Growing up in Montreal, Quebec during the rise of a separatist political party in the 1970’s, this gave me a front row seat to how families can be divided because of political differences. Every Sunday, after church, this division played out in my living room.
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(Published on Huffington Post and a chapter in the book
When I watched the powerful 2012 documentary called “Bullied”, I cried in recognition, grief, anger and sheer sense of helplessness to stop it.
At the end, there were memorials for children who had taken their lives because of bullying. I wanted to reach through my TV and shake those school principals and parents. I understood the victims and their sense of isolation and despair.
The main difference between children’s bullying and adults’ bullying is that the more “mature” bully leaves no physical scars. After all, there are laws for that!
Having worked in mental health, I’ve seen the other kinds of scars. Unfortunately, I’ve also been victim to them myself. (more…)
This past Saturday, I was in a Professional Speaking Competition and I had to shrink a program I teach into a 10 minute keynote. Yikes. 100 people in the audience were the judges.I was intimidated by the fact that most of my opponents had been professional speakers much longer than I have. One of them for 15 years more than me and she was talking about the same topic. Double yikes!
I decided that since it was unlikely that I would win one of the 3 prizes, I wanted to have some good video to use in my marketing. I didn’t have video of me with a head mic on a raised platform. (more…)