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

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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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  I’ve met someone. You say it with a dose of giddy in your inner voice. It’s not the same as some rando hitting on you at the brunch club or the night club or as you stride by them on a busy street. It’s not the same as a flirtation, or interest, or a suppressed

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So I find myself in San Francisco, for very mysterious reasons, doing very mysterious things, because, as it turns out, I am a very mysterious person. An enigma, really *tightens knot in scarf and adjusts sunglasses for eluding paparazzi. Currently I am at Trieste Café, with its brilliant history of renowned authors and artists and

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The Kings and Queens of drama, we celebrate them as artists with a rolled out red carpet, with gazillions of dollars, with shiny awards and with our devotion, our interest, our engagement and spare time. We watch their movies, their television, their plays. We celebrate and not just celebrate but invest in the stories they have to tell and in

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Today, is the big V day. The day we want to be spending with our beloved, either dining and romancing, slurping the same noodle until we unexpectedly lock lips, or avoiding the commercial trappings of capitalism in a united sarcastic front with our paramour while we Netflix and chill, preferably with a war flick. Oh right, Netflix and chill doesn’t really signify chilling or

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So the weekend rolls around, it’s Saturday, and my daughter’s been waiting for like days, all five of them if you’re in the mood for math, for me to have a few hours to take her to get some errands done and have a little mom time. It’s supposed to start early, like early afternoon, but

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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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        For those of you who are new here, welcome to my Monday Musing, my weekly offering of insight and laughs on topics of relationship and emotional health, to fill your world with less heavy and more happy.   Turns out last Monday was not A-Musing.  In waiting room A folks were

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The New Year is a time when we revisit our hopes and dreams and wishes and intentions and all of that jazz. I know because my phone is blowing up right now with all of you lovelies looking for insight and support #igotyou. Please enjoy this oldy but goody on hope, and stay tuned for

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Champagne and sparkles twirling into the glorious night or a quiet eve in front of the crackling fire log channel, watching movies or playing games with the kids, or the anti-normative stance of going to bed at 11:30 because you don’t believe in the whole drama of it all, the consumerism, or confetti makes you

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Here it is! Erin’s Holiday Survival GuideBe patient with yourself first, and others second. Like they tell you in the airplane, along with other important tips for staying organized and keeping chill while plummeting to your actual death. Everyone is feeling it at decibel 100 and not everyone is good at even quiet, small, every

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I am a proud Mama this week. Not of my actual kids, I mean I am always proud of them because they give me so many reasons to be proud, but this week and today I am proud of you. I am proud of how far YOU have come. I am proud of the work

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It’s the nineties. On any given night the juke-box in the restaurant-bar is singing “I don’t want the world to see me, ‘cause I don’t think that they’d understand,” and I feel this somewhere ugly and holy and deep. I barely understand it. I am at the heart of the middle of my onion by

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You know in The Sixth Sense (spoiler alert —if you haven’t see this twenty year old goodie you may want to skip to the next paragraph) how the little kid can see dead people and actually talk to them and it’s super scary until he figures out what they need from him and then it’s

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Fa la la la la, the cups are out and it’s time for holiday cheer! And guess what, kiddies?!!! That means it’s time to turn up the volume on the mall music, and also on ALL OF THE GOOD AND BAD FEELINGS YOU HAVE EVER HAD IN YOUR WHOLE LIFE! Whoopee! What —comma, deep intake

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I remember the Remembrance Day assemblies as a child. I found them confusing and terrifying. I didn’t understand the lowered eyes, faces. The scrutinizing stares and glares from grown ups, and worse, grown ups who were authority figures. Teachers, and worse yet Principals. Principals in my elementary school mind were the Grand Poobah’s of punishment.

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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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Daughter; Her memory starts when they are in the car, in the bright dawn of a summer morning. The world is crisp, and the car is filled with a sense of the unexpected. She has been included in an adventure, and though she doesn’t really understand what it is, she is buoyed by his anticipation,

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Kids love those “would you rather” questions, at least mine always have. I frustrated the daylights out of my children by answering that I don’t believe in choosing from two unpleasant outcomes, that I would choose neither, and that I would play the game when they put a positive spin on it, you know like “would you

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Last night I dreamt that I was attracted to a married man and agreed to a mastermind group with him in order to soak up his attention even though I knew it would be a one way giving street, me to him, and my friends all chimed in from some board room as judge and

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I was in San Francisco a little while back, and I was on a jaunty little run from our hotel to the Golden Gate Bridge which turned out to be a 9.4 mile round trip, and I was watching the world sway, the way you can when you are away somewhere, removed from all of your personal

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You know those commercials where the perfect woman is running around perfectly checking off all of those items from her holiday party get ready list, fanning the fragrance of warm brie-filled biscuit around the entertainment area while ornaments twinkle, and ice tinkles an invitation of refreshment and merriment in a crystal punch glass; checking her

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I’m not sure what you’ll be doing all week, but I will be talking to people about the intimate details of their lives. They will tell me about their heart aches, heart breaks, losses and traumas. They will tell me, sometimes with surprising attention to detail, what’s missing in the bedroom. And I will help

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This weekend, I thought I would be on cheer up duty for my daughter, on account of her life plans catastrophically falling apart, but as it turns out her bestie had it handled. I had cleared my schedule to take her to Peach Fest for the weekend, all the way back in B.C., which we

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  I am still driving, as I sit on my bed with my laptop open and a glass of wine on my night stand. I am still driving, the way you are after 12 hours on the road, which should have been 9, but construction. The air is buzzing, trying to pick me up and

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It was the first day of Grade One, only I was not your typical grade one student. I, and a handful of other kiddies like me, had been included in an experimental program for kindergarteners based on our reading abilities, and found ourselves in a shared classroom with thousands of extremely large children. Okay well there

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Hello Friends, Just a quick note to say that I will return to your inbox for our regular Monday Musing next Monday. Yesterday I was surprised and swept away by an invite to an awards ceremony for my youngest daughter, who won an academic achievement award in both science and journalism. Join me in a “Yay Tess”! If

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This weekend my youngest daughter graduated! I sat in an auditorium listening to 700-ish names called, hands shaken, inspirational speeches from institutional and political leaders, and from the accomplished young adults themselves. I enjoyed the crowd of giddy parents, some in sweats and some dressed as if to relive their own rite of passage some

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Mindfulness is trending. If you pop over to the magazine section of my local Chapters, there are a dozen publications on the topic, all giving us the skinny fry on how to salt and pepper our lives with Zen. Mindfulness, as it has been cultivated and reinvented by Western society, is about how to put the

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Calories in calories out is medically true. But it isn’t the answer to weight management or wellness, beauty or survival. We have to ask “why” calories in, otherwise we’d all just fix our math and weigh in somewhere in the perfect zone. Easy peasy! There are a ga-freaking-zillion strategies out there that are geared toward

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A beloved client of mine once sat down in the green chair, and feeling inspired by the success he and I had been having ventured to ask me if I could help him with his teenage daughter, then proceeded to list the numerous strategies he had employed to regulate her behaviour, all of which met

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Words. I have spent my entire life in a love affair with words. I wrote my first poem when I was eight, first song at age ten, which I will share for your general entertainment. It went something like:   I wish that you could understandJust how I feel about youI could not possibly live

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Oh the lure of an enticing profile, a chiselled jawline, a sparkling eye, some pretty hair blowing in a gentle breeze, a friendly-quirky-accessible expression as s/he hugs the family dog with such affection you dream that this could be you one day, in the arms of your new heart throb, though ideally with less slobber.

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Gather around children, today we’re going to talk about a little problem called “overachieving”. Yes, you, put down your April Grandmaster List revision number three, get off the stationary bike, stop doing your squats while trying to style your hair and practice your Spanish. This is for you— but not just you. It’s for you

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My University boyfriend is working in Jasper and hanging with the outdoorsy types and in some sense he is one of them and in others he is oh so not but he plans this adventure hike and knowing that I am a fan of both the outdoors and exercise he invites me to come along.

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Overnight in the emergency department. I keep straining my eyes under the horrible yellow glare, which it turns out is actually my bestie’s skin colour. And eye colour. Yes, she is yellow. Yellow is what happens when your liver is mad, it turns out. I mean I think that the rest of the room is

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You can’t operate on your own back.  Even if you are a leading surgeon in your field.  I mean, I’m not trying to hold you back (damn those unintentional puns – it’s a gift and a curse), but there are limitations, and I think it’s fair to say that your health and well-being would be

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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 about terrible. We are tired, and we work

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    Sometimes we need to give ourselves permission to not know, to NOT have all of the answers. We need to lower the expectation of ourselves to be all-seeing, and all knowing. Sometimes our best try needs to be enough. It needs to be enough that we show up, however we can while things

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  We all have a story that kicks us behind the knees. It’s not always the biggest story, it’s not always the one with the Hollywood glitz, the sensational story. Sometimes it’s the smallest of the small ones that truly gets us, for reasons we don’t even always understand. Once you get to know me

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Gather round children, today I am going to tell a Holiday story. There was a year, many years ago, when my children were wee. Decorating involved the delightful stacking and draping of ALL the ornaments on the Southwestern hemisphere of the tree. I should preface this by saying that the tree, the choosing of, and

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