This afternoon one of the workshop participants brought raw frozen char for a snack. It was quite tasty, very sweet. The other thing that happened this afternoon is that I got asked to be on call for the women's shelter for the weekend. I said yes, filled out a form, got the tour, was given the keys, and now if anyone needs to go stay at the shelter the police or social services will call me, and I'll go down and get them settled in. I think that sometime this week I passed whatever test was being given, because I have also been approached to help with youth anti-violence programs at the school and family support groups during the weeks I'm not helping with workshops. I'm hoping I can live up to their expectations...... time will tell.

And so, it snows. Big flakes blowing around. Kids are wearing parkas. The wind blows me helpfully to work in the morning, then freezes my face on the way home. At the post office today, three packages. Kurt Cobain's Journals, Micheal Palin's Himalaya and a gift from the real estate agents. This last provokes much hilarity at home, being a full set of barbecue implements.

Work is painful and beautiful at the same time. A women's group, and their lives have been unimaginably hard. Substance abuse, violence, children taken away, residential schools... and yet, they love to laugh, and to make others laugh. I realize, as always, that I am swallowing everyone's emotions and can't eat. A weekend workshop usually caused me to lose about five pounds. Don't know how much i'll lose in two weeks. Today my co-worker left me alone with the group, and we did some circle work. Lots of tears. At the end of the day he said to me, "I swear 9am was about an hour ago." I replied, "Maybe that's what tells us we're doing what we're supposed to be doing, that we don't watch the clock." I also know that compared to 12 hour days at the prison, 9-4 and going home for lunch seems like a picnic.

One of the men I worked with at the prison tried to kill himself on the weekend. And he was quite close to getting out.

Work was good. Very laid back, we spent a lot of time sitting in other people's offices, talking. Planned and organized all the materials for Monday, when a two-week women's treatment program starts. Another facilitator was supposed to be coming from Calgary to help, and I was just supposed to be observing, but she couldn't get her stuff together so she's not coming. Can't say I'm tremendously sorry.

The building I'm going to be working in looks like a shack from the outside, but turned out to be light and airy with high ceilings and lots of wood. My new co-worker and I seem to be on much the same page, we had no difficulty selecting which exercises to do. We laid all the ones we wanted out on a big table, so we could decide which order to do them in, and then there were quite a few times when he said, "Where's that..." and before he could finish I'd handed him the one he was thinking of. He said that we will do an afternoon of circle work this week, and that since the participants are all women he will sit out and let me facilitate by myself. I love circles.