Here's another entry from @plushzilla via email. I will make sure to remind the judges when it comes time to vote on this round to keep an eye out for it and to not miss it.

Sorry, this one is a little bit late, but I have been getting inspirations all week and interestingly enough they have been related and I was able to join the dots right at the end of the week (i.e. today).

On Monday I visited a friend who is a music teacher and not only does she teach piano and flute, she also specializes in something called 'voice therapy', which is something between music and speech therapy. The concept is to use singing as a way for a person to express their feelings and emotions, sort of like instead of sitting down and talking to a therapist you are singing instead. I found out recently that she actually went through domestic violence as a mother and had to leave her husband, who she married at a very young age so it left her with years of torment and some psychological scars. However, it was also through music that she found a way to express the emotions and release the bottled up sadness, and now she is using her passion of music and skills in teaching to help people going through difficulties in life.

On Wednesday I spoke to a friend's friend who suffered from post-natal depression and was looking for ways to help improve her mental health while she is recovering from the trauma. I didn't realize that the incidence rate of post-natal depression was so high (same goes for miscarriage), and that GPs don't really provide much information about this for expecting mothers. So she wanted to get organizations to provide better awareness through information about strategies and resources available to deal with post-natal depression. Something that really helped her get through this difficult phase of her life was her love of singing, although this was something that she didn't not do very much during that time because she was depressed.

On Sunday I taught an origami workshop as a guest presenter for an art therapist who changed her career from a teacher after dealing with the loss of her husband who dragged her through a terrible time when he was sick and blamed her for all the problems in their family. After he passed away she was able to use her love for art to pull herself through this dark period and now also helps others to use creative activities to deal with difficult situations in life and see the positive side of things.

I have been able to connect with so many people in the 'real-world' that shared experiences which put them through a difficult period, something that added a lot of burden and threatened their mental health, yet each of them found a way to climb out of the abyss through a connection to the arts. More importantly, they have also managed to use this as inspiration and motivation to help others now. I did wonder if there could have been more done on the prevention of these issues, and this is something that I am using as my own inspiration to start working on ideas that will help people build up emotional resilience and mental fitness to deal with the tough situations in life.

I also know many people in the Steemit community (but I won't mention specific names here) that also went through challenges in life, and through Steemit have made connections with others that share similar experiences. I have personally seen how many have also managed to pull themselves through some tough situations (or are still dealing with it), but the support and compassion shown by people in the crypto-community is so inspirational that it makes you really see the positive side of the social networks online.

And that's my thoughts on inspiration for this round of the IFC.