One of the best ways to learn someone's story is to read it... Happily, in the wake of the Joseph Boyden scandal, more and more Indigenous writers are being published, and their voices and lived experiences are being centred - through incredible fiction, memoir and non-fiction. My personal top 10 includes: Indian Horse by Richard … Continue reading Read for reconciliation

https://www.instagram.com/p/CQtOhlKNbKL/ Loved this poem-ling (like a baby poem, duckling-kinda-thing, not even 20 words long but enough to take your breath away) when it crossed my field. It is a paradox, isn't it? That when you slow down and stop trying to fit so much in, the things you do make time for are able to … Continue reading The paradox of less

Look closely and carefully at this photo... and tell me what you think it is? Does it look like an aerial view of a city? A beautifully designed community? A garden or park? A futuristic world? The ultimate playground? My imagination was dreaming away when it popped up on my Facebook feed, thanks to friend … Continue reading Your body is a landscape, your insides are a universe

Earlier this week, I wrote about acknowledging our personal losses and pandemic-hits. Just before the pandemic started, I was invited to become a columnist for Coast Mountain Culture magazine, a beautiful bi-annual print magazine that I've written features for. I wrote one. Submitted the second. And then, the magazine abandoned its next issue as advertising … Continue reading What Is True Right Now? Here’s How To Ask The Best Question Your Heart Can Hold

If you're working on being a better ally, one area you might find yourself struggling with is in finding the right words. This article from Bob Joseph's team at Indigenous Corporate Training offers some helpful guideposts. (And perhaps is a reminder of how much we have to learn. It might seem daunting. Take it one … Continue reading 9 Terms to Avoid in Communications with Indigenous Peoples

"Child's time." The name of the activity I'm being introduced to, during the Strengthening Families workshop, is so bad that I'm tempted to dismiss it outright. (I like to imagine myself as being too cool for schmaltzy, Hallmark-y things, and my partner has an every stronger aversion to anything vaguely contrived.) And yet, the more … Continue reading Your attention is a gift. Who’s getting it?

This year, we have handed the reins to instagram.com/thewellnessalmanac to Amanda Ritchie, a writer whose wordcraft and photography I admire. She introduces herself so beautifully in this post and has been sharing a perspective on this territory, her territory, the land of her bones and her ancestors, that is a gift for us to ride … Continue reading Follow the Wellness Almanac on instagram

After being offered "be calm, be safe, be kind" as the COVID-19 mantra for the past year, I've felt of late a little... um... resistance to the phrase. (Kind of like the aversion I developed to being told to get a gratitude attitude by a ton of perky blog posts and wellness-oriented magazine articles. Until … Continue reading A toolbox to help shift from violence to kindness

There are days it has occurred to me that emerging from deep pandemic life (as we did officially on July 1 as we moved into stage 3) warrants some kind of ceremony or ritual... some kind of formal acknowledgement that much has been lost. Your loss and my loss might not weigh the same - … Continue reading A year of loss and struggle

It's a terrible irony that the gardens we plant to make our environments more beautiful can damage the natural world outside our fences. By now, we understand the harm caused by the improper use of pesticides and the over-use of chemical fertilizers. But are you aware that many of our garden plants are from foreign … Continue reading Responsible Gardening: 7 Red Flags – a guest post from Sea to Sky Invasive Species Council