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Memory #41: Soup!
I love soup. One of my early childhood memories is enjoying a bowl of beef barley soup made by my grandmother. I remember her house in the city. It always smelled fresh and clean and a bit like lavender. The kitchen table was brown, and the chairs were a cream vinyl, the counters were arborite…
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Memory #43: For shots
There are moments that define you as a parent. Ones that make you beam with pride, make you think “I am doing things right!” Where you know, without a doubt, that the kid you’re raising is going places. That they are going out into this world and are probably going to leave it a better…
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Memory #44: Ice, ice, baby!
Like many, I got my driver’s license when I was sixteen. Nothing especially remarkable about that, except I took my road test in the middle of a blizzard. Which, for me, growing up in a small Alberta town, seemed to happen to a good number of the kids who were made to learn to drive…
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Memory #45: Overboard
Picture it: Rural Alberta, the year 2002, only me, my husband, our cat, our dog, and the quiets of nature for an entire week. After a grueling two full years of college, no money, unemployment, a terrible back injury, we needed time to regroup, think, and relax. However, without any money, resources, or way to…
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Memory #46: Uplifted – dreams of dance
I love to dance. But like formally, something I didn’t discover until my son was a baby, and I took a belly dancing class. It was my ‘thing’ – I could do it all day, every day! I was passionate. Unfortunately, as things sometimes are with babies, he wasn’t so good in the evenings without…
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Memory #47: Loss
When I was twenty-one, rather by accident, I was told I would never have my own children. Having gone in for something completely different, learning this news was not something I was expecting to hear. It was hurtful, sad news – I knew I wanted children, not then, but one day. That possibility had just…
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Memory #48: Facing failure
My first failure came when I was 12 or 13 years old. I’m sure I’d had small failures prior to this, but this particular ‘fail’ was, in my mind, unfair and unjust. What was it?
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Memory #49: Into the unknown
It was 1993 when I walked away from high school ‘for good’. I moved right on to the city and a different life. All the people I once knew behind me and a whole new world ahead of me. It was time for change.
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Memory #50: Running on instinct
When I was 15, I ran away from home. Troubled, afraid, lonely, and seeing no way out of what was bothering me, I needed out. Out of my skin, my life, and the (perceived) mess I was in. I felt fleeing everything was the most viable option for me.