Hi! I'm Tara Robertson.

My dad died last Monday. He was 79. It was shocking but not unexpected. The next morning my wife and I got in the car and drove 10 hours north from Vancouver to Prince George to be with and support my mom. My biological family is complicated for me and so is my relationship with the town I grew up in. I could feel the investment I've made in my healing and growth through therapy, movement work and coaching, and it was still hard. I have the love and support of many people, and it was still...

Happy solstice! For me time is moving very quickly and also slowly. How is it almost July already? It feels like we just planted our garden and now we're eating from it. This salad was from our garden: Drunken Lady lettuce (she is frilly, droopy and unruly), greens, baby kale and nasturtium and chive flowers. Putting flowers in salad makes me feel like a fancy fairy. The garden has been A Very Good Thing in my life. The snow peas are halfway up the trellis and there some that are ready to...

What's your relationship to receiving help? For me, it's not been a strength of mine. But the last couple of years, it's been a real...growth area. One year ago my wife had endometrial cancer and had a hysterectomy. (Thankfully she didn't have to have chemo or radiation and is now cancer free.) Part of navigating her surgery was thinking about what kind of help we wanted to ask for and then navigating various generous and thoughtful offers of help. I'm much more comfortable offering help....

Last week I found myself at two very different events. At one of them I felt I was exactly where I should be and at the other one I was mumbling to myself: "what am I doing here?" It was disorienting, but by using my values as a tool to understand the match/mismatch, it all makes sense now. sample from Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture The "yes! this is exactly where I should be" feeling was teaching coaching skills to scientists at NOAA Fisheries, NASA, and the California Water...

baby radishes! omg! Thanks for filling out the poll in the last newsletter. We decided to call the garden Earthseed 653, from Octavia Butler's books with the Dewey Decimal system number for gardens. 57% of people who votes in the poll two weeks ago picked Earthseed. My friend Vanessa Richards, who is an amazing artist, facilitator and educator suggested putting the two together. My values are my compass When you live and work in alignment with your values you feel aligned. Some of my values...

The best thing in my life is the garden I'm growing with a few friends in someone's front yard. Three of us were librarians. Two weeks ago we prepped the garden and this weekend we planted the first batch of seeds: veggies, herbs and flowers. It's the kind of work that I would feel like a chore on my own, but as a small group it was fun and satisfying. Slight detour: I loved everything about the Artemis II space mission. The teamwork! The stories! The competency! The diversity! YES! Amanda...

As a workplace inclusion consultant I see a lot of things from a systems perspective. For example, what are the design decisions we make around hiring/onboarding/promotions/layoffs that create fairer and more equitable workplaces, (or not)? After I had written this newsletter I could see that system level design decisions are a through thread through what I'm sharing in this newsletter: How do we design leadership events that are nourishing? How do we build movements that creates liberation...

Em and I launched Seasons of Change and co-lead our first session for spring. It was such a delightful group of people! We invited participants to think back to what they dreamed in the winter time and what seeds they were choosing to plant in their lives. Then, we invited people draw their gardens. We took our own medicine (that sounds so much nicer than dogfooding, don't you think?) and drew the seeds that we want to grow in our lives. This is what I drew: The raspberry bushes are ones that...

Seasons of Change - starting THIS FRIDAY! When Em House and I started brainstorming about what we want Seasons of Change to be we were both excited to build something that's creative and stretches what hosting a seasonal group on Zoom could feel like. How can we involve all the senses? How can we use embodiment? One of my favourite ideas is a digital postcard to get people starting to think, feel and dream before each the live session. It goes out later today! If you're on the fence about...