Hope

It’s re-write time and from the muddy pool of shitty drafts, a small jewel appears – at least I think it’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. “You have to help me now Vigdis,” I remember his stuttered whisper. His silhouette looked pitiful in the arched opening he’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 ‘felt’ fake. I was definitely not my self – I didn’t know how. I hadn’t even heard the word authentic.

Do you recognise the ‘feeling’ when you ‘think’ someone doesn’t like you?

Here are a few questions – to myself – I’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 ‘Getting in sync with the teenage brain’ 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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