Playing the Game You Want to Win
You're not going to win at Scrabble if you're playing by the rules for Monopoly. You're not going to win at poker if you're playing by the rules for solitaire. You can’t play chess with the rules for checkers. It's always a risky bet for me to use a sports analogy,...
The Mother I Never Meant To Be
I'm not really sure I want to write this and I'm even less sure I want to share it. My insides are twisting as I type this, but they've been twisting for months, so I'm just going to write it anyway. It's really difficult to be suffering from something painful or...
After the Adventure, the Rough Landing
So I'm fresh back from a long-anticipated trip to Universal Studios and Disney World with one of my best friends. Did you know you can request a pixie-dusting when you're in the Magic Kingdom? It's free, relatively not well known and it's the souvenir that keeps on...
Intuition vs Ego
How do you know whether the small, still voice you're listening to is the right small, still voice to listen to? Have you ever tried to check in with your intuition, only to discover that you can't distinguish the voice of your inner wisdom from the silver-tongued...
On Leaving Well
When I was, oh, eleven or twelve—I can't actually remember, though I remember it was during the long reign of knee socks—I decided to quit Girl Guides. I remember this because it was the first time I ever left anything by my own choice. I also remember that I fretted...
The Stories We Tell
We humans are funny animals. I once heard Elizabeth Gilbert say in an interview that the best place to hide God was in us humans, because we are the last place you'd think to look for it/her/him/they/divinity. It makes me laugh but I think it's also profoundly true....
Finding Places to Fail
I'm relatively new at being a person who does yard work and gardens, which is a fun hobby for me and an ominous undertaking for all flora residing in my yard. My thumbs are not particularly green. Last summer, I accidentally chopped off a clematis I'd been...
Beware the Reasonableness of Your Fear
When I was in university, I had many opportunities to travel and study abroad. I could've met my best friend Jennifer in the UK and spent the summer adventuring around Europe together. I could have spent multiple summers working on archaeological digs in Jordan. I...
How to Give Feedback that Doesn’t Suck
"Can I give you some feedback?" I don't know about you, but rarely is this the prelude to my favourite kind of conversation. For six little words, they sure can generate a lot of energy, both for the giver and for the receiver. I think there are probably a lot of...