There are certain recipes that instantly transport me back in time. For me, lemon curd is one of them. My mom’s lemon curd recipe is fresh, zesty and full of love. The moment I zest a fresh lemon, memories come flooding back. I can see my mother standing in the kitchen with a wooden spoon […]
Some of my most treasured possessions from my late mother are not jewellery, photographs or family heirlooms. They are my mom’s old recipes. A little stained. Slightly faded. Sometimes difficult to read. Often covered with splashes of gravy, cake batter or flour from decades ago. When I open my mother’s old recipe collection, I am […]
When people think about addiction they often focus on the individual who is struggling. What is discussed far less often is how addiction affects the family dynamic and the people who love them. Addiction rarely exists in isolation. It can influence relationships, communication, finances, trust and emotional wellbeing throughout an entire family. Whether the addiction involves […]
From the outside, some families appear to have everything under control. They gather for birthdays. They exchange gifts at Christmas. They smile for photographs. They ask polite questions across the dinner table and maintain the appearance that everything is perfectly fine. Yet beneath the surface there can be a very different reality. There may be […]
The phrase “healthy family boundaries” gets mentioned often these days. You hear it in conversations about relationships. You see it on social media. Therapists discuss it regularly and self-help books devote entire chapters to it. Yet many people are still unsure what healthy family boundaries actually look like. For a long time I believed boundaries […]
If someone asked me a few years ago whether I was creative, I probably would have laughed and said no. Many of us grow up believing that creativity belongs to artists, painters ,designers and people who can draw beautiful pictures from memory. We admire handmade items at markets and online shops and assume that the […]
There are some meals that simply feel like home. For me, lasagne sits right at the top of that list. The smell of a rich meat sauce simmering on the stove. The creamy béchamel bubbling away. Layers of pasta, cheese and sauce coming together into something far greater than the individual ingredients could ever be […]
Life has a way of changing course when we least expect it. Sometimes the changes arrive gradually and sometimes they arrive all at once. Children grow up and leave home. Retirement appears on the horizon. A relationship ends. We move house. We lose someone we love. Health challenges force us to rethink our priorities. Parents […]
There is grief and then there is grief complicated by unanswered questions. Losing someone you love is devastating under any circumstances. When that loss is accompanied by a nagging belief that things could have turned out differently and that the death could have been avoided, the emotional burden can feel almost impossible to carry. I […]
Grief has a way of convincing us that we are standing still. When someone we love dies, when a relationship ends, when a cherished chapter of life closes or when a serious illness changes everything, we often expect healing to arrive with fanfare. We imagine waking up one morning feeling lighter, stronger and somehow transformed. […]
