A Nested Story: Transformative Healing

The following article was recently published in Psychologica Magazine’s special edition on Trauma. I’ve included a link to the full magazine, lots of great articles on trauma treatments, both from a clinical perspective as well as personal. Hope you might find something that resonates. http://www.oaccpp.ca/assets/Psychologica%20Vol.%2041%20Final%20(DIGITAL)%20compressed.pdf

blue jays and things

There is something I don’t know That I am supposed to know. I don’t know what it is I don’t know, And yet am supposed to know, And I feel I look stupid If I seem both not to know And not to know what it is I don’t know. Therefore, I […]

Valuing What Matters

“August: You know, somethings don’t matter that much…like the color of a house…But lifting a person’s heart–now that matters. The whole problem with people–“ Lily: They don’t know what matters and what doesn’t… August:…They know what matters, but they don’t choose it…The hardest thing on earth is to choose what matters.” Sue Monk Kidd, The […]

holding on-letting go

let it go – the smashed word broken open vow or the oath cracked length wise – let it go it was sworn to go let them go – the truthful liars and the false fair friends and the boths and neithers – you must let them go they were born to go let all […]

Sailing on the River of Integration

In his book The Neurobiology of We (2008), Dr. Daniel Siegel uses the metaphor of a river of integration, flowing between two kinds of banks “These two banks, if you will, outside of a river, of rigidity on the one hand, and chaos on the other, help us know when something is missing. And that […]

Looking Back and Looking Forward

“…That’s why we have the Museum, Matty, to remind us of how we came, and why: to start fresh, and begin a new place from what we had learned and carried from the old.” Lois Lowry, Messenger The transitional space between old and new feels like a shifting energetic pause. Time is marked by rituals […]

Slowly looking with the Buddhist “good eye”

Recently I came across the Contemplative Photography movement, which incorporates Buddhist mindfulness practice with Western ways of seeing the world. Contemplative Photography practice is based on holding an intention of learning to look and see through a lens of nonattachment. Through practice, you begin to trust the gaps in discursive thought where clear seeing and […]

Looking into the Open

The Open With their whole gaze animals behold the Open. Only our eyes are as though reversed and set like traps around us, keeping us inside. That there is something out there we know only from the creatures’ countenance. We turn even the young child around, making her look backward at the forms we create, […]

the known unknown

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery Poetry And it was at that age … Poetry arrived in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where it came from, from winter or a river. I don’t know how […]

“Ten times a day something happens to me like this – some strengthening throb of amazement – some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.” ― Mary Oliver The most treasured moments are […]