Meanderings with Trudy

We meander around beginning again, around little monsters that join us when we engage in a meditation or a “sit,” around what Advent offers to us as we prepare for the coming holidays… It’s a nice complement to my solo meander from last week, and I hope you’ll listen to these both in that understanding. December, at least in the northern hemisphere where we live, gets increasingly dark, the days,...

I start with how I build and tape my podcast… the technical components and the space I work in. We also talk about other inside activities, like how we can prepare our hearts for the coming holidays with families, for family dinners that spark both joy and, sometimes, dread... Certainly sparking old habits of behaviour that no longer serve our relationships or reflect who we are, now. I hope this...

Deceptively simple, it is a story of courage and friendship. A reminder that it is love for each other that makes life feel rich and full. This book reflects themes that I explore often in conversation – love, community, courage, risk – and how they enrich our lives. If you’re of a mind, share your thoughts with me about these book reviews  at meanderingswithtrudy@gmail.com . If there is a book yo...

Nancy was first on the podcast in January of 2022 and we just talked about what brings her joy. Today, she shares with us her love of playing in the mud, shaping it, painting, and firing it into things of beauty…. Functional, useful, sentimental and beautiful.  We talk about the meaning that she derives out of the potting; you'll see what I mean when it comes up. Nancy is an effervescent spirit, a...

It’s funny how our lives spiral around certain themes, and while Angie is a storyteller at heart, bred in her bones also is teaching, mentoring, and supporting others, or as she calls it, being a "human-evoker.” She talks with us about the invitation she’s had to move into a different role in her organization, as well as the things she’s learned through all this change she’s experienced this last...

This week, I’m all about fall and its bounty. Not the vegetable harvest as much as the opportunity to start again… that kind of bounty. Fall is a natural time to consider where I’ve been, and where I am going, and that’s some of what I’ll meander around today. I hope this lands well for you. Share your thoughts with me too about how the fall bounty shows up for you. I’d love to hear from you, plea...

Episode Links: Chapman Coaching Inc. Royalty free music is called  Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma As always, this podcast is sponsored by the guests who give of their time, and by my company, Chapman Coaching Inc. Royalty free music is gratefully received and is called  Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma Live life joyfully, and always let kindness guide you.

Today, we are exploring "Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations" by Richard Wagamese. Wagamese died in 2017, leaving behind 16 books. The bulk of his writing was fiction, telling stories about his people, informed by his experience. These are hard reads sometimes for they are full of heartbreak and challenge. His first book, "Keeper'n Me" tells the story of Garnet Raven, a story that parallels Wagamese...

This week, I speak with weaver Jane Perry about her love of nature, and how she finds joy in working with natural fibers as she pulls wool threads into beautiful tapestries. A retired forester, she’s been able to spend her days creating and playing on her loom in her studio in a gorgeous log cabin in the forest, west of Williams Lake, BC. I'm a little rusty and forgot to remind you to please subsc...

You can't make this stuff up,  the gunshots that landed just as we started to meditate are one of the happenstance occurances of life  in "live to tape" podcasting. I left them in there because they made me laugh, and they reflect life at it's crazy best. I hope you liked this all the same. Please, like it on your favourite social media and share it around, and subscribe where ever you get your po...

On this episode, Angie fills us in on what she’s been doing now that she’s moved to Arizona and her new work helping people after facing a catastrophic loss. We also explore what we’d like to do for the coming fall season. Please, share our work widely, give us a review or a drop us a few stars. If you have comments or questions, please send them to  meanderingswithtrudy@gmail.com . Episode links:...

In this episode, I'm all alone... explaining to you what you can expect from this fall and winter season. How I plan to give you a little more of me with the first episode of each month me alone, sharing whatever comes to mind. Week two, we're back to the "PauseCast with Angie Arendt." We'll explore more of the elements of joy in the every day. Week three each month goes back to the roots of this...

Good morning from Horsefly Lake, BC! It’s our usual summer visit to northern BC, to this glorious spot at Horsefly. Horsefly is a small town with a big heart and we enjoy our trips here every year to visit family and explore what the Cariboo region has to offer.  Enjoy! Episode links: Chapman Coaching Inc. Horsefly, BC Royalty free music is called  Sunday Stroll – by Huma-Huma As always, this podc...

Summer is turning to fall here in Canada, and hubby and I are making a pre-winter trip to BC to check in on my father-in-law, Bruce's dad. The flight from Ottawa takes about five hours, and then we stop off at Bruce's sister's place for a day before hitting the road for the day long trip north to their father's place. This gives me a day to resume my meditation routine, this time in Kathleen's hot...

The Pacific Great Blue Heron is featured in this bonus episode of Meanderings with Trudy. Turns out, Stanley Park in Vancouver BC is home to one of the largest colonies of these majestic birds, worldwide. The babies had hatched, and the sound was unlike anything I’d heard! We were there in late May of 2024. Stanley Park is an urban park, and so there is a lot of texture in this soundscape. There w...

Into every life, some rain must fall… I don’t know who said that, but has it ever been true of the summer of 2024! We’ve had some glorious weather, and we’ve had some incredible rainstorms! Today, this is what is on offer… one of our summer rainstorms with sound collected from my backyard. I hope you enjoy this reprieve from the summer heat, as we move from August to September, and the fall begins...

One of the great things about our short Canadian summers is spending time at a cottage. I’m lucky in that I have a good friend who rents hers out a few weeks a year. Hubby and I spent a week there this summer during one of the hottest weeks we've had so far. We swam in the lake, or lac as they say in Quebec, lite campfires and roasted marshmallows, cooked burgers and hot dogs on the BBQ, spent tim...

The genesis of this episode lies with an article I read as I was making my morning coffee about the cancellation of three Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna this summer. Threatened by a terrorist plot, authorities closed down the phenom, breaking the hearts of some 200,000 fans who’d hope to attend. On its own, this story is simply a sign of our times. The mayhem on our streets playing itself out in...

In our final meander together with Dina, we explore the final chapter in “Grief Unleashed: Moving from the hole in our hearts to wholehearted.” This Postlude explores the work that Dina is confidently and humbling stepping into, the work of a Grief Doula, which she defines as companioning people in their grief journey. This is such big work, and such important work, as life is full of grief and lo...

In chapter five of Dina’s book, we’re looking at the gifts that come out of embodying our grief, of healing the wounds in a healthy way. I found this chapter a wonderful way of pulling together all the threads of learning in this book. In fact, the invited homework from the previous chapter on continuing bonds helped me with this too.  The notion of post traumatic growth is a centrepiece of this c...

In chapter four of Dina’s book, we’re looking at this idea of continuing bonds, of continuing our relationship with people who have died, by way of better owning, embodying, and coping with, our feelings of loss.  The thing about death is that we often can’t accept the reality of our loss. Continuing bonds normalizes our desire to maintain a relationship with those who have died, and for this to b...

In chapter three of Dina’s book, we’re looking at the ways that we attend to our broken hearts. In this meander we show the shifts that Dina is still making in her own grief journey. How, after 22 years, she is finally making space for herself in this journey. It is such a beautiful way of appreciating how we embody grief and it nourishes our own experience in the world. And irrevocably changes us...

In chapter two of Dina’s book, we’re looking at reconciling loss. We start with last month’s exercise to look at our loss maps, and my extrapolation out, looking at belonging. It’s a great example of how to do the exercise and apply the learning to our own lives. Dina tells us that reconciling loss is about reasserting harmony in our experience, and with the insight from my loss map, I find more h...

In this second episode in our book review, we look at chapter one, which is all about grappling with grief. The starting point is understanding that we all grapple in different ways. And that is absolutely as it should be. But most of us don’t know how we grapple, and don’t realize that others ways can be different. So that is where we start, and we meander from there. I hope you find this both he...

Canada Day is a delight here in the Great White North… the first heat of summer hits us, hard, and we settle into the dog days of summer, which are often too few but usually well appreciated. On this Canada Day, I went for a kayak with my brother Steve on a tributary of the Ottawa River. Green’s Creek it’s called, and while in the city, it’s like going back into prehistoric time. We saw several he...