Mental Illness/Disorder has long held a stigma and shame around it that has always baffled me. I know the effects, and more importantly the SHAME associated with that stigma, however it’s always eluded me exactly why that even exists to begin with.

This week my anxiety and shame around the stigma of mental disorder has reared it’s head in a rather unlikely place: my Christmas cards for 2020.

No one has called me out or made any feedback that would trigger this shame — but rather my own anxiety and shame has bubbled to the surface by doubting what I…

Today the kids were home — sick with a head cold (thankfully confirmed as Covid-negative) and I took the opportunity of having them both at home to get started on a Christmas tradition at our house: Gingerbread house making. The kids were surprisingly cooperative and engaged at the beginning. (Often these kinds of things immediately inspire a FIGHT between them) We made and rolled the dough with little to no drama; my son, surprisingly helpful and his sister happy to let him in on the action.

Before I get into what happens next, I should preface this with a bit…

I’ve been sitting on this post for awhile in my head, continually adding and revising what point I wanted to make, the examples I wanted to include and the theme I hope I would convey… and I’m laughing at myself now as the very act of my procrastination lends itself to the subject of this post: behaviour is communication; communication of a deeper need and/or the attempt to soothe/cope with something.

As a child, I simply thought of behaviour as what I did. Some of it was good… and, sadly, some of it was deemed as “bad”. The good behaviours…

(I wrote this a month ago but couldn’t post it as I moved house and I’m in transition to move my whole blog to a new site. But I figured I should’t let this one collect dust… as the message still applies today)

The pandemic ebbed and now is hitting it’s second wave.

We found a house and sold our own in three weeks.

My son finally received a diagnosis of Autism. (More on this in another post)

My daughter has started at a new school as she recognized (as did we) the need for space from her brother at…

Originally posted on Mar 25, 2020 www.vibrantconnections.ca

Since November of last year, my 7 year old son has refused grade one classes except for a couple of hours once a week at most. His attendance on his term three report clocked 64 school days absent by Mar 2.

We actually were beginning to make progress — having implemented a much more comprehensive plan and getting assistance at the district level from the District VP of Supported Learning. However we still had not been able to get M to return to class.

But when the order came that schools would now…

Heading into my Week 2 of officially homeschooling two kids, I was starting to feel confident about how things were going. My kids were slowly accepting the new routine and more importantly, to me, I was managing somehow to maintain some semblance of sanity and grounding about the whole process.

Originally published Mar 31, 2020 www.vibrantconnections.ca

I hesitated to put Coronavirus or Covid-19 in the title as goodness knows we’ve all been inundated with enough articles, memes, charts and quips about empty toilet paper shelves. I personally, in general, have a tendency to consciously shield myself from news media — mainly to refrain from exposure to sensationalism and/or fear-mongering. And yet, just over two weeks ago, when I went to the grocery store and saw the empty shelves of not just toilet paper, but tissue, canned soup,instant noodles, paper towel and cleaning products, it hit me:

Hype or not, SOMETHING is really happening here.

And the question I…

I still remember the day I learned it was okay to cry — I was attending a parent talk at my daughter’s preschool by Deb MacNamara, PhD, clinical counsellor and author of best selling book “Rest, Play, Grow:Making Sense of Preschoolers”. She came to the part in her presentation where she was outlining something called “tears of futility” — essentially the path that frustration can take if one can feel the futility of the situation.

Really there’s nothing left to do to change anything but cry.

My revelation was, that the tears that are shed are actually important in order for the brain to rewire and find adaptation to the situation…