish Step Couples and Remarriage with Susan Swanson! About Susan: Susan Swanson, MSW, LCSW Relationships & Remarriage! Susan and her inspiring guests will give you tips and tools to overcome the challenges of remarriage and navigate all the different types of relationships in your life. Susan is a noted authority on issues involving step, blended and remarried families, and has spent more than 15 years working with couples. She is licensed therapist and has attained Board Certified Diplomate status in her field. Connect with Susan at http://www.stepfamilycenter.com/services.html

Join Peggy and Teresa as we dish managing stress tips with Stacey Shipman! Meet Stacey: Your guide to “feel-good living”. As a speaker, wellness educator, writer and online media host, Stacey teach the tools you need to feel less stressed, more relaxed and confident in all aspects of your life. Drawing from a decade in the corporate world and more than 15 in the wellness industry, Stacey creates programs that are practical for busy lifestyles, with a focus on saving time, money and your health. She's helped hundreds of people experience “feel-good living.” Stacey hosts the online video series “Feel-Good Living TV”, a forum to share fun information and experiences on stress relief, yoga, and general wellness and healthy living to a wider audience. Check out her weekly Stretch break! series offering simple stretches for morning, mid-day and at work stress relief. Stacey also teaches yoga classes in and around the South Shore of Massachusetts. Visit her website: www.staceyshipman.com for more information. Community Involvement Co-founder and President (July 2010 – June 2011), Hanover, MA chapter of Toastmasters International. Immediate past-President, South Shore Women’s Business Network (2009 – 2010) Immediate Past Co-Director, Boston Chapter Downtown Women’s Club (2008 – 2010) Volunteer Big Sister with Big Sister’s of Greater Boston Volunteer with Girl Scouts of America Top Five Finalist for Spring 2010 Idea Cafe Grant Columnist for SouthShoreWoman.com

We're starting 2011 off in grand style with stepmom favorite Jacquelyn Fletcher, author of Becoming A Stepmom. We're going to dish tips, tools, and advice on how you can still be yourself as you adapt to your new role as stepmom! About Jacque: acquelyn B. Fletcher is a stepmother of three children and mother of one. She is a full-time freelance writer who sits on the Board of Directors of the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis-the largest independent literary center in the nation. She is the author of the award-winning book A Career Girl’s Guide to Becoming a Stepmom (HarperCollins, 2007) publisher of www.becomingastepmom.com, co-founder of the Stepfamily Letter Project, and host of the popular Stepmom Circles podcast. As a stepfamily coach, she has educated stepmothers in the United States, Canada, and Japan about stepfamily development in her Stepmom Circles Group Coaching classes. Since the launch of A Career Girl’s Guide to Becoming a Stepmom, Jacquelyn has received feedback from stepmoms across the globe who found great comfort in her writing style: a tell-it-like-it-is honesty combined with the empowering energy of a cheerleader. The book won a 2008 iParenting Media Excellence Award and was a 2009 Gold Recipient of a Mom’s Choice Award. She’s been interviewed from coast to coast on television and on AM, FM, and satellite radio shows, including KARE 11, MomTalkRadio, RadioDisney, Women Aloud, Talk of the Town, and many others. Her work has appeared on traffic-heavy websites including PsychologyToday.com, LifetimeTV.com, Cafemom.com, Daughters.com, MomTalk.com, Stepmomstation.com, and Steptalk.org.

Peggy and Erin are so excited to close out 2010 with Wednesday Martin, author of Stepmonster. She's a favorite with our audience and with us! It's been an amazing year and we love our listeners. You've helped make The Stepmom's Toolbox one of the most downloaded shows in our category on Blog Talk!

Join Peggy Nolan and Teresa Thompson as they dish tips, tools and advice with Lance Ekum, inspirational writer and creator of the amazing blog, http://jungleoflife.com. Lance has a great way of communicating tough subjects, like fear and the things that hold us back from living our best lives now. Lance Ekum started writing almost three years ago, after thinking about some of those things that he’d never done…that were floating around in his heart. Today he writes at the Jungle of Life. The site has transformed over time, today with a focus very much around seeing the inspiration that is all around us in our world. When he’s not writing, you can find him training for some sort of endurance race, playing with his kids, or just hanging out at home. Lance lives in Wisconsin, with his lovely wife and three children.This is going to be a great show! Listen Live or Listen Later!

Join hosts Peggy Nolan and Erin Erickson as they dish Holiday tips, tools, and advice with Claudette Chenevert, The Stepmom Coach. Claudtte has been a stepmom for 20 years and is now a grandmother and stepgrandmother. Prior to becoming the Stepmom Coach in 2006, Claudette was a hairstylist for 18+ years, worked for Paul Mitchell in Canada as an educator, facilitator and speaker/platform artist. In 1997 she and her husband moved from Canada to Northern Virginia with their three kids. Became a stay at home mom to three teens. At that point, at the age of 36, returned to school and nine years later graduated from George Mason University with honors in Psychology of Communication where most of my work was around stepfamilies, relationships and conflict resolutions. Started Coaching Steps LLC during last year of school (2006) and have been developing programs and workshops to promote healthy, flourishing stepfamily relationships.

We've been taught a language of violence - a language that blames others, complains about others, and a language that makes excuses or justifies our own not so stellar behavior. Please join Peggy Nolan and Teresa Thompson as they dish Nonviolent Communication with Jerry Gonzalez, New England Director and certified nonviolent communication trainer on Monday, November 22, 2010. This is a show you don't want to miss. Listen live, ask questions in our online chat, or call in with your questions. This topic is too important to your marriage, to your family, and to your stepfamily. Really. You don't want to miss this!

We're exicited to have Chantal Boudreau, Certified Master Practitioner in Neuro-linguistic Programming by the National Federation of Neurolinguistic Programming, a Certified Hypnotherapist by the National Guild of Hypnotists, EFT practitioner, Certified Isui Reiki Master-Teacher and Interfaith Minister. I have an Associate in Arts General Studies with High Honors. The Board of Mental Health of NH registers Chantal as a Rostered Alternative Provider. We're going to be dishing tips, tools and advice on how anger and resentment effect the body and steps you can reduce your negative energy and / or turn it into positive energy. We'll be talking about Chantal's field called “Psycho-neuro-immunology”, which studies how thoughts, emotions, feelings and beliefs affect the immune system. As a breast cancer survivor, this topic is near and dear to my heart as I'm a firm believer that stress supresses the immune system, and once it is out of balance, so is the rest of our body. This is going to be a GREAT show!

Join Peggy Nolan and Erin Erickson as they dish tips, tools, and advice with Remarriage Works publisher Paula Bisacre! Paula Bisacre’s mission is have a positive impact on stepfamilies and remarried adults by providing solutions that increase happiness and success, as well as shift cultural perceptions about blended families. Paula is the founder of Remarriage LLC and www.RemarriageWorks.com, providing practical solutions, resources and a supportive community that enhance the experience of remarriage and stepfamily living. Her business venture, along with her personal experience of blending a stepfamily of seven, has put Paula at the forefront of the national stepfamily conversation. A trusted expert and advocate, Paula frequently speaks, writes and consults about stepfamily issues and was the creator of The Washington Time’s monthly remarriage column. You can reach Paula at publisher@RemarriageWorks.com.

No one is under the moral obligation to love another - Wallace D. Wattles. In fact, it is our own responsibility to become loveable...and how do we do that? By being Love In Action. I'm excited to have Wilma Ham back on our show because Wilma KNOWS what it means to be Love in Action. It isn't about keeping score. It isn't about doing for everyone else first. It isn't about self-sacrifice. If you suffer from the Disease to Please, you'll want to tune in!

Join hosts Peggy Nolan and Erin Erickson as they dish tips, tools, and advice with Deesha Philyaw of Co-Parenting 101! From Deesha's website, http://coparenting101.org: After our marriage ended, we became the poster-children for divorce amongst our circle of friends and colleagues. We wished we could have been the poster children for successful marriage, but it didn’t work out that way… (photo courtesy of T. Foley) In the wake of our divorce and despite the problems that ended our marriage, we have managed to establish a successful, congenial co-parenting relationship which allows our children to thrive and which causes those who know us to ask, “How in the world do you do it?” We are not, however, advocates for divorce. In fact, we tell couples who seek our advice to only consider divorce as their very last option. We won’t debate whether staying together “for the sake of the kids” is best for children. That’s a personal decision each thoughtful couple must make for themselves. But we’ve heard from many co-parents who report that using “for the sake of the kids” as the glue to hold their marriages together didn’t work ultimately. This site is a resource for those parents and for others who find themselves parenting after divorce or separation for whatever reason.

This week, hosts Peggy Nolan and Teresa Thompson dish tips and advice on overcoming fear with Sali Tetreault, Reiki Master and Fire Walker. Learn our three reactions to fear: fight, flight, or paralysis Learn the difference between real fear and comfortable fear. Learn tips on how to overcome your fears. And Listen in as your hosts and Sali describe some real and comfortable fears and how they overcame them!

Please join Peggy Nolan and Erin Erickson as they dish tips, tools, and advice with Gloria Lintermans, author of the new book, "The Secrets to Stepfamily Success" : Newlyweds can have a difficult time learning each other’s quirks and habits. In fact, they may be sitting on an emotional powder keg. After all, everyone’s had those ‘If he makes that noise one more time…’ moments. Now imagine that tension multiplied to the nth degree as children, ex-spouses, and perhaps even disapproving in-laws are added to the mix. While the couple tries to acclimate to each other, they might also have to contend with a child who wants Mommy and Daddy back together NOW! In her newest book, The Secrets to Stepfamily Success, author Gloria Lintermans gives the reader insightful techniques on how to merge a group of virtual strangers into a loving family able to give each other support and respect. The Secrets to Stepfamily Success offers tools that can significantly lower the alarming rate of step and blended family divorce, helping families evolve into highly nurturing, reliable refuges of warmth, safety, encouragement, strength, caring, and joy. Step and blended families have a unique dynamic with which couples must cope, along with all the other normal challenges of life and marriage. See how these families differ in up to sixty structural and dynamic ways from typical intact biological families--including consisting of two co-parenting homes and ex-spouses?and learn how to successfully recognize and manage these challenges. We're also excited to have Brenda Ockun on to dish her upcoming issue of StepMom Magazine!