Acts of Kindness

We are currently storing a neighbour’s Christmas present for their eight-year-old son; a new bike! Several weeks ago, our neighbour asked if it would be okay, and then last weekend he arrived with the bike. We found a spot in the shed and covered the sparkling orange bike with an old sheet. This weekend, my… Read More

You could not have missed the floods that swamped parts of Victoria this year, either directly by being a victim to their sweeping invasion or indirectly through living your friends’ and relatives’ experiences vicariously. Perhaps you had the role of onlooker with a few degrees of separation, witnessing in the media the daily stories and… Read More

Recently an email pinged into my inbox. It came from a former student (whom I shall refer to as A.) who is at university now. The recent death of Queen Elizabeth II prompted her to write to me. She was a student in my 2020 year 12 English as an Additional Language class. The link… Read More

The Higher Order Animal Part of my ‘maintenance’ work for my manifesto is to interact with our Instagram account followers. Never having been an exponent of social media, this is a new and not altogether enjoyable activity for me. However, it has its moments… Recently, while randomly sifting through the material in the feed, I… Read More

I am about to gift my first ever cactus plant. Over the past few months, I have participated in Ryan Holiday’s Read to Lead course which I have thoroughly enjoyed. Within this curriculum Ryan sets ten reading ‘challenges’ to his participants, the third challenge was to re-read a book you love. I immediately thought of… Read More

In my family, the request, “Hold the space with me”, encompasses a variety of needs, which I will unravel in the context of our family dynamic. Originally, the expression arose as a response to a question from my husband and my practice of ‘being of benefit’ to our family. To set the course for our… Read More

I’ve always been challenged by the phrase Random Acts of Kindness (RAOK). Not because I don’t think it is a lovely gesture to randomly deliver an act of kindness but because I don’t often hear the other complementary phrase. In my view, the more important and well-known phrase could be Deliberate Acts of Kindness, or… Read More

My husband, Gary, is a musician who has been involved, in some way, with music throughout his life. As a Senior, he recently announced that he was taking up the trombone! His first instrument is the guitar, followed by keyboard and voice. He has had no formal music tuition; he was attracted as a teenager… Read More

Earlier this year our daughter started the next chapter of her life, which involved moving out of home and commencing her university degree. Understandably there was excitement, trepidation, and a roller coaster of emotions in the lead up to the big move. Fortunately, for my wife and I, our daughter was quite clear on what… Read More