February February is so still It waits to see what happens next Hovering, oppressive Desultory, gray and faded Sagging Lackluster February is nowhere Barren, it lies Between festivity and celebration Weak and bitter and ugly A friendless hag.
When you travel, the abundance of new sights, sounds, tastes and smells leave such a strong imprint on your mind that, even years later, you never know what will trigger a memory of a long ago trip. A particularly good falafel quickly downed at lunch in Toronto might recall a childhood trip to the Middle East, or the pungent...
"Every morning, when you get up, think of ten things you are grateful for." This was the advice given to me by a good friend when I was going through a very rough patch in my life, suffering with debilitating chronic pain and fatigue. Just getting out of bed was extremely difficult physically, and the thought of spending ano...
One day last December I woke up, barely able to move. At first I could hardly stand; once standing, I could barely breathe. Even sitting or lying down, the muscles between my ribs strained with each inhalation. It hurt to lift a cup of tea. Over the course of the next year I became intimately acquainted with pain: inescapabl...
We are what you would call an allergic family. Between the four of us we are allergic to almost every form of plant and animal life. When I was a teenager my parents had me tested for environmental and seasonal allergies: out of the 50 substances tested, I was not allergic to sheep and two kinds of mold. My husband's lips di...
Many people use the term "burnout" loosely, to describe the way they feel when they're tired, run-down, over-worked, under-nourished, in need of a break. But real burnout, as originally described by the American psychologist Herbert Freudenberger in the 1970s in his books Burnout, Women's Burnout, and others, although it may...
Multiple Severe Food Allergies and the School-Age Child When my son Ben started kindergarten five years ago, I was pleased that an allergy protocol was already in place at his school. Students were not permitted to bring to school food items containing peanuts, the nurse was informed concerning allergic children, an extra ep...
Make sleep your best friend. Get to know it well, and learn to enjoy its company. Don't feel guilty about getting reacquainted with this old buddy. Without enough quality sleep you eventually turn into a quivering blob of tears and frustration; with enough quality sleep you feel you can run a marathon with a smile on your fa...
Recovering from burnout can be very long, and very difficult. It can seem even longer and more difficult because, generally speaking, people who suffer from burnout are not usually very patient with themselves to begin with, and are not used to sitting on the sidelines of life watching everyone else "get ahead" or have fun. ...
I always tried to avoid walking home late at night from the Bathurst subway station, but sometimes I had no choice. So far nothing untoward had ever happened to me during the 15-minute walk, but I was never particularly comfortable, and even less so after a young woman was attacked at the beginning of the summer, mere meters...
Sammy Jobson
Member since: March 2008
Articles Written: 11
Writers Invited: 3