Blog

Posted on

Five Ways to Survive the Parent Teacher Interview

There are some things about parenting that seem to go either one way or another. Either you are blessed with reasonable, flexible, and compliant kids and breeze through life, or you live in the other blessed land. One of heart palpitations every time the school’s name pops up on your phone. Two roads diverged at some point, I suppose.

Remembering the parent teacher interview

Why We Do It

There are many things I’d rather do than answer that potentially explosive phone call. An injury? An incident? Another panic attack? All potential treasures to behold… but if I’m honest, nothing used to top the anxiety, nothing made me want to stay home forever more, than the parent teacher interview. But, it’s necessary for all the right reasons, and with time I have learned that it is possible to attend one of these meetings without tearily hitting-up an ice cream machine on the way home. And you love your kids, so on we march.

Here are five ways you can survive and thrive through a parent teacher interview, even (and especially) if your kiddo is struggling.

1: Address Your Child’s Anxiety First

Sometimes when I have to find words to support my child, I find myself feeling better, too. In this case, you can empathize about the pressure they may be feeling and put their mind at ease. That’s because you’ve been keeping regular communication with the teacher and any hiccups have been dealt with immediately beforehand. The parent teacher interview is not the time for bringing up issues that have already been addressed regarding behaviour or other aspects of your child’s school life. Your meeting should have a broader focus and put as much emphasis on success that your child is having than the support they continue to need. So, reassure your child (and yourself) that there won’t be any embarrassing surprises. To ensure this is possible, do keep in good contact with the teacher by email, text or whatever works best to make sure these conversations are timely.

2: Reassure Yourself

When things are challenging for your kiddo at school, it can be difficult to walk through those halls with your nose in the air, feeling great. But the reality is, if you’re anything like me, you’re so hyper-focused on your anxiety about being judged by a teacher or malevolent ex that you can hardly keep your shit together just to get to the room (and your nose is probably pointing straight at the floor – just like your eyes).

The reality is that the fact that you’re showing up means something to this teacher. They’ve been putting a lot of hours in with your kiddo – in fact, they probably see more of your kid than you do. Remember, you’re not there to discuss your parenting, so judgment is off the table. You’re there to discuss your child’s needs and progress during the hours that the school is responsible for their care and development. The spotlight is not on you here – it’s on your child’s teacher.

3: Acknowledge the Complexity

We often forget that our children are entities of their own – entirely separate from us. As much as we can use our influence to coach our children into making good decisions, the reality is that we have no control over whether they make them or not. Once a parent understands this fully, it becomes easier for them to have some compassion for their own experience in this parenting thing.

A parent teacher interview

Whether there are challenges around academic performance, social integration or behavior, or any of the myriad of difficulties that can face our young children, it weighs heavy on the parent. We do ourselves a favor when we don’t add guilt to our cauldron of emotions. We have to honor our children’s right to agency as they get older, whether we like what that looks like – or not.

So, show up as a part of your child’s team. Show up as a curious investigator ready to help. Show up as tough love if you have to. But don’t show up embodying a victim of the teacher’s potential scorn. Just as above, the energy you use imagining judgment is stolen from your sense of calm and your ability to be objective and act as a problem solver.

4. Come to the Parent Teacher Interview With Questions

Your questions will help better inform your understanding of your son or daughter’s successes and challenges.

  • Where does he/she need more support?
  • How do we access more support?
  • Where is he/she improving or excelling?
  • Can we get a plan in motion?
  • What can we do to assist at home?
  • How is his/her education program plan supporting him/her? Could the program plan benefit from some changes?
  • Need more ideas? Click here

5. Show Appreciation

Let’s be real: the parent/teacher relationship can be challenging in some ways. If this is the case, it may be even more important to maintain regular contact with the teacher and to show appreciation for the things that they do for your child. Like you, teachers are often exhausted parents. A little thank you goes a long way because although all teachers should offer fair and equal treatment all the time – they are humans trying to regulate their emotions, also.

Successful parent teacher interview

You might thank them for:

  • The time they took with you today
  • The patience they show while working with your child
  • The attention they give to your child’s needs
  • Treating your child fairly
  • An email that they sent
  • The extras they do behind the scenes

The parent teacher interview is notoriously disliked by parents of children with challenges at school. These tips allow you to put them into perspective and make the most of the time you have with such an important and influential person in your child’s life.

Posted on

How to Grow Garlic From A Clove

Of all the plants in the garden, none have made such an impact on our culinary lifestyle as garlic. Not only is it an important ingredient in a vast array of cooking traditions from Italian to Mediterranean, Asian, and Middle Eastern, it has even made its way into folklore and myths as a way to ward off evil spirits and vampires. And while almost every person on planet Earth couldn’t do without it, my mother complains every time it is used – without fail. My conclusion? Mother is a vampire. Explains her love of ballroom dance.

Keeping My Mother Out of Your Garden

Whether you’re plagued by vampires or not, you can never have enough garlic in the garden, in my opinion. Learning how to grow garlic from a clove begins with timing – the clove(s) needs to be planted in mid-to-late fall. Where I live, that means that I can use my garden beds all summer for their entire season and plant garlic going into the off-season. Early spring brings bright green shoots bursting through the soil. By the end of March, the garlic in the garden is offering beautiful and welcome green to the scene. In June, the garlic is ready, and my garden bed becomes available for the next crop of carrots or beets to grow in their place while the garlic dries. Okay, Okay, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s start at the beginning:

Choose Your Weapon

If you’ve never paid much attention, you might think there’s only one kind of vampire repellant on the market. But with a little interest, you’ll find that there are garlic heads in all kinds of shapes, sizes and varieties! Whether you’re looking for a compact variety for spicy impact or elephant garlic for its mild garlicky boost, just grow what you like to eat!

Hard or Soft Neck?

Garlic comes in two distinct variations – hardneck and softneck. Hardneck generally have a punchier taste, woodier paper and will produce a scape. A garlic scape is a delicacy that grows upward from the garlic stalk before the garlic is ready. It is generally cut once it has grown one full turn and is pointing upward again. Enjoy these scapes chopped, pickled or sauteed for a mild boost. Softneck varieties don’t produce a scape, but they can be braided into the long, beautiful braids you see hanging from the rafters in Italy. Most garlic at the grocery store are softneck varieties because they have a longer shelf life.

While I like to recommend visiting a local farm or nursery to buy the healthiest heads of garlic, in a pinch you can even grow garlic from the supermarket. Either way, look for healthy-looking bulbs with unbroken skin.

Before you can grow garlic from a clove, it needs to be broken away from its neighbouring cloves in the rest of the head. Break down your chosen heads of garlic into cloves by gently pulling them apart but don’t remove their protective paper. If your efforts are successful, each of these cloves will become a whole head of garlic.

Prep Your Medium

Grow Garlic From a Clove
Grow Garlic From a Clove

When growing garlic from a clove, the plant will do best in rich soil. Make sure the soil drains well and doesn’t pool water on the surface. Be sure to mix in some compost or well-rotted manure-based fertilizer before planting to condition the soil, and/or ask your garden center for a garlic-specific fertilizer. If you like it technical, garlic likes a pH of 6-7.5.

Put Your Plan into Action

Growing garlic from a clove requires placement of 6 inches of distance from the next clove and one foot from the next row. This will ensure that your garlic has room to grow naturally without interference.

An index finger plunged into the soil provides a channel to slide the clove 2 inches under it. Insert the clove with the pointed end facing upward. This pointed end is what will eventually produce the germ and eventually the stock of the head of garlic.

Before You Retreat

The finishing touches on your garlic include water and mulch. First, water in the garlic until you’re sure the soil is damp around the clove. Now, cover your garlic bed in a healthy 1-2 inch layer of mulch. This can include chopped-up branches, dried leaves, commercial mulch or storebought straw. This layer will suppress weeds, insulate the garlic during the cold of the winter, and will ensure that soil erosion due to wind and water is kept to a minimum. Keep your garlic moist throughout the growing season, but do not over-water.

Early Spring

In early spring, offer your garlic bed another blast of nutrients with some of your remaining fertilizer from planting. This will give your garlic a bump in nutrients through the growing season which will support it up until harvest.

Garlic drying
Garlic heads drying

Harvesting Your Garlic

When growing garlic from a clove, they will eventually start to look a little ‘sorry’ – that when you’ll know it’s almost time to harvest! Garlic will begin to yellow and dry as its bulb reaches full size, letting you know it’s time to dig it up. Begin by gently lifting a central head out of the soil with a garden fork and checking for size to determine whether or not to go forward with the harvest or wait another few days for some additional growth.

Lay your harvested garlic out to dry in a dry, warm environment for 2-3 weeks before cutting stalks for storage or braiding. Congratulations!! You have successfully grown garlic from a clove! Want to braid your vampire repellant into a fashionable neck piece? See how here.

Posted on

Churned Butter at Home

churned butter

When I was young, my grandfather tried to gut a jackfish in front of my sister and me. The reaction he got from us was biblical – crying, screaming, the whole thing. Before long he gave up, placed Jack back in the pail of water he’d come up in, and let us watch as he swam away unharmed. My ‘squeamishness’ that day is regularly brought up at family gatherings where everyone reinforces what a wimp I am. (It’s been 35 years, I think the horse is dead…) It has taken me until my 40th birthday to realize that I’m really not squeamish in most situations. What happened that day was a reflection of my lack of exposure to things in life that would bolster my resilience when faced with something new.

Years Later

At my house, my mother was so allergic to almost all animals that my exposure to them was essentially nil. No shit – I had to strip down in our attached garage and immediately launder everything I wore if I had stepped foot in a friend’s home. And it wasn’t just my mom that stood between me and animals, either. Once, we got an opportunity to ride some horses at a family member’s acreage, but the fun was immediately cut short because my sister’s face and eyes were swelling.

At that age, who could fault me for not being able to pet a dog comfortably – let alone gut a fish? Gradually, I began to see my lack of understanding of animals extended to the flora around me, too. I had moved to a beautiful coastal town in 2020 and the exposure to all the lush green rainforests around me called at me to do, learn, and experience more. So, I did what any sane person would do and went directly into my fears to face them head-on. I started a huge garden, learned to filet fresh salmon out of the river (H is best at this), and got a dog. I washed chicken eggs, sewed boat covers, homeschooled, and found friends who wanted to live the same way.

Now that my children are old enough to understand, I want to imbue them with as much knowledge about the nature of our earth as I can. I don’t want them to be young adults who can’t identify all the vegetables at the grocery store – you know, the ones who are 40 and still putting ranch on every damn thing?

I want my kids to understand where food comes from and how it goes back to the earth in a cycle that supports all life. I want them to understand more of the world in general. So, where should I begin? I searched my memory basket and remember making churned butter in a Mason jar as a small child (and wondering if it would ever end). It’s easy, inexpensive, and provides lots of opportunities to discuss how this important resource was made in the past. This would be perfect.

Churned Butter

  • Start by purchasing 2 cups of whipping cream. Any attempt to use a low-fat alternative here will fail!
  • Let your whipping cream come to room temperature before pouring it into your mason jar or stand mixer. (I took pity on my little guy and we used the stand mixer).
  • Start your stand mixer on low and gradually increase the speed until just before the cream splatters and makes a mess. Place a tea towel over the mixing machine to catch any splatter that does occur.
  • Continue to run your mixer this way until it forms a thick whipped cream.
  • After taking a mandatory sampling or two of your whipped cream, turn the mixer up again and keep churning the butter until it splits into what looks like butter and cloudy water (this “water” is buttermilk).
  • Pick your butter up and run cold water over it butter as you knead it into a ball
  • If you want to salt your churned butter, sprinkle some in now. If you want to add herbs and seasonings, click here for a few ideas.
  • Reserve the buttermilk to get the most out of your whipping cream!
  • Click here to see butter churning in action.

Why Churning Your Own Butter is Better

  • You control the quality of the butter by using quality ingredients
  • You get access to the freshest product (especially when you make small batches regularly)
  • Education – your child learns more about traditional foods and how they are made
  • It’s easy and fun!

Using Your Leftover Weigh

You’ve just made your first batch of home churned butter! Now you can turn your attention to that leftover weigh you set aside when it separated. Although the possibilities are endless, we love to use it in these buttermilk pancakes. For other ideas of what can be done with your leftover buttermilk, check out this list.

Posted on

Leftist Agenda – Please Stay the Fuck Away from My Family (or, Fuck You Gillette)

To the tune of: Learn to Swim – Tool

As a thirty-something wife, mother and business owner who isn’t as comfortable with conflict as I’d like to be, I typically abstain from these conversations. I prefer, instead, to hold my tongue until I can get home and throw up on myself. Today, though, things are different.

Last night, my husband came home to find me agitated and expressing my concerns about the political state of a country that has been our home all our lives, a discussion we have had together many times before. The tension around this issue has been rife in my household as it seems that anytime we venture out into public we come home more disillusioned than before. This time, however, my husband didn’t respond to my concerns about the direction that our country is headed in. I talked and he listened, and listened, and listened. But there was no conversation to be had.

There was no conversation to be had, not because he didn’t hear me, not because he didn’t agree, but because he is so tired of being chronically angry at being continuously put down everywhere he looks that he simply told me: “I cannot continue to call-out the wrongdoings of our current cultural situation and still maintain my mental health”.

Let that sink in for a minute.

This beautiful, intelligent, pillar of masculine perfection who served our country for 6 years before settling into civilian life where he works arguably as hard for me and our two boys (and who, BTW, has never been anything but gentle to me), said to me in our kitchen that he just couldn’t any more. My husband is shutting down.

There is no excuse for this kind of mass manipulation of public sentiment against men in a country as educated and democratic as ours. Simply no excuse.

I woke up today to this horrifying new ad by Gillette. Did it show up on my feed because people were outraged? No. Just like always, this vile rhetoric was being celebrated online by so many of my friends, family and colleagues. Women who I have come to respect, mothers raising young boys, all taking time to celebrate this disgusting advertisement for the lie of benevolence it purports to be.

Saying No Thank You to Malevolence

I’m not entertaining this bullshit anymore. Allowing this garbage to continue and saying nothing is tantamount to allowing my children to be malevolently abused by a communist media whose agenda it is to expose men to psychological torment for political gain.

It hearkens back to the ‘good old days’. You know, the not-so-good ones wherein a fascist dictator nearly overtook the entirety of Europe by playing on and inflating the sense of victimhood of his compatriots. The axe that forced a wedge between the Jewish community and the rest of German society. We know better.

Well, we could know better if it wasn’t for identity politics and the communist brainwashing that we’re all forced to hear incessantly from that Trudeau thing. Trudeau would castrate our men himself, if only he had the time. Amidst constant assaults on our ability to sustain our province (and hello! consequently our country), this prime minister has done an incredible job of confusing the issues that first wave feminists worked so hard to achieve – and playing on the legacy resentments of women. What it has turned out is a loud minority of women so consumed by their resentment and victimhood as to justify the institutional dehumanization of men.

I see this widespread degradation as such a horrendous act of intolerance that I can hardly understand how these women manage to overlook the hypocrisy of their position. Hint: if your ideology requires you to demonize and denigrate an entire gender, it’s likely that you’re acting more out of victimhood (regression) than of ‘progressivism’.

No Boys Allowed (unless we have heavy lifting to do…)

We are raising boys in a climate in which they are no longer welcome. Regardless of whether my husband or my children have acted unjustly toward another citizen, they have been (and will be) characterized as if they did. Because we don’t want little boys anymore, and we don’t want men, either. The only safe place to exist in this ‘new’ Canada is in some obscure genderless corner of the LGBTQMNOP community – but if you’re a white male conservative?? Fuhgeddaboudit with a capital FU. This is the overt action of intolerance espoused by the very people who say that they are fighting intolerance. These people would make excellent Catholic priests. (No – it’s okay for me to say this. At least you’d think it’s okay for me to say with the way we have cut Christian words like ‘Christmas’ out of polite vernacular).

This is the same petty rationale used by women to exercise extreme manipulation of their children throughout divorce proceedings just to get a jab-in at Daddo, and the same one used by Trudeau to invoke this concept of ‘wrong speak’. We call-in the government like Big Daddy every time someone is mean to us, and now Big Daddy-Brother is here to stay.

With the torrent of censorship befalling our intellectual institutions, early education programs and infiltrating our communities, it’s a wonder we can even communicate at all. I have now stopped consuming anything that refers to ‘the patriarchy’ or feminism in any way. I don’t ‘do’ victimhood and I don’t do ‘toxic masculinity’ or ‘micro aggressions’. We have lost the ability to talk about people, without talking about the groups in which they belong – without regard to whether it’s right or wrong to make such unbelievable claims. When the rights of the group overtake the right for people to exist individually and to be held individually responsible for their actions and behaviours, we are on the wrong track, friends.

We have become so fucking entitled to our first-world rights, so complacent, that we have now made it okay for the Government to act to regulate, not just our economic infrastructure, but to live in our homes, schools and bedrooms as invited guests to help us decide what kind of person is allowed to exist and how they’re allowed to speak.

Our men have been fighting our wars since the beginning of time, and they have been spiritually and psychologically dismantled as a result of that – many times the result of a UN whim. Yet, instead of thanks, we are demonstrative in our hostility against men at every opportunity.

For as many people that think that talking about a gender this way is okay, it’s a wonder they think they’re safe at all. Call me crazy, but if all men are toxic sociopaths as the left would have you believe – I don’t think that denigrating them in public, in media and in social forums would be the best way to overcome that concern.

Let’s Fight About Equality, Shall We?

We are so in love with our victimhood stories that we seem to actually think that it’s okay to have a government and a societal agenda that is intent on widening the divide between men and women and that this is helpful. I can’t think of a more counterproductive agenda.

Around this time in the article is where I’m supposed to start explaining myself, telling others how ‘I’ve been victimized too’ and how ‘I really am a good feminist’, and I’m not going to do any of that. It doesn’t matter where I come from or how I was raised, wrong is wrong.

We didn’t become ‘the west’ by scapegoating masses of our society and throwing stones at them in advance of their crimes. Consideration for the TRUE value of diversity – diversity of language, thought, perspective and art– is fast being lost. We’ve got ourselves into such a hysterical tantrum that we are comfortable perpetuating this incredibly harmful rhetoric while our fathers, uncles, grandparents and sons become increasingly marginalized and scapegoated for communist social gain.

And if you don’t think it’s communist – think again. A reread of 1984 might do us all some good. Or maybe we could all read such incredible depictions of the horrors of scapegoating and tyranny brought to us courtesy of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s works. But we won’t do that – we can’t stomach it. For us, showing up to shit on masculinity is, at its very core, reasonable – and we don’t have to take responsibility for the damage that it does to ALL of us. It doesn’t take a wizard to know that these kinds of tactics do nothing to move us forward. It’s the energetic equivalent of indiscriminate terrorism, or of cutting off our nose to spite our face.

Breaking Up

I’ve lost many friends in the last few years to an intentional distancing in which I could no longer be around these disgusting conversations. Masculinity being called toxic – what a terrible implication! If we were to call Feminism out for its toxicity there would be an outcry in the streets the likes of which we have never seen. And for a supposed redneck city, Edmonton sure has its leftist politics scattered in every corner of the map. I’d move – but what if it’s worse on the other side of the border? Can Californians still have conversations about conservative notions without risking being labeled transphobic or fascist? I think not. I’ll tell you who’s fascist, Knights of the Leftist Kingdom, and it ain’t me!

I’m ready to lose more friends if I need to, too. Every time I see another friend advocating for censorship of a group or an idea, I take four giant. steps. back. It is my responsibility as a Canadian to distinguish the innocuous from the criminal, in Janice Fiamenco’s words. To call out injustice where there is criminal harm, and to protect the innocent men of my family against the zombie-like totalitarianism of the far left by speaking up for them when I see blanket accusations and harm being done in the name of righteous self-indulgence. Maybe these hateful feminists should practice hearing the other side, practice being offended and growing a back bone – after all y’all offend me every day.

Maybe we could start by modeling to our daughters that indiscriminate labeling of a gender is no more help than blaming every member of the western ‘white’ for the atrocities committed against our first nations communities long before our time. Maybe we could show more love for the incredible currents of strength residing in the men that we love and stop maiming the many for the deeds of the few.

What does the goal of self-loathing in men really accomplish besides lighting the fire of hatred under their feet? Then again, maybe I’m wrong– maybe the real goal isn’t about men at all. Maybe it’s just part of the globalization of communism – the intended proliferation of governments like communist China and Cuba, whom our Prime Minister is so oft to compliment and idealize.

So goodbye to Gillette razors, you won’t be seen in my house anymore after today. And I fully expect to have to educate and re-educate my boys in the social sciences as they age from home, where the communist angle can be squashed around the dinner table like the cockroach that it is. If we truly love our rights and first-world freedoms, we had better start behaving in a way that allows us to maintain them – because right now we are handing over every ounce of our power to stand confidently and autonomously in our Canada – to a man with an agenda who wants to tell you how to speak, how to live and how to earn a living.

If we do nothing about this continuous assault on our freedoms to speak openly about issues that concern us and continue with this petty nonsense, then so-be-it. I’ll see you in the labour camps. Or, we could learn to swim.

Posted on

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson Back Home in Alberta

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. Digital Image. The Varsity. 8 October, 2017. Web. 12 February, 2018.

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson. Digital Image. The Varsity. 8 October, 2017. Web. 12 February, 2018. <thevarsity.ca>

An Antidote to Chaos

His international book launch tour is in full swing, with the most recent of talks being given at his old stomping ground, the Grande Prairie Regional College on February 10. Peterson discussed the release of his new book, 12 Rules for Life – An Antidote to Chaos to a sold out and enthusiastic crowd.

If you’ve been watching the news, walking the bookstores, or doing almost anything else – there’s a good chance you’ve heard of Jordan Peterson. An Alberta-born professor at the University of Toronto and clinical psychologist, Peterson has made headlines of late in his response to Canada’s compelled speech laws (Bill C-16), and his adamant opposition to postmodern rhetoric and social justice advocacy.

Beyond Media

If all you know about Peterson came from the news, there’s a good chance you’ve got a narrow understanding of his philosophy, and of his approach to life. Despite all the contentious news coming out of Peterson’s outspoken dissent to compelled speech and the polarizing sound bites our media is so oft to provide, Peterson is an encyclopedia of knowledge and insight, and a figure worthy of consideration and pride among Albertans and Canadians alike.

With nearly 300 YouTube videos and over 800,000 followers, it’s hard to say his insights are limited to the issues that have brought him visibility in the public sphere. A true intellectual, Peterson’s breadth of expertise extends from the political sciences, to clinical psychology (PhD McGill University 1991). He taught at Harvard University (’93-’98) before returning to Canada for the University of Toronto (current).

Peterson expresses keen interest and knowledge in 20th century history, including but not limited to the world wars and their impact on our understanding of the collective human psyche. He is a library of knowledge where it relates to prominent thinkers and philosophical figures from Nietzsche to Jung, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Piaget. Integrated in his philosophical teachings is his understanding and work with mythology and religion, attempting to attribute applicability of the stories of the past to the relevant present. His overall message? Stop complaining and fix your life – something our youth has hungered for, and something that twenty and thirty something males are gobbling up at a desperate rate.

Peterson On the Fly

Peterson spoke for nearly 3 hours, discussing everything from the nervous systems of crustaceans to the development and rearing of malevolent psychopaths and their manifestation in society (via rules #1, 6 and 7). His improvisation on stage is something to be observed, often determining the lecture topic once he’s got a clear view of his audience. Perhaps even more compelling, though, is the sobering existential dialogue that often results from question period. Taking 6 questions from the audience, we saw Peterson at his philosophical best. Questions were heard with interest, and responses were laid out with the wisdom of what could only be expected from one of the greatest thinkers of our time, and the accuracy of a seasoned clinician.

12 Rules for Life. Digital Image. Goodreads. Web. 12 February, 2018. <goodreads.com>

We watched with heavy hearts as one audience member asked how to progress in life in the aftermath of having witnessed the brutal murder of a family member as a child, and the continued malevolent emotional trauma he has since endured. Peterson took in the question with a sincere interest, and remained stoic throughout his response. The manner of his response was reminiscent of the parenting expression ‘meet them where they’re at’. He met this person where he was, showed sincere appreciation for the magnitude of his despair, and offered him a way forward. Without fanfare or drama, he discussed the perceived need to put distance between the subject’s family and himself, while putting emphasis on fostering connections with other trauma survivors to anchor away the sense of loneliness and isolation that these experiences can no doubt cause.

Questions around how to live in a time of such chaos were tempered with Peterson’s wisdom about the role that media has in generating a sense of chaos and confusion for its consumers, and his feeling that all is certainly not lost in the West. Regarding efforts to help others being swallowed up by tragedy and despair, he offered the biblical reference: “Cast not pearls before swine”. In other words, put your efforts into helping those who wish to be willing participants in the process.

Look Elsewhere for a Pick-Me-Up

For many of Peterson’s followers, the book offers non-academics their first opportunity to consume his written work. His previous work, Maps of Meaning – the Architecture of Belief, is a lengthy and highly academic read coming in at nearly $140.00 at local bookstores. Those of us not living in the world of academia and clinical studies have struggled to digest the work to extract the full meaning of his writings. His new book offers the best of Peterson’s take on life in language we can all understand, with all its inherent darkness and even more-so, its inherent inspiration.

“…life is complex and tragic and difficult. And the problem with the public portrayal of the ideal state of humanness as happiness is that it makes all of these young people feel ashamed of their own suffering. …If you’re constantly in a state of satisfaction and happiness, then nothing is going to affect you deeply enough so that you’ll become deep. And life without depth is, by definition, shallow and meaningless. In order to regard anything as truly important, you also have to regard its loss as truly meaningful and that means that to open yourself up to experiences of deep meaning also simultaneously means that you have to open yourself up to the possibility of deep hurt and sorrow.”-Jordan Peterson

[transcribed from Jordan Peterson on Why Happiness is Deceiving. YouTube. Rob Velzeboer, 2017].

Peterson describes the book as intentionally dark, and delves further into his insights on the embodiment of the logos (reason and logic in Jungian psychology), in an effort to maintain balance between the worlds of order and chaos inherent in all of our lives. Peterson’s 12 steps remind us to take our life and our responsibilities seriously. Rather than strive for happiness, to strive to become [someone] worthy of, above all else, our own self-respect.