June 1, 2017 My new documentary is live on the CBC IDEAS website--click in to stream it anytime!
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/bringing-up-furbaby-the-evolution-from-family-pet-to-pet-family-1.4136659
July 19, 2014 This is my TedX Regina 2014 talk about what I learned while touring my creative non-fiction memoir, Ducks on the Moon. Thanks so much to Jayden Pfeifer, Johanna Bundon and Nevin Danielson for putting together such a wonderful event.
June 24, 2014 
A friend of mine just became a grandmother. (Let me pause there for a minute. Hand to heart. Deep breaths. A friend of MINE is a grandmother. A peer. A childhood friend even. Someone who I remember vividly wearing a cat costume with divine black velvet ears and perky whiskers when it was totally not Hallowe'en, but just a Tuesday and her Grade Four self needed to release her inner kitty. I have a Grade Four Kitty friend with a gorgeous little grand-daughter, and a blissed-out-new-father son, smiling from the photo with his newborn on his chest, like he is old enough to have a new-born and not still playing Lego down in my rec room. Processing. Processing. Nope.) Let's try this again.
A new person has come into the world and nothing will be the same again. Just because a birth is not an unusual thing, that one occurs around the globe about four times per second, doesn't mean the first statement is not true. A life is in motion. A story has begun. And I am old enough to know that stories are not safe things. Things happen in stories. Bliss, pain, love, unbearable loneliness, ecstacy--these things come-- in tiny drops or tidal waves-- when a life is put in motion. But they come. And you can anticipate, or prepare or practice your dog paddle til you're blue in the mouth. But when it does come like a five story fist of water slamming everything known and safe to matchsticks, and throwing it out to a rubble tumble sea, you've got nothing, but to spread your arms and ride it to wherever your story's going.
(This is not something you write in a "Congratulations on your new Grandchild!"card. I mean, clinically depressed, Gauloises-smoking nihilists would manage something with a nice bunny on it, and a gift card for Toys R Us.)
But I have gotten to the point where I don't see just the day, the moment--I am always looking to where the moment is going push the story next. I am always looking at what it cost to get to the moment. I have developed Chronic Big Picture Syndrome.
Which has made this week a little challenging. Quite apart from Hello Grandma Kitty's news, my son is about to leave his elementary school, and go to high school. Now before you go, "Ah, she's going to wax all soppy about her youngest growing up, and leaving the nest, blah dee blah blah...let me be perfectly clear. As a CBPS sufferer, my problem is NOT fear of empty. I long for empty. I visualize it, late in the night, when the stories that are my children finally, for a few sweet seconds, rest, and I can go from flailing to gently bobbing atop their very full cross currents.
I am just trying to keep it together as my CBPS threatens to overwhelm me. When my fellah stood up on the stage to take his "diploma" (and when did the end of Grade Eight become something that required pomp and circumstance? When did leaving Pre-school for that matter? How many times can we listen to "Good Riddance" by Green Day before we figure out that it's not a nice song, and that "I hope you had the time of your life" is a Fuck You that should not be lisped by four year olds wearing teeny tiny cocktail dresses and My First Fake Lashes?) anyway, when he took his diploma--all I could see was the story--the stories--of how he got there. And the stories he was being pushed towards, by Green Day and time.
Those who have followed my writing around my younger son will know that he is on the autism spectrum, and getting him through grade school has involved lots of story. A lot of it good. I am thinking about his communication therapist who came to kindergarten with him every day, for months, after spending half a year in a model classroom, trying to acclimatize him to a classroom. And who just sat, and supported him, until he looked at her and said "You can wait in the hall." I am thinking about the teacher who threw her arms around me after she heard we'd won, and the school board had guarenteed an education assistant. I am thinking about the three teachers who sat like cats with canaries wriggling in their mouths, waiting to surprise me with testing that showed that my boy had gained three years of lost development--in one. The little girl who got between him and a bully--arm outstretched, looking firmly up at the aggressor. The big, gentle, unflappable male teacher who walked past my son, now a former student, and said ,"Hello wonderful boy." I am thinking of so many good, strong caring people who fought so hard to keep my son's story headed somewhere safe.
That's a good thought, right? Except I can't stop there. I have CBPS so I have to also think about the other stuff in the story to date...the wondering how often I could arrive at work with bruises and swollen eyes without human resources stepping in. The year he talked about suicide every day for three months. The daily picture of him alone, hunkered down on the playground, trying to avoid the older boys who harried him. The way that picture stayed on the back of my eyelids all day, so that every blink brought it again. The day he ran. And no one knew where.
(Four blocks. Across a busy city street. One of his daycare workers, walking to work, found him in a November bare baseball diamond. He was "looking for food and shelter.")
And that's not all of it. I don't just see the story to date. I see the story to come. As the other kids in his grade received prizes for excellence in academics, or sports, or community involvement, and my boy sat and watched them move away and on, I saw next chapters headed our way...high school (and god, that's hard enough for the more standardly issued, what will it be for an Ichabod Crane tall, pock-faced autistic guy with all the wants and desires of any teenage boy and ZERO game?), adulthood--when every single bloody support for people on the spectrum basically evaporates, and I'm an old mum, how long can I work, keep a house, keep him safe? How will we even negotiate that--when all he wants is a home, a wife, a job, children (dear god, children---he is very clear on that point). This "turning point" this "fork stuck in the road" puts him a year closer to the rest of his life's story...and that my friends, opens us up on a big picture that anyone in the ASD community will tell you is complicated at best.
So, forgive me if I seem to be holding my breath a lot. Forgive me if my eyes are awash in water and salt. I feel the Big Picture coming, right now, and it makes me want to write inappropriate things in baby cards....and have the wrong look on my face in proud-parent-of-the-grad photos.
A new person comes into the world. A new story begins. And there is NOTHING than can stop that story's flow. So I spread out one arm, to try to keep myself afloat. And I wrap the other around him. And we take a big breath and get ready to ride, wherever the story is going.
December 11, 2013 
Sometimes a reluctant writer doesn’t have a choice:
I had breakfast with Death the other day.
I have a 13 year old Aspie kid who is deep into the whole talking in role thing, so when he pitched his voice deep, and did his best to look moribund, and announced that he was the Grim Reaper, I just rolled with it.
He told me about the job—he took over for his dad 20 years back, who took over from his and so on—and the social challenges. Dating is a huge problem. He’s allowed to go out with angels, but they are snooty, and not up for much—but humans are forbidden since the incident. Seems he woke up one day expecting to see his live in girlfriend beside him, and found a corpse. Tough way to discover his problem with Sleep Reaping.
At this point we were interrupted by his mother:
“Skully! Skully! Come in for breakfast!”
“Ma! Will ya leave me alone? I’m a grown man fer Crissakes. I'll eat when I’m ready!”
I tried to chime in here, seeing Skully’s mom as my natural entrée into the improv. But at my first “Skully! Don’t you talk to your mother like that…” he shut me down.
“No. She doesn’t sound like that."
Death and I went into the living room, where Ma couldn’t bother us. He looked at me quietly for a moment.
“I saw your Dad a few weeks ago…. Is it okay if I talk about this?”
I nodded. Three weeks. To be exact.
“I think he was glad to see me.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.” I said.
“He’s a great guy. He’s on our hockey team.”
I managed another nod.
“Now your brother, he wasn’t nearly so easy to reap.”
“Well no. He was so…” I wasn’t quite able to get the “young” out intact.
“I have this thing I do with the tough ones. I pull down my hood, show them my fleshless skull, all horrible, crawling with maggots. Scare them to a better place….You know what he did when he saw me like that? He laughed. Can you believe that?”
“Yes. I can.”
“”We’re great friends now. He wanted you to know something.”
“Okay.”
“We’ve solved the problem of atheist heaven. “
“That’s a problem?”
“People like you who don’t believe in heaven or hell. You were a problem. But now we have an atheist heaven. Carl Sagan set it up.”
“He’d be the guy for that.”
“Yah. You get to become part of the cosmos. Like the stars and stuff. Become part of everything.”
“I will be star stuff?”
“Yah. You will be star stuff,” Death looked at me, “Just not for a long time.”
And then, Death went to school. I sat awhile after, rocking, stars running down my face.
February 2, 2012 "Ducks on the Moon: A Parent Meets Autism" the radio documentary, which combines elements from my performance of the play, Ducks on the Moon, with interviews with other parents, and experts in the field of autism and parenting, will air as a holiday special, Monday Feb 20 at 12 noon on CBC Radio One across Canada.
The book Ducks on the Moon which has the full play, extended interviews from the documentary and photos from the production, is available at Hagios Press or here at Amazon.ca, Chapters.Indigo.ca, or McNallyRobinsons.ca.