Last December, I posted the above picture on Facebook and announced that I was done my memoir. Three and a half years of working on the beast–a huge project that was connected to my Masters degree in (MFA in Creative Writing) from The City University of Hong Kong–and I had a first draft ready by December 15th, much to my…   …read more.

I am really excited to announce that I will be taking part in this event called “CO-OPALOOZA” as my final performance in Canada before returning to Beijing, China this summer. And what a great event to be part of! This is the first CO-OPALOOZA picnic, open to the public and located at the Gay Lea Dairy Heritage Museum site near…   …read more.

When my mom retired in her late fifties from teaching, she got straight to work doing the creative things she had been longing to do for several decades. She’s a poet and a singer and a songwriter–three things I relate to intimately–and was always so amazingly supportive of my career, in part because she had put hers aside to pursue…   …read more.

I am so happy to report that we are in the final stages of the new album for 2016! It’s a full album with three themes: Songs For Adults / Songs For Kids / Songs For Adults w/ Kids. There will be 16 songs, only 2 of which are re-makes of older material that I couldn’t resist re-recording to capture…   …read more.

After six months of taking my daughter to the bus stop in the morning to go to kindergarten, the days when she cried and didn’t want to go are long over. Those first couple of week mommy cried too, sad to see her baby upset and conflicted as to whether sending a three-and-a-half year old alone on a bus to…   …read more.

From September of 2015 until June of 2016, I wrote weekly blogs for Beijing Kids Magazine’s online presence. These were separate from monthly column that I write for this magazine, links to some of which you can find here. Those articles are published in the physical magazine monthly whereas these blogs only appeared online. While I no longer blog of…   …read more.

  I was asked to participate in this project called “9 Tips for 9 Months” by The American Recall Center. They’re compiling tips for a healthy pregnancy from bloggers around the world. I figured it would be fun to participate. Enjoy!   These tips are primarily for mothers pregnant for the first time. I’ve found that most mothers on their…   …read more.

As I watch the spring buds form on the trees in Beijing, I can’t help but think it’s a lot like what has happened to our family in the past three years—a sudden growth of two little ones followed by their constant flourishing, expansion, and blooming. Our daughter has now turned three and we plan to place her in a…   …read more.

She asked me how things were going with Guo Jian and her eyes glinted with worry and concern (and maybe a bit of pity, but only the kind that comes from a big heart, not the patronizing kind.) She is my friend here in Beijing, but she is not from here. Like me, she is from the West—a Western wife…   …read more.

It’s been awhile since I wrote for this blog. There’s reasons for that, but the primary one is this: I’ve spent the past eight months or so fantasizing about changing the blog name to: “Queer Girl Gets Divorced.” Seriously. It’s not that I don’t love the guy–in fact, that’s part of the problem. If I didn’t love him, divorce would…   …read more.