“Before I love someone else, I’ve got to love myself.” Recognize that line from the song “Save Myself” by Ed Sheeran? Or maybe you have heard “Lose You To Love Me” by Selena Gomez? Those two songs talk about loving yourself before you get into a romantic relationship.
But how do I love myself, and why is it important to love yourself before going into a relationship? Like a lot of teens, I have questions on this topic, so I decided to invite my crazily artistic, fun-loving and beautiful aunt to coffee to talk about it.
Hannah Johnson has an undergraduate degree in psychology and was recently accepted into Gonzaga to pursue a masters in school counseling and become a licensed professional counselor. We decided to go to The Garden Coffee and Local Eats, and she brought along her 5-year-old son, Oakley, who was kind enough to take our picture for this story. The coffee was so good! I was trying hard to focus on the subject at hand, but my mind would go back to my delicious blended mocha.
Hannah wisely approached this subject with a definition.
”I think it’s important to define self love as valuing yourself as a whole and having confidence in who you are; it’s important to recognize that it’s different from simply comparing yourself to others or being self-focused,” she said. “Some people think it’s narcissistic, but it’s really just having a value of yourself and where you’re at. Self love is just a healthy view of yourself; it’s healthy for everybody.”
Hannah Johnson and Kylie Johnson enjoy chilly beverages and meaningful conversation at The Garden Coffee and Local Eats (prior to recent COVID-19 restrictions). Photo credit: Oakley Johnson, 5-year-old master photographer
How could I build my self love? Like a lot of people, I can be pretty hard on myself, and I could work on building my self-compassion. Hannah gave multiple great points, such as following positive accounts on Instagram, doing fun leisure activities and building social connections.
“Your peers can influence you even more than a trusted adult, parent or guardian,” she said. “If your peers are not boosting your self-esteem, then you need to notice that and maybe put some distance there.”
What does self love look like when you’re ready to go into a romantic relationship? Hannah listed three areas to get right first. The first one is self kindness; don’t criticize yourself for your flaws. Then you need to realize your common humanity, which is that everyone makes mistakes and acknowledging the weaknesses you have makes you human. The final step is mindfulness, which is to be aware of negative self talk. All of us can grow in an area or two, but that’s no reason to beat yourself up about it.
Wait … if you don’t love yourself and you dive into a romantic relationship, is that really a bad thing? How would it affect the relationship? Would it affect the relationship?
”It can totally affect your relationship because if you don’t recognize your own self worth then you can begin to expect others to fill that hole,” she said. “You also won’t be able to protect yourself and stand up for yourself in tough situations.”
“Some people think it’s narcissistic, but it’s really just having a value of yourself and where you’re at. Self love is just a healthy view of yourself; it’s healthy for everybody.”
Hannah Johnson
Hannah also said that if your self love is at an unhealthy spot it will negatively affect both sides of the relationship. One person will need to take more than they can give, which is exhausting for both people.
That makes sense, but what should I do if I’m in a relationship when one person does not have a healthy amount of self love? Hannah suggested that in these seasons, the healthier partner needs to have sensitivity and awareness and help the other person practice self love. Self love isn’t going to be natural for everybody. If it’s at a really unhealthy point, then you may need to break it off and give them time to focus on themselves. If they are hurting themselves, then it will be harder but still be the right thing to do.
”In the end, everyone is responsible for their own actions,” Hannah said.
If you need to work on self love and you’re in a romantic relationship, you need to realize that it’s not selfish to take time to yourself and break it off, if that’s what you feel like you need to do. You should know that it’s not the other person’s responsibility to carry your negative self talk burden and that you can’t rely on them to feel good. In either situation, it’s never bad to go and talk to a counselor or someone you trust so they can give you input.
Hannah and I sure had some deep conversations about this topic while little Oakley played on his tablet and my phone. Our drinks were amazing, and I absolutely loved the vibe and atmosphere of The Garden. It was a great place to just share a treat with a loved one and talk. I learned so much more about this topic because of Hannah and give her much thanks. I’m glad I could show myself a little love with the blended mocha and whether it’s with a coffee or just giving myself grace, I think I’m going to start treating myself more often.
Guest contributor Kylie Johnson is a freshman at Mica Peak High School in Spokane Valley. She drinks blended mochas, eats ice cream by the pint and plans to marry Five Seconds of Summer drummer Ashton Irwin. Until they get the chance to actually meet, she is focusing on self-compassion.
While you’re here, would you do me a favor?
If you enjoy articles like this one, join the CoffeeJosh mailing list. It’s hurry-free, spam-free and also free … free. As a thanks, I’ll send you a PDF — you guessed it, free — that has 10 of the best coffee shop orders in the Spokane area. (All 10 are drinks and treats local coffee shop owners make for themselves. In this case, expect to pay for your order and feel like it was totally worth it.)
Three things a Valley trio learned opening a coffee shop far from home
Before they wanted to quit 5,000 times, a trio of Spokane Valley residents set out to open a coffee shop in Costa Rica. Since that moment nearly three years ago, a combination of perseverance and “pura vida” resulted in the popular San Ramon destination, Elements Coffee House.
It’s a decision that has impacted thousands of lives for good: The team of eight local employees they treat like family; the community of Ticos (Costa Ricans) who pack the venue for their most important celebrations; the Gringos (expats) who have found “a perfect combination of the comforts of home with the taste of Costa Rica,” as one five-star reviewer put it.
The layout of Elements Coffee House …
… includes beautiful second-floor views.
The coffee house and adjoining TEN Degrees Coffee Roasters have enjoyed acclaim for excellent customer service and sourcing local ingredients and products. Even so, Spokane Valley’s Kent and Dina Johnson and partner Malcolm Wicks will tell you there are far less time-consuming — and far more lucrative — ways to achieve ROI than Costa Rican cafes.
“We thought about closing it 5,000 times, 20 times a day,” Kent said.
For Kent, perhaps it was the fact he worked remotely for his full-time “real job” at Liberty Lake-based Itron while simultaneously building a coffee shop from scratch in a foreign country. (The Johnsons lived in Costa Rica from February 2012 to June 2019.)
For Malcolm, maybe it was the three-week window he chiseled to be away from his Spokane Valley coffee businesses to travel to Costa Rica, set up the shop and train employees — only to have all the equipment he needed stuck in customs until the day after he returned home. (Malcolm owns Grinders Coffee and its next door roaster, Bumper Crop Coffee, at 14505 E. Trent Ave.)
For Dina, it might have been the hundreds of hours waiting in line at third-world government offices to meet always-shifting requirements and obtain ever-elusive approvals. On one such occasion, a contextual misunderstanding of the Spanish word “timbre” had her thinking she needed to complete an application by providing the clerk with a doorbell. The woman was actually asking Dina for a 10-cent stamp, and eventually cleared up matters by providing it for her.
“I’m so thankful she had one, because I probably would have gone down to the hardware store and actually brought back a doorbell to give to her, because it seriously would not have surprised me,” Dina said.
Not that this marathon of hurdles has seen its finish line. In the week of our November interview, the Spokane Valley owners were troubleshooting a wonky ice machine from 3,200 miles away and finalizing details for a vacationing friend-of-a-friend to deliver a commercial grade kitchen mixer to Costa Rica as an extra suitcase.
Has it all been worth it? If life is to be measured on a spreadsheet, the jury is out. But like explaining that perfect cup of coffee, there are layers of this experience that run deeper: notes of deep fulfillment and accomplishment, fresh textures of the human experience, and — best of all — a richness in relationship.
So here are three of Kent, Dina and Malcolm’s favorite takeaways from their experience — in case, you know, you don’t get around to opening a coffee shop in Costa Rica yourself.
1. Embrace the ‘Pura Vida’ perspective
Ask an American teenager, and Pura Vida is a bracelet company. But in Costa Rica, it’s everything. Translated with expressions like “pure life,” “positive vibes” and “no worries,” it serves as an aloha-like greeting, but it’s also used as an attitude-checking response to the ups and downs of living.
“We used it a lot when we came up against those different obstacles, like, ‘Pura Vida, what are you going to do about it? This is life, and you have to just accept it and walk through it,’” Dina explained.
But it’s more than a Costa Rican spin on the “no worries” catchphrase — it’s regularly lived out in the culture.
When Malcolm was in Costa Rica for three weeks, unable to do any of the most pressing tasks on his itinerary, he was staying with the 25-year-old manager of Elements Coffee House, Jeanka, a longtime family friend of the Johnsons.
In Malcolm’s own words, Jeanka got to see the “chop-chop-chop” American culture coming out of him: “I was raving about something, not happy with how things were going, and he was like, ‘Look, man, there’s only one thing in life you can’t fix.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, what’s that?’ And he said, ‘Death.’ That was his response to me getting wound up. … It made me sit back and put things in perspective. Nobody’s dying, so yeah, I do need to chill out a little bit.”
Not that Jeanka lacks zeal for his work.
“He is passionate about things, but I’ve also heard him say a number of times, ‘Well, what can I do about that?’” Kent recalled. “And literally if there is nothing you can do about it, then why do you freak out about it and spend that much energy on it?”
“Pura Vida”: Perhaps another translation is “lower blood pressure.”
Elements Coffee House in San Ramon, Costa Rica is owned by Spokane Valley partners Kent and Dina Johnson and Malcolm Wicks.
2. Ask yourself if you need it
About 90 percent of Costa Rican coffee is exported. The 10 percent that remains for local consumption is affectionately referred to by Ticos as “the garbage,” Kent explained. Not to be fooled, the coffee that doesn’t pass muster for export is still very good, and it’s widely consumed as part of a true “coffee culture.”
“The toddlers drink coffee; (people) drink it all day and all night,” Kent said.
They enjoy this “garbage” with milk and sugar, if available, or drink it black. Skimping on unnecessary ingredients is part of a cultural value of getting by simply.
When Malcolm moved in with Jeanka for his first three-week stint in country, the young man lacked a refrigerator. Malcolm wondered how he would store the groceries during his stay, so he bought Jeanka a fridge. Two or three days later, Malcolm approached Jeanka about the rag they used to wipe down the glass door on the apartment shower.
“I said, ‘Jeanka, we need to go get you a squeegee and wipe this down with a squeegee,’” Malcolm said. “What’s a squeegee — three bucks? … And he was like, ‘Look man, if you don’t have it, you don’t need it.’ That was his response. And it’s just the way they live.”
Look man, if you don’t have it, you don’t need it.
Jeanka, Manager of Elements Coffee House
The response made a deep impression, causing Malcolm to wish this minimalist perspective would not only rub off on him, but on the America he would soon be re-entering.
For Malcolm, the lesson was more than a conviction about personal consumption. He also noticed this perspective caused people to treat one another with greater humanity. While there isn’t a middle class to speak of in Costa Rica, the rich and poor seem to coexist without stigma, not measuring their human success in terms of wealth.
“There’s a different way than what we typically see done, and it’s OK,” Malcolm said. “It’s like, ‘If you need it and I have it, then it’s yours.’”
3. Place proper priority on relationships
In Costa Rican coffee culture, you don’t grab and go; you sit and talk, Dina explained.
“Every day, they drink at 9 o’clock and 3 o’clock; it’s coffee hour for them,” she said. “It’s relational. This is what they do. They invite you over for coffee.”
The busiest day of the year for Elements Coffee House? Mother’s Day. Indeed, the culture seems intent on making a statement that people are not part of a checklist, but simply the priority that will always trump the checklist. In this way, the coffee and relational aspects of Costa Rican culture are linked.
Living with Costa Rican neighbors for seven years, the Johnsons’ decision to move back to Spokane Valley in June caused no shortage of mourning for the relationships that had been formed. Perhaps the hardest goodbye was to their longtime neighbors, Jeanka’s family.
“The dad was just sitting by the curb and crying,” Kent recalled. “He just said thanks for all you have done for Jeanka.”
Malcolm Wicks and Kent Johnson, at left, tour a Costa Rican coffee farm with its owner (standing) and Jeanka, the now 25-year-old manager of Elements Coffee House.
While Malcolm was never a longtime resident of the country, Jeanka’s family left a similar impression on him. On his first day in Costa Rica, Jeanka asked him what he wanted to be sure to do or see on his visit. His only request: An authentic meal. Jeanka said he would have his mom cook him something, and then Malcolm thought he must have forgotten about it, because he didn’t hear another thing about it the entire three weeks.
While eating dinner on his final night before returning to the States, Jeanka suddenly showed up and interrupted the meal.
“We got to go to my mom’s right now,” he announced. “My brother is coming to pick us up.”
Malcolm asked if they could just say goodbye to her in the morning before heading to the airport.
“No, you don’t understand,” Jeanka shook his head. “She cooked; we got to go.”
An hour later, Malcolm walked into the humble Costa Rican home.
“It dawned on me at that point what had transpired over the course of the last three weeks. It literally took her three weeks to source the ingredients she wanted to prepare this one meal for me,” Malcolm said, explaining how she had likely had to save money to purchase some of the ingredients and bartered for others. “In that moment, it was the best food I’d ever eaten, and I sat there and bawled for probably 15 minutes in front of this lady I’d met once. But she understood it; Jeanka understood. And the bond with that family for my family will never be broken.”
In the Beginning
The makings of an unlikely Costa Rican coffee partnership
Malcolm Wicks spent the better part of four hours scaring his friends away from the coffee business.
The owner of Grinders Coffee and its next-door roaster, Bumper Crop Coffee, at 14505 E. Trent Ave., Malcolm knows firsthand how complicated and financially uncertain the industry is in Spokane Valley, let alone Costa Rica.
Kent Johnson showed up for that February 2017 conversation in the Bumper Crop loft with “four or five questions” connected to his dream of opening a coffee shop in San Ramon, Costa Rica, with his wife, Dina.
“I left with the biggest pit in my stomach I’ve ever had in my life,” he recalled.
Dina could see the reality check written all over his face.
“He came home to me, and he said, ‘We don’t know what we’re doing. There’s no way we can do this. We do not know enough,’” Dina remembered. “And he said, ‘I think we just need to hold off on this.’”
Kent’s recollection was even more blunt: “I was done.”
He prayed about it that evening, effectively handing the dream off to the Lord with the acknowledgement that resuscitation would require a miracle.
At approximately 9:30 the next morning, he received a text message. The dream was back on.
* * *
Malcolm and Kent first connected on Newman Lake in the 1990s over a shared love of wakeboarding. As their families grew, so did their friendship. Highlights include the year Malcolm’s wife, Dani, had the Johnsons’ daughter in her fourth grade class. The families spent years barbecuing and snowboarding together before Kent and Dina vacationed to Costa Rica in June 2011 — and fell in love with the country. By the following February, Kent had gained permission to work his Itron HR job remotely, and the Johnson family became full-time residents in the hills northwest of San Jose.
Since their first trip in 2011, Kent and Dina Johnson’s Costa Rica experience has been a family affair, shared with two adult children (27 and 24), and their two youngest sons, ages 14 and 10.
The fateful meeting with Malcolm came five years into their Costa Rican adventure, with the Johnsons well along in the process of investing in a local business. They had looked into vacation homes and private car rentals, but nothing appealed to them quite like the idea of starting a coffee shop. On a vacation to visit family and friends back in Spokane Valley, Kent looked to his friend Malcolm to help sharpen the idea.
“I left the meeting going, ‘Those guys are going to fail. They can’t do this,’” Malcolm said. “My whole mission was to talk them out of doing it.”
But then a strange thing happened. He found himself thinking about how some of the best coffee in the world is farmed 30 minutes up the hill from the Johnsons’ proposed venture, how he owned a backup roaster that was just taking up space in the Bumper Crop shop, how many of the pitfalls awaiting his business-savvy friends were tied to their lack of coffee experience — experience he had in spades.
“The next morning I woke up, and I said, ‘Dani, I think we should try to partner with these guys and do this down there,’” Malcolm said. “I was thinking she would be like, ‘What? Why would we do that? We don’t want to get involved in that.’ But she was just like, no hesitation, black and white, ‘Yeah, I think you should do that. That’s a great idea.’ So I took that as like, ‘OK, I should at least propose this.’”
And he sent a text.
Coffee Notes
When we met in November in the loft of Malcolm Wicks’ Bumper Crop Coffee on Trent, he had just finished roasting a batch of beans from China. My first experience with the rare Chinese coffee industry, these beans showed hints of blueberry and left me wanting to waltz into Malcolm’s roastery more often.
Kent and Dina Johnson’s favorite coffee in the world is, of course, their own TEN Degrees variety. The beans are purchased 30 minutes up the hill from a collection of small farms that specialize in growing high-altitude Arabica coffee in Costa Rica’s famous West Valley growing region. The Johnsons roast the beans at TEN Degrees, which has its own space next to Elements Coffee House in San Ramon.
For coffee that doesn’t require travel to Central America, the Johnsons recommend picking up one of their two favorite Bumper Crop single origin roasts: Santa Rosa (from Honduras) and Sidamo (a popular coffee-growing region in Ethiopia). Find them at bumpercropcoffee.com.
Huge thanks to Dina and Kent Johnson for sharing their Costa Rican adventures with me, as well as Malcolm Wicks (not pictured) — Josh Johnson (soccer jersey: Borussia Dortmund)
While you’re here, would you do me a favor?
If you enjoy articles like this one, join the CoffeeJosh mailing list. It’s hurry-free, spam-free and also free … free. As a thanks, I’ll send you a PDF — you guessed it, free — that has 10 of the best coffee shop orders in the Spokane area. (All 10 are drinks and treats local coffee shop owners make for themselves. In this case, expect to pay for your order and feel like it was totally worth it.)
Isaac Hebden is a runner, but I’m his friend anyway.
The other day he told me this terrible story about a time he ran 12 miles in an unfamiliar neighborhood and decided it wasn’t far enough, so he swerved off his planned route with the intention of cutting back over to the area where his final destination waited.
When his new path didn’t allow for a cutback route, he just
kept plodding away in the wrong direction, mile after mile. And you know what
he finally did when he got tired enough? He stopped and called his wife to come
bail him out.
Dr. Isaac Hebden at The Garden Coffee & Local Eats
I don’t know what it would be like to ever run that far, but
I have a lot of experience traveling stubbornly in the wrong direction and
hoping no one would notice I’m looking more and more ragged with each passing
landmark.
Out of gas.
Out of water.
About to collapse.
Looking for any option other than admitting my need to be
rescued …
• • •
Isaac Hebden is a pastor, and he’s a friend to people like
me anyway.
Actually, he’s got a soft spot for the choose-your-own-adventure
type. He’s traveled those roads himself.
Isaac likes a story told by Jesus about a young man who
passionately pursued everything he wanted from life and ended up broke and
desperate. And then Jesus delivers this epic line about what ended up being the
turning point for this guy: “When he finally came to his senses.”
This guy is best known as the Prodigal Son (not to be
confused with the crime drama Mondays on FOX), and I can relate to him. A few
years back I was doing the whole have-and-eat cakewalk. I worked crazy hours
trying to tame a beast of a business that was actually slaying me. Along the
way, I kept believing I could be a first-rate husband, father and friend
without changing a thing about my life. What I was really doing was running
scared in the wrong direction, lying to myself that my lucky break was just
around the bend.
Can you relate? Ever come up with a recipe for Awesome Sauce
that ended up tasting like Awful Sauce — and served it anyway? Ever realized you’re
at the end of your rope — and kept reaching anyway? Ever been exposed and made
up a face-saving narrative — what’s the point of vulnerability, anyway?
Isaac was one of the people who helped me with that whole
“finally come to my senses” thing. It was good to have friends nearby, because
let’s be honest: This is brutal.
“There is a moment where you have an awakening where you
realize, ‘I’m not the person I thought I was, and I can either do something
about it or put my head down and keep running,’” Isaac said. “How many people
put their head down and keep running because it’s painful to look around and
say, ‘Have I been on the wrong road all along?’ Who wants to do that?”
If you find yourself at such a crossroads, may the good Lord
give you a friend like Isaac, someone who has been there, done that, and lived
to write 48,000 words about it.
• • •
Isaac Hebden is a doctor, but for now he has agreed to be my
friend anyway.
All those words were for a dissertation he wrote last year
en route to achieving his doctoral status. The dissertation examined the
prominence of pastoral burnout and strategies toward a more holistic,
emotionally healthy approach.
For Isaac, it was a timely project, seeing as how the
longtime associate pastor at his Spokane Valley church, The Intersection, was
recently named the new lead pastor.
That’s not to say the conclusions he reached are only for
pastors. After all, the symptoms he was describing — emotional fatigue,
disillusionment, exhaustion, self-deception — cross vocational lines. Isaac
said the solutions, while drawn from the life and teachings of Jesus of
Nazareth, work both inside and outside the church.
“We just believe that the principles Jesus lives by and
teaches will make your life better, so if you don’t even believe in Jesus, try
the principles and see if it works,” he said.
• • •
Isaac Hebden is a human being, and that’s more important
than his resume.
Yes, he can run for days, pastors a church and has earned a
doctorate, but his research — and his experience — has taught him that Jesus
didn’t accomplish all kinds of things in order to form his identity, but the
other way around.
“Jesus was clear on his purpose and his identity, and out of
that he was able to do things of significance, and from there it was fruitful,”
Isaac said. “We try to make fruit and then become significant. … We do things in
order to be accepted, and so it’s backwards.”
So how do we find peace in our own skin without having to
put on another exhausting show for acceptance? Isaac encourages people to go on
a journey of building self-awareness and implementing practices of “being.”
Whether you follow Jesus or not, tools like the Enneagram
can help you better understand your makeup and lead you on a pathway to more
holistic health, Isaac suggested, adding that self-awareness is aided by
community and humility.
Isaac recommends surrounding yourself with people who will
tell you the truth in love, and then actually listening to them instead of
playing the role of defense attorney.
“There is a required amount of humility that one has to have
(for) self-awareness,” he said. “Those people who do not ask for help and don’t
want to be in community, who aren’t willing to listen, they will end up in
trouble.”
After vulnerability paves the road for greater self-awareness,
Jesus modeled a set of practices that are more about personal growth than showy
accomplishments. Examples include celebration, community and quiet solitude,
among others. He said that last one is particularly rare in our plugged-in,
distraction-rich culture. Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t have to be a
monk to practice solitude. Isaac said even successful CEOs are known to start
their day in stillness and quiet.
“Silence reminds me that I’m not in control, that there are
other things beyond me,” he said. “What is devalued unintentionally (by our
culture) is the idea of being. … So to just sit and not do anything is so
counterintuitive to what we think is beneficial, but perhaps it’s the most
beneficial 15 minutes of the day.”
Whether it’s embracing the quiet, a heartfelt visit with a
friend or pausing to celebrate, the theme of many Jesus practices is simply slowing
down. Isaac said this helps people feel more integrated, more whole, more
healthy.
“The best that I can bring into any situation is the
healthiest me, which requires some self-reflection,” he said.
One good thing about “finally coming to your senses”? The
“doing” path is shown for what it really is — exhausting, unhealthy and
ultimately unfulfilling.
“Everybody has some specific identity; every person has
intrinsic value,” he said. “The difficulty for each person is to get off the
treadmill, look around and see who you really are.”
Connect with Isaac Hebden at The Intersection Church, 905 N. McDonald Road in Spokane Valley or reach him at ihebden@theintersection.info.
Coffee Notes
Isaac and I met for this conversation at The Garden Café & Local Eats in Spokane Valley. Isaac’s go-to order is an Americano. Before I realized Isaac had secretly arranged to put my order on his tab, I went for an oat milk latte and — why not? — a bowl of chicken tortilla soup. Man, it was delicious. Thanks, bro!
Thanks for the coffee, the soup and for letting me read your dissertation, glimpses of which I recognized from the many times you have spoken into my life over 25-plus years of friendship. I’m blessed. — Josh Johnson (soccer jersey: Tooro United F.C. of the Uganda Premier League)
While you’re here, would you do me a favor?
If you enjoy articles like this one, join the CoffeeJosh mailing list. It’s hurry-free, spam-free and also free … free. As a thanks, I’ll send you a PDF — you guessed it, free — that has 10 of the best coffee shop orders in the Spokane area. (All 10 are drinks and treats local coffee shop owners make for themselves. In this case, expect to pay for your order and feel like it was totally worth it.)
Kylie, this is beautiful. So on point and a much needed topic in today’s world. I am glad you are sharing this with others and hope many young people will ready this and learn the lesson early in life. You are gifted with words and I hope to see more guest spots from you!
Kylie, this is so well done, I’m very impressed! You have your dad’s gift for words and organized and expressed yourself so well. Plus, what an important topic! Your Aunt Hannah sounds like a wonderful person. And coffee from The Garden IS delicious.
2 Comments
Kylie, this is beautiful. So on point and a much needed topic in today’s world. I am glad you are sharing this with others and hope many young people will ready this and learn the lesson early in life. You are gifted with words and I hope to see more guest spots from you!
Kylie, this is so well done, I’m very impressed! You have your dad’s gift for words and organized and expressed yourself so well. Plus, what an important topic! Your Aunt Hannah sounds like a wonderful person. And coffee from The Garden IS delicious.