Tag: life
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Quietude
One of my favourite times of the day is the early morning in which I surrender into quietude, or what the Cambridge dictionary calls a state of calm and peacefulness. This is especially true during December as we approach the solstice. Usually at this time of year, I feel a pull between the noise of…
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Christmas tree lights…
My mom and my brother arrived this past weekend for the Christmas season. There was a lightness in my step, as I left the house to travel up to the airport. However, there was also a sense of needing to ‘get through’ the first week of visits as I am smack dap in the middle…
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Embracing the dark
Up here in the Northern hemisphere, we are officially in the darkest days of the year. The birds at my feeder seem hungrier, there is ice on my windscreen and the pale, silvery winter sun casts warm hues on the tops of buildings, requiring us to look up a bit more. These can be hard…
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The good, the bad and the ugly
I am not sure about you, but sometimes my social media feed becomes a space for either validating or challenging what it is that I need to hear in any given moment. It’s kind of like shaking one of those old magic 8 balls to see whether I should proceed with the current plan, love…
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Resting in the afterglow
Two weeks ago my brother arrived at the cabin, marking a period of action-packed visits. There have been sing a longs, fishing trips, long paddles, camping and plenty of connection time with family and dear friends. Today is the day that the last of the visitors take to the road, leaving behind my love- soaked…
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Making space
For as long as I can remember, I have always been chasing space. Space to read, space to paint, space to watch a sunset, space to meditate, space to write, space to sew, space to sit in a sunbeam streaming through the window. You get the drift. It’s not that I have never had the…
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Keeping it simple
As many of you know, I am currently at my cabin in Northern Manitoba (Canada). There have been a few forest fires up here, to say the least. What’s more is that due to the vast size of the Boreal forest, the fires will be an ongoing concern for months to come. This means that…
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Turning the ship
My husband Graeme was a clever man. Both as an intellect and as a contemplative. While we both taught mindfulness, he used to claim that I was the ‘better’ mindfulness practitioner. In all reality, he was like an anchor for me. He had an uncanny way of putting things into perspective, whenever I became lost.…
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Do our expectations get in the way?
I can remember being a smug teenager who constantly reminded my mother that if she was going to place expectations on me, she was only setting herself up for disappointment. I have no idea where I got the confidence to make such an assertion and at such a young age; however, it was not far…
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Lost and found
For quite some time now, I have been inspired by a beautiful poem written by David Wagoner called “Lost”. This past week I discovered that Wagoner based his poem on a traditional teaching given by Indigenous elders in the Pacific Northwest (U.S.A.). The story goes that a child asks an elder what to do if…
My Silent Place 