Dear Jessica Brennan, Sometime around 1997, I got an idea to send a letter to Dad’s cousins in England and ask them if they had a family photo of him with his mum and dad, because all of the photos Dad’s family had brought from the UK to Canada, had…

Dear Jessica Brennan, One of the evilest acts of emotional violence we commit against each other as humans is ironically most often thought of in a religious context. This, of course, is the sin (word chosen intentionally) of shunning. Shunning doesn’t always occur within the walls of a place of…

Dear Jessica Brennan, In the town of Whitby, in North Yorkshire, way up on a hill sits the ruins of Whitby Abbey. It was first built in 657 AD, then demolished by the Danes in the mid 860s. The structure was rebuilt in 1220 and then stripped and destroyed by…

Dear Jessica Brennan, One thing I’ve noticed during the pandemic is that there is this weird time-warp occurring. In the outside world, the virus rapidly takes control of the news cycle, the healthcare system and people’s bodies. What is real this morning is dated by this afternoon. As we learn…

Dear Jessica Brennan, In this very open and public world we live in, we tend to think that the good works we do must be seen, in order to have an impact. I have noticed though, that the opposite might actually be true. Helping someone else accomplish something with no…

Dear Jessica Brennan, At this point in my life, I must need to learn about grief, because in the first six weeks of 2020 I got a crash course, as I lost five people I loved. Initially, the first thing I learned was this. Grief is as individual as the…

Dear Jessica Brennan, A poem. Love, Mum xo Deep Runs the River My face is still, And what you see, Is a quiet presence, So low key. But deep runs a river, For you to consider, Deep runs the river in me. Cool like the wind, But never a storm. …

Dear Jessica Brennan, I once heard Tina Fey say that when you are first doing improv, one of the most difficult things to learn is when to enter a scene. Do you enter it right when you think of something to say? Do you enter when you think you might…