The Journal for Living, formerly known as the Journal of Family Life, was born eight years ago in the living room of Albany (NY) Free School founder Mary Leue. With her school -- the oldest independent, inner-city free school in the United States -- on a firm footing and a vibrant intentional community steadily growing up around it, Mary felt that it was time to tackle a broader mission. She and longtime Albany Free School teacher / registered nurse Betsy Mercogliano had already converted one of the school's adjunct buildings on Elm Street into the Family Life Center in order to provide a wide range of support to pregnant couples and new families. The next step, decided Mary, was to establish a national forum in which the Albany Free School community could share some of the wisdom and perspective it had gained from working with children and families of all types, from every race and social class.

Mary's vision: to start a participatory journal, one in which readers and nationally known leaders could collaborate in a beyond-the-mainstream discussion of issues concerning children, parenting, families of all kinds, education, health, the environment, alternative lifestyles, and anything else of import that the corporate media might be ignoring.

Mary was never one to color inside the lines. In the early 1960s, she was arrested for protesting -- alone -- against nuclear proliferation in front of an air force base in Texas. When she relocated to Albany, New York with her husband at the end of the decade, so that he could teach philosophy at the state university, she became the only card carrying female member of the Brothers, the name of Albany's local affiliate of the Black Panthers.

And so, at Mary's urging, a handful of teachers and community members began meeting up at Mary's house every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning at 7:30 to figure out how to produce a quarterly national magazine that would be provocative and unique. We weren't entirely starting from scratch, because Mary had already been single-handedly cranking out SKOLE, the Journal of Alternative Education for several years. But our learning curve was steep, because none of the rest of us had any publishing experience at all.

We had no choice except to practice one of the key principles that we were seeking to preach: become your own expert. Wisely, we decided to start close to home with an issue on education that featured an in-depth interview with John Taylor Gatto, one which would later be reprinted in the prestigious journal, The Sun. This would mark the first of many instances in which our detailed and probing interviews would ultimately be picked up by much larger publications. (Our interview with the Unabomber's brother David Kaczynski and his wife Linda Patrick made its way through major newspapers and periodicals around the world and was eventually quoted in an issue of Time magazine.)

With a bare minimum of start-up funding, we produced a prototype issue that won glowing endorsements from people like Thomas Moore, Ram Dass, Bernie Siegel, and Ina May Gaskin. The response to a mailing of 1,000 copies of the first issue was sufficient to produce a second. A second led to a third. At some point early on the Utne Reader heard about JFL and nominated us for an alternative press award. The Library Journal gave us a very favorable review.

The only significant negative criticism we received had to do with our name. Some said that it didn't reflect the broad spectrum of issues we were exploring inside the cover, many of which only tangentially pertained to family life. And so, after much soul searching, we came up with a new name that still fit the same acronym. The Journal of Family Life became the Journal for Living.

Everything else remained the same and now, eight years later, we are still produced entirely by volunteers -- thankfully a much larger number than we started out with. We still operate on the same shoestring budget. We still dedicate our efforts to our founding mission to provide individuals and families with tools that will enable them to seat themselves back at the control of their own lives -- yes, to become their own experts.

Obviously, financial gain has never been our motive. Two things have kept us going: the consistent feedback that we are making a difference in the lives of our readers, and the stimulus to keep learning and growing that the experience of producing JFL has provided our community. It continues to be a very profitable exchange.