We have the parents that we have. And their parents. And theirs. It matters deeply what happened to those people who came before us. We carry personal, familial and collective trauma. As a descendant of a family that came from various places in Europe to Canada, I inherit the collective trauma of World Wars I and II, rationing in England, bombs, fear of Jews, fear of Nazis, the impact of colonialism on my sense of privilege, the twisted logic of slavery and Residential School

The cycle of not feeling and stashing and moving on takes hold of us. Since we rarely get to come back and feel the feelings that we stuffed, we begin to feel stuffed. Things start to happen in our lives that we can’t control - our health declines, pain arises, arthritis sets in, we get chronic bronchitis from a cold. Yes, of course we could take the view that we just got a cold and it got stuck. We can make all sorts of reasons for it - we were worn out by pushing hard to co

It is so hard to look around and not be dismayed at the state we are in as humans and the state of our home, this one planet. Because it is hard, we tend not to allow ourselves to drop into the heartbreak. We react by refusing to slow down and be where we are, feeling the feelings that we are feeling. We go quickly though our days and try to blind ourselves with distractions: coffee, food, drugs, internet, dieting, exercise, etc. All of these distractions take energy from the