Mothering myself (a new journal practice)
I adopted a new journal practice this Spring, after reading the book Discovering Your Inner Mother. I wanted to nurture all of the parts of me that are connected to old stories, and I wanted to learn to mother myself better. Each morning, when I sit down with my...
Whose voices are you being influenced by? (And when is it time to silence those voices?)
On a news program recently, I heard a judge being quoted as saying that, in deciding the sentence for someone who’d been charged with a crime, he was influenced by neither emotions nor public opinion. And my response was… REALLY?! Is such a thing even possible? I...
Velcro membranes
(from the Holding Space Card Deck) When I talk about holding space for ourselves, I often introduce the concept of psychic membranes – the container in which we can protect, nourish, and support ourselves. The cell membrane serves as a metaphor for what it means to...
Three men and a leaky boat
I was sitting on the dock on the Red River at the local park. It’s my favourite place to sit with my journal on these pleasant Spring/Summer mornings. I can usually sit there uninterrupted, but sometimes I have to share the dock with people launching their boats. One...
It’s okay to be wounded (and it’s okay to heal)
Recently I wrote a post about worshipping our wounds. In it, I talked about how sometimes we cling to our wounds too long because they become part of our identity or healing them might feel threatening to those who don’t want us to change. I’ve been thinking about...
Stay with the waves (on practicing stillness)
(from our Holding Space Card Deck) In the movie, Sound of Metal, Ruben, a drummer in a heavy metal band, begins to lose his hearing. Fearing that he might slip back into addiction because of it, his girlfriend helps him check in to a facility for deaf recovering...
What I’ve been reading lately
There’s a stack of books on the floor beside my nightstand. And there’s another stack next to it. And there’s a third stack on the nightstand above. It’s a bit ridiculous and it’s about time I did my twice-yearly movement of books to my overflowing bookshelves...
Are we worshipping our wounds or seeking mutual liberation?
(Listen to me read the post.) Not long ago, I listened to an interview with someone who'd written a piece for the New York Times on the “empty religions of Instagram”. She was critiquing some self-help social media influencers, and she mentioned that some of them...
Sovereignty is a Relational Concept
(Listen to me read the post) A few years ago, I had a pretty big a-ha moment when I realized that the concept of holding space (which I’ve spent the last seven years exploring in a deep way as I developed programs and wrote a book about it) is, at its core, about...
Expectations, Trauma, and Over-Functioning
A few weeks ago, when I was teetering on the edge of crawl-under-the-covers-and-don’t-come-out-until-2022 burnout, I was on Zoom with a couple of wise friends. We were checking in about how our lives were going, and I had just unloaded a long list of stressors,...
Winnipeg • Manitoba • Canada
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