Be The Pot Roast
A while ago, when I was preparing to present a speech about uncertainty (long before COVID was a thing), I decided to share one of my Dad's sticky-stories.
We’d been talking about ‘going with the flow’ in life, when he mentioned having a dream about a juicy, perfectly browned, succulent pot roast that was so tender, the meat fell off the bone. Only he was the pot roast. And he happened to be floating down a stream in the dream. When he struggled against the current, and fought where it was trying to take him, he started to fall apart.
When I was looking for stories to weave through my ‘uncertainty’ speech, that pot roast image kept coming back. Maybe...
Plastic Guilt
Trips to the grocery store have never been my favourite thing. I’m not someone who flips through cookbooks as a pastime, dreaming of what I can create in the kitchen (I know and envy people who do). I’d much rather sit at my computer and create word concoctions instead.
But increasingly, my reluctance about going to the grocery store is compounded by guilt whenever I do....
See the full article on The Spinoff: https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/01-07-2019/plastic-bags-are-just-the-start-on-the-paralysing-guilt-of-a-supermarket-visit/
One Month Later (from the POP Newsletter sent out on April 15 2019)
This newsletter is going out on the one month anniversary of the Christchurch terror attack. I had just started settling into my new community on the South Island when the tragedy unfolded. It left me numb. It's taken me a month to process.
As someone who's lived in the Middle East, studied its culture and politics, as well as reported extensively to "humanise" the Muslim community in the US, I was buoyed by what I observed after I moved to New Zealand. Friends of mine helping Syrian women learn to drive in Wellington. Neighbors helping collect donations for refugee families. At the Happiness Idea, we did a radio show on a local Muslim who started inviting strangers into his own home for "Coffee, Cake and Islam?" conversations.
I simply had a hard time believing what had happened when I heard the news about Christchurch. Though I wasn't naive enough to think it couldn't happen here, I lived in hope that it wouldn't. However, when I received...