November 2025 Vol 7 Issue 11
Tell Your Story Newsletter (TYSN):
Teaching English as a Second Language
to economic immigrants and second-language academics
Let us help you tell your story!
Welcome Mid-November 2025!
And just like that, winter descended on November 6th! The first snow of the season fell fast on the heels of rain that froze, delivering a treacherous double whammy for pedestrians and drivers.
And yet, like last November (as my newsletter archive testifies), this month has otherwise given us many days of above-seasonal warmth and bright sunshine (at or near +10 degrees Celsius). The snow and ice have melted!
To have seasons, and to notice the changes that come with each one, are distinctly Canadian–and, especially, Saskatchewanian.
The recently crimson “Manitoba Maple” tree across the street from my office reminds me that we are not only a country of winter!
As I prepare this issue of “TYSN,” we are observing Remembrance Day. Are you, like me, grieving the contents of the nightly news–a world dominated by deeply autocratic, power-hungry men, not only overseas but also close to home?
While the “leaders” of the US, Russia, China, North Korea, Israel, Afghanistan, and Sudan, to name a few, hoard material and military wealth while their own people or their neighbours suffer impoverishment, starvation, disease and an end to public education. How can we register our dissent?
As you know, good readers, we strive to stay informed about these injustices, to vote for leaders who oppose them, to support human rights’ groups and to donate to relevant charities. There are, however, smaller steps that each one of us can also take to improve our lives as part of our global community: we can live more thoughtfully.
This month, in “Article One,” I share some simple insights on seeking “richness”–not in material wealth, but in “slow living,” from Jade Bonacolta. A former Google executive, Bonacolta believes that coexisting with oppressed neighbours in a troubled world requires us to live more simply. I go one step further by trying to donate to specific causes, when I can.
In “Shop News” this month, I share a change in my contract work, as I accept an invitation to serve local children who are struggling to achieve literacy so crucial to their survival, and in our first-world country, too.
As we approach the end of 2025, may you, good readers, find ways to register dissent from the autocracies that have overtaken so much of our world. Led by men (and many fewer women) who divide and conquer by hate (putatively on the bases of race, gender, class, religion and age), these governments are rooted in greed and exclusion.
And amid the noise that the latest developments of Artificial Intelligence (AI) raise, we strive to remember that the fundamental freedom all humans deserve has only been achieved in our world by (the tragedy of) sacrifice.
As we observe this month of Remembrance, and as the late Jane Goodall has said, we must continue to resist tyranny by working for a better world. This means we must continue to believe each of us still has purpose and value, by which we can collectively overpower the malevolent forces that threaten our world.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth
Principal
Storytelling Communications
www.elizabethshih.com
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IN THIS ISSUE:
ARTICLE 1: Seven steps to live more purposefully (with Jade Bonacolta)
SHOP NEWS
ABOUT US
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Article One: Seven steps to live more purposefully, with Jade Bonacolta
With a weekly online newsletter polemically titled, “The Quiet Rich,” former Google executive and online coach Jade Bonacolta might appear to be part of the problem besetting western democratic countries—where free market capitalists pursue their own selfish gain. After all, the development of the AI industry costs trillions of dollars annually (an industry not foreign to Bonacolta), while millions of people worldwide suffer in poverty and starvation.
Bonacolta may have left Google, but she is still a high-earning tech star, as an online coach and guru to entrepreneurs, and for leading a club for LinkedIn “thought leaders.”
She may not be as mercenary as that sounds, however, as she does believe in learning from the past. She notices the irony that we may have “gotten every convenience imaginable” in the 21st century, but that we now need to revisit our grandparents’ simpler times. Why? Because our lives now are “more anxious, distracted and exhausted than ever.”
She writes of her grandparents’ lives, “What if [they] had it right all along? . . . They started their mornings with the newspaper and coffee—not scrolling through social media. They cooked Sunday dinners from scratch. They walked to the store and actually talked to their neighbours along the way.”
We fritter away our conscious minds on “Social media notifications. Breaking news alerts. Stock prices. Dating app swipes”—all for a “flood” of dopamine that our brains are not genetically wired to handle, in the first place.
She observes: “The happiest people I know have figured out what our grandparents knew instinctively: offline is the new luxury.” I’d suggest instead that living “offline is the new sanity” and ethics, too.
Bonacolta recommends “seven old-fashioned habits” to improve our lives, even as we morally try to refuse the waste that can come from some of middle- and upper-class life.
Which of these habits work for you?
(1) “Start your day with paper not screens”:
Keep a book by your bed, so you can read at least 10 pages each morning, before you look at your phone. (Try charging your phone in another room, so you don’t wake up to it.)
Bonacolta writes that our grandparents knew, if unconsciously, that “the first hour of your morning impacts your mindset for the rest of the day. Your brain will thank you.”
(2) Practice making “ordinary dinners” once per week:
She recommends buying a cookbook that genuinely interests you. Then, “every Sunday for the next month, cook one new meal from it. . . . You’ll be surprised by how much you enjoy the process of creating something new with your hands.”
If you live in a busy household with adult careers plus children to care for, how about trying to cook a “new” dinner, once per month? And use that as a break from the “old” dinners you’ve (and I’ve) been rotating for years.
(3) Keep a “free library” at home:
Bonacolta recommends that you buy extra copies of a couple of your favourite books, if your budget allows for it. Then, when friends visit, you can share a copy with them (and they, in turn, may do so, with you).
She writes: “Books are meant to be shared, not just displayed on a shelf.”
(4) Keep a “little things” list to observe life’s goodness:
In a small (e.g. dollar-store) notebook, jot down one good thing that happens every day, before you fall asleep. Examples she includes are “a nice email from a client,” a “delicious meal” you ate, some “hilarious” humour that arose.
Then, “re-read the whole list on New Year’s Eve. . . . You’ll be shocked by how many beautiful moments you would have forgotten otherwise.”
(5) Take a “white-space walk”:
Once per week, Bonacolta recommends taking a “20-minute walk with no phone, no music, no podcast. Just you and your thoughts.”
This teaches us that “boredom isn’t the enemy.” On the contrary, when you feel bored, your best ideas develop: “They need a little white space.”
(6) Have some “vinyl nights”:
Bonacolta suggests that we listen to an entire album of a favourite singer or band, “from start to finish.” (I suggest trying this over the Christmas holiday season): She adds, “No skipping, no multi-tasking. Just appreciating.” She argues that music can be an “event” and not just “background noise” to the rest of our busy days.
(7) Take “1-minute voice messages”:
Finally, she urges us to send a voicemail or “voice memo” to let family and friends know you’re thinking of them. I would add, to remind them that you love them!
This should not be a text or social media message. “A voice memo lets them hear the warmth in your tone.”
While telephones were invented to connect us with loved ones far away, smartphones now “disconnect us from the people closest to us.” We might try using them for their fundamental use–as telephones!
And if we’re tempted (as I am) to dismiss Bonacolta for her apparent privilege, consider her closing words:
“There are seven weeks left until New Year’s Eve. Try one of these habits every week for the next seven weeks . . . . And for these final months of 2025, give yourself permission to slow down a little. To spend less time on screens. To stop multitasking all the time. To do fewer things that matter more, with the people who matter most.”
The message of calm and peace that can transpire might be the best gift you could offer loved ones and yourself, in this chaotic world.
And now it’s your turn: How do you live more purposefully or meaningfully, in these troubled times?
How can we outdo the aggression and greed that threaten to overtake our world? Please share your thoughts; I’d be grateful to include them in a future issue.
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SHOP NEWS:
I remember that an old family friend who lived in British Columbia at least 30 years ago, would answer my letters that inquired about the health of himself and his young family.
One reply showed his trademark humour: “We’re all much as we were, maybe a little more so!”
The latter clause struck me as both hilarious and charming. So I now share a similar “status report” with you–here are some ways that I too am “a little more” than I was, last month! And how are you?
I am delighted that my long-term colleague and friend, writer Ashleigh Mattern, is ready to return to leading our writers’ group, “Saskatoon Freelancers’ Roundtable,” after the conclusion of her cancer treatment.
I’m very grateful to Ashleigh, as this will allow me to plunge back into teaching and editing, which sometimes conflict with our group meetings.
That said, I’ve greatly enjoyed exchanging conversation with our group over the past year, and look forward to future discussions about “favourite books,” for instance, and about a potential writers’ retreat at St. Peter’s Abbey, next autumn (2026).
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I’m glad to share this month that while my communications’ business sees me work with economic immigrants and internationally educated, second-language academics, I plan shortly to begin work with two native-speaking children, who face basic literacy challenges, and who were referred to me through my faith community.
In the area of children’s literacy skills, I had a wonderful opportunity last summer (as I shared then) to work with a (native-speaking) grade nine student who needed some support with his writing skills.
He flourished in the several short weeks that we worked together and the process impressed upon me the importance of literacy tutoring, even or especially for native speakers, who are sometimes overlooked.
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As Saskatchewan teachers and parents have long told us, primary (and often secondary) school classrooms are bursting at the seams with students, some of whom have complex medical needs that require ongoing maintenance (e.g. neurodivergence, breathing tubes, allergy alerts, etc.).
Quiet and often shy students (whether they have medical needs or not) are not always sufficiently served by teachers and by Educational Assistants (EAs)—that is, if the class is fortunate enough even to have EAs.
These children sometimes fall through the cracks, and I’m grateful to teachers and EAs who identify these cases, so that they can receive literacy tutoring in caring environments, with teachers like me.
I enjoy children. But my many years as a graduate student in Southern Ontario, decades ago, trained me to teach adults (18+ years), as the body of undergraduate students whom I would serve.
So I owe special thanks to retired teacher, Sharon Wiseman, whose vast experience teaching literacy students from K-12, in the US and in Canada, has again become invaluable.
Sharon’s awareness of the stages of literacy development and of relevant early children’s literature is indispensable.
Thank you, Sharon, for instruction and guidance on phonemic awareness, which lays the foundation for the study of phonics.
Literacy tutoring of children under the age of 10, can be tremendously rewarding, but also challenging, across different cultures, class, gender and religious differences.
But I’m delighted to help children who may be struggling to “catch up” in their literacy skills.
There are always new “thank yous” to share and new entrepreneurs and businesses to promote.
But this is a wrap for mid-November!
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ABOUT US:
Between 2011 and December 2018, Elizabeth Shih Communications chronicled the stories of B2B marketing and communications on the Prairies and across the country.
Effective January 1, 2019, I rebranded as “Storytelling Communications.”
I help economic immigrants and internationally trained, second-language academics to improve their spoken and written communication skills.
By doing so, I help economic immigrants to gain better jobs or larger contracts; and I assist second-language academics to secure promotions (such as tenure) more readily and quickly than if they worked alone, in isolation.
Interested in learning more? Please contact me through my CASL-compliant website (www.elizabethshih.com).
After I receive your message, I’ll be pleased to discuss projects with you!
Please visit my website for more information (www.storytellingcommunications.ca).
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