Fran Wescott

I am filled with love and light. I need only open my eyes to see the light and open my heart to feel the warmth of that love. For some reason I’ve found at this time of year that I’m resistant to this idea. With the onslaught of the holiday kerfuffle, I was grumpy about what I anticipated but unwilling to adopt a different approach. I was resistant to acknowledgement that family holiday celebrations can be pleasant, abiding instead with a stubborn inner dialogue about what in those observances is less than magical. I was just feeling like and acting like a Poopy Head. I wanted to cry and whine and pout about the lack of joy I felt for this time of year. I didn’t feel connected to it, and found instead that it amounted to an element of my personal “work plan.” And I couldn’t find a way to talk about it since a) it’s not up to my peeps to "fix" this issue, and b) the sharing of shitty feelings about the holidays is the relationship equivalent of kicking a puppy -- ra

Winter Lessons I deeply resent the Hallmark Channel. We had a good thing going for a while -- I turned to them for some vapid-but-salving entertainment. I turned to them for the simple pleasures of a baker who gives away cups of coffee to her regular clients and who assists the impossibly beautiful cop in his murder investigations. I turned to them for the lush escape of a beautiful, beloved  renovator who transforms homes in a small coastal town in the Northwest… and who assists the impossibly beautiful cop in his murder investigations. There was always great scenery (many filmed in NW Canada), super outerwear (who knew that any one baker / decorator / home renovator could have so many stylish, statement-making coats in her wardrobe?) and pleasant, if predictable, outcomes. And then the holidays arrived (in October…) and things went South for us. Now when I tune in, I’m confronted with lots of shiny people who suffer implausible gaps in their perfect, shiny lives and the ent