![Magic trunk](https://neufeldinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/magic-trunk_32431121_sm-1-480x369.jpg)
Let me introduce you to Mister Rogers and Mister Dressup. Perhaps they need no introduction, especially if you are from my generation. Or perhaps you have heard stories from your parents. In my day, these two shows were a much slower counterpart to the fast-paced Sesame Street and Electric Company. At the time, Mister Rogers…
![chick in hand](https://neufeldinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/chick-sm-480x369.jpg)
Some of our first pets were baby chicks — twenty-day-old precious Buff Orpingtons, Australorps, and Rhode Island Reds. New to chicken farming, my husband and I learned how to care for them alongside our children. I could tell on that first day, however, that one of those chicks was not like the others. It was…
![Light flower](https://neufeldinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/light-flower-176758222_sm-480x369.jpg)
I keep waiting for someone to ask me this. Not even when writing Hold On To Your Kids, over 20 years ago now, did anyone ask me – not my editors or even my most articulate co-writer, Gabor Maté. Perhaps it is obvious and doesn’t require further explanation. On the other hand, the capitalization was a deliberate choice…
![Art journal sun](https://neufeldinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/art_journal_sun-480x369.jpg)
“Just make a mark,” Tammy said, as she boldly drew a messy line on her paper.I had been the kind of girl who coloured between the lines. I wasn’t comfortable with things that were uncomfortable. Things I didn’t know how to do. Things that were messy. Yet something had been shifting and I knew there…
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Sometimes in our travels we come upon something that seemed initially like just one more place to visit, only in retrospect to reveal itself as absolutely key to our understanding of the world and our place in it. I remember a few such transforming experiences in my life. My travels over the theoretical landscape of…
![yellow dandelions](https://neufeldinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/yellowdandies_463981268_sm.jpg)
I lost my playfulness pretty early in life. Something to do with figuring out there was a “right” way to do things, or that I was easier to manage without my big bright and often messy ideas. Either way, it became obvious to me that taking risks was too risky and I would get further…
![](https://neufeldinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Stick-figure-father-son-dependence-cropped-2.jpeg)
As I have been immersing myself into the material in preparation for my 2023 conference address on the Wisdom of Dependence, I once again find myself in awe regarding Nature’s blueprint for the unfolding of human potential. At the same time, I am acutely aware of how much we are still being governed by the…
![](https://neufeldinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Slovenian-HOTYK-square-480x369.jpg)
“Oh, the comfort – the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person – having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all right out, just as they are, chaff and grain together; certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and then, with the…