On the Sunday before Rowan was about to start school on Tuesday, I got text confirmation that I’d be subbing two hatha yoga classes at a multi-franchise fitness centre. Two different locations, actually, in two different Metro Vancouver cities. My first subbing, procured through a Facebook call out. Yes! I can do it, I reply….
Tag: anxiety
What’s so great about unconditional love?
My second son was born in an instant. The instant after the midwife told me on the phone that I couldn’t have a homebirth because of my precariously low platelets. @#$! I thought. I can’t do a ride in a car. I just can’t. And then I rose to all fours from where I’d been…
Chard makes my spirit level
Today’s happiness is the kind that feels like floating. Internally my spirit is level. There’s a little buoy inside me, bobbing about on a sea of incidents. Sometimes it’s pummelled by waves of children who hate my parenting, or knocked up against the rocks of an empty bank account, or just squeezed into a shrinking air…
3 weird ways to spot anxiety
My old companion Anxiety turned up this week. It’s interesting because through yoga and therapy with a naturopath i’ve learned how to spot anxiety even when i don’t consciously feel worried about anything. My three weird anxiety symptoms Gnawing hunger. I feel gnawing deep in my gut, even if I’ve just eaten. Before I started medication…
Mamas, Beer and Bears
Real Camping On from my last post…I feel like such a dumbass for suggesting I’d be prowling around the fire with my cougar panties on. In fact, I played the smiling frump in my full-coverage one piece (with a cool picture of a sunset forest, if that counts for anything.) Besides our family and my…
How to talk to men. Or not.
I’m so excited that we are going camping tomorrow. Three nights in a tent at Lake Allouette. It’s all down to my sons’ caregiver being organized enough to book a Long Weekend site two months in advance, and being kind enough to invite us along. Camping is a big step in moving a relationship from…
The Quiet Ones have the Strongest Stomachs
18 years ago (ack!) I was eating banana pancakes on a roof in Taiwan. Run by kind, English-speaking Janice, the Green House Café was an unofficial drop-in centre for expats in Tainan, a small city south of cosmopolitan Taipei. Unlike the capital, Tainan’s signs displayed only Chinese characters and Westerners were so rare that strangers…
Our Folk’s Fest
The first time my man and I went to Vancouver’s Folk Fest I was nine months pregnant with our first child. I was a fan for life. Not only are there five stages of music and so much good food, there’s a special hippy rule that pregnant women don’t wait in line for the porta-potties….
Secrets of a former loser
“And what was your high school experience like?” I’m sitting round a dinner table with three women I’ve only met once before. Two are my fellow volunteers for a poetry outreach society (how cool is that?!). The questioner is the society’s kindly executive director who pays us monthly with a savoury home-cooked meal, red wine…
The rush of knowing you’re not (that) Crazy anymore
One of the coolest benefits of mental health is that remembering yourself crazy can give you quick hit of endorphins, a kind of hindsight superpower. What I mean is that nowadays, no matter what is going on or wrong, I can easily call up a memory from Before – i.e. before I found the medication,…
Saying ‘So what?’ to flaws
(Halfway through our 9-hour flight home. Looking tired, but still smiling) One reason I keep comparing this recent family holiday to England with the one four years ago is because the similar circumstances let me compare the real-world effects of my work to deal with depression and anxiety. The first trip I was just about…
Travelling Crazy – a two-, four-, six-year study
It’s easier to travel while sane than crazy. As evidence I produce my two nearly identical holiday circumstances: 3 weeks with in-laws 8 time zones away, plus toddler(s). The first trip, four years ago, resulted in my decision to take anti-depressants for the rest of my life. The second, last month, with double the preschoolers, resulted…
Wendy's House 