The Power of Daily Journaling & Doodling
April 28, 2024
FROM SLUDGE TO SHAZAM ⚡️- A day without journaling is like a day without exercise. I write to break through the morning sludge.
Journaling uncovers the ideas you didn’t know were hiding beneath your moaning, groaning, and scrolling.
Becoming a writer with a unique voice, an open heart, and a distinct point of view is a decades-long quest. I’m still on it. And I won’t get there if I don’t face the page and dump out my petty grievances first.
Profundity, gratitude, and grace are always hiding below that crusty layer. Breaking through it is like discovering warm honey under a layer of wax. Doing it increases your positivity and makes you better equiped to handle the rest of your day.
If you didn’t start your morning with journaling, there’s still time. Add drawings too.
Epilogue: My “Sludge to Shazam” moment yesterday unearthed, what I thought, was a meaningful way to describe our universal search for motherly love: Are You My Mother? ➡️ I Miss My Mommy 📚 – my new graphic novel (link in bio).
I Miss My Mommy is my new picture book for big people without parents … because sometimes we need images to explain the language of loss.
The perfect gift for someone who is missing (or wrestling with) their deceased mum on Mother’s Day.
Available at penjarproductions.com.
Printed and shipped with care by Lulu Press, Inc.
Bookmarks for Orphaned Adults
April 28, 2024
To all the people in Canada and the US who have already pre-ordered my new graphic novel, I Miss My Mommy: 150 Portraits of Orphaned Adults, Thank You!
This custom bookmark and card will be arriving in your post box later this week.
I Miss My Mommy is the world’s first picture book for big people without parents.
It’s a love letter to orphaned adults (my people) who find calendar holidays, like Mother’s Day, especially hard.
Tell me if you agree: after you lose a parent, first you grieve that they’re gone and never coming back. Then you grieve how they affected you. I took the five stages of grief and turned them into a cast of 150 hand drawn characters, some grim, some funny, but all relatable.
I call it getting graphic about grief.
If you’re struggling with loss, I hope this book helps you find a way to sit with emotions you’ve been avoiding but can’t stop feeling.
Present the book to a friend who misses their mom on Mother’s Day, or someone who is still trying to make sense of their relationship with a parent.
I Miss My Mommy is now available for pre-order at PenJarProductions.com.
And as a thank you to those who place a Pre-Order, I will email you a FREE chapter and send you a bookmark!
Thank you, Lulu Press, Inc. ! 📚
I Miss My Mommy: a graphic novel to help orphaned adults through grief
April 10, 2024
All of us will have to do life without our parents at some point. I decided to write and illustrate a book for orphaned adults to shows what grief looks like.
I MISS MY MOMMY: 150 Portraits of Orphaned Adults takes you right to the heart of the five stages of grief through 150 portraits, some grim, some funny, but all relatable.
It’s the world’s first picture book for big people without parents!
It’s set for release May 10, 2024 – in time for Mother’s Day.
The stage you’re in may change by the hour, or even the minute. The book helps readers struggling with grief sit with emotions they’d rather avoid but can’t stop feeling.
Dip inside to find yourself, or someone you love but don’t quite understand. Better yet, present the book to someone who’s missing their mom on Mother’s Day.
Pre-order HERE!
Folks who pre-order will receive a complimentary chapter.
Mother’s Day Grief Survey
February 28, 2024
Hi Everybody:
I want to include you in a story about Mother’s Day. I know many of my friends and colleagues here have gone through the experience of losing your mothers. You’re my people.
A lot of you are also doing life without your dads. Like you, I’m an orphaned adult.
With your help, I want to write an article called, “It’s Just A Day: Orphaned Adults Share How They Get Through Mother’s Day.” To do that I have crafted a survey to capture your thoughts. (link below)
The article I’m planning, which I’d like to pitch to the Toronto Star, coincides with a book I am publishing the week of Mother’s Day. I MISS MY MOMMY: 150 Portraits of Orphaned Adults is the world’s first picture book for big people without parents. It is 280 pages of drawings and short captions about our least favourite emotion, grief. Cover reveal coming in April.
I MISS MY MOMMY captures the Five Stages of Grief through a series of intimate portraits that are funny, grim, and relatable. I called my fictional cast of mourners “The Stagers of Grief,” and I followed them around with my sketchbook and brushes as they moved through their eeriest, rawest, softest, and biggest breakthrough moments.
Unlike past Star articles about Mother’s Day, I want this one to offer a wider range of voices and experiences from our cohort (orphaned adults 45+). What I’d like to find out from you is, what kinds of feelings and memories do you bump up against every second Sunday in May? As a reminder, this article is not about not being a mother ( #Bless), it’s about being an adult whose mother is gone.
I am genuinely interested in finding out how you honour the good memories and manage the bad ones (afterall, grief can also include thoughts about the mother you wished you had). I’m not interested in writing an article that leans into saintly stereotypes about motherhood. Rather, I want to share short vignettes of how her choices and personality shaped you and the life you are leading now. I want to show how our cohort of orphaned adults is facing up to grief, and learning to manage it through rituals or self-care.
This article also won’t be about how you keep busy being a mom or dad or a grandparent on Mother’s Day. It will be about how you sit with the moments of silence that push their way through the busyness and make you consider what it meant being your mother’s child.
Through your range of voices and experiences I would like to offer other grieving readers a sense of recognition and comfort. I will honour your privacy should you choose to use a pseudonym. I hope that it inspires greater honesty in your answers.
If you are interested, please join me over at: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Q9S7F5C
Thank you for your willingness to share your notes from the road. If you mother is still with us and I have mistakenly tagged you, I sincerely apologize.
The poll will close on Wednesday, March 13.
Alison xo
Learner Profile: Megan Fleming
January 24, 2024
From Research Assistant > Podcast Host > Communications & Knowledge Translation Officer
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
Megan Fleming knows this first hand. She is the Communications and Knowledge Translation Officer at CanPath, Canada’s largest population health study.
In early 2022, Megan’s face popped up on my Zoom screen as one of 40+ learners enrolled in the Digital Communications Strategy and Social Media (2875) course I teach at the University of Toronto’s School of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies (SCS Connects). From the beginning, she was clear why she was there.
With a newly minted MA in Health Promotion from Queen’s University, Megan wanted to make the leap from an administrative role to her first job in her chosen field. Her ongoing research was showing that the job she wanted hadn’t been posted yet, and she wanted to be ready the moment it dropped. Her faith in the process was beautiful.
Over the next three months in class, Megan took the time to study the playbook for the most current best practices in digital content creation and distribution and applied them to Holding Healthy Space, a podcast she created.
This blog post from the SCS website shows the steps Megan took to prepare her skills for her new job and a new future.
Megan’s story highlights the role continuing education can play when we try to balance our personal career goals with evolving technology and emerging job roles. Her dream job appeared just as she was finishing the course.
As an instructor, I love seeing how students create valuable digital assets in class that can become the stepping stones … no, the jetpacks that thrust them into brighter, more fulfilling careers.
Way to go, Megan!
Dr. Fei-Fei Li
January 16, 2024
Computer Scientist Dr. Fei-Fei Li told Kara Swisher in a recent episode of the podcast ,On, that she only feels hopeful about the unleashing of AI across society when she feels she is “participating in the change.”
“If people like me and you, Kara — we’re not powerful or extremely rich [and Dr. Li is a female and a minority] — if people like us feel like we no longer have any say or any way to participate then the hope will be gone. But right now, as a researcher and a technology leader, I’m working with students who always make me feel hopeful. I’m working with civil society. I’m working with policy makers. I’m working with industry. And right now I’m still holding the hope. I’m not letting go of the work, therefore I’m hopeful. If I feel there is no place for people like me to participate, then that’s the beginning of trouble.”
If you’re a paralegal, a kindergarten teacher or an HR professional how can you participate?
Play with the tools. Start with a search-generative tool like PerplexityAI or Microsoft CoPilot. See how it can help you manage your home or your kids or plan your next vacation.
Next, advance to testing how it handles different aspects of your job which, yes, can be as scary as waiting for lab results from your doctor. But ignorance is never bliss.
Taking a class with other humans is always a good way to feel more supported and less alone in times of rapid change.
Finally, read Dr. Li’s latest book, “The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI.” It encourages people of different backgrounds to “join in the learning and feel the hope in the doing.”
Source:“Fei-Fei Li and a Human Approach to AI,” On with Kara Swisher” (Replay: Jan 14, 2024)
The Evolution of Digital Strategy
January 12, 2024
2024 marks ten years since I started teaching Digital Communications Strategy & Social Media (2875) at the University of Toronto.
2014 was another era: Obama (the 1st social media president) was still in office, Brazil was wild about Justin Bieber, and those of us who lived online were gripped by a condition known as #FOMO.
This slideshow looks at where we are right now:
The new year is also the perfect time to say how grateful I am to Martin Waxman, Eden Spodek, Diane Begin, Donna Papacosta, and Andrew Jenkins for showing me how to find my voice as a university instructor. Thank you as well to Cynthia Bettcher, Keri Damen, Sam Levy, Marisa Ciappara and Lee Gowen. It takes a village to ensure that learners get the most up-to-date version of their industry.
This is the advance reader copy of my new graphic novel that I’m sending out to the media.
You can see that it’s got little tags in it where my copy editor Pamela and I have spotted a few tiny bloopers that need correcting before I create the final.
But I want to show you the pièce de résistance which is those end papers.
At some point you realize that everyone in your photos is no longer here.
My thanks to Pamela Capraru, the only person I considered to copy edit this book. Thank you, P@amela!
I Miss My Mommy is the world’s 1st picture book for orphaned adults.
It’s the perfect gift for someone who’ll be missing their mum on Mother’s Day.
Available at PenJarProductions.com
Printed and shipped with care by Lulu Press, Inc. (Thanks guys).