On Babies and Planes

.Reading time less than 1 minute.

We are slipping away Tuesday, on a plane to the Caribbean. Will be there by the time this post goes to publication. It’s our close friends 50th wedding anniversary and we are honoured to help them celebrate. In the meantime, our fifth granddaughter is due to arrive any day, and the kids have reminded me […]

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This Poem is Banned

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Historically marginalizeddisability biased –a privileged minority Women’s inequalitysocioeconomic –oppression excluded Cultural relevanceunderrepresented – diversity victim Ethnicity, gender (female)sense of belonging –male-domination systemic Indigenous communityinstitutional trauma –polarization hate speech Advocacy banned (Every word in this poem, except banned, is from the list of words forbidden in research proposals submitted to the National Science Foundation (USA) as […]

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Red-bellied Woodpecker

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I try not to pick favourites amongst the many birds that grace our backyard feeders, but there are just some that always manage to take my breath away. The red-bellied woodpecker is one of them. This beauty is anxious and tends to fly away at any movement from inside the house, so I have patiently […]

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Broadening my focus

.Reading time 1 minute.

I was aiming for the bird, my fingers wrapped around the lens, ready to zoom in, when the scene spoke to me. “Sometimes”, I reminded myself, “you need to look at the larger picture.” The larger picture, in this case, was stunning, almost as if the sky had a message it didn’t want me to […]

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Three years

.Reading time 1 minute.

“Did you believe that war would happen?” We are sitting around chatting with some Ukrainian friends. It’s three years since the war in Ukraine started and we are remembering how unreal it all felt in the beginning. Surely Putin was just putting his troops through a military drill, we all thought/ hoped, when the tanks […]

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Reading is not enough…

.Reading time 2 minutes.

Our 2 1/2 year old granddaughter can read. On a recent visit, her older cousin carried her about the house testing her skills with random bottles and things she would not have seen before. She read them all, with total nonchalance while we looked on amazed. One thing she read was a Christmas greeting: May […]

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Permission

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Wading through the muck of internalized blame, I stumble across a fault line, where the light breaks through. Old patterns are breaking up. My worth is not tied to how others feel, I realize. I am not the Queen of Everything. For the umpteenth time, I tell myself: I am enough. Permission granted to follow […]

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Pippi

.Reading time 3 minutes.

Pippi was so nervous the day she arrived at our home in her little dog crate. Her brother had no problem sniffing out his new domain and blessing us with a tail wag, but Pippi made a beeline for our then 8-year-old granddaughter and stayed put. All eleven pounds of her shook with fear. For […]

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Chasing bridges

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I am feeling torn apart. Afraid to breathe lest I should crumble. Definitely on edge. I know life is like this – the past circles around and confronts us when we least expect it. Things come in threes, they say – whoever ‘they’ are. First, a child missing, which triggered memories of my own abduction […]

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Perspectives on a Child Found

.Reading time 2 minutes.

First of all, deep gratitude to the police for their work finding our missing teen. One week after she disappeared, she is home again. Initially, the feeling was immense relief. The emotions we’d been holding in, along with our breaths, gushed out in sobs. But a tragedy like this does not unravel itself in a […]

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