21/06/2026
Thank you to these beautiful beings for making me a father.
Looking back at these photos, I'm reminded how quickly it all passes. So much of fatherhood is spent in the midst of ordinary things: working, providing, fixing, driving, worrying, planning, paying bills, trying to do your best. It is easy to miss how precious those years are while you're living them.
Father's Day falls on the third Sunday in June, and this year it coincides with the summer solstice. To all the fathers out there: may this solstice bring light, warmth, renewal, and strength.
The work is not always visible, and it is not always acknowledged. But your presence matters more than you know. The time is fleeting, the responsibility immense, and the rewards often only become clear in hindsight.
Don't underestimate your importance or your presence.
And if you have a troubled relationship with your own father, consider the weight and significance of that. Loving yourself also means making peace with the father within. Create a little space for that today—even if only as a possibility. Offer some goodwill and compassion to your own heart, to the part of you that longs to protect, provide, guide, and love. And if you can, extend some of that goodwill to your father as well.
Whether your experience of fatherhood has been joyful, difficult, absent, healing, or unresolved, may this day bring a measure of understanding and peace.
Happy Father's Day.
14/06/2026
Anyone remember this classic Peanuts strip?
I recently shared it with a patient recovering from a chronic gastrointestinal condition who had become highly sensitive to every gurgle, rumble, and sensation in their abdomen. After a long history of pain and discomfort, even normal digestive activity can trigger a threat response, leading to hypervigilance.
In many chronic conditions, the issue becomes one of “volume control.” Healthy digestion is not completely silent, but most of the time we simply don’t notice it because it remains in the background of awareness. Once attention becomes fixed on bodily sensations, however, normal digestive activity can begin to feel abnormal, concerning, or intrusive.
This is particularly relevant in disorders of gut-brain interaction such as IBS, where hyperawareness of visceral sensations can amplify symptoms and contribute to a self-reinforcing cycle of anxiety and discomfort.
Paying attention to your body is important, but so is knowing when to shift your attention elsewhere. Meaningful work, social connection, exercise, creative pursuits, time in nature, and other immersive activities can help turn down the volume. As attention broadens, many of these sensations often become less noticeable and less distressing.
Sometimes the path forward is not listening more closely to every sensation, but learning when it is safe to stop listening quite so hard. So many things are like this in life!
06/06/2026
With gratitude for her life, and sadness at her passing, I share today that Grandma Sophia crossed the rainbow bridge at the age of 14.
She was a central part of my kids’ lives growing up and gave birth to five pups herself, including Bella and Freya, who in turn birthed 21 dogs between them—almost all of whom remain here in qathet.
The hardest thing for me, as a parent, is to bear witness and hold space for my kids: a poignant reminder of our own mortality, and of how heavily this weighs on every parent’s mind.
The thing about grief is that there is no way to fill it; it just is. With time, its emptiness diminishes relative to the ceaseless fullness and flow of life, but the absence of what we cherished—and perhaps did not fully appreciate or comprehend when we had it—always remains.
It is a good reminder to reflect on the fragility and tenuousness of life, and to celebrate both what we have now and what we have lost.
In that spirit, and for the many beautiful and rewarding things she brought into our lives, we honour Sophie’s life.
05/04/2026
This poem by Rūmī points toward a radical form of self-acceptance: not as a passive tolerance, but as an active hospitality toward the full spectrum of inner experience.
Change arrives with a force that often exceeds our preparation. Even with clarity, intention, or discipline, its effects move through us in ways we cannot fully anticipate. Joy, grief, confusion, tenderness, shame, and insight all arise as movements within the same field of being.
The invitation here is not to resist or correct these movements, but to receive them. To recognize that what feels disruptive or unwelcome may also be formative, and even necessary.
Within the intensity of pleasure and suffering, there remains a deeper ground: a place of quiet recognition and self-regard, where nothing needs to be excluded. In that openness, something more fundamental is revealed about the nature of our lives, stripped of pretense, direct, and whole.
Each experience, however difficult, participates in that unfolding.
If this resonates for you, please let me know in the comments ❤️
05/04/2026