A warm welcome to Penny Ehrhardt! Penny runs a public policy consultancy called Ehrhardt Advisors. She is a writer, researcher, international human rights law practitioner, parent, Soka Gakkai Buddhist, and lifelong feminist. Formerly based in Napier, New Zealand, she is currently undertaking doctoral research into the economic and social rights of single-parent families at Oxford […]
In November 2015 my family moved to Chiang Mai, Thailand, to work with a small, nimble NGO, Partners Relief & Development, to help bring free, full lives to children affected by conflict and oppression, particularly people in and from Myanmar/Burma. Soon after we got here, I wrote a bit about the state of life in […]
If I’m brilliant and amazing, my Mum has a lot to do with it. Here are six ways she has been a brilliant and amazing mother to me and my sisters, things I want to do for my kids, too. 1. My Mum is brilliant and amazing. She stayed at home with us for years. Every day that […]
A warm welcome to this year’s Advent in Art series, where we join thousands of others in contemplating artistic works while we wait, wait, wait for Christmas. For an introduction to this series, and He Qi, the artist featured in 2014, please see the first post, on the Annunciation. Week 2: The Visitation The mood […]
Welcome! This is a reworking of an earlier post, from March 2013 (just so I’m not soliciting undue sympathy: I’m fine now!). Being a woman equals being in community. The same might feel true for men (I hope it does), but I can’t write that blog post, being in possession, as I am, of two […]
This is part of a series aiming to help us all go easier on ourselves and make our parenting lives more enjoyable and satisfying. The whole series list is here and more links are at the bottom of the post. [Update: 2.5 years later I’ve revised this and added some stuff in. Feel free to suggest […]
A warm welcome today to my good friend Rob Kilpatrick, who wrote this reflection on Facebook yesterday and let me filch it for the blog. You’ll be glad you read it. I’m incredibly lucky to be granddad to 11 wonderful kids. I don’t deserve to be but there you have it, grace upon grace. I […]
I often tell my husband he needs to write a book about how to be an awesome partner to a pregnant person. It seems more likely that I’ll write a blog post about it though, so here we are. My husband was a superhero supporter through my pregnancy (and beyond). When your partner’s pregnant, it’s […]
About a third of you, Gentle Readers, are based in the Northern Hemisphere, where the church calendar was born and raised: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and so on, until Advent begins another church year again. That means that your wintry Advent is naturally an expectant, waiting time that builds to the celebration of Christmas […]
I had a nightmare recently, where my husband and I were both sent to prison – separate prisons. I don’t remember what we were convicted of or whether we’d done it. I just remember the horror of realising that our punishment was the break-up of our family. How appalling. I did a criminology paper at […]