Every generation thinks they are the first ones to invent being young. We meet our parents as mature adults, overly concerned with our curfews, our…
Covid was a major disrupter to my family’s long standing Christmas traditions. Pre-covid, we had a large family dinner, including gift-giving. “Nothing I have to…
Shame is a powerful silencer. My working theory is that the degree to which one is comfortable sharing their shameful secrets is the degree to…
When you reflect on the biggest life changing circumstances you’ve experienced, how long did it take before things felt normal again? Or, how long did…
This Mother’s Day, I gifted my long-gone Mother with a posthumous answer to a vocabulary challenge she liked to pose. My Mother was thirty-nine when…
Conversations at family dinners are decidedly different when there are newly discovered blood relatives in attendance. My older sister gave a baby up for adoption…
When my cousin Stuart was a kid he visited our Aunt in Toronto’s west end, circa 1960. She was a single, working, professional woman in…
Last weekend my family, including cousins, in-laws, offspring, plus ones, and other loose bits gathered for a large Thanksgiving celebration; the first of this kind…
Families are like a mobile — the kind that are hung from the ceiling with matching parts delicately balanced, moving together on whatever on air…
Anyone who’s been married for a few years understands that sometimes you have to pick your battles. I recently heard tell of a friend who…