​Beth joined CFI as a Heart Voice leader in the spring of 2016. She’s taken part in our Heart Voice program since 2008. Heart Voices for Beth is about connection. It is about finding and exploring that connection to yourself, to others, and deepening your spiritual connection. It is about finding support to navigate relationships, friendships and parenthood, and creating a safe place in which to grow and learn and laugh and cry. It is about discovering who we are and learning to be quiet enough to listen to the voice within our heart. 

 

Memorable family tradition?

I grew up in North Carolina. Family meals were always a tradition. I remember fondly gathering with aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins for big family dinners. It may have been a holiday, such as Thanksgiving or Christmas, or a family holiday such as a birthday, or perhaps just a Sunday afternoon. The meal would begin with sweet iced tea, and it would often include fried chicken, mashed potatoes and buttermilk biscuits. (These would get slathered in butter and honey!) The meal would conclude with pound cake, whipping cream and a bowl of strawberries in Spring or peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream in Summer. I remember lively conversations, great story telling, and many reminders about my manners! It is nice to look back and recall the importance of just being with family as well as a time that I could eat dessert!