Three years ago, I came home from work one day to discover that my life was about to change forever. My husband of six years informed me that he wanted a divorce. I had thought we were planning for children; clearly we had different goals for our marriage! I was completely stripped of everything I [...]
It’s 6:30 in the morning and my phone is ringing. I stumble out of bed, pick it up, and am greeted with the dial tone. I look over at the birdcage hanging in a stream of early morning light. I then hear my cell phone, our old phone, a dump truck backing up and our [...]
I stare into the overlit shop mirror, and this other woman, with her formidable shoulder pads and monochrome armour, stares right back at me. I suspect this will take some getting used to.
I am trying on a suit at a ladies shop, and there is a clerk looming behind me, in wait for her final [...]
I am not sure when I decided that I wanted to do something “good” with my life. I do remember watching an Indiana Jones movie with a childhood friend, but I’m sure there must have been another influence besides this movie. My friend and I would often discuss going to a poor country, living in [...]
The first weekend in my new apartment, I broke from unpacking to sit on the deck and enjoy my small piece of the outdoors in the middle of downtown St. John’s. I discovered that a group of caterpillars had moved in too. I watched the fuzzy little guys scout out spots to settle down [...]
I don’t leave my house much these days. If I do, it’s quite a production.
I haven’t lost use of my limbs or become an agoraphobe; I’m a new mom. And getting my baby boy and me out of the house to enjoy the gentle breezes takes the tactical skills of a four-star general.
Used to [...]
My ideal holiday involves sun, by a pool, a never-ending supply of chilled diet coke, and a sky-high pile of novels to read while the stresses of home and school evaporate. However, holidays are not always just about the individual; they are about the family. That appears to be a straightforward problem; yet, is it [...]
One Sunday night, while fretting about ungraded year 10 papers, I was flicking through the channels and stopped to watch “Child of Our Time,” a social study where 20 British children born in 2000 will be documented until the age of 25. The purpose of the televised documentary is to see if their life experiences [...]
Recently, a friend of mine jokingly referred to me as “PEI’s Jamie Oliver”. Oliver— the infamous “Naked Chef”—has become a media darling, and has been credited with single handedly changing the foods that British students eat at school. Over the past five years, I have appeared in the local media a number of times speaking [...]
The Superwoman: a professional woman, a friend, a lover, a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter, an athlete, an artist, who desires to be feminine and while doing so, she ends up “the superwoman.”
Feminist Media Scholar Susan Douglas suggests that women currently receive profoundly contradictory messages about what constitutes “ideal femininity,” and how “ideal [...]
