It’s a Friday evening as I sit down to write this post and I’ve officially been back to work for three weeks. I can’t believe how quickly that time has gone! Being on maternity leave during the pandemic has meant that for healthy and safety reasons, we’ve foregone time with family and friends we would have otherwise spent the last year with. And while I’ll probably be processing the sadness of that lost time for a little longer, I know there’s still much to be grateful for. This last year with my little family and our new baby has felt strangely insulated, but we were also able to spend a lot of time focussing on one another, and being able to focus on anything—much less something so positive—this last year feels like an absolute blessing.
Read moreThe Long September
September is usually my favourite month of the year, given that it heralds the start of fall, the start of school and the start of a new year for me—as my birthday falls in September. But, as it has all year, 2020 continues to reshape the familiar and expected. Case in point—I originally wrote this post on September 1st, and then just became completely consumed in getting my six-year-old ready for her Cayuga language immersion class (choosing to follow the paper option because the internet where I live is so terrible), and then felt like it was hard to know what to write about when there were so many things on my mind and in the news cycle that were affecting my community and Indigenous Peoples across Turtle Island. I’ve also had a tremendously hard time letting go of the summer—a definite first for me.
And while I am someone who thrives on creating things: books, art, and stories, my great unwavering hope for this entire year has been for the continued good health of my family, my loved ones, my community members—the entire world, really.
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