Befriending your self starts with making small talk with your body My father was a pharmacist, my mother a nurse. In my household, we took stale-dated medicine (because it was still good even if it was illegal for him to sell so why waste it) and we were never indulged a day off school unless…
Category: lisa richardson
Garlic Planting as Prayer
The fall garlic planting mission has always been accompanied by a prayer, of sorts. An atheistic kind, largely faithless: “Okay then, do your thing.” I’d brush my hands clean of the moist black soil and feel again the improbability of all this growing business – stick clove in soil, anticipate its budding five or six…
Make friends with maybe
Have you given any of your attention to the warnings being put out at senior levels of government and public health? What I hear reverberating through my news feed is this: The fall could be wickedly challenging, courtesy COVID-19. I don’t want to say “Brace for it” – because I don’t think that feeling of…
What Women Want
When I learned that a lot of women’s outdoor and sports apparel was built first for men, than adapted ie applying the “pink it and shrink it” design brief, I suddenly understood that it wasn’t me. It wasn’t that there was something wrong with my body. It wasn’t that I would be a better biker/skier/climber/runner…
Run towards hope
Maude Cyr will run 110 km September 26 to raise funds for the Howe Sound Women’s Centre to address domestic violence When Maude Cyr was a girl, growing up in Rimouski, Québec, a friend of hers experienced domestic abuse. She confided in Cyr. When Cyr took this information to her parents, her parents did what…
Picklepalooza: preserving high summer for my Future Self
It’s not really cost-effective, this pickling and preserving business, I realize, as I empty another $20 bottle of Bragg’s apple cider vinegar into a pot. My husband keeps checking in, nervously asking “Are you having fun?” because these evenings are cutting into my Netflix/book-reading time, and I tend to be an angry-and resentful-if-you-aren’t-also-contributing house-cleaner. But…
Life is now a million LEGO pieces and it’s okay to name this as loss
The other morning, my kid woke up with an idea in his mind. Literally, the first words out of his mouth, still prone and pyjama-clad, were: “I’m going to make an Inukshuk. Where’s the LEGO?” As someone who enters the day like a hard drive in need of defragmentation, files all scattered and hard to…
How to Tell Your Husband You’re a Witch
Originally posted on Longreads:
Lisa Richardson | Longreads | April 2020 | 15 minutes (4,084 words) On a Friday afternoon, pre-COVID-19, my husband dropped some ice-cubes into glasses, ready to make us screwdrivers and cheers to surviving another week of working/parenting/wondering where the hell the years were going, only, the vodka bottle was empty. “Oh…
The pandemic might not make me a better person
Day 20 of our self-imposed isolation and I have to confess, I haven’t really maximised the opportunity to self-actualize. Not that there’s been any shortage of resources or recommendations shared by beautiful loving-minded friends – how to work from home, how to be healthy when completely alone, how to learn a second language, spring clean…
Reflecting on the question, What’s to Come?
View this post on Instagram Even in your self-isolation and social distancing, tele-commuting and homeschooling, adapting and responding, may you feel deeply connected and supported. May you do your part. May you find sanctuary in your breath, in the trail, in looking up at the sky, in the air outside — even if simply from…
