Love
Our Adoption Story
By Victoria Utman Four years ago, I learned that a quickening is the feeling an expecting mother has when their child moves beneath their breast- a stretch felt through the very muscle, sinew, and core of the woman as her baby develops inside of her. It’s a beautiful, active word and was brought up in a writing workshop I attended. Around this time, my husband and I had just begun our first serious conversations about beginning a family together and I instantly fell in love with the concept. “Quick” meaning alive or lively; the emotional made physical…
Read MoreBare Beginnings
By Jenn Wallace So many of our beginnings start this way—two individuals who were bare and vulnerable, who trusted. There is something attractive and exhilarating in allowing someone to know you—it can feel like a big risk, opening to someone’s touch, gaze and trusting that person. The vulnerability in partnering and building trust is so needed in parenting. Whether or not a couple is able to conceive, raising a child requires naked vulnerability. If living with someone does not bring out all the details, good and bad, then raising a child certainly does. Babies produce all kinds of emotions…
Read MoreMorning Coffee
By Janelle Ross Almost every morning he makes the coffee: grinds the beans, pours boiling water into the French press, and waits until just the right moment to drop the plunger. He picks a cup for me from the cupboard. If it’s clean, he chooses the brown one that says You are a Courageous Woman. I’ve never asked him why. He pours the coffee and splashes in some cream, the real thing, full of fat and flavour. If I’m in the kitchen with him, I watch the white liquid swirl into the brown, and this comforting routine, established over time,…
Read MoreBeautiful Ugly
By Jen Wallace When John proposed to me, I cried. It was an ugly cry. In this beautiful moment the woman he was proposing to was sobbing—“So, is that a yes?” he asked. My response to his first question, “Will you marry me?” and the subsequent one was a resounding, “Yes! Yes!” I am still not entirely sure what all my tears meant. Years and memory tend to colour the retelling of events. But I think a part of me knew that he would now have a chance to really know me. He would see it all: the good, the…
Read MoreYour Body is Mine
Jennifer Wallace “Your body is mine! Your body is mine!” I hear my son singing a song that sounds…well inappropriate for a five-year-old or anyone to be singing. I ask him about it and he tells me he made it up. “And where did you hear this? Where did you get the idea?” I ask concerned about what I might hear for an answer. “You, mom!” “What?!” I respond. “…‘Member when you told us that everyone in the family thinks your body is theirs?” I do remember and it is all making sense now. I was laughing and slightly exasperated…
Read MoreLines in the Sand
Sheena Koops Imagine. You have made a mistake. Maybe you’ve made this mistake over and over, but this time, you’ve been caught. You are being escorted into a public space, a circle of those who hold the most power and the most respect in your community. They are listening to an outsider, a newcomer, and you recognize this guy. He’s the one making a buzz from coffee row to the hair salon. Many people don’t know what to make of him. Some really get what he’s serving up. Others think he’s the devil himself. Well, here you are. Tossed into…
Read MoreLove Story
Jennifer Wallace I love a good love story. Always have. When I heard that Jonathan Crombie died, the actor who played Gilbert Blythe opposite Megan Follows in Anne of Green Gables, I was genuinely saddened. While I did not know the actor, Jonathan portrayed Gil so well. He represented a character that I, and many other girls, had loved so much. Gilbert was a boy and then a man who was undaunted by a strong and feisty Anne. He was not intimidated by her but liked being challenged by her. He encouraged Anne and even admonished her to do what…
Read MoreHome: Potluck
Katelyn Pippus “It’s not, actually, strictly, about food for me. It’s about what happens when we come together, slow down, open our homes, look into one another’s faces, listen to one another’s stories….. It happens when we enter the joy and sorrow of the people we love, and we join together at the table to feed one another and be fed, and while it’s not strictly about food, it doesn’t happen without it. Food is the starting point, the common ground…..” *Shauna Niequist, As the doors to the fellowship hall open, I am hit by the aroma of casseroles, stews,…
Read MoreFather
Andrea Muirhead In my family we love a good story! I’ve been told many times the story of my birth, of how my father drove my mum two hundred kilometers through a Saskatchewan blizzard so that my arrival would be safe in the big hospital in Regina. The neighbours got stuck coming one kilometer to pick up the big kids but my dad, the hero, and his super-Volkswagen, safely transported Mum and me to the hospital. Jesus tells a great story of an unlikely hero, a simple shepherd, a man who had 100 sheep. This story is not about the…
Read MoreMy Path
Natasha Coroluick I never know where to start when telling my story. Everyone I talk to tells me to “start from the beginning”. Is that meaning to start with, “I was born on a chilly November day twenty-nine years ago.”? Or is it the beginning of where my life began on its path? I suppose I will start where it’s relevant. Twenty years ago I was new to small town living. My grandmother had passed away in the summer of ’95 and we moved into her home in Avonlea, SK. I remember our mom telling my sister and me that…
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