Once I understood that nothing outside of me was stronger than what was inside of me, I was able to see every situation as a chance to change. And I realized this one night, on the shores of Moose Lake. One year before I got busted, I dated a carpenter named Doug. Doug had bright…
The Patriarchy hurts women in obvious and well-chronicled ways. But how it hurts men is a more covert affair, and is responsible for the uptick in male suicides, particularly in middle-aged males. There is a myth that runs through our culture, one that says a man can shut off his emotions and be an island…
I have been watching a disturbing trend gaining momentum in North American circles over the past ten years, a trend I have dubbed “Bipolarism.” I first noticed it bubbling up at dinner parties, where a guest would be chastised for not championing the social cause of the day. Intellectual rigour wasn’t embraced, in its stead,…
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) has been the talk intervention of choice for treating mental illness for decades. The basis of this treatment is to get the client to take an honest look at the thoughts, feelings and attitudes underlying their belief system so they can decide if the stories they believe about themselves and the…
Mere months before I met Jay, my friend told me about the ending to his first love relationship. I had never been in love, and I told Andy that it sounded so painful I was certain that I never wanted to be. “Oh, but it was worth it,” was his response. Little did I know…
When I was ten years old, I watched The Godfather series with my Dad. To this day, no other movie has had a deeper or more lasting impression on me. Did I believe that Michael Corleone understood the secrets of the dark side of humanity? Was my perception of the reality I was born into…
It was a dark, wet coastal night, and Michael and I were on our way home from the Bird Cage, his favourite restaurant. That wasn’t its real name, we just called it that because it had forty-foot ceilings. “Lots of headspace,” Michael would say, “so you can get some thinking done.” We walked along the…
I’m excited to share with you a segment that CNN did on me for their “Turning Points” series! If you like it, I’d love it if you could share it with your friends 🙂 You can watch my segment here: CNN Turning Points
When I was eleven years old, I had an old road bike that I found in the back of the garage. There happened to be a fabulous rectangular configuration or roads in our neighbourhood that made for the perfect circuit, complete with hills, curves, and straightaways. All summer long I rode this circuit, over and…
Healing is hard work; to this day it is the single hardest thing I have ever done. To face the rage, pain, abandonment and betrayal was an impossible task that was only navigated with a tenuous combination of hope, faith and desire. The flip side is that healing is the gift that keeps on giving,…