Hope

Itโ€™s re-write time and from the muddy pool of shitty drafts, a small jewel appears โ€“ at least I think itโ€™s a jewel. I rinse it, I dry it and polished it down to the bone.

What’s left is a mere smidgen of a vignette, but it gives me hope. – A different kind of hope from what I had back then, – I hope. . .

He woke me in the middle of the night. โ€œYou have to help me now Vigdis,โ€ I remember his stuttered whisper. His silhouette looked pitiful in the arched opening heโ€™d cut – between my two basement rooms – years earlier. His figure crooked and unstable against the light falling in behind him.

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Why Don’t you like me?

I always thought there where two kinds of people – those with and those (like me) without confidence. Those WITH confidence seemed more genuine.

I never thought confident/genuine people liked me, maybe it was because I โ€˜feltโ€™ fake. I was definitely not my self – I didn’t know how. I hadn’t even heard the word authentic.

Do you recognise the โ€˜feelingโ€™ when you โ€˜thinkโ€™ someone doesnโ€™t like you?

Here are a few questions – to myself – Iโ€™ve been pondering.

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Getting in sync with the teenage brain

How brain research helped me be a better parent to my teenage daughter. 

This week I had the great fortune to attend a keynote talk in the CAC Theatre by clinical psychologist Dr. David Gleason. In his talk entitled โ€˜Getting in sync with the teenage brainโ€™ Dr. Gleason drove home the effects performance pressure can have on our adolescent kids. Far from being a wishy-washy psychology speech about taming teenage behavior, Dr. Gleason delivered an engaging introduction to neuroscience and brain development, compassionately told through real-life stories about disorders, self-harm, and suicide amongst teenagers. The audience was stunned as we waited for more.

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