Welcome to BouncebackCafe.com

…a different kind of Internet Cafe, dedicated to finding useful, optimistic solutions to life’s little (and BIG) challenges.

At BouncebackCafe.com you will find a place where you can have a quick laugh, linger over interesting and enticing ideas, and refresh your spirit. We hope you’ll bookmark us and return often.

Bounceback is our word for resilience – the strength, the optimism and the skills to endure, adapt and flourish in the face of adversity. As lifelong learners and trainers working with people who are dealing with difficult clients, we know that bouncing back demands more than just “turning that frown upside down.” We think this cliché says it well: Fall down seven times stand up eight.  Adversity – bad stuff – happens. It’s what you do with it that matters. Like many of you, we’ve had our fair share of setbacks, and we’ve learned lots about what works and what doesn’t.

We’re the BouncebackCafe.com founders and chief commentators – Ellie & PattiAnn, friends and business partners for more than a decade, midlife emigrants, seekers of truth, self-appointed resilience connoisseurs and purveyors of optimism.  Like many of you, we’re a bit fazed by the on-going state of our lives:

• In transition from what we were to what we want to be.
• Held hostage by an economy turned inside out and upside down.
• Challenged by on-going health and well-being issues.
• Sandwiched between elder & youngster generations, trying to serve all including ourselves.
• Intrigued by the notion that we might make a living doing what we love.

In his book The Way of Transition: Embracing Life’s Most Difficult Moments, author William Bridges characterizes this transitional phase as the “chaotic but potentially creative neutral zone when things aren’t the old way but aren’t really a new way yet either…” And, Julia Cameron, a prayerful poet as well as the prolific author of The Artists Way, writes in her Transitions: Prayers & Activities for a Changing Life:“curiosity is the right companion of change.”

Interesting juxtaposition – creative chaos accompanied by curiosity. Out of our creative chaos we’ve discovered what we already knew… we love to find and share good ideas for coping and thriving through adversity. We’d like, without being pollyannas, to spread the joy and hope of finding solutions that work, share fun stuff that makes us smile, give encouragement to try, and provide a safe haven that gives you the space to try things out and carry on despite the big and little irritations life throws at you.

This will be, for us, a journey of paying-it-forward.

And, we hope you’ll stop by to share what makes life joyful for you, even as you face seemingly insurmountable obstacles and those trivial “straws” that break-the-camel’s-back. We’re eager to hear from you, to find out what works for you and what problems need solving.

In concert with you, our Cafe guests, surely we’ll find new answers and new possibilities that will lighten the load for all and each of us!