The Family Tree Series: Empowering Stories of Mother Son Relationships (Vol. 3)
by Rebecca Harrison
Family Tree: Empowering Stories of Mother Son Relationships (Vol. 3)
Twelve mothers have come together to whole-heartedly share the joys and challenges of raising sons, and one son has collaborated with his mother in their own unique chapter. These are deeply personal journeys of humour, love, loss, and powerful healing. Every story offers the reader a deeper understanding of this most special bond and gives hands-on tools for mothers who want to create a foundation for their sons to thrive. Immerse yourself in these incredible stories and discover your own pathway to more love, fulfillment, and freedom.
About the Author
Rebecca is honoured to be the founder of the best-selling Family Tree book series. She wholeheartedly loves supporting authors to bring their powerful stories out into the world. Her children’s book, The Little Tree, had a successful launch in December 2020 and will soon launch worldwide on Amazon. Rebecca’s film script has attracted attention recently, and she is excited to one day see it on the big screen!
Rebecca is also a health nut and fitness fanatic. For sixteen years, she was a personal trainer and group fitness instructor. She loves helping people feel alive, energized, healthy, and fit! In 2005, she was introduced to a unique wellness company. After experiencing her own astounding results and those of her husband while using this exceptional nutrition, she began to share it with clients and friends. Over time, she created a fulltime income while helping others transform their health and create extra cash flow for their families. Rebecca is so proud of the positive difference this company is making!
Rebecca is most proud of her wildly creative children, Benjamin and Olivia, and her talented husband, Nicholas Harrison, PhD. They live in sunny Tsawwassen with the best cats in the world, Ruby, Skye, and Bartholomew.
Co-Authors (Vol. 3)
Michelle Stilwell
Determination, perseverance, discipline. These three qualities truly capture the strength and character of the dynamic Canadian athlete, Olympian, and politician, Michelle Stilwell. Her story speaks to the power of focus and how this can make a winner out of anybody. Her love of competitive sport helped her regain confidence in her abilities post-injury; since then, her passion to compete has been her vehicle to success in all aspects of life.
Michelle is a six-time Paralympic gold medalist in both basketball and track, nine-time World Champion, and the world record holder in the 100m, 200m and 800m events in the T52 class. She also served two terms as a Member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia for Parksville- Qualicum and was the Minister for Social Development and Social Innovation.
Michelle is passionate about healthy, active living and advocates for people with disabilities and children with special needs. She has been an ambassador, spokesperson, business owner, and inductee of both the BC and Manitoba Sports Hall of Fame.
Michelle lives in Parksville, a beautiful city on the West Coast of British Columbia, Canada, with husband Mark and son Kai.
DeeAnn Lensen
DeeAnn Lensen is a trusted and sought-after skin care expert, international advanced esthetics educator, certified life coach, and keynote speaker. A life-long skin and empowerment enthusiast, DeeAnn has dedicated over thirty years to the art of beautiful skin arising from within. An award-winning and six-time best-selling author and NLP practitioner, DeeAnn is the president and CEO of Touché Esthetiqué, manufacturer of the Touché Beauty Serums, and owns Advanced Spa Technologies, a five-star spa consulting education and distribution company.
A pioneer in pairing empowerment with spa treatments, her multi-faceted strengths have empowered thousands from the inside out. Frustrated by the onslaught of fear-based marketing targeted at women, DeeAnn dissected the cosmetic industry with a fine-tooth comb and created the Emotional Freedom Technique tapping exercises for women to use while applying skincare to increase self-compassion. She also offers many public programs, including Thrive/Alive Mastermind, Emotional Intelligence/Life Coaching, Emotional Freedom Technique Downloads, and Women’s Empowered Inside Out Live and Zoom Events.
A deeply respected spa consultant, DeeAnn is known for her ability to support spa businesses through dynamic education,
creative marketing, empowering staff, coaching management, as well as speaking at Empowered Inside Out Seminars for select spa clients. Connect with DeeAnn through any of her contact information below.
www.DeeAnnLensen.com
Dee@LensenInc.com
Phone: 604-916-8354
Joel Slenning
Joel Slenning is a serial entrepreneur and President of INNOVA Staffing and INNOVA People. He is considered one of the leading minds on talent acquisition, tech start-up growth strategies, and creative branding. He recognizes trends and patterns early to help his clients and teammates pivot and adjust, taking advantage of the marketplace shifts and opportunities. He understands how to bring brand relevance, company culture, and growth strategies to the forefront and use it to attract the right talent to grow the business or meet the mission.
Today, Joel helps large-scale healthcare organizations and tech start-ups build highly scalable and proficient teams of talented professionals through INNOVA People’s intensively sophisticated and proprietary talent acquisition model. In addition to advising multiple businesses, he can be found on social media outlets via podcasts, interviews, and speaking engagements, working collectively with some of the brightest minds in the industry.
Joel’s energy and focus are also very entrenched in his family life: his amazing wife, Lisa; his brilliant daughter, Zoe; and his two little rug rat boys, Evan and Grant. He draws inspiration from fatherhood and a successful marriage that has catapulted his passion for living life to the fullest.
www.innovapeople.com
Phone: 503-847-9364 • Fax: 503-582-8313
Odile Nicolas-Etienne
Odile is a certified trainer and facilitator, a professional transformational coach, and a body and mindfulness therapist. Her first career, though, was as a lawyer. She was an attorney in Paris in 1995 and then became the legal director of the biggest consumer organization in France, UFC QUE CHOISIR. Here she finally created and led the communication and lobbying department, becoming an advocate for consumer’s rights on a national and international scale.
After eleven years as a lawyer, Odile realized that she was not fully living her life’s purpose. She then decided to make a radical turn and embrace her passion for dance, arts, and education.
Today, Odile lives in Martinique after spending twenty-seven years in France and Belgium. She now coaches and guides parents, teachers, and educators from all walks of life to wholeheartedly embrace their life’s purpose and live to their highest potential. She teaches personal leadership, emotional intelligence, high performance, and mindfulness, all facilitated through dance, arts, collective intelligence, and participative dynamic and creative pedagogies. She inspires, elevates, and guides her alumni with a big heart and a lot of joy, fun, and passion.
Ali Perry-Davies
Ali is a singer/songwriter, author, painter, poet, storyteller, minister, entrepreneur, wife, mother, nana, dog lover, and lifelong learner and explorer with a curious mind. She has just completed a diploma in Holistic Integrated Creative Art Therapy (HICAT) and has written her first solo-authored book, titled A Holistic Path to Healing Trauma: Finding Freedom through Forgiveness and Creativity.
Ali has completed certification courses and programs on business and entrepreneurship, an advanced diploma in human resources management through Camosun College, and diplomas in both theology and ministry through Vancouver Island International School of Ministry, where she went on to work in ministry for over fifteen years.
Ali has volunteered for a variety of nonprofit organizations and is certified in non-violent crisis intervention, suicide prevention, and as a Lifeline phone counsellor for crisis intervention. She has also worked as a disability case manager for the British Columbia Aboriginal Network on Disabilities Society, where she was forever changed after learning so much from the beautiful culture and traumatic history of Indigenous people in Canada.
After sustaining a traumatic brain injury in 2015, Ali needed to reinvent herself and is now painting, writing music and books, and finding ways to explore healing through creativity.
Crystal Charmaine
After a comment from her favourite college professor—“You sure you want to be a nurse and be stuck inside for the rest of your life?”—Crystal changed directions and has never looked back. Even this professor knew her love of nature and pushed her outside. She became a biologist and has spent the last twenty years playing outside for work.
Crystal met the man of her dreams—a fly-fishing, backpacking, mountaineer—at the first environmental firm she worked at, and they now have three incredible boys together. She and her family spend their days on their property at the base of the Rockies, where she and her hubby raise their boys in as much nature as they can. She works on various environmental projects including river restorations, fish rescues, wildlife surveys, writings about nature and kids, and her sustainable kids apparel and accessories line, with a passion for getting kids outside from birth.
Maren Montes Caldwell
Maren is the president and founder of a nonprofit organization, Ayden’s Wish Foundation, Inc, which she created with her longtime friend and co-author, Kelli Bono, eleven years after the loss of Maren’s first-born son, Ayden. She is excited and passionate to take her nonprofit to the next level by connecting with likeminded individuals, businesses, investors, families, and nonprofits. In addition, she plans on becoming a residential and commercial real estate agent so she can help individuals and families find their safe space to call home, and she is writing books about her tragedies and successes to help other women heal.
Formerly, Maren went to the University of Central Florida where she received her bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education. She was a second-grade teacher who was driven to educate, connect, and positively impact her students daily. Working with children was Maren’s entire world since she was a young girl, including babysitting, teaching swim lessons, preschool teacher, substituting, and teaching all the way up until she became a mother.
Maren lives in sunny Florida with her parents and her two beautiful, healthy children, Kellan and Finleigh. Her number one goal is to independently provide for herself by continuing to sustain the best life for her children.
Lynn Lee
Lynn Lee knows first-hand the difficulty in starting over. At forty years old, her life was turned upside down—she became a single parent, and her job was pushing her out the door. She had to rebuild from the ground up. At one point, she was working three jobs and felt like her life was passing her by. Then she discovered the benefits of running a business and the importance of generating passive and residual income, along with learning the rules of the money game and how to build distribution. At that point, her life changed.
Today, Lynn Lee continues to grow her business and is passionate about sharing her skills with people who want to improve upon their future and discover their Dharma. Her sons are doing well and, by witnessing her struggles, have learned to appreciate the value of a dollar and become strong, independent, mature adults. Her family has come back together after facing huge challenges, and she is determined to always put her sons first.
By sharing her story, Lynn hopes that she can inspire and encourage others to take the leap and make the big changes needed to find happiness, discover their Defined Major Purpose, and step out of their comfort zone.
Nikki Knutsen
Nikki is an emergency room nurse as well as a health and wellness coach. She began her nursing career in 2000 after obtaining a bachelor’s degree in Nursing from the University of Victoria. She has worked part time in a busy emergency room for the past twenty years. Her wellness journey began back in 2011 when she was introduced to Isagenix, a nutritional company that drastically improved her health and that of her family. She realized then that she had a true passion for helping people feel their absolute best and showing them how to take control of their overall health and wellness. She now loves partnering with others who have the same vision so that they can help as many people as possible.
Nikki lives in Surrey, BC, with her husband, Wade; their two beautiful children, Breanna and Aidan; and their lovable dog, Kenya. They are a big hockey family and are very active in sports and fitness. They enjoy travelling to sunny destinations either by airplane or with their travel trailer, and they love spending time with friends and family.
Rochelle Curé
Rochelle was born in 1984 as the youngest daughter of Vicki and the late Gilbert Curé. The family lived throughout Alberta until they returned to her mother’s home community right before she turned ten. Growing up on the Siska reservation just outside of Lytton, BC, Rochelle learned about where she came from and embraced her Indigenous culture.
She moved away to go to university, but that was short-lived. She gave birth to Randy in 2005 and soon decided to move home for support, but she eventually went on to complete her Employment Counselling Diploma in 2007.
Since that time, Rochelle has been working in the employment industry, helping people find work and get training for employment. She gave birth to her second son, Parker, in 2013 and is currently working for the shishalh Nation as the manager of the employment/training and postsecondary department. She is one year into obtaining her Masters of Interdisciplinary Studies at Royal Roads University, with a focus on adolescent mental health and how education is affected by it.
Rochelle currently lives in Davis Bay on the Sunshine Coast of BC with her fiancé, Kim; their two sons, Randy and Parker; her mother, Vicki; and until recently, their two senior English bulldogs, Maggie and Buddy. Maggie sadly passed during the writing of this chapter, and she will be truly missed.
Kim Barsanti
Kim attended Concordia University in Montreal, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre in 1987. She worked as a professional stage manager for fifteen years and has been a well-respected talent agent/manager for over twenty years. She ran her
own talent agency, Muse Artist Management, for ten years prior to merging with Lucas Talent in 2014 to form the largest agency in Western Canada and the second largest in Canada. Kim has served on several arts and community boards and volunteers to rescue, rehab, and rehome English and French bulldogs. She has been clean and sober for twenty-six years and continues to be an active member of the recovery community.
This is the third time Kim has contributed to the Family Tree series. Her chapter in the Father/Daughter book explored her relationship with her father, Raymond Barsanti, while her contribution to the Mother/Daughter book was co-written with her mother, Jane Scott Barsanti. She is very grateful to Rebecca and the rest of the team for all their support and guidance.
Kim currently lives in Davis Bay on the Sunshine Coast of BC with her fiancé, Rochelle; their sons, Randy and Parker; her mother-in-law, Vicki; and until recently, their two senior English bulldogs, Maggie and Buddy. Maggie sadly passed during the writing of this chapter, and she will be truly missed.
Kelli Bono
As a follower of Christ, Kelli Bono is passionate about helping others. She has two master’s degrees, one in Family and Marriage Therapy and one in Spiritual Psychology. But after her dad died of cancer and her son was born with a rare blood disorder, a life of counselling was off the table. Once she learned that almost 99 percent of everyday products are linked to cancer and disease, she made it her mission to share safe cosmetics with the world. She is passionate about helping people create wealth, so her cosmetic company, Keep Me Safe, helps women build financial freedom and residual income with no glass ceiling. She also creates private-label safe cosmetics for influential companies and celebrities, and she has partnered with her beautiful friend Maren—a co-author of this book—to create Ayden’s Wish Foundation, a nonprofit honouring the memory of Maren’s son.
However, Kelli’s greatest joys and achievements are her family. She is blessed to have created four children with her husband, Danny. Hunter is a brilliant thinker and lives consciously. Titus brings light to everyone he meets. KelliBelle is focused, determined, and will be an Olympic champion. LillyRose was born to be a performer and a star. These four made Kelli a mom, and she is forever grateful for them.
www.keepmesafenaturals.com
www.lillyrosebotanicals.com
My.keepmesafeworldwide.com/kms
www.aydenswish.org
Kbono@keepmesafeorganics.com
Email: Kellibono777@gmail.com
Text: 321-431-1858 (text)
Rebecca Calado
Rebecca Calado was born in New Zealand and moved to BC, Canada, at seven years old. She has had an incredible love of animals from an early age and now has multiple dogs and even a few purebred Bengal cats. She was also raised with a love of the outdoors and activities such as camping, jet boating, and snow skiing. She met her husband at eighteen years old and they were married with a small baby when she was only twenty-two. Now, seventeen years later, they are parents to two teenage children and have been able to foster within them that same love of animals and the outdoors.
Rebecca originally pursued a diploma in accounting, then worked in an accounting office and in the family business. However, this took a back seat as her passion shifted to advocating for and taking care of her special needs son as well as raising her daughter. This path has also brought her some amazing lifelong friends that understand the journey of a special needs parent.
Now that her kids are older, Rebecca has become an avid yoga student who hopes to one day get her teaching certification so she can share her knowledge of life and how much our minds are connected to our physical bodies.