Category Archives: Essential Journey

You are needed in this world.

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Yesterday, I had the gift of lunch with my beautiful friend Kerry in her backyard sanctuary. After 3 hours of chatting, savouring time together and sharing the delicious meal she’d created, I realized I’d better get running as our two daughters, as well as my sister and her husband and my daughter’s partner, were coming for dinner.

The plan had been to sit out on the deck for appetizers and cocktails but the weather had a different idea in mind. In fact, right after the two girls and TW stepped through the front door, the heavens opened up and rain poured down followed by a brilliant thunder and lightening storm streaking across the sky.

Needless to say, we made indoor plans.

And that’s the thing about the weather. It will always do what it wants. Thinking you can control it, or even being disappointed in its seeming disregard of your plans is futile. With the weather, and with life, you need to be prepared for the unexpected. You also need to be prepared to change your plans when the weather does what it wants.

Like life.

You can plan all you want, but life takes its own course. The secret to happiness, joy, and contentment is to be willing to embrace what life brings with grace and ease, while always remaining true to your path and yourself, without apology.

On this beautiful day, may we each celebrate who we are in this world and all that we bring to make it a more loving, kind, creative and grace-filled place. May we each stay true to our values and beliefs, and unasbashedly embrace all that we are when we walk in the integrity of being our authentic selves.

Namaste.

 

 

Evenings are made for wondering and wandering

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Evening light on the Bow

11 hours in and I am making progress. The storage area is starting to look organized… and I can find my art supplies! All of them.

Which is why, after spending 6 hours yesterday moving and dragging, unpacking and sorting, I decided it was time for a creative break.

One of my favourite things to do is to make nametags for our guests. One friend (I won’t tell it’s you Al) likes to tease me and bring his own now, just in case I forget his. Which I accidentally did once — not forget it but it got misplaced and somehow I didn’t notice!

My nametags have become part of the evening.

So, given I could find a bunch of my supplies and I wanted to make tags for Saturday night’s dinner, I delved into creativity and spent the evening painting and cutting and mounting and outlining tags for everyone.

In the process, I felt my heart fill up, my senses enliven and my being become enfused with the joy of finding myself exactly where I belong — immersed in creativity.

And when I was done, Beau and I walked up the hill to the path that follows the river and watched the sunset to the west and the waters flow eastward.

A bend in the river

Long shadows. Soft light. Gentle breeze.

An evening for dreaming and scheming, connecting with the muse and delving into what stirs my spirit with its capacity to create beauty and richness in my world.

The Hextall Bridge

Time in the studio. Time immersed in creativity. Time in nature. Time in preparation for an evening with friends and my beloved.

And again I embrace the truth of my life, I am so blessed.

 

Morning Sunshine!

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Morning light streams in through my kitchen window, a summer breeze chatters in the trees, the river flows and I am awakened.

Some mornings are made for dancing. Soul Dancing. Heart Thumping. Blood Flowing.

I dance.

I feel the freshness of the morning air upon my face. I sense the rhythm of the music in my soul.

I move slowly. Gracefully. Gently.

I move faster now. My limbs stretching out, and out, I reach for the sky. I touch the earth.

This morning, the sun arose and I rose with it, my entire being infused iwth the pure joy of being alive. Of life. Of this moment, right now.

I embraced movement meditation. I let the music lead my body, stir my heart and soul. I let the notes pour into me and felt my blood flowing steadily, like the river outside my window. Flowing endlessly to the sea, into the ocean of life that is my life, that is as important within our shared universe as your life is to its natural rhythm, rhyme and reason.

I embraced my life this morning through movement meditation and then…

I made my latte. Admired the sun on the kitchen counter. Listened to the wind in the trees, the birds chirping, the river flowing, the traffic moving across the bridge.

All is well with my soul.

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The beauty of daily routine

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I like the familiar. The well-worn path. The knowing of what to do next, of what is coming next, of what is on my path.

Which is why I like my morning routine.

From Where I Sit

I awaken (later than I used to which is getting to be quite lovely). I pet Beaumont for awhile (it’s hard not to, he jumps up on the bed as soon as he hears me move and lays on my stomach). I get up. Take him out for a short wander. Sit in the quiet of the morning. Meditate. Make a latte. Sit down at my computer and begin to write.

Some mornings, like today, I take a couple of photos of my world. Sometimes, it’s because I think they may go with what I write. Sometimes, it’s just because.

I’m okay with it all.

In the presence of my morning rituals, I find my pace, my rhythm, myself.

This morning, I am adding back a step in my morning ritual that I had begun before I left for the west Coast — writing my 3 pages.

I left my 3 pages journal at my daughter’s — I’d intended to keep up the practice while I was away but found myself diving headfirst into my days as my grandson rises early and I love the early morning hours with him — and the morning hours are my preferred writing time.

And the river flows

Though, with my arising time getting later, that may change too. Perhaps it is in my “Sage-ing” time is becoming less the measurement of how I spend my days.

I am also falling in love with the word and concept of “Sage-ing”. Yesterday, I signed up for an online course with Spirituality and Practice — Infusing Your Life with Creativity. The course is presented by two Elders of Sage-ing International and while my life is fairly infused with creativity, the reminder to slow down, to consciously move through my day with a creative frame is important. Plus, I love to learn new things and there’s always something to learn about being a creative and its many joys.

Which all means, I’ll be adding the coursework to my morning routine. What fun!

And today, I begin the process of clearing out the back room where all my art supplies and paraphenalia are stored, in ernest. Not a small task but cloudy skies and a keen desire to create order and make space for renewed creativity and unknown possibilities are spurring me on.

As I cleanse and clear, unpack and sort, I shall carry with me the word that I pulled from my Shell of Plenty which sits on my desk, “Joy.”

To do all things with a Joyful Heart is a beautiful gift I bestow upon myself today.

May you find joy in all things today as well.

Namaste.

Home again. Home again.

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I am home.

We left Gabriola Island on the 10:05 ferry Saturday morning and began the journey back. We had intended to wend our way through the Okanagon but grey skies, rain and C.C.’s Interclub golf game Monday afternoon gave us pause to reconsider.

We drove through in 2 days.

I am grateful we did.

I am ready for home. Ready for routine. Ready to settle in and ease into for this next phase of my life.

As we drove my mind wandered to thoughts of ‘the future’. What does it look like? What will I do? What’s in store?

It is inevitable that my mind does that. Leap into future planning, future vistas.

Home isn’t just a place to be. It’s the place where I live my life, day by day, moment by moment.

I like structure. I like knowing what I’m doing, what’s ‘supposed to be’ happening next. And while I am still committed to my ‘unplanned’ summer, I feel the urge within calling me to look into out there, on that distant horizon for ‘what happens next’.

I am resisting its call and looking within instead.

Peering deeply into myself to feel the ebb and flow of creativity as it crashes into the shores of my desire to be present with all that is when I stop pushing and pulling and trying to make ‘what is’ into something I want it to be.

For now, I shall be spending time preparing my workspace. Clearing out clutter. Setting up my studio to be a space that infuses each day with creative spark and inspired curiousity.

There’s a fair amount of ‘grunt work’ to be done.

Since moving into this house a year ago, I have not tackled the back storage room where all my boxes of art supplies were loaded in by the movers.

On the road as we drove…

There is no rhyme or reason to the placement of the room’s contents. And, because the move out from our old home was so fast (the sale included a 14 day possession date), a lot of my supplies were simply loaded into boxes without a plan. The movers didn’t label what they were packing so now I go on the adventure of discovering what is there. What is needed, and what is not.

I’m excited!  Stampede is on and I don’t have to dress-up and play cowgirl. I get to revel here at home as I create my ideal studio space in which to paint and draw, write and contemplate, create and grow.

Yahoo!  I may not be out kicking up my heels, dancing to a two-step, but I shall be dancing with the muse as I unpack and explore what happens next in my studio space.

_________________________

And…. I created a video of C.C. and my stay on Gabriola. It was a delightful time!

What do women (of a certain age) want?

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I am female. I am a baby-boomer. I am a senior. Which, according to current vernacular places me somewhere in the vicinity of ‘a woman of a certain age’, a term coined by a British essayist way back in 1754 and later immortalized by poet Lord Shelly Byron who wrote in 1817, “She was not old, nor young, nor at the years/Which certain people call a certain age,/Which yet the most uncertain age appears.” In 1822, he clarified his reference to women of “a certain age”, by crudely stating that women of a certain age were, “certainly aged.”

Lord Byron aside, recently, as I prepared to retire from a career I loved to engage in this new field of possibility called, life after a career, I began to wonder, what does it mean to be a woman of this certain age? What do I really want now that it feels like nobody really wants me?

After decades of chasing after the dream of ‘having it all’, I was tired of always trying to be everything to everyone. Of feeling like I had to do more, especially as I was never sure of what the ‘more’ was. I had raised two daughters, mostly on my own, and was a step-mother to two adult children as well. I’m still all of these things, but, along with being a wife, a new grandmother (or YiaYa as I’m called because I’m cutting back on the No’s in my life so NoNa or NoNo didn’t work!) daughter of an octogenarian and a recent passing over the threshold into what society calls, ‘being a senior’ I was tired. Tired of the constant drive to find myself in a world that told me who I was, as a ‘woman of a certain age’, was old and possibly no longer relevant.

And that’s when I began to wonder, what if I was never lost? What if, at this certain age, I have the luxury of simply being me without feeling pressured to be anyone, or anything, else?

Which is when the panic set in. Having spent decades being defined by not just the fashion I wore but also what I did in the world and how much I gave to others, I wasn’t sure I knew how to step out of my designer heels and give to myself what I needed most. Especially when I wasn’t quite sure what it was I needed the most.

The question, “What is it I want most at this certain age?” became my rallying cry to discover the more of what there is to create, do, be after tipping over into the other side of the second half of my life. That place where I am learning to value the wisdom I’ve gained after so many years on this earth, without fearing ‘the younger generation’ has all the answers. They’ve got their answers but they don’t have mine. And mine are worth their weight in gold.

At this certain age, I am settling into accepting aches and pains and crêpe-like skin as part of my beauty, not detractors from my desirability. I am learning to slow down with grace, including remembering to not bend over too quickly to pick up the earring I dropped because if I go too quickly, I might just pass out.

And I am learning to accept (with grace) the answer to my question, “What is it I want most at  this certain age?” is not a sprint to the finish line of my life, but rather, a beautiful wandering journey through fields of gold along the shores of golden ponds and verdant valleys.

I am a woman of this certain age where I have the wisdom, and the experience, to know how to live life on my own terms. I know how to fearlessly and effortlessly fall in love with being old enough to know when to slow down and young enough to want to kick up my heels and dance naked in the light of a full moon, because at this certain age, I am certain nobody’s watching but me. And I if I am the only one watching me, then I am certainly not going to worry about what other’s think of me. Which means, I have all the freedom in the world to grow more certain of who I am as a woman of this certain age.

So… as I continue to explore what I want most at this certain age, I have an invitation for you. If you relate in any way, or are asking yourself similar questions, I’d love to know what you want most at this certain age. And what you don’t want.

For me, the list includes wanting to feel like my life has had meaning and relevancy. Like there is still –more’ and the more is not prescribed by what I’ve done in the past, but rather, how much I still have to contribute.

I want to feel like it’s okay to grow older without fearing being old.

I want to know my wisdom matters. That I am heard, seen known for my grace, elegance and style, not just the clothes I wear and the title I no longer carry.

I want to be okay with being silly, just because, and I want to be ‘nothing’ other than who I am.

I want to let go of feeling like I have to explain or defend my decisions.

And I want to be okay with the past and its many ambiguities so that I am at peace today, with me, the world around me and everyone in it.

I want to make peace happen.

What about you?

What’s on your list?

I’d love to hear from you. If you don’t feel like posting here, an email would be great too! You can reach me at louise [at] louisegallagher.ca.

Namaste.

First you must dream

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I am sitting in a coffee shop on Main Street in Vancouver with my daughter. She is working on her laptop. I am working on mine.

Around us the coffee shop hums with activity. The street outside the window is busy. In the background, I hear the sound of the coffee machine steaming. The clatter of crockery and voices.

Above our table three paintings adorn the wall. I do not know their story. I wonder if they’re just ‘finds’ the owners have placed upon the walls to give it a homey feel. They look old. Perhaps from the 40s. I decide they are a father. Mother. Daughter. They do not smile. The father looks at his wife. Sternly. The wife glances sideways at her husband. I imagine trepidation in her glance. The daughter, who hangs above the mother, looks down towards her mother’s face. She seems sad. Worried. Perhaps her parents are fighting. Perhaps she fears they will divorce. Or perhaps her mother is sick and the father does not know what to do.

And that is all the story I decide to create about them.

My grandson is with the nanny today. My daughter does not have to go into the office but has two hours of work to complete, she tells me, before we can go explore the day. Let’s do it in a coffee shop she suggests so as not to conflict with the nanny’s schedule and my grandson’s attention.

I am good with this plan.

I am good with pretty well everything these days, holding myself in that space between what is right now in front of me and dreaming of what can be when I determine it is time to breathe into my dreams of life beyond this place called, ‘recently retired’.

I am thinking alot about dreams right now. Dreams of/for my life. For what I want to do. At some future time not yet determined. At some future date not yet arrived.

I am dreaming, scheming, divining… possibility. Of what can be, will be, when my intuition rises up and I let my imagination run wild. When I dive into creation of the life I dream of beyond the life I loved when work was my focus and my world gravitated around ‘a job’.

I am dreaming of next steps, but first, I must put substance to my dream. I must know what it is I dream of so that I can see it, feel it, taste it, hear it calling my heart to awaken into its possibililities with all my senses.

First I must dream.

I am awakening to dreaming. Awakening to creating possibility where this dream I am incubating of my life after ‘work’ becomes the reality of how I live my life everyday, inspired by life itself honouring, as Albert Einstein called it, the sacred gift of my intuitive mind.

“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift,” said Einstein, “and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

I am falling into dreaming, falling into honouring this sacred gift where my intuition guides me into igniting my imagination and will to create the life I am dreaming of, the life I am creating.

 

 

 

Island Life. Slow and easy does it.

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The View From Where I Sit

Island life is a slow, easy pace. The biggest decision of my morning here at my sister and brother-in-law’s on Gabriola Island is whether to have coffee on the north deck or the south.

Decisions. Decisions.

This morning, I added one more decision. To take the seaplane from Silva Bay to the south terminal in Vancouver, (20 minutes + half hour transit) or, two ferries (4+ hours).

Seaplane won. Simple. Direct. And bonus. I get to spend the day exploring the beaches of Gabriola before returning to Vancouver.

This trip is unplanned insofar as my schedule is determined by my daughter’s needs for childcare as she settles into a new job and juggles work, family, and a nanny 3 days a week.

Tomorrow, Thurlow, my grandson, and I will spend the day together.

Colour me excited!

It is the most precious part of this trip. To spend time with him without adult supervision (I’m hoping my daughter doesn’t read this as she might get a little perturbed by my suggestion that time with my grandson is all about being a child at heart!) 🙂

Before I left for Gabriola on Monday, my grandson and I walked to the park at the end of their street for playtime. Apparently, an hour walk was a bit longer than my daughter anticipated. When my phone rang and I answered, she advised me I needed to get back.

But he’s not ready to leave yet, I told her.

She suggested I pick him up and carry him home.

I don’t think he’ll be happy about that, I replied.

I didn’t pick him up but we did manage to wander home in time to meet the nanny.

It is perhaps one of the greatest joys of being a YiaYa. Not feeling the pressure and responsibility of time, schedules and disciplined structure. It’s why I like my name ‘YiaYa’.  There are no-no’s where my grandson is concerned!

And on this trip, there is no need to create a schedule — other than to coincide with what works for friends and family whom I may be visiting. C.C. is looking at flying out for a week to visit friends on Vancouver Island. He’ll fly home and I’ll continue on my journey. Or he’ll drive back with me.

That’s the plan. And that’s the beauty of the plan. There’s lots of room for change!

Namaste.

 

 

 

 

The Sacred Nature of Waves

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From my journal yesterday:

I sat by the ocean and wept for the joy and beauty of being alive in this moment right now. My tears flowed into the sea and the sacred embraced me and this ordinary experience of being human opened my heart to the awesome beauty of our shared humanity.

We are all capable of greatness. We are all part of the light and darkness of being human.

Where we walk, how we walk is our choice. Let us step lightly on this sacred planet.

I leave this paradise of Gabriola Island tomorrow to return to Vancouver where I will spend a week with my grandson, daughter and son-in-love. And then… the script is not completely written. I shall take the ferry to Vancouver Island. Visit friends. Wander the island.

Unscripted. Unmapped. Unwritten.

Such a joyful, beautiful time to refresh, relax and rejuvenate.

I am so blessed.

The Bucket List

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A morning visitor

I am sitting in bed at my sister’s home on Gabriola Island. The view is stunning. The morning fresh and dewy. A deer walks past the window. And then a racoon. A squirrel bounces up a treetrunk. An eagle soars overhead.

Morning rush hour has arrived.

Two years ago, my sister and her husband moved to their island home on Gabriola. It is their own personal paradise, their home filled with treasures, a reflection of their eclectic lives.

I arrived yesterday afternoon via float plane. One of my favourite ways to travel. It feels so in the moment, so close to the sky and the sea. So personal.

Ryan, the pilot, has been flying for Gulf Island Seaplanes for 13 years. There’s not a day when he hates his job, he told me. Sure, there are days when he doesn’t want to get out of bed, but once up and at work, he’s reminded of how fortunate he is to do what he does, and live where he lives.

The Islanders

Like my sister and her husband, living on Gabriola Island is a dream come true for him. A bucket list kind of thing.

It’s a relatively new term, ‘bucket list’, coined by screenwriter, Justin Zackham for his 2007 movie of the same name.  He had a list of things he wanted to do before he ‘kicked the bucket’. Having a hit movie was one of them.

While visiting with my daughter and her family in Vancouver she asked me what was on my bucket list. It’s not something I think about a lot, I told her, the list of things I want to do or see before I die. Mostly, I want to live my life fully each day, experiencing life’s juicy moments with uncensored joy.

Love in a bucket seat

Yes, it would be lovely to see the Taj Mahal. The Great Wall of China, but even more, it would be good to know I have lived fully. Shared love. Spread kindness. Savoured each moment.

Where I do it is not as important to me as how I live and with whom.

And that’s where my bucket list lives. Not in places or things to do but in the heart. My heart.

And when my heart is full of time spent with those I love, my bucket list is full.

Namaste.