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

Bird’s Children

Children born between words holding jeweled feathers. Left facing ruby suspended… a bird’s eye view of rec-tangled flags hanging on a wing and a prayer.

A nicely burning home

April Dream Last night my house was burning. Could not find one precious thing to grab and find comfort in. And when the torrential rain hammered out the flames, I was angry with its self-righteous interference. My house is still burning. And where it is whole, I have not found all the rooms, closets […]

home-keeping heart

Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest; Home-keeping hearts are happiest, For those that wander they know not where Are full of trouble and full of care; To stay at home is best. Weary and homesick and distressed, They wander east, they wander west, And are baffled and beaten and blown about By the winds of the wilderness of doubt; To stay at home is best. Then stay at home, my heart, and rest; The bird is safest in its nest; O’er all that flutter their wings and fly A hawk is hovering in the sky; To stay at home is best. “Song” by H.W. Longfellow: Keramos and Other Poems 1878 As Longfellow says “to stay at home is best”. But is it? It feels great to be in a place that feels safe, protected and predictable. This is the land of […]

Lion of Amazement

When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, I want to step through the door full of curiosity, […]

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, […]

Madiba and the power of creative potential

Madiba’s powerful words encapsulate many levels of meaning. Perhaps that is why they inspire and light a creative spark for so many of us. These words point to the idea that finding passion requires commitment and responsibility. The heroic attempt to live up to one’s potential and the power that entails is often an overwhelming […]

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 […]