I have often thought that life seems to move in ten-year chapters. The first ten years are our childhood, when so much is formed in us quietly and deeply, long before we understand what is shaping us. The second ten are our teenage years, when we begin reaching for our own identity and trying to…
Tag: writing
The Other Way Around
Here Down Under, everything always feels a little bit the other way around. While the northern hemisphere is welcoming Easter in springtime and Christmas in winter, we Australians are doing our own upside-down version of things — Christmas in summer heat, with sunburn, salads, and trips to the beach. Then Easter arrives with cooler mornings,…
Writing While Able
I have lived for some years now with a certain kind of uncertainty, the kind that quietly follows me even on ordinary days. It is not always loud. Sometimes it sits far enough in the background that I can almost forget it is there. Life feels normal for a while. I breathe a little more…
Tender Beginnings
Although the day might have seemed like just another day, to me it felt like the world had paused for a moment, holding its breath for something extraordinary. The day felt charged, alive, touched by something beyond the usual routine of life. It was one of those rare moments where I could feel the earth…
The Stories We Keep
There is something about flour on the bench and the smell of cardamom and cinnamon in the air that loosens old stories. When I bake with my granddaughter in my kitchen, I notice that I begin again.The same stories. The same tone. Often the same hand gestures. I tell her about my grandmother’s kitchen —…
Water over Rock
This summer, when we visited Marysville, we found ourselves drawn once again to the mountain stream — the one that runs clear and cold through the town, even when the heat settles heavily over the valley. It feels like part of Marysville’s heartbeat, weaving alongside the main street and through the parklands where families gather…
Echoed Dreams
She talks about her dreams as if they are already beginning to take shape — a life imagined in bright strokes, full of meaning and promise. There is certainty in her voice, the kind that doesn’t yet know how easily the world can complicate things. I listen, and I am taken back. I remember dreaming…
My Treasure Chest
When I look back, it isn’t the big moments that rise first. It’s the small hands. The weight of a child asleep against my chest. The way time softens when you are watching someone you love grow. Life keeps bringing them to me — first as babies, then as children, then, almost without warning, as…
Allow
There was a time when I believed life moved in straight lines. If I made careful plans, if I worked hard enough, if I loved well enough, things would unfold as expected. I thought certainty was something you earned. But life, it turns out, has never been interested in our neat expectations. It bends. It…
Stay, I Pray You
Last night I saw a musical that quietly undid me. It exceeded every expectation I carried in with me. Anastasia was exquisite — moving, tender, and deeply human. One song in particular stayed with me long after the curtain fell. “How can I desert you?”At eleven years old, I didn’t have the words for this…
Apples of Gold 