My goodness. It’s been a minute since I’ve dusted this place off and put fingers to keyboard and emotions to thoughts. Life’s been busy. Between a full-time job flogging software in the manufacturing sector and building a private practice as a therapist…I’m getting lazy with writing. That, and I’m not getting any younger.

I’m knocking on the door of my 6th decade (still having a difficult time coming to terms with that) and wondering what the next stage of my life will look like. I mean, I’m doing okay. I’m gainfully employed, still fairly fit (rock climbing helps) and counsellors generally have their own counsellors! Mental health all the way, baby.

My common-law hubs and I are doing fine and I’ve taken up another hobby of watercolour painting. I make these cute and pretty cards and then gift them or use them for birthdays, Christmas, etc. Our kitchen table is covered in puppy pee pads (because they absorb water and work great!!) paint, paint brushes, various grades of watercolour paper, more paint and everything else associated with this hobby that you can possibly think of. It’s extremely therapeutic! But yeah…can’t use the kitchen table. Not that we do…but still.

Aside from a few things that niggle me, I really can’t complain too much. We don’t have a mad orange man in our government. No one is sending hostile attackers to round up already traumatized folks from other countries, brutally abusing and arresting them and throwing them in prisons. No one is cutting essential services and even though the Province next to us is losing it’s mind and thinking they should go it alone, the rest of of know it’s never going to happen. Silly Alberta, you stop that nonsense this minute! The land all of your oil sits on belongs to the Indigenous People and you know it.

Even though we have an ex-friend next door (we’re not mad at ALL of you, just half of you…you know who you are!) who wants to steal our home, we’ve rallied (eyes Alberta) and become more patriotic than ever. Elbows up!

We still search the grocery store looking for and buying as much Canadian made/grown products as we can. And just to clear the air, we are not anti-American. Just anti fascist-dictator asshole. We, here, up North have every confidence that our Southern neighbour will come to their senses and restore their democracy before ‘someone’ torches your constitution and re-writes your history in his own image.

After that…well, therapy. Trust me, you will need it. The healing will happen.

Our stocks are yo-yo’ing, we are looking at a recession but we will prevail. All of this is a lesson in humanity and making sure we remember who we really are – Souls having a human experience. I’m convinced in the long run, this experience will make us all better humans and we will learn valuable lessons. It will be painful, but wounds heal and scars are roadmaps of our journeys and resilience.

Take heart; somehow sanity will win and the grandkids will be talking about this, one day when they’re our age, joking about that time in history when the world needed a shake up and better path. They’ll write stories and study this time, realizing that the only way we’d be willing to make that change, make better choices … is if someone took us down a very dark road…so we could find our way back into the light again.