IMPORTANT UPDATE
As of April 2024, my blog has moved over to Substack where I’m co-hosting A Tender Space (together with my business partner at Centre for Holding Space). You can find my new writing plus podcast episodes there, or sign up below to get them in your inbox.
Here’s some of my earlier writing…
Sometimes holding space means that you have to break the rules
“Wow. You’re the first psychiatrist to introduce himself to me,” I said to the man who stood in front of me with his hand outstretched. “The other two ignored me and never gave their names. I wondered if I had become invisible.” I reached out to shake his hand. I’d...
Your discomfort won’t kill you
Yesterday morning I was in an emotional tailspin. The night before, at the end of a long day of coaching clients, I made a couple of mistakes that were pointed out by people and it put me in a shame spiral. And then, partly because I was already fragile, another...
Meet me in the space in between
Seven years ago, sixteen women gathered at the edge of a lake in Ontario to learn The Circle Way with Christina Baldwin. I was one of those women, having longed for this opportunity for ten years, since I’d first read Calling the Circle: The First and Future Culture....
What I’ve realized after many hours of writing about holding space
I miss writing you love letters, dear friends. I used to write a post every week, then it stretched out to every second week, and now, for the last six months, my posts have become rather sporadic. I apologize for that. I’ve been a little busy. In that time, almost...
So you care about white supremacy? Do something.
Everyone is talking about what happened in Charlottesville last weekend, but the problem with much of the response to this event is that it gives us a clear "them" to vilify. "Those horrible neo-nazis and white supremacists. Can you BELIEVE what they're doing and...
On border guards, claustrophobia, and the right to breathe
The border appeared too quickly. On a small highway with little traffic, nobody had bothered to post a “5 km to the U.S. border” sign, so I was suddenly there with no time to prepare. With some trepidation, I pulled up next to the border guard’s window, took off my...
How to Hold Space for Children
I swore I’d never write a parenting blog. Parenting feels like a lifelong experiment where the variables, subjects, and researchers keep changing so that there’s never any way to prove your hypotheses. Just when you’ve figured out that “Action A applied to Subject B...
What to do when your bowl is full
When I spoke in Florida last month, I recounted a story of a time when I was getting too many requests from people who wanted me to hold space for them when I was personally depleted and had to start saying to people “I’m at capacity - you’ll have to find someone else...
This body, without the triumphant narrative
I am fat. Let’s get that out of the way first. At least 60-70 pounds over what would be considered my “ideal weight”. Probably more, but I don’t own a scale. I don’t love this about myself, but it’s part of my story. It has been, to varying degrees, all of my adult...
When you find it (on finding home in an auditorium in Florida)
"It's a long and rugged road and we don't now where it's headed But we know it's going to get us where we're going And when we find what we're looking for we'll drop these bags and search no more 'Cuz it's going to feel like heaven when we're home It's going to feel...
Shawnigan Lake, B.C.
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