Hi! I'm still learning my way around the teen site at BellaOnline! I hope you will bear with me as I work hard at making the teen site articles, forum and newsletters something that you will really enjoy and value!

Let me tell you a little bit about myself. I am a wife, mom and grammy, but in spite of my advanced age (49!) and my grey hair, one of the things I enjoy most in life is my work with a bunch of great teens at a children's home in Texas. i do recreation and I supervise the staff at one of the group homes. I am privileged to get to spend lots of time with teens, and I love it. They keep me young!

One 18 year old girl I met at this very children's home is named Amber. I adopted her, along with her brother and sister, when they were 11, 12 and 17. Amber is the youngest and she is my hero. She is currently writing her life story and gave me permission to share it with the teen site readers. You can read the first chapter here:

http://thelightedway.blogspot.com/2011/01/my-life-chapter-one-by-amber-s.html/

My new article called Are We Abandoning Our Adolescents, will be featured this coming Sunday night. I hope you will read it on the teen site at BellaOnline.

Movie Alert: I had the opportunity to screen a new movie that will open on April 8th called Soul Surfer! I loved it and will talk more about it in my next newsletter. I can't wait to tell you about it!

Please visit teen.bellaonline.com for even more great content about Teens.

To participate in free, fun online discussions, this site has a community forum all about Teen located here -

http://forums.bellaonline.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=154

I hope to hear from you sometime soon, either in the forum or in response to this email message. I thrive on your feedback!

Have fun passing this message along to family and friends, because we all love free knowledge!

Leslie Swindle, Teen Editor
http://teen.bellaonline.com

One of hundreds of sites at BellaOnline.com