Many people anticipate quitting their worst habit with a sense of dread. They worry they won’t survive without it. They imagine years (or days) into the future and wonder how they’ll fill the spaces created by its absence. And the more they think about quitting, the more their resistance grows. They worry they’ll never be … Continue reading Taking Breaks Can Help You Change Your Habits
In last month’s post titled The Power of Our Personal Stories to Shape Our Habits, I discussed how our internal narratives can either help, or hinder, our ability to change. I provided two examples of men who sought my help as a hypnotist to quit their 50 year-long smoking habits. I suggested that their success … Continue reading My Smoking Story
Anyone who knows me well is aware of my love of storytelling in all its forms. Over my 25 years as a high school English teacher, I shared hundreds if not thousands of examples of (at the time) culturally significant stories with my students. Throughout my life, I’ve read, watched, and heard many thousands more. … Continue reading The Power of Our Personal Stories to Shape Our Habits
This morning, I pulled a card from a Chakra Insight Oracle deck by Caryn Sangster. The question I asked before drawing it was, “What should I focus on as I move forward through this period of my life?” The card read, Honesty. In the past three months, I’ve been pulling more cards than I would … Continue reading The Art of Personal Myth-Making
When I checked in on my website recently, I was jarred by the contrast between the direction my writing took over the past year and where it left off on March 1, 2025, the date of my last two posts. I created this website in late December 2024, after three months of revising a hope … Continue reading Hey World, Look What I Made! A Year in Review
As the sun rose on the third day, the young woman felt her power return. A new strength surged through every cell of her body and she again heard the gentle hum of The Mothers’ chant. There were nine of them gathered in the room and their voices rose and fell in a gentle murmuration. … Continue reading The Elora Sky Sanctuary
At some point between its release date of April 17, 2020, and the following September, I watched Bali: Sharma Springs, an episode from Apple TV’s documentary series Home. I know this, because it inspired the setting of a series of novel chapters I wrote over the Labour Day long weekend of the same year. During … Continue reading How Bali’s Sharma Springs Inspired My Eco-Fiction Novel
In 1939, J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and the father of Modern Fantasy, presented his essay “On Fairy-stories” at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. In the essay, Tolkien attempted to answer the following questions: What are fairy-stories? What are their origins? and What is their function … Continue reading Tolkien’s Eucatastrophic Tale: A Lifeline for Today’s Youth
How banning books from classrooms because of racial slurs hurts the very students our schools are trying to protect Last Wednesday, I had the opportunity to watch a live, online conversation about censorship between two prominent Black Canadian authors. The webinar was called “We can’t teach a book with that word in it”: Reflections on … Continue reading Reflections on Censorship: Lawrence Hill in Conversation with Debra Thompson
I could tell you that my recent decision to read as many books about trees as possible is solely based on the fact that I’m conducting research for my latest novel. That would certainly be a reasonable argument, since my book is about a 22-year-old woman whose dream is to reforest the world. To help … Continue reading Discovering Trees: A Year of Reading for Reforestation
Monique Chénier - Author 