Managing fragility in 17 easy steps

It’s all well and good to have the theoretical understanding that systemic racism exists, and to be enthusiastic about reading How to Be an Antiracist with your office book club. But actually dealing with race-related feedback might be a whole other thing.  As a part-time university instructor, I recently received feedback from the winter semester (don’t get …

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Keep my anger from becoming meanness

When it comes to anger, our relationship status is “it’s complicated.”  (To be fair, that’s been my relationship status for most of the last decade, but that’s a topic for another day and another blog. Probably an anonymous one.)  I’m one of those kids who grew up around some other peoples’ anger and outbursts, and …

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What’s a poppy mean in 2020?

Throughout elementary school in the small town where I grew up, I was in Brownies and Girl Guides. Every November, we sold poppies to support the local branch of the Royal Canadian Legion. Selling poppies meant going door to door in northern Alberta, freezing our butts off. This was still when dresses were a mandatory …

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