Yet again a post in this series is purely about pointing you to someone else’s cool post. Glennon Doyle Melton writes at Momastery about the difference between feeling like saying ‘no’ to someone or something and finding the words to actually say it. Even harder for teenagers, in endless intense situations with friendship capital at stake […]
[Trigger warning: if you have experienced sexual assault, please just be aware that rape and rape culture are discussed in this post. Many of the links similarly lead to pages that need a trigger warning.] Sad, sickened, shocked, triggered, appalled, horrified, not-actually-that-surprised. Most New Zealanders could tick most of those boxes this week as our […]
Is it fair to say we all want our kids to have better, healthier, happier feelings about their bodies than we have about ours? How can we avoid passing on our own insecurities? Alex linked recently to this bawl-inducing letter Kasey Edwards writes to her mother in ‘Passing on Body Hatred,’ excerpted from […]
‘All I ever needed to know I learned in the mental hospital,’ says Glennon Doyle Melton, from the Momastery blog, in her recent TEDx Talk. It’s sort of Glennon 101, an introduction to the big themes of her mission to live in the open, be a shameless truth-teller, and help everyone else to feel ok […]
It is a legal right in New Zealand for all children to have free education that meets their needs. This includes the right to ‘special education’ for people under 21 years old who need extra support, or something different from the usual classroom teaching. The vision statement of the Ministry of Education, in relation to […]
It’s the first day of school for lots of people in the Southern Hemisphere this week, if they haven’t already headed back. I am among the hundreds of thousands of people who read and were moved by Glennon Doyle Melton’s yearly talk to her son about what’s important at school: Chase â When I was […]
In A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor gives the news each week from the township of Lake Wobegon, where ‘all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.’ It’s not just Lake Wobegon. Some friends of ours observed the amusing number of parents around them who considered […]
My Mum is my hero in lots of areas. As well as playing hockey for New Zealand and being one of the best teachers I’ve ever known, she’s extremely, consistently gracious. She’s my top role model when it comes to giving people âthe benefit of the doubt,â choosing to think the best of people rather […]