This time of the year, with winter’s melt and spring’s thaw, one has to watch where one steps. The ground is soft, mushy and squalid. Although tempting to wear that bright, new pair of sneakers you ordered off the clearance rack on The Shoe Company website (that cute and airy, light-blue pair of Adidas that …
When I was nine years old, the bottom fell out of our family’s world with one, horrific phone call. The call that changed everything—it came on a December day, just before Christmas. I remember very little about the date—the common, everyday moments leading up to the call. But I will forever have imprinted in my …
Fighting the dark. Filling the empty spaces. Finding light. First, fighting the dark. I felt a cloud of darkness pushing in around me. Felt it for days. Heavy, ominous: it started with the light-hearted feeling of having done something helpful and hopeful, but left me feeling pinched for air, as if being suddenly choked by …
“Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world; for indeed, that’s all who ever have.”- Margaret Mead The writing I do is largely about my vision of how attentive care impacts within the school system. Yet in my awareness of care that I ascribe to, I truly believe care is fundamental to …
I am standing, a girl of ten or so. My arms outstretched. And behind me, my playmate’s hands are widespread, in anticipation of my falling limply backward into her awaiting embrace. It is a game we play called Trust. We test the limits to which we can trust that the confidant behind us will support …
It is hard to understand the whys and hows of human relationships. Sometimes these interactions astound and touch my deepest parts for their tremendous propensity to kindness. And yet sometimes they disappoint beyond what mere words can express. Why are our connections with one another so prone to such wild swings of the pendulum? For …
I remember the Christmas I was about seven or eight years old. I wanted a Cabbage Patch doll. It was all I really wanted that year, to be honest. I had made that much clear to anyone who was listening (Mom, Dad, Santa….God?). I think I dreamed about her, my doll: those chubby cheeks, that …
We talk a lot about white privilege, but it is a little more discomforting to broach a discussion on white poverty. Somehow it hits closer to home. I grew up in the heart of the Annapolis Valley, a small rural farming community known for its potatoes and apple orchards. My community was aptly named Melvern …
I watched the on-line news coverage tonight featuring Torrence Collier, of Baie Verte Peninsula, Newfoundland. I watched and I listened to this young boy, in between the ages of my own two oldest daughters, as he describe what it feels like to be the only black child in his town of Westport. The only black …
“Can you stay with me until I fall asleep?” she asks trustingly. I kiss her baby cheeks and cuddle in close. When disaster strikes, everyone is afraid. And while it is hard for us as adults to understand the travesty of it all, for children it is unthinkable. Hard to believe in hope when all …
Dear Teacher Who Wants to Quit: I am sorry. Sorry too that I must start first with regret. What a poor way to begin. But then. You are leaving teaching. And a void has already been left in the wake of this momentous decision. I feel that void. And sorrow too; for when decisions like …
I watch him build the wooden walls of his tower, painstakingly. One by one. They stand in solidarity for mere moments, only to topple before even I can add another brick. This is child’s play, and it is fascinating to watch him. These walls are made for crashing, in his view. In his mind’s eye. …
