A Touch of Human Kindness

There I was, in a hotel in San Francisco, lying in bed with my legs propped up on the headboard.    It’s really not as naughty as you think. I had been walking around the city with my sisters all day.  My knees were swollen and painful.  I’d had meniscus repair surgery 4 weeks prior, and things weren’t healing well.  So I flopped on the bed, and…

Home & Maple Syrup

I must have been carb-deprived.  Or hormonal.  There’s no other logical explanation why the sight of a bottle of maple syrup would move me to tears, in the middle of Marshall’s in the middle of Texas.  But there it was, a tiny 250ml bottle sitting on the shelf, (we’d call that an “individual portion” in Quebec) with an itty-bitty label…

The Power of Silence

“How big is the gash?” “Is the blood gushing or pulsating?” Two questions no parent wants to be asking their child over the phone, while on a remote hiking trail, 30 minutes away. But there I was, trudging up a steep trail, out of breath, trying to see if I needed to hang up on my teenage daughter and dial…

Learning Through Vulnerability

I write all the time. In my head, that is. I have written the most eloquent passages while walking the dogs, or in bed at night, or while folding laundry. But the process of putting it in a sharable format is daunting (well, remembering it is pretty hard, too!) It shouldn’t be daunting or arduous at all, because I love…