Abandonment.Gut wrenching. Knee buckling.So many of us know its metallic taste, its blood on our tongues.The faces at the schoolyard when it’s just us again.The dance class, the recital, the sports game when he shows up foul mouthed and glassy eyed.Trips to the emergency room when she is climbing out of a moving car.Hungry days

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I have a friend who when asked by me if he would mind doing something will take a pause, RIPE with hesitation, and then draw ever so slowly from his resounding pause a throaty preamble that sounds like eeeuhhhh…culminating in a loud “SURE”. Now I am telling you in confidence that if I was to get

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Last week we talked about divorce. Today we’re going to answer the gazillion dollar question should we get married in the first place? This question alone can mean so many things.Is the institution itself sound, sane, meaningful, successful, necessary, beneficial? Is it a con by the government, one of many avenues to exert control? Is

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Through her veil the room is softened, the lilies dusted eyelet white. Candles glimmer, expectant faces embrace her. She is captured in sepia, ethereal and soft, gliding toward him lifted by wings. He waits, solemn, her soldier. The room can feel him quake, just a little. A rumble, low in the ground. His hands stick

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Don’t say these 5 things! (5 Do’s and don’ts of supportive communication).When someone we care about is upset it can feel, well upsetting, for so many complicated nuanced reasons. Sometimes they are upset with us and that is never fun (Miss Piggy says who, MOI?). Sometimes they are upset with us AND we may have

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  So much attention around dating and relationship goes to the Red Flag. The warning signs that we shoulda woulda coulda paid attention to –but didn’t. And then it was a year or five or twenty later and we were belly crawling out of the Love Trenches, getting airlifted out of The Rabbit Hole, resetting the

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Shit happens. Shit happening leads to conflict. They make you mad. They hurt your feelings. They don’t wipe the crumbs off the counter when they KNOW how much crumbs bug you and how hard it was for you to ask for the crumb cleaning when you were so afraid of being seen as an OCD

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In the spirit of full moons and eclipses please enjoy this jewel.I listen, and have listened, not just to what is wrong in your lives— where you hurt, get stuck, struggle, where old wounds won’t heal and you can’t seem to turn a corner— and I dig in where the shame is and we pour

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 Last time Dear Reader we talked about the radical idea that there are things we need from ourselves, things we need from our romantic partner, and things our romantic relationship needs and why it’s important to know the difference between the three. If I am dating you it won’t work if I expect you to

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 Oh so much heartache, oh so much mental chaos is created for us while trying to negotiate getting our needs met in relationship. Erin when it comes to figuring this out I don’t know my ass from a hole in the ground, is something I have heard recently and as I type it out for

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This week one of you lovelies had a big ass relationship decision to make. Our discussion started with a very frenetic paced defense of your thesis that it was not in fact a sign of rapid mental decompensation that a. you had been looking at real estate for you and your new beau in the

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 Today, if you are willing to entertain me, I am going to teach you how to go on a date with money. This will serve nicely if you are alone in your house right now, but happen to have a twenty in your wallet. JK. It’s for everyone! The single, the betrothed, the married, the love adverse. Because even if

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We all have ideas of what we need in a potential partner. Often these ideas are formulated by past experiences, like what didn’t work last time, where it all went wrong. Yep we are analyzing, overanalyzing squeezing our big little brains trying to pin it down so that we can compensate for past shortcomings. We

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Shhhhhh. There there. It’s all right, it’s okay, Tessy baby girl…  When my daughters were little wee things I used to comfort one with stories, endless colourful magical children’s books at bedtime to lull her to sleep –okay fine lulling sounds peaceful and easy when really I was sitting in the gold story chair beside

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As I was jotting down some handy dandy tips for first daters, I realized that the same principles at work for first dates apply to your 500th date with your spouse of ten years, or twenty years. So lovers and beloveds, daters and seasoned couples, let’s crush it together.Focus on the date. As in your

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You may have heard me once or twice talking about what I call snapping a zee culture, this whole movie endorsed phenomenon where some poor love-soaked sap is getting schooled for putting up with stinky rotten garbage behaviour from their love interest. Maybe they are getting crumbs of attention while they hang onto their phone,

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Sometimes the hardest part of dating is not the big scary business of opening our heart with a prayer and sigh of resigned despair as we hand it over on a platter and wait for it to be smashed cruelly to dust with our lover’s mallet. Although I’ll circle back to that particular problem later.

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Last week I wrote to you about avoidance; how and why it’s hard for us to talk about hard things in our relationships —for some of us chronically hard, and what we can do to make it easier to just say the thing (hint if you are afraid that feeling scared or needing space makes

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In how many movie plots does the leading person sit down with their posse and try to work up the courage to SAY THE THING. You know, the…THING!!??? The thing could be any thing, really.I feel a thing.I don’t feel a thing.I did a thing.I didn’t do a thing.Sometimes THINGS are hard, and even harder

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  January. January. January. A time to restore our energy from the craziness of holidays. To reflect and rest and recuperate. Dial down our expectations. Create some emotional space for the seeds of newness to form *spins and twirls in her earth maiden gown*. While many are rushing to take down their Christmas trees, I

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I was reviewing my sage wisdom from past new years in order to distill it to a ‘best of’ for your greeting of 2022 when I discovered what was clearly a psychic vision on my part—naïve little 2019 me actually forecasts the Hunger Games Home Edition 2020. How did I know!!?? *whips out new tarot deck.But

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Hey it’s the holidays and that means merriment and good will for all and 157 W channel movies with wholesome fixable mistakes that no one can relate to but are a lot more fun than trying to solve our own problems. Some lucky couple always gets a kiss at the end of your 90 minutes

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Let’s play a game. Let’s think about all of the insecurities that come up for us when dating, otherwise known as seeking a relationship. Don’t worry, even if you’re already in a relationship or steadfastly love abstinent you can still play this delightfully fun game.Here are some that you have shared with me of late:By

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For my lovely Americans this week is the start of the holidays, YAY HOORAY STREAMERS AND MERRIMENT or the terrors of family and loneliness but it kind of is for us Canadians also. A few years ago we like totally copied you and dipped our toes in the waters of BLACK FRIDAY, which is pretty hilarious

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If you are going to fix your relationship or go about creating a good one from scratch you are going to have to “give up” a thing that you cherish. What!!!??? you say, That does not sound good! And it does not, in fact, sound good. It sounds terrible. We are tired, and we work hard and

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 I can’t solve for why the tiny chocolate bars taste better. Is it because they are cute? Is it the ratio of filling to chocolate. Is it strictly illusion? Does the psychology of portion size actually affect the experience of taste, as in these are small and cute and therefore they must be harmless. And

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Have I ever told you about the time when my youngest was in preschool, yes preschool, and developed this crush on a boy in her class? Is that young for crushing? Well if it is, it runs in the family, because I can remember my first crush at the same age and his name was

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 As a culture, and maybe a world wide one, we have been over saturated with the concept of gratitude in recent years.Tales of how so and so lost everything in the crash or the fire or the flood, and then he got diagnosed with something severely diagnosable, and then his wife left and even his

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Once upon a time in a land far far away, when you were young and naïve about the ways of the world or as you put it ‘stupid’ you let someone treat you less than ideally; you know –use you, say mean things to you, take you for granted, disrespect you, not give you the time of day, OR

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I refuse to admit that fall is in the air. I’m not ready for pumpkin spice and colourful leaves crunching underfoot and cozy sweaters and Thanksgivoween. I am still planning the vacation I will take when the smoke clears and I remember what my name is and where I live. Today we feature the last of our Drive

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I took an unexpected Haitus from musing this week on account of travel complications!As you soak up the last rays of summer you may wish to sip a Pina Colada with one of those cute tiny umbrellas my mom used to bring me home from her date nights when I was 5 (don’t get all

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In this week’s edition of the Summer Drive In series (dedicated to advancing your emotional education by investigating brilliant moments in film) we feature Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a heart wrenching portrayal of a young boy’s search for forgiveness. Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock are parents of young kiddo played by Thomas Horn. Kiddo seems to

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Welcome to week three of our Drive In Series where we gain some brilliant emotional insights from film. I love to draw attention to moments that kick us in the back of the knees then sweetly help us back up again and feed us an ice cream. Characters we fall so madly deeply in love

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You’re welcome. For the trip to Italy, because who doesn’t want the sensual brooding landscape where fruit doesn’t just ripen it saturates the air with honeyed dew, drizzles into your hair, softens your skin and your soul. Where you become the rolling hills, the vibrant piazza, the light captured in stained glass —where there is beauty

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It’s summer o’clock, which means it’s about time that we feel whatever it is that SUMMER means to us; the fragrance of lake water in our wavy windswept hair (btw it’s 30-60 bucks if you want to pay for this look in a bottle which may be much cheaper than a day off but also

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Wow. It’s 43 degrees right now, like CANADIAN, Dude. That means 109.4 at 6pm in the shade on the patio where instead of writing to you today, I am simply going to melt my soul onto the page and stir it around with some number 50 sunscreen and some eye of newt. I am pretty sure that should solve all of

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Saying no. Let’s practice it.No that doesn’t work for me. No I don’t want to. No I am already committed. No thank you I don’t need it. No I already have one (a husband, wife, hamster collection). No I don’t feel a spark.Was that scary? Or are you good at it? Does it come easy

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Is your refrigerator running?Well then you’d better go and catch it!Remember that prank friend? Back in the day when phones were attached to the wall, and tweens relied on them for rebellious shenanigans.I mean I am aging myself. Some of you bright young minds were born into the cell generation. You don’t know what phone

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“Happy Birthday to me Happy Birthday to me Last year a lot of crazy weird things happened which is why I am currently living in a fancy hotel. I’ll tell you a story about it all next week and hopefully we will laugh and laugh and laugh. Happy Birthday to me. And many more.” I

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 We didn’t communicate well. I hear several times a day this reason as to why a relationship didn’t work from lovely humans who were once part of a lovely couple. But we are smart people, Friend, so how does communication go so wrong? Surely we know how to say please and thank you by now and not to say you look fat

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Money, money, money, is it funny or is it a drag? Can it buy you love? Are the best things in life actually free? Should we give them to the birds and bees?Money IS funny, ABBA was right. Well I mean they were being sarcastic I know, funny if you have it and don’t have

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The other day my daughter’s dad stopped by and left behind a grocery bag with some Doritos, toothpaste and half a sandwich. I looked in the bag and somewhere in the recesses of my thought processes I registered the half sandwich and that it would need to be refrigerated. An hour later, after I had done

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What is it about a group of wholesome moms who rob a grocery store to keep a daughter alive, save the family home, and not lose custody of a non-binary child with fragile esteem who needs a loving nurturing accepting parent to raise her, that is just so damned compelling? Or our friendly neighbourhood science teacher

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Aunty I am wearing your sweater.   I love it because it was yours. Because we both loved it. You found it at some kind of sale for five dollars and it was the perfect warmth and structure to throw over my shorts and t-shirt, or my bikini. To sit at the beach when the wind

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If you’re new here, my Monday musing is some loving guidance I send your way weekly to tide you over or top you up or get you through. I believe that shit happens but we can fix it and feel so much better when we do. Life doesn’t have to feel this hard. LOVE doesn’t

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If you’re new here, my Monday musing is some loving guidance I send your way weekly to tide you over or top you up or get you through. I believe that shit happens but we can fix it and feel so much better when we do. Life doesn’t have to feel this hard. LOVE doesn’t

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If you’re new here, my Monday musing is some loving guidance I send your way weekly to tide you over or top you up or get you through. I believe that shit happens but we can fix it and feel so much better when we do. Life doesn’t have to feel this hard. LOVE doesn’t

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 If you’re new here, my Monday musing is some loving guidance I send your way weekly to tide you over or top you up or get you through. I believe that shit happens but we can fix it and feel so much better when we do. Life doesn’t have to feel this hard. LOVE doesn’t

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If you’re new here, my Monday musing is some loving guidance I send your way weekly to tide you over or top you up or get you through. I believe that shit happens but we can fix it and feel so much better when we do. Life doesn’t have to feel this hard. LOVE doesn’t

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If you’re new here, my Monday musing is some loving guidance I send your way weekly to tide you over or top you up or get you through. I believe that shit happens but we can fix it and feel so much better when we do. Life doesn’t have to feel this hard. LOVE doesn’t

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Roses and chocolates and cards dripping with sugary declarations of affection. Starry-eyed dreams of someone to love and be loved by. Candle lit conversations, getting caught in the rain while drinking pina coladas and not being into health food, the sweet nothings of Valentine’s Day engraved on a candied heart; Will you be mine or I have a crush on you or You’re the one.  But then there are those less

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If you’re new here, my Monday musing is some loving guidance I send your way weekly to tide you over or top you up or get you through. I believe that shit happens but we can fix it and feel so much better when we do. Life doesn’t have to feel this hard. LOVE doesn’t

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I have so many lovey dovey things I like to share with you at this time of year. About goodwill and lighting the spark in the secret chamber of your heart and of new frontiers and how to fill them up with possibility and hope. And that is all coming, it’s in my heart and

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  ERIN’S ADVENT; THE 12 TRUTHS OF MERRYMAS THAT COULD CHANGE YOUR LIFE.   1. It is enough to change something NOW.  We have so many fraught painful thoughts of all of the things we could have would have should have done differently that keep us from doing something differently now. Most of these are prickly cactus thoughts or broken

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 So it turns out I will NOT be replacing the toilet for the foreseeable future. That was last week’s cute problem. This week I have the stupid Covid #imnotscaredyourescared. I write to you tonight with fever brain, which I can only hope will make tomorrow’s musing extra entertaining. We gamble together. I dream of Las

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So much has happened since we last chilled. So very very much. And this entire time I’ve been writing to you, in my wee noggin, narrating the world and its unfolding of events to help you understand, to give you a foothold. A better way. So many hard heavy things are dropping like anvils from

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So I was talking with a friend of mine who has some opinions, as it turns out, on men and women and women and men, and how they think. One of these opinions is that men think that women make things more complicated than they need to be. Well, because I like to complicate things,

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 Boundaries. I say the word and the emotions spark like those firecrackers bad ass kids set off in the streets after dark when the rest of us are unsuspecting and usually down to one taut nerve. Bang! Haha. Some of us tense and tighten, our hands into fists, our soft places into hard walls. We’re

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I am not in the biz of diagnostics. For top secret reasons I have done a study of modern academic research on whether Narcissistic Personality Disorder is caused by lack of nurturing in childhood, or the alternative, coddling and being encouraged to feel superior —the upshot of that study if you’re interested, is that lack

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 Well, I am back in the great province of Alberta, to the house I have called home for nearly two decades, after sleeping on a sofa for coming up on three months. I arrived, bleary eyed and sleep deprived from a very intense health care boot camp to one very ecstatic doggo who communicated to

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 So I was discussing with a client a very significant time in his life when some very surreal shit went down. Those kind of freaky experiences that are metaphysical in nature, that Jung refers to as the synchronicity. The meaningful coincidence. Synchronicities speak an emotional spiritual language to us through which we are guided by

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  Nice guys finish last. We’ve all heard the oh so sad story. Women want bad boys, we want charisma, we want edgy and thrilling. We want Mickey Rourke, growling up on his bike and throwing us up against the alley wall in the wild rain, making brick wall sex look, well, doable if not natural. We

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I have always had a soft spot for films about escaping to Italy, or somewhere that is pretty much Italy. Under the Tuscan Sun, where she gets dumped by her cheating whore husband and goes on a gay tour her friends pony up then buys a house with the money left from the dream home

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Spotify had a tough morning. She couldn’t read me, and I think she panicked. There was some Nine Inch Nails trailed by a jaunty little ditty by a bare footed songstress running through daffodil fields, or maybe it was alfalfa —and then I was “Just a Girl” and also a crooning Fiona Apple “Shadowboxer”. I

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  Insight comes in some interesting ways. And when I say interesting, I mean like, wow, wait for this story. Some men have what we’re going to call ‘GAME’. You know, they are slick, Rico Suave, charming, charismatic. A woman appears and the flame of challenge ignites within and they are GAME ON, gliding across

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I listen, and have listened, not just to what is wrong in your lives— where you hurt, get stuck, struggle, where old wounds won’t heal and you can’t seem to turn a corner— and I dig in where the shame is and we pour some sunlight in there. But I also hear what you want,

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 He rolls his eyes. Here we go again. The feeling creeps over him. Like bugs. Worms. Fever. That god awful flu everyone keeps hyping on about. They can’t just chill. NO. They can’t just do something as simple as going on a freaking vacation. Okay I know he wouldn’t say freaking. He would full f

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So, yeah. I’m at a Bougie little place called The Bannock Café in a town called Merritt, B.C. Okay I am practicing sarcasm, but truly it’s a lovely place with lovely accommodating staff, albeit very far from the plan of the day. Like a scene from a movie, Tess chimes in. We have calmed down a

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Hiatushi·a·tus/hīˈādəs/nouna pause or gap in a sequence, series, or process.See you all next week.— Love ErinP.S. You’ve been asking me how to get your friends and loved ones the help I’ve been able to give you. We can do that. Contact me and we’ll talk details.P.P.S. One of the kindest things you can do for me is

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  Well well well, if I didn’t pick up a copy of a wee little bad car accident of a book called “The Rules” which teaches women how to bag a man and lure him to the altar by…wait for it…that old tradition of playing hard to get. It was brought to me by a

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 This one is for Richard, my friend who passed away in February this year, right before the entire world lost its mind. You left just in time. I hope you are riding a bike up there, like the one you won in that contest and had to give away, and that you are sculpting beautiful things,

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 For a very special reason I am sending you Monday’s musing today. I invite you to take a listen to this amazing new podcast that I was asked to be a part of, with a group of smart, classy and edgy thinkers who are doing something a little different. Their brand is “raw, relevant and

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SABOTAGE.

The itch to light it all on fire, when you get close to safety. Close to yourself. Close to love.

Sabotage is extremely painful to watch.

And it’s staggeringly painful to be on the receiving end of.

 It should be easy, right? Things should just fall into place, click, be all Sympatico. You should ‘meet cute’ on a colourful city sidewalk where you are distracted by a street vendor hollering today’s deal on hot dogs and they are leaning over to pick up the package an old lady just unwittingly dropped, and

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Enjoy this pre-COVID oldie but goodie. Here is the nightmare; it’s Christmas Eve and you are at the mall. Wait, no, that’s not it. It get’s worse. It’s Christmas eve and you are at the mall and you can’t find the gift that you need, and you keep running from store to store, but everything

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I’ve never used Botox, but I think jealousy can be likened to the neurotoxin. In very small carefully placed and managed doses, it helps us. I mean it feels good to be wanted. We want our paramour to see us as desirable, to know that other bachelors/bachelorettes find us desirable, and to give some general

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Let’s face it. We have a love hate relationship with L.O.V.E. We want it, we yearn for it, we seek it out, we risk for it, and simultaneously we pride ourselves on NOT needing it, on being content with our selves, on NOT depending, on being whole, or evolved or “going our own way”. We write out our name with his last name, we ROM COM (now a verb), we wonder how we will meet someone, will we ever, is it me we ask when the solo years roll by, am I too SOMETHING? An asshole, a bitch? Too demanding or critical? Do I need botox, or stronger glutes? A sexier job title? More hair?

  This week I would like to pay forward a request that came into my inbox asking me to take the time to read and honour the story of a person of colour. I could think of no one better to ask then my beloved client, friend, colleague and beautiful human, Patrician Goulbourne. Patricia has

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I don’t know about you, but today friends I am tired of feeling vulnerable. Maybe I need a day off of emotional bravery.I feel kind of suspended. The innermost part of me, the one I have forged a deep abiding love and loyalty to over the years is patiently waiting for care-giving me to come

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I forgive you. What?! You say. What could you possibly need forgiveness for, you haven’t wronged me. In fact you say nice things to me and about me, you spend your precious time reading at least some of the things I say, and basically you are pretty freaking stand up as humans go, except for that

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This weekend I had the pleasure of giving a talk for a lovely group of Moms from all over the globe who were needing some support and insight in dealing with some of the heavy of momming during this current state of the world. I have written these insights into this week’s musing, FOR EVERYONE,

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Well it’s about time I told you this story.It was 1982. Ninth grade. I was in my friend’s parents’ basement, killing time on the sofa while she executed her daily ablutions in the bathroom. We called it, much like the kids today, “getting ready”. Ready for us, like kids today, meant achieving maximum attractiveness to

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 Yep, while we are living out the same days, same routines, or slipping into the abyss of routine-less-ness (taking some liberties here friends) our inner worlds are undergoing a tectonic plate shifting kind of upheaval, gradual and massive. The emotions keep churning, even though we are doing our very best to outsmart them. I myself

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Serendipity is the unfolding of fortunate events that were ‘unsought after’, or brought about by chance. The idea in the film, is that chance is orchestrated (an oxymoron) by the Universe, and that if Sarah and John are meant to be, if they are Universe-endorsed as a couple, then they will be lead back together by the fortunate unfolding of events in their favour while they are busy doing other un-suspect movie worthy activities like setting about marrying other people. I mean I am pretty sure that as an audience we are all rooting for the unfolding.

Victoria was a newborn, and after nine and a half months of pregnancy —which is like 9 1/2 Weeks the film, but slightly less sexy-Kim and slightly more enormous-Erin, slightly less sexy strawberry eating and slightly more ravenous devouring of the contents of the kitchen, slightly less Mickey Rourke on a motorcycle and slightly more get

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Today, if you are willing to entertain me, I am going to teach you how to go on a date with money. This will serve nicely if you are alone in your house right now, but happen to have a twenty in your wallet. JK. It’s for everyone! The single, the betrothed, the married, the love adverse. Because even if you are living happily ever after in joint bank account bliss, someone close to you is not. And I am here for you, or your someone, to help them navigate the massively confusing conflicted area of integrating money and security into a relationship in a way that does not blow up the relationship, or strain it, or make everyone sad, or bitter, or confused, or anxious or feeling like they have jumped off a cliff without a parachute, and given up control of everything that ever mattered but shouldn’t but actually does.

Well, shit. You know that whole e=mc squared, what goes up must come down thing? Fair, one is energy and has something to do with how fast I am eating my cake and the other measures how hard I fall down after drinking too much wine, and by the end of quarantine I will likely

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Welcome to my Monday Musing. If you are new here this is where I write hilarious and meaningful things to help you feel “less heavy, more happy” because gosh darn it I can’t stop loving you. This week for no reason at all I present you with the following flow chart.FLOW CHART I would like your

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    No sympathetic suffering. Your suffering does not abate someone else’s. You can care and act in a loving way without taking on more hurt. One time when my youngest was like 2 years old, all tiny spriggy piggy tails and freckles and frocks, I opened the car door with her itty bitty finger

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So I am on my run from North Beach to the Golden Gate Bridge my last day in San Francisco and it’s pouring rain, and to paint the scene for you we’re in the middle of a world pandemic crisis. What?!!! You hadn’t heard? You legit had something else to talk about at the dinner table, over your

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