I teach my kids to use their voices. It matters. “but it makes me stand out; it makes me feel exposed” they respond, and unfortunately, the world worships the secret keepers instead of the ones who crack the safe and let the birds fly. Writers make themselves targets. Always. Writing…

Poetry is usually met with a ‘oh wow, how indulgent’. I get it. We get taught in schools that poetry is the snack of the privileged, the starving struggling creatives, the people who sit and stare into the middle distance and wonder if their life choices were good enough. I…

I see a lot of ‘if you want to be a published author, get an agent’ stuff on social media, and I have some thoughts.. I get a lot of questions about self-publishing, and honestly, there’s still a big stigma about how ‘second best’ self-publishing is for writers. 99% of…

One day, I’ll tell you that motherhood is a kind of grief. You don’t need to know that now, but one day you’ll want to understand that I wished that time would go by in a fury. I was sinking like quicksand further into all the nights sitting in a corner with stains on my…

Years ago, I started noticing my eldest child more than I normally do. Something was happening to her, and I couldn’t place my finger on what it was. She was suddenly taller, her legs entirely too lanky and out of place, folded up around her on the dining room chair…

I might be losing the plot. Literally and figuratively. Last night I told him that I should just pitch story ideas to big fancy publications with Big Names attached to them because it would validate my existence as a writer; it would feed my need to be ‘good enough’. He…

A long time ago, I was standing in the sunny garden taking laundry off the rotary dryer, and I saw her teeny socks hanging limp, dwarfed by the rest of our clothes. It was then that I noticed it: a delicious little pang in the centre of my chest, followed…

“That child is being a bully. I’ve seen it.”, the parent says, defiantly, marking a child with that all-too-standard scarlet letter B. Bully. “Oh, gosh. How upsetting. Have you seen anything to that effect, then?,” I ask. I was genuinely curious. …

I’ll be honest here and say that I never really wanted kids. Or a husband for that matter. Writing it down is only marginally better than confessing that to close friends (even very accepting ones) because it always feels and sounds completely cold and inappropriate in any setting. …