On trauma, abuse, and the justification that helps us cope with cognitive dissonance
image credit: Jonatan Pie, Unsplash I was driving home this morning (bringing home donuts, if you really must know), when a half-ton truck pulled up within inches of my rear bumper, impatient to pass me and trying to find an opening in the next lane to speed by me. I...
Watching the train derail when you can’t get out of the way
photo credit: JP Valery, Unsplash The workday was finished and I had just picked up my two daughters – one a toddler and one an infant at the time – from daycare and we were on our way home in the family minivan. I was tired and knew that I still had to find enough...
What if we show the mess?
photo credit: Andy Holmes, Unsplash I didn’t rake the leaves off the lawn this Fall. My climate activist daughter regularly sends me articles about how the dead leaves create biodiversity in the backyard, serving as places for insects (including pollinators) to...
The trauma memories my shoulder holds (and the alchemy of rewriting the narrative)
photo credit: vladimir kozhevnikov, unsplash listen to me read this post... A few weeks ago, my shoulder started to ache. My right shoulder has become a bit of a barometer for my emotional state. Specifically, it tends to ache when there are trauma memories being...
Holding Space is Not About Willful Blindness or Complacency in the Face of Injustice
Not long after my first attempt at defining holding space, I changed some of my original language and I added a few important nuances. Specifically: I stopped talking about “non-judgement” and replaced it with “selective non-judgement”; I started talking about...
Contraction and expansion: Sometimes you have to get smaller before you get bigger
So… I’m launching a book. From my bedroom. Sigh. I had high hopes for what this season of my life would be. Back in late 2019, when I settled on September 29th as the date my book would be launched into the world, I was imagining myself heading out on an extensive...
Holding Space for our Wild and Wonderful Wisdom
It’s Friday afternoon. I’m staring out a large picture window, watching the poplar leaves dance with invisible partners. A squirrel just darted across my line of site, leaping from poplar tree to pine tree to spruce tree. Just beyond those trees is the lake. If I...
Maybe Plan B is the best you can hope for (letting go of the dream that needs to die)
image credit: Allef Vinicius, Unsplash Listen to me read this post... Last night, after sunset, I lay in my hammock in the growing darkness of my backyard feeling low. I couldn’t shake the growing melancholy that’s been with me this week, but I couldn’t quite name it...
On trauma, shadow, and flawed leadership
Listen to me read the blog post: It happened repeatedly in my youth. I’d come home from a friend’s house and walk into the house to find nobody there. I’d look in all of the rooms, start to get that panicky feeling and then go out to the farmyard to see if...
Ten practices for the liminal space
Listen to me read the post: We’re now a couple of months into The Great Pause. We’ve baked all the bread, learned to cut our own hair, logged too many hours on Zoom, built elaborate islands on Animal Crossing, adapted to the new protocol at the grocery store,...
Winnipeg • Manitoba • Canada
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