Today, October 10, is World Mental Health Day…an opportunity for us all to focus on how to improve our mental health. Just as physical exercise, eating right, and proper sleep is good for our physical health, we need strategies and disciplines to improve our mental health. Helpful mental health disciplines help mentally healthy people stay …
Of Bird Feeders and Trauma
There was about a year in my life when I was in very close contact with a trauma survivor. Despite the fact that I had known him a long time, it seemed he didn’t trust me. I would ask him, “How was your day?” as part of friendly conversation, he would suggest that I was …
Changed: An open letter to Dr. Blasey Ford
Dear Dr. Blasey Ford, Today was a day unlike any other for you. A day you’d avoided for literally decades, and then, with the eyes of the world literally watching on live television, you re-lived the most traumatic moments of your life. I’m shaking a little, with tears in my eyes just imagining what that …
Dear client: We don’t give advice
Dear client, When you come in for your first appointment, you may ask a question. I get asked this question a lot. So many clients, when they come for their first appointment give an outline of a very painful situation in their lives and then ask, “What is your advice?” There are different ways people …
Nevertheless…you got this
I posted a picture last week, the day before school started on Facebook: I wanted to encourage the students, the teachers, and everyone else that was and is starting something new and exciting and terrifying and wonderful and nervewracking. Hal Anderson read it and got choked up. It touched on the part of him that …
It’s important to hurt his feelings.
Hers too, for that matter. Husband is good for me. He is so good at marriage. Husband teaches me so much about what it feels like to be in a good relationship, it sometimes takes my breath away. One of the things Husband does is invite me to tell him when, from my perspective, something …
The magic of street hockey
“Mommy, I think I need to play some street hockey.” When my littlest Junior Tribe Member was a little tyke, he was plagued with frequent, raging ear infections. His temperature spiked high, his ears hurt bad and he was sick. We would come back from the doctor’s, prescription in hand. The antibiotics hadn’t yet kicked …
Does your spouse annoy you?
Hal talks with people and he has his finger on the pulse of what people are saying. .And, as he said on today’s show, he doesn’t much care what other people think. That frees Hal to name topics that other people wonder about but don’t say out loud… Today, we spoke about how to …
Grieving a Pet
Yesterday, during my weekly chat with Hal on 680CJOB, we talked about how real the impact of the death of a pet can be. As you’ll hear on the recording, one of the guys in the news room pooh-poohed the idea that the death of an animal is actually the death of a family member. …
Be with the ones here
We had an out-of-town family wedding last month. It was beautiful–great efforts were expended to look after every detail of the day. On our way home in the airport, I asked everyone at supper about their favourite “memory snapshot”. Some of the responses: time with the other groomsmen while the couple was off taking pictures …