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“How was art?” My eight-year-old’s favourite subject. “OK,” came the response, sounding less than OK. “We were learning to draw faces. We had to do them correctly.” Sounds great to me. Why wouldn’t he be happy about getting it right? He has a new te...

The first day of school … and all the preparation in the world hasn’t managed to ready our household for the accompanying chaos of trying to get out the door, fed, with all the necessary named items, in the correct uniform, washed and brushed to make...

School’s out for summer! Do you remember that feeling of having, what seemed like, endless weeks of vacation stretching out ahead? Even with a summer job it felt so good just not to be in school. Can anything match that sense of freedom? Retirement. ...

This Father’s Day will be 21 years since my dad’s death. I’ve now lived longer without him than I did with. Every day, I wake up grateful for what he worked so hard to provide for me: a good education, financial security and back-up. I know I’m very ...

For the past month I’ve been recounting the trials and tribulations in my project to massively reorganise my life. An exercise in humility, but my hope in airing my failings is to identify pitfalls so others might avoid them. Here are my biggest “lea...

Last week I wrote about generosity and the importance of giving of ourselves from a place of wholeness and not depletion. This week I want to highlight the importance of giving itself. Authors Stephen Post and Jill Neimark detailed numerous studies...

Visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads? Sadly not. We may forget that while we are busy being concerned about our plans for the holidays, many of our students and young folk are in the throes of making important plans and decisions about thei...

By Julia Pitt Last weekend was a bit different. I spent most of it attending a seminar on race walking of all things. Yes, that track & field event with the swishy hips and rather awkward gait that never gets much coverage on television. It was, howe...

This week’s life lesson came like a slap in the face. I lost my cool. So dramatically in fact, it was Oscar-worthy. The wheels fell off, springs boinged out, my head spun round as steam issued from my ears. I ran the full gamut of cool-losing — from ...

“But I haven’t got a creative bone in my body …” I hear people say. Chances are no, the last time I checked the human skeleton isn’t formed with one. But we all have the potential of creativity within us. Creativity is not the exclusive domain of po...