“If there is someone that is there to listen to your story, there is healing.” Nancy Slonim Aronie I watched a movie with my husband the other evening called A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood, based on a true story about the friendship...
“The places where we are seen and heard are holy places. They remind us of our value as human beings. They give us the strength to go on.” Rachel Naomi Remen Living with our friends on Butterstone Farm was comfortable. So comfortable that there was...
“Writers often experience exhilaration, fear, or dread… It’s both exciting and dangerous.” Kristjana Gunnars Have you always dreamt of being a writer? Have you often felt like...
It is up to the writer to recognize everything that happens to her as a gift, to love each thing that comes under the eye’s contemplation, inner and outer. Jane Hirshfield When I first moved into this new house, everywhere I looked there was something...
“Writing was the healing place where I could collect bits and pieces, where I could put them together again… written words change us all and make us more than we could ever be without them.” bell hooks, Black feminist writer & educator (1952-2021) ...
It’s a special time of year: twinkling lights, harmonies of holiday music and the cultural delicacies we have waited for all year-long. A unique time to pause and be grateful for just this breath, this moment’s presence, the gift of this life with its...
We usually think of writing as a solitary activity. The stereotypical image of a writer is a tortured soul, often a man, at their desk with a cigarette in one hand, a glass of vodka in the other. In between sips and puffs the man’s hand types away on a keyboard....
“Writing is a way, and not necessarily the only way, to open up the word and the world, and our lives within that world for attention, discussion, understanding, re-imagining and re-creating.” Cynthia...
In a world that is becoming increasingly virtual, how do we connect and sustain mutually supportive social relationships with each other? I returned to UBC, my alma mater, to give a workshop for professors and students of the Faculty of Language &...
Experience writing as a catalyst for personal growth, creative self-expression and mutual support. Discover a place of connection and belonging in a circle of creative inspiration and compassionate witness. Through the four practices of Writing Alone Together, you...
One of the greatest gifts that you can bring to your journal writing is your own inward permission to write freely.~Stephanie Dowrick As I sit here and start to write these words, I feel a knot of tension in my solar plexus, and nudges of anxiety in my lower belly....
As I was poring through some old journals recently, I stumbled upon this entry from journal #16. Such a hesitancy to start again. How long has it actually been since I’ve been here. It seems like forever. How quickly I forget the path, when I stray from its marked...
This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Rumi, The Guest House A walk in the garden, spying on sparrow with its...
Yesterday I wrote a very short story about a girl who was wide-awake. Today I fell into a deep sleep again. And now, with these words, the light turns on. I am flowing. Sometimes I can’t believe how much our bodies experience. Stress, the way it hovers in the chest, a...
Stuff goes into the writer, a whole lot of stuff, not notes in a notebook but everything seen and heard and felt all day every day, a lot of garbage, leftovers, dead leaves, eyes of potatoes, artichoke stems, forests, streets, rooms in slums, mountain ranges, voices,...
A human being is a part of a whole, called by us “universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison...
In March, I was invited to UBC to participate in a panel on “Jobs Outside Academia” for students in the faculty of education. A friend and colleague, Heather Duff, suggested to the organizing committee that I be a part of the conversation because of the...
I give births. I enjoy giving births. Helene Cixous Everything is alive now. Spring brings permission to begin, again. A fresh perspective, as if we could be virgin, (re)newed. This past weekend saw me fulfill a dream, long ago hatched. A dream begun inwhen I first...
This week’s post is a favourite passage from Nancy Houston’s exquisite novel An Adoration, in which the character Fiona says: Mama claims that people can’t exist in and of themselves, they’re a patchwork of everything they’ve seen and done, their heads are teeming...
In this peaceful place time slowsdownwith onestepafter another nowhere to gobut here Hear the flow of breath creek, life Finda spot to rest and write whatever comesfrom presence, memory Hold gentlyas if the soul has already leapt Listen a...
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