LIFE UPDATE!

Friends, it’s been a minute since I wrote a post about my life’s happenings. Currently, I’m sprawled out on the sofa in our living room, laptop on my lap, fireplace crackling on Netflix (I’m loving all the fireplace options!), glancing at the blustering snowstorm outside between writing sentences. I have to venture out there soon and I’m gonna have to muster some courage and heat to do so!

There are so many life updates – internal and external. Let’s use photos to show all the exciting accomplishments and new dreams, shall we?

PHOTO 1 – A CHRISTMAS STORY

This year’s holiday home decor theme is A Christmas Story! It’s one of our favourite holiday films, and I finally gave in to my desire for a leg lamp and purchased one! I’ve been watching holiday films nearly everyday! The list includes: A Christmas Story, White Christmas, The Sound of Music, The Holiday, Christmas with the Kranks, Christmas with the Coopers, Champagne Problems, Oh What Fun!, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Dash & Lily, Home Alone…and I can’t remember what else! I love decorating for Christmas…hanging lights and burning candles. I spend so much time in our living room surrounded by the dazzling tree (which is COVERED in tinsel in keeping with The Christmas Story theme…don’t ask about clean up. I’m avoiding the thought.), and comfy warmth. I’m staying up late and sloth-ing…’tis the season!

PHOTO 2 – TYPEWRITERS

Mama loves her typewriters! Part of holiday decor includes zhuzh-ing (pronounced: jooj-ing! had to look up correct spelling…you’re welcome!) up collections and art. I’m hoping to get back to typing on these in 2026 when I do a poem-a-day again…

PHOTO 3 – NOVEL/WRITING UPDATE

I’m still toiling away on my young adult novel. It’s a long process, and one that Pages, our delightful red golden, loves to disrupt. I’m working through a final edit before sharing with beta readers one last time. I made a major decision about what’ll happen next – I’m going to self-publish. More on this in future posts and vids. I’m back on Instagram and hope to vlog my journey in the new year when research begins for this creative path. I can tell you that I felt fantastic relief when I said it out loud for the first time to my husband: I’m self-publishing my young adult novel. I’m basking in the relief and excitement of what is to come…

Rejections continue to come in like aches, but I’m stretching through them. I applied for 10 Ontario Arts Council recommender grants. So far, I’ve received two rejections. I’ve got some submissions out, and will be heading into the new year with renewed energy for writing flash fiction and essays. I’ve got days planned for dedicated submitting. And, my process for writing these new formats is this: get an idea, write, play, enjoy the process then find a place to submit. Typically, it’s the other way around: I find a publication and write to their theme or style, then submit. Nah-ah. I want to write based on my own inspirations and format whims…enjoy the creative energy and then submit. And if I don’t submit, I’ll still have the creative experience. Letting go of outcome is my jam! Or at least, I’m striving to make it so!

I’m so very grateful for our writing community. From those who join in classes and workshops, to my teacher/writing/submission partner, Cassie, to my writer partners Charis and Christian and Ben and Elly, to the libraries and cafes and spaces we read and write in…to writing friends near and far, I feel so full of inspiration, motivation and…trust that this writer (me!), even though the writing itself is a singular action, is beautifully supported.

What ‘be-ing’ a writer means to me has changed this year. It is no longer the main identity through which I create. I mentioned in an earlier post that I ‘quit’ writing. It was the one of the best gifts I’ve given myself. To lift off the heavy hat that I’ve been wearing since I was eight…that over the decades grew in size and scope and weight such that I couldn’t see much outside of this identity…or that it was this identity through which I filtered everything else.

I’m still a writer, of course, but it feels different….that part of my identity feels different in my body and mind and heart. It’s…beside me now, a parallel lover, if you will, who I love as a part of me, not as all of me. Writing feels different. Calmer. Lighter, not only in weight but in, like, actual light. It is an opening filled with brilliance, shadows here and there for depth, but no longer a single path…it’s like, it is shape-less now…a light source beside me I can step into. Ha. It’s curious, isn’t it? Creatives speak often of ‘source’ as an energy, a movement, a service in process of the art. I can really feel it now as an entity, gentle and kind and spinning and laughing, always there.

As I age, I discover and manage and love so many parts of who I am, of all the ‘who-I-ams’ that make me ‘me’. Writer is a big part…and she’s made up of parts…and, really, she’s quite enthralled and, some days, ecstatic about being lifted off my head. She is very much enjoying not being a hat at all, but a friend.

I’ve got great writing partners inside and out!

PHOTO 4 – THE DREAM SESSION STAYCATION

I booked an overnight at truly magical cottage in Kingsville called Reveries on the Lake so that my husband and I could have a dream session. A written and verbal exchange of dreams, sort-term and long-term. We feasted and wrote and talked and listened.

The space we delightful and charming and…magically haunting! There was a terrible storm out, and we watched Lake Erie swell and white-cap as the wind and rain smacked her around.

The tree is made of driftwood!

PHOTO 5 & 6 – WRITERS’ ASSEMBLY WORKSHOPS

If you can believe it, we’re going into our fourth year of Writers’ Assembly workshops! This past November, I led a workshop on using creative writing and collective art-making as ‘repair’. We had sooo much fun! One of the exercises was to take a print out of an anatomical heart, feel it, think about it as your own heart, then cut it up and glue it back together. Think about what a ‘broken heart’ means…and how we repair it over and over…it was a very moving and profound exercise.

We’ve got workshops booked into May 2026…do join us! For more information, CLICK HERE!

PHOTO 7 – THE CREATIVITY CAVERN

I’ve started team-teaching with poet/writer/teacher Cassandra Caverhill. We met at a poetry reading at Indigo in Lakeshore about a year ago….and became quick friends, then writing pals, then teaching partners and yowza, besties! Cassie has this fantastic space we decorated for teaching workshops and classes. We call it The Creativity Cavern! And in the fall, we offered our first class in the space. We also had a full-day writing retreat in November, and our virtual prompt-a-thon early this December.

This photo is Cassie and I trying to figure out how to play music on the zoom, as dance breaks were part of the prompt-a-thon – and holy-moly did we dance! I’m loving teaching especially with a creative, talented, generous and intelligent teacher like Cassie!

Here’s what’s coming up in Winter and Spring 2026…Registration is open! For more info, CLICK HERE FOR EROTIC WRITING, and CLICK HERE FOR THE FEEDBACK FORUM – POETRY.

PHOTO 8 – GROWTH

I just want you to see how long my hair is getting! This is the longest it’s ever been. I’m growing out my white hair, so I’ve this witchy, wild, curly vibe going…I’m growing it until I’m fifty…so two and a half more years to grow!

PHOTOT 9 – PAGES

Since our Oscar crossed the rainbow bridge, we’ve been making sure Pages is happy and healthy…and goofy. She’s a joy and more human than dog, it feels like! This photo makes me happy. I hope it does for you too!

PHOTO 10 – THE MAKING SPACE

As my ‘parts work’ continues, I’m expanding my ‘making’ experiences beyond the page…onto canvases for collage…into sewing for odd creations…and into whatever else may creatively emerge. In the spring, we’ll be shifting spaces around in the house for the kids, and my current office will become a professional editing suite for our son, so my making space will be my new playroom. In the meantime, I have to do a grand culling of books and decor. Oof. It’ll be major, but I’ll be asking for help – physical and soul – as the spaces shift and share.

It’s quite amazing how much a home can re-shape. For us, the longer we can keep our precious children living in the same house, the better, so adapting how we use and share the space is important.

Soon, 2025 will be complete….but it doesn’t feel like an ending…and I like that. I want it to feel like a continuation…so many amazing things are in action…I’m hoping to keep the joy fat.

Thanks for reading!