On Big Books and Healing Brains
Life lately: reading, healing, and following my curiosity I’ve been thinking a lot about reading lately. Honestly, I'm always thinking about reading. It's one of my favourite hobbies. Not just what I’m reading, but why I’m reading it. Not so long ago, as a result of severe CPTSD, my attention span became so poor that I couldn’t even watch Instagram Reels. I was in the depths of a depressive episode...
Recovering A Sense of Safety
My new contemplative The Artist's Way book group | Week 1 Welcome back to The Artist’s Way group of my own dreams. I missed posting our Week 1 book group post last week because all four of my children got sick, and eventually I succumbed to the bug too. It was a pretty awful week in all the ways, full of fevers, disrupted sleep, and the general intensity that comes with caring...
Hearing Ourselves Again
Discernment in the Age of Information It has become commonplace to complain about the modern age… Technology is ruining childhood.Social media is destroying attention spans.AI is going to replace us all.Children don’t play outside anymore.Nobody connects anymore. And while many aspects of modern life really are unprecedented, especially the speed of technological change, the act of panicking about cultural change is not new at all. Humans have always feared change....
Making Space
A simple weekly practice for creating breathing room If you’re anything like me, the weeks can disappear in a blur. You get to Friday and wonder… Wait, did we actually spend any time in nature this week? Or suddenly it’s Thursday morning and you’re scrambling to do the violin homework because… how did an entire week go by so quickly? I fully intended to remind my daughter to practise this...
You Do Not Have To Be Good
Life lately: burnout, unmet needs, and radical self-compassion This week has been filled with a very unfun stomach bug. My youngest got it first last week. Three mornings of vomiting first thing in the bed, yet somehow she mostly bounced back between episodes, as toddlers mysteriously do. The timing was especially unfortunate because it was also my middle daughter’s fourth birthday. She was feeling so poorly the day before her...
Parenting My Children vs Reparenting Myself
Raising Children, Healing Ourselves | Aware Parenting Series, Part 1 Every time I choose to stay present with my children through big feelings, I’m reparenting myself. I didn’t know this when I first became a mother. Back then, I thought good parenting was mostly about getting it right. Read enough books. Learn enough. Make good choices. Raise secure, emotionally healthy children. Simple… or so I thought. What I didn’t expect...
When the Sacred Left the Kitchen: Why We’re Hungry for Ritual
On Winter Solstice, sacred rhythms, and the marking of time. At the time of writing, today is Winter Solstice here in the Southern Hemisphere. By the time this is published, it will have been yesterday. The shortest day of the year. The longest night. I’ve been reading The Great Cosmic Mother, and one idea keeps returning to me: our ancestors lived much closer to cycles than we do. They lived by...
Cold Water & Full Days
Life Lately: Sardines, Spreadsheets, and Solstice With the upcoming winter solstice, we’ve had some chilly weather here this week. Considering our temperatures rarely drop below 20°C, even in winter, our mornings have been down to around 14°C. Which, let’s be honest, is not exactly cold by many people’s standards, but it is cold enough here that the sea temperature has been dropping rapidly, and that can only mean one thing......
The Foundation: Morning Pages & Artist Dates
My new contemplative The Artist's Way book group | Week 0.5 [Bonus Pre Week] Welcome back to The Artist’s Way group of my own dreams. I was planning to jump straight into Week 1 this week then I stopped myself. I realised there was no way I could move on without going deeper into Julia Cameron’s two foundational tools. Because really, these tools are the course. Julia writes: “A lasting creative awakening requires the...
Values By Design
A simple exercise to help you get clear on what actually matters. Something I have come to realise as I grow older and maybe wiser is that big decisions rarely become easier because you gather more information. They become easier when you get clear on what matters. In other words… your values. When life feels uncertain, values can be your compass. They help you orient, make decisions, and ask: Is...