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…
When I remember who I am: On freedom, embodiment, and holding space for oneself
Listen to Heather read the post: I’ve come to the woods to remember who I am. As I write this, I’m off-the-grid, offline and unplugged, tucked into a tiny cabin by a lake, with just enough solar power to occasionally charge my laptop so that I can write. I cook over a...
Guides for the liminal spaces: On queerness, neurodivergence, and the boxes that don’t fit us anymore
Listen to Heather read the post: There’s a place I love to walk. I discovered it at the beginning of the summer, when my daughters and I rented a little house in a different neighbourhood of the city than where we’d lived before. It’s a low-lying area along the Red...
Lean in: On trauma, embodied trust and holding space
Listen to me read the post: I was lying on a table and the practitioner holding my arm with both hands was saying “relax your muscles and let me move your arm for you”. With all of my will, I tried. I wanted to do what she asked, if only to make my inner...
Let Go, Dear Parent (Tips for when your child moves away)
My social media feed is filling up with images of grinning college students settling into dorm rooms. Sometimes the parents who are posting those images are in the photos and grinning too, but beneath the grins and cheery captions… well, there’s a lifetime of stories and a whole host of other stuff. I can see it in their eyes.
From the Path to the Living Room: Celebrating friendships of all kinds
There’s an older man I often encounter on the path when I go for my morning walks. We’ve become path-friends, always stopping for a brief interaction when we happen upon each other. Once, he showed me how the inside of his hat was falling apart, but “I just can’t bear...
Living in this imperfect, good-enough body
I’ve been sick this week. Congestion, fever, a nose like a leaky faucet. This morning, I was just going to carry on with my day as though my body wasn’t begging to stay in bed, but then the fever finally convinced me a day under the covers was justified. One of the...
Transcendence: Lessons learned from a moment at the folk festival
Transcendent (adjective) [tran(t)-ˈsen-dənt]: exceeding usual limits; extending or lying beyond the limits of ordinary experience; being beyond comprehension; a spiritual or religious state, or a condition of moving beyond physical needs and realities **** Every year...
The Woman by the River: on holding space for those in despair
I had good intensions of writing something light-hearted this week, in celebration of the beginning of summer and the launch of my new program, A Full-Bodied Life. The first lesson in that program is about embracing joy, so it seemed fitting to write something joyful....
Go Into the Woods
On my semi-regular walk this morning, I found myself in the woods and suddenly realized I wasn’t really IN the woods. I’d headed down a familiar path, and yes, I was surrounded by trees, but I wasn’t really present. My body could have been anywhere while my mind was...
Rethinking Liminality: evolving my understanding of “the space in between”
“Liminal space is an inner state and sometimes an outer situation where we can begin to think and act in new ways. It is where we are betwixt and between, having left one room or stage of life but not yet entered the next. We usually enter liminal space when our...
Shawnigan Lake, B.C.
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