Oh Valentine! My love letter to the world

Oh Valentine! My love letter to the world

It’s Valentines’ Day, here again, the day to celebrate love in all it’s forms, and I have an always-current love letter to the world to share. This letter, which I wrote in 2013, is much loved by my friends and community, and, I admit, by myself. I reread it every...
Why trying is better than perfect

Why trying is better than perfect

A year and a half ago I moved my daughter and I to a small town in the Okanagan Valley on Syilx First Nations land, about a 4.5 hour drive from Vancouver. The 5 years previous to that we lived in a small town on Vancouver Island, also a 4.5 hour journey to Vancouver....
Father Should Be A Verb

Father Should Be A Verb

My own father passed away almost 8 years ago, at the age of 53, after living with an aggressive form of leukemia for 4 years. His birthday was last month (he would have turned 61) and his death anniversary is in July. My heart still feels tender and I still feel his...
I’m not the hero of this story

I’m not the hero of this story

I haven’t always questioned things the way I do now. A memory surfaced the other day. I think I was around 12 years old, and I went to a Catholic public school in northern Canada. I wasn’t Catholic, my parents didn’t take us to church, nor were they practicing...
Why I’m Sick Of People Like Me: an open letter

Why I’m Sick Of People Like Me: an open letter

We need to talk about a gap in the healing path for creative healing types, and the resulting lack of kindness that arises. As many of you know, I often describe and identify myself as a highly creative person, as ‘spiritual but not religious,’ as a highly...
Writing through painful memories and trauma (with a capital T and a little t)

Writing through painful memories and trauma (with a capital T and a little t)

This is a real and common challenge – how do we write about the compelling parts of our personal history when those tragic, comedic and painful memories are often tied to trauma that is still humming away inside of ourselves? (If you’d like this post as a PDF,...