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The cure for apathy
Watching the news this past week should have come with a trigger warning. Just as I was settling down to a Friday night of relaxing TV, live news coverage rolled in. Rather than feeling an ease into the weekend, the politics of our day activated a sense of shock, disgust, anger and ultimately a sadness…
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Against the grain
There is a Buddhist teacher named Pema Chodron who has famously declared that, “to be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest”. I remember when I read this for the time, a droll smirk formed on my face. Accompanying this smirk, my internal dialogue muttered the word, ‘Great..’.…
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Misery loves company
To say that 2024 was a tough year would be minimising what was probably one of the most anguish filled years of my life- if not THE most. After a road of tortuous ups and downs and months of hospital stays, I lost my beloved husband Graeme to cancer. The devastation felt crippling and one…
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The practice of looking up
Last week, things were feeling tight. Part of my discomfort was that I had a computer heavy week with very little output. This is perhaps funny as one of the projects that I was working on was the Art of Rest, which is starting in the Sanctuary this coming weekend. Despite the research that I…
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When in doubt, keep on keeping on
I have been stepping out of my comfort zone a lot lately. Last September, I started “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron. The Artist’s Way is a bestselling book that guides the reader through 12 weeks of self-discovery and an uncovering of all that holds one back creatively. Through the 12 weeks, I have been…
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I’m fine…well I’m basically OK
It’s been a weekend of wild weather, over here in Ireland. A sense of foreboding started early in the week with headlines declaring a storm so big that the whole country would be on Red Alert. I’d like to say that I was cool as a cucumber with all my mindfulness and stuff. And mostly,…
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The middle way
I wish I could say it’s a generational thing, but my son expressing anxiety and stress due to his lack of knowing what the next few years look like is unsettlingly familiar. He’s been feeling discouraged and disillusioned with the university experience and is looking to apply to an exchange programme as a means of…
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Home is where the heart is
Whenever I think of the phrase ‘home is where the heart is’, I see a handstitched needlepoint in a wooden frame hanging on a wall in my grandmother’s house. The word ‘home’, almost like a beating heart, yearningly calling us all in for some of her warm, soft love. Perhaps, this is what Maya Angelou…
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My Silent Place
I remember the first time that I read Wendell Berry’s poem “How to be a Poet”. Now, I am not a poet, at all. However, I do love poetry and words that remind me what it means to be human. That is exactly what, I feel, this poem does. It reminds me what it means…
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The Evolution of Hope
It’s been over a year since I have delivered a meditation session for the Sanctuary community. I had to step back as my husband became acutely unwell. And tragically, after seven months of struggle he passed away at the age of 53. When my husband, Graeme, first became sick, his doctors told me that they…
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My Silent Place 