Fragrant on the wind of my simple prairie childhood were the seeds of play, community, and revolution.
I grew up in rural Alberta, the eldest of four. Thankfully I was left to wander the woods, tinker with odds and ends, and bond with my best friend Mr. Dressup, all ensuring that those seeds of rapturous play would yield a permanently quirky personality.
As an 18 year old I went straight into 4th year Metaphysics and Comparative Literature classes at the University of Alberta and worked my way backwards from there, piecing together an honours degree out of whatever courses fascinated me. As a 21 year old I was running workshops for grownups twice my age, taking them on journeys of self-discovery and creative awakening. Helping adults reconnect with their inner wellspring of child-like joy has been at the centre of my work for 20 years!
When I was 23 years old I was the survivor of a near-death airplane crash. A few months later I met the man I would marry. Thomas was 25 years older than me but on our first date it was undeniable; we would be married within a few months. I have often found life to be this way; a perfect, climactic chain of events much like the “physics of the quest” in Liz Gilbert’s novel Eat, Pray, Love.
These last fifteen years have been full-on motherhood, school-planting, innovation and re-invention, following the thread, obeying the unction in my bones.
Lit by the same relentless quest for best practises and glory, I began blogging about magical parenthood, wrote and published two children’s books, moved suddenly to the gulf islands and found my next incarnation as an advocate of radical unschooling.
Playwork is my wheelhouse. Community is what I do. And the revolution…is now.
