Category Archives: Essential Journey

New Attitude

Posted on by
12

It’s back.

Yup.

It was starting to loosen up, to feel less tight and stiff but after a long, stressful day at the office with too much computer time and too many meetings, my neck is once again stiff and sore.

Ugh.

Wh’aazz’up wid dat?

I’m not complaining (or whining, honest) but I am expressing my frustration so that I can get through to the other side of self-pity to get a new attitude!

I got plans! Know what I mean? And a stiff neck is interfering with my ability to achieve the goals I set for myself this week — like spend some time in the studio (hard to do when my neck won’t bend and turn easily). Get back to yoga — time to rethink that one. Start spending more time training Beaumont on the leash. Not going to happen right now. He still tugs and pulls, and even with the waist leash system, the constant strain is too much.

So… as my Auntie Maggie would say…. What to do? What to do?

I have a massage booked for 10am. Yes!

C.C. set up the traction device I am to use twice a day to see if I can relieve some of the pressure on my neck.

And, after getting the news earlier this week that one of the main sources of the discomfort is degenerative disks, I have forwarded the x-ray report to my doctor and will go see him about alternatives.

So, self-care. Check. √

What’s next on my list?

Right. Time in the studio.

I have a drafting table as a work surface. I can raise it to a greater angle so that my neck doesn’t need to bend as much. Oh. And I can set the timer on my phone to ring every fifteen minutes to remind me to stop and stretch and change position.   Check.  √

Hmmm… walking Beaumont. Well, this will delight him I know. Instead of on leash, he gets to stay off leash!  Walking is good for both of us and off leash is his favourite!  I just won’t be throwing the ball but that’s okay, he just likes to be outside (me too) having fun. Check √

And, as to yoga. Well, some simple gentle stretches will have to do and more deep-breathing and meditation, Check √

Okay. So that’s not too bad.

Hmmm.. speaking of being outside. I think C.C. and I just might go invest in some snowshoes this weekend and head for the mountains for a day. The weather is stunningly beautiful and spending time outside is good for my soul, not to mention my body and head (neck included).

Okay. Got a plan and, a new attitude! Check √

I’m all set.

To celebrate, here’s one of my favourite Patti Labelle tunes to lighten up your Friday! Doesn’t it just make you want to leap up and dance? Go for it! I am!

 

Mental illness is not a death sentence

Posted on by
7

A boy walks into his high school in a town on a remote northern lake and starts shooting. He kills four people and injures more.

A man starts firing a gun into his neighbours’ homes and is eventually shot dead by police.

Guns do not discriminate. They kill. Left untreated, left to its own devices, so can mental illness.

A gun cannot kill someone unless someone pulls a trigger.

Mental illness does not carry a death sentence unless untreated.

So let’s be clear. Millions of people with mental illnesses live rich and full lives. It is not the mental illness that kills. It is the lack of care, the lack of treatment, awareness, knowledge, that makes the difference.

There are many reasons someone with a mental illness does not receive treatment. One of those is the lack of available resources, something every government and community needs to address. Immediately.

Another is, shame.

My eldest daughter writes a lot about the shame of mental illness, its ability to eat away at your belief in your own human goodness, to destroy your sense of self and and your capacity to live strong, live free, live.

I have learned a great deal through my daughter’s journey. At times, it has felt like riding a rollercoaster with no straps holding me in. Just the rails, the car careening along the tracks and me holding on for dear life hoping I don’t let go and in letting go, lose her forever.

And then, there were the lull times. The periods where we floated for awhile in the valley of each descent where I thought maybe, just maybe this time, we had reached the end of the ride.

And then, it would begin again. And in its ascent, I’d grit my teeth, breathe deeply and hold on. Tight. Because at the end of every up, I knew there would be the crazy, speed-charged, out of control descent yet to come.

Roller coaster rides don’t end on the high. They end somewhere near the bottom where the tension in the tracks is not so great. Where the brakes do not need to be applied with such force.

Sometimes, for someone living with a mental illness, the tension becomes so great they cannot reach the brakes. They cannot stay on the tracks. They have to release the tension long before the bottom comes.

Which is why I know the other reason mental illness can spiral out of control and have devastating effects is because we, those who love the one whose life seems controlled by a fire-breathing, out of control beast we cannot see, cannot reach, cannot touch, do not understand what’s really happening. We do not know the seriousness, the depth of the darkness, the pain and confusion and self-loathing and the consequences of so much tension on the human mind and body.

I know I cannot turn back the pages of time. I know I cannot change the past, but if I could have done anything differently, I would have learned more, talked about it more and beyond talking I would have moved heaven and earth to get my daughter the help and support she needed, earlier.

I am grateful. My daughter has always been an amazing, incredible, loving, vibrant human being. She feels deeply. Cares deeply. Loves deeply. And sometimes, it is the depth of her feelings that pull her down. Sometimes, it is the depth of her caring that hurts her most. And sometimes, it is the depth of her loving that consumes her, pulling her out of the light, into the darkness.

Which is why those of us who surround her, love her and cherish her presence in our lives, must always hold space in the light for her to find herself anew. It is what I learned most as my daughter travelled through depression and an eating disorder. To always hold onto hope. To never let go of the light and to never stop loving.

Today, my daughter is an amazing woman who lives a rich and full life. She still has mental illness and is able to write about it with passion, compassion and conviction. Today, my daughter has tools and strategies to help her through her darkest times. And always, she has people who continue to support her, love her and believe in her.

And most of all, she knows she is not alone. Even in her darkest moments when the beast is screaming inside her, telling her she is worthless, or calling for her to let go of the light and give into the darkness, she knows she is not alone.

Because no matter how dark it gets, we are always holding her space in the light of love.

Namaste

 

 

 

What colour is your prejudice?

Posted on by
10

I am waiting for the C-train to arrive when a woman and a young child walk past me. She is pulling on the child’s arm, trying to hurry him up. He is running/hopping to keep up while also looking up at a bird sitting on the lamppost above. “Why didn’t he fly south, mommy?” I hear him ask.

I smile and watch them walking and my mind leaps into judgement without a second thought. “How nice to see an aboriginal mother and her child looking so normal,” I catch myself thinking prejudicially.

It is there, just beneath my skin, those thoughts that keep me mired in us and them thinking. That separate me from you because the colour of your skin, your heritage, your belief, is different than mine, or what I have been conditioned to think of as ‘the norm’.

I feel it when a woman in a burka floats down the street. I admire the grace of her garb but thoughtlessly judge the choices she makes to cover herself up in public.

I catch it when I see a police officer trying to pull an obviously inebriated and homeless man into a sitting position from where he lies on the sidewalk. Can he not be more gentle? More compassionate?

It is there as I judge passers-by for giving the man on the ground scathing looks of disgust.

It is present as I ride the C-train and another passenger is talking loudly on their cellphone. Where are their manners?

It is everywhere.

Judgement. Discrimination. Prejudice. Fear.

You are different than me. You behave other than how I do. You worship at a different pew. You talk in another tongue. You were born in a foreign -to me- land. You see the world through different eyes.

Why can’t you be more like me?

The better question is, Why am I always judging? Because it’s always there, my judging. Measuring. Gauging. Your words and looks and actions against mine.

Is it that I fear you will take from me what I hold dear? My position of self-righteousness? My place of privilege for having been here first? My belief that you would rather be like me than you?

Is it that I do not want to let go of what I have for fear you will have more than me? That you will be better than me?

Is it a habit?

Why don’t I just stop judging so you can be you and I can be me?

In that place of neither of us judging one another, we can meet somewhere in the middle, on the common ground of our shared humanity knowing, it is our judgements that are keeping us apart, not our differences.

I caught myself in judgement.

To create the world I want to live in, I must stop my judgements from creating a world of us and them to see the light in each of us shining as brightly as it can, where ever we are at. And in our lights shining, we connect on the common ground of our humanity knowing, we are one human race, one planet, one world.

What about you?

 

Forgiveness is the bridge to love

Posted on by
10

Twelve years ago, when I was released from a relationship that almost killed me by the police walking in and arresting the abuser, one of the greatest challenges I faced was to forgive myself.

“You have nothing to forgive yourself for,” well-meaning people would tell me. “He was a psychopath. He abused you.”

That wasn’t the point. No matter how cruel, abusive, or deceitful he was, I did things that hurt the people who love me most. To accept their forgiveness, (which I desperately wanted) I needed to believe I was worthy of their forgiveness by forgiving myself.

It took a lot of work. Commitment. Loving honesty, (not to mention therapy) to get to a point where I could look in the mirror and not see that mother who deserted her children. Not see that woman who did not love herself enough to believe she was worth more than his abuse.

It took a lot of belief in the power of forgiveness to not whisper back to myself every time I looked in the mirror, “Shame on you.”

In her blog today, my eldest daughter Alexis writes, after spending the last five days here at home:

“No matter how far or fast or long we run, our pasts remain the same.

And though I wanted for my visit to Calgary over the past five days to be different, I still carry the weight of a girl that used her pain as a weapon to drive the love of her family away. I am still condemning her for a past she cannot change.

When we don’t make peace with our mistakes, we recreate them over and over and over again. Though I left home in my rearview mirror, I am afraid of its shadow.”

If we do not hold our hearts in the light of forgiveness, shadows lengthen and block out love’s presence.

 

Throughout her life, I wanted nothing more than for my daughter to know that there was nothing she could do that would make me stop loving her. There was nothing she could say that would close my heart to her forever more.

I wanted her to see what I see when I look at her. But she could not see through my eyes. All she could see was the road to the past and the little girl who never felt like she was enough, who felt abandoned, who felt unworthy of love, and in many ways, unworthy of life.

There was a time when I carried my shame like a badge, even though I told myself I wanted, needed, had to, let it go.

I remember in those first days of freedom after that relationship ended, feeling like if I let go of my pain and shame, I would be saying, what I did to those I loved didn’t matter. I thought I would be making small of all the pain and harm I’d caused.

Fact is, those who love us want only the best for us but we can’t know that when we are holding ourselves in unforgiveness by holding onto our past.

While I can look at my daughter and tell her she does not need to forgive herself, she did not know any better at the time how to handle her pain, fact is, she is smarter than me. She knows what she needs to be free to love with all her heart.

When shame blocks the access to feeling your heart calling you home, letting the shame go is the only way to open the door.

Because no matter how far we run, Love is the shortest distance between two hearts. And forgiveness is the bridge.

 

 

 

Become and Let Joy Arise

Posted on by
8

On this day of your life,
Louise, I believe God wants you to know…

…that safety is not the thing you should look for in the
future. Joy is what you should look for.

Security and joy may not come in the same package.
They can…but they also cannot.
There is no guarantee.

If your primary concern is a guarantee of security,
you may never experience the truest joys of life.
This is not a suggestion that you become reckless,
but it is an invitation to at least become daring.
Neale Donald Walsch (Daily Message from CWG)

***********************************************

When I read the message above from a daily note I receive in my Inbox, I felt this visceral, oh no! kind of response that said, “See Louise. No one can give you a sense of feeling safe or secure. Only you can do it and the only way you can do it is to seek joy, not safety.”

Dang.

Here I thought it was someone else’s job to make me feel safe and secure.

Wouldn’t you know it, the Universe knows and is constantly delivering what I need to learn. Sometimes, I’m just not ready, or perhaps not feeling safe or secure enough within me, to heed the lesson.

I have often confused feeling ‘safe’ with ‘trusting’, especially in relationships. Having been prone to trusting the untrustworthy, it was virtually impossible for me to achieve a sense of feeling safe so I constantly put the responsibility for my unease on the world outside.

“I need to feel safe so I need to trust you,” is very different than, “I feel safe within me so I choose to trust that I am capable of making loving decisions that support and honour me and my life, whatever you do.”

In the first, I am placing all the responsibility for my feeling safe and for having trust honoured (or not) on ‘the other’.

In the latter, I am acknowledging my accountability to creating my own sense of well-being within me, and acknowledging that I have the power to make decisions that create the more of what I want in my life — whatever is happening in the world around me — in loving, kind expressions of my truth.

And in living my life true to my inner knowing, I find joy arising with every breath.

The joy of freedom. the joy of knowing I am safe no matter how fierce the winds are blowing around me when I stand in my “I” and stay true to my beliefs, my values, my being who I am in the world.

At the talk I gave on Wednesday night at Canadian Business Chicks Christmas Social, I began with telling the group that I believe we are all born magnificent.

Within each of us, I told the group, no matter where we stand on the street, no matter our economic, spiritual, physical or emotional state, is the seed of magnificence that is our true essence.

When we’re experiencing homelessness or other life hardships, it is easy to forget our magnificence. It is easy to believe we are the labels we carry. Homeless. Addict. Bum. Emotionally disturbed. Mentally-ill. Broken-hearted. Rejected. Lost. Alone.

I shared with the group the story of a man in a class I was teaching at the homeless shelter where I used to work who was once a boy soldier in Africa.

I have done awful things, he said. How can I see myself as anything other than bad?

Do you want to be a ‘bad’ person in the world today? I asked.

No, he replied vehemently.

I invited him, and the group, to close their eyes and for just a moment imagine they truly were magnificent. That in that moment, they radiated pure, beautiful light. Live it. Breathe into it. Become it, I told them.

When they opened their eyes I asked the man who was once a boy soldier if he could feel it.

Yes, he replied. And he smiled and his eyes lit up and for just a moment, his magnificence shone.

Then it is true. I told him. You could not imagine it if it did not exist within you. Rather than fearing the truth that what you did when you had no choice but to survive or be killed is who you are, breathe into the truth that your magnificence is your birthright. Live that truth everyday and keep doing one thing, everyday, that awakens your magnificence.

I saw that man several years later when writing an article about one of the housing first programs in our city. He was working as a custodian/building manager. He saw me and took me aside and reminded me of that moment and thanked me. “I work at being magnificent everyday,” he told me.

When we live our magnificence, when we breathe into it without seeking anything other than to know it, we become it.

Just for today, let go of the fear you will never be good enough, or tall enough or rich enough or safe,  and simply, Become.

Become and Let Joy Arise.

what are you grateful for?

Posted on by
12

Thank you. copyWhen I was a little girl I wanted to be like the sunshine. I wanted to make people all around me feel warm, cared for, happy. I wanted them to know their hearts were capable of smiling, even when clouds blocked the sun and that if they couldn’t smile, I would smile for them until they felt the warmth of the sun once again upon their skin.

Yesterday, I was given the gift of feeling like I was immersed in sunshine, even on a dark December day, where snow clouds blocked the sun.

From C.C.s latte at my desk while I typed in the morning and an amazing dinner when I got home at 9 last night from Canadian Business Chicks where I was giving a presentation and received a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday lead by Canadian Business Chicks CEO, Monica Kretschmer, to my daughters calling to sing me happy birthday as did other family and friends, to the man who purposefully held the C-train doors open for me when he saw me running to catch it, to the singing of happy birthday by two handsome co-workers, to treats from my team and well-wishes from others, to the outpouring of birthday-wishes and thoughtful emails from friends near and far, I felt embraced in love, tenderness and celebration.

Dr. Seuss famously wrote, “To the world you may be one person; but to one person you may be the world.”

I am grateful for my world of people who care about me and about whom I care so much. My world filled with people who support me, love me and applaud me through every stage, every moment, every event and for whom I in turn get to be their cheerleader too.

I am grateful for all of you who come here every day to read and share and travel this journey with me.

I am grateful for those I meet whose hearts I touch and who touch mine. I am grateful for strangers who do kind things and those whose actions remind me to be kinder, gentler, more caring of our world.

I am grateful for the laughter, the tears, the silly moments and the sad. I am grateful for the moments that fill me with such joy my heart wants to burst and the ones that fill me with such sorrow my heart can only cry.

I am grateful for it all. And for all of you.

Thank you!

The ocean refuses no river.

Posted on by
14

river copy

 

The ocean refuses no river.
The river refuses no life.
Life refuses no spirit.
Spirit refuses no Love.

I’ve started a Christmas project for my beloved which means, that when I awoke at 4am and could not get back to sleep, I slipped into the office and began working on my project.

Which also means, I became immersed in the creative spirit and didn’t notice the time!

Imagine! I’ve been at my laptop for 2 and a half hours and I haven’t even had a coffee yet.

And now, we break for a musical interlude while Louise goes makes herself a latte.

I’m back with eggnog latte in hand and words flowing.

The first line of Ocean by Mirabai Ceiba is, The ocean refuses no river.

Just as the ocean refuses no river, the Muse refuses no offering.

We are all creative.

No matter your belief, or colour of skin or size of your bank account or education, there is a sacred place within each of us that is our creative core. It is a sacred chant singing within us of our unique beauty, wonder, brilliance. In your sacred chant singing of your uniqueness is the creative expression of you rising up, just as it rises up within all of us, calling out to our hearts to dance free, to spin about and laugh and turn cartwheels. To sit in silence and dream. To leap for joy and be.

The ocean refuses no river and the river refuses no life. And in that knowing is the truth — The sacred knowing that this life, this beauty, this brilliance is mine, and yours and each of ours to live as best we can, as best we allow, as best we do in Love.

No matter how small, how big, how rusty or difficult, how tired or weary, how young or old, the ocean refuses no river.

In the river’s flow, the open heart refuses no Love. The open mind no knowing.

And life refuses no body, not me or you or him or her or them.

In that acceptance, in that awareness is the knowing, deep and profound and healing. We are not alone. We are one with life flowing in the ocean of Love that is in, around and of us. Each and every one of us.

The river, and the universe, refuses no life.

I started a special project for my beloved’s Christmas gift this morning and became lost in the wonder and awe of creating, of allowing ideas to flow, wonder to arise and the Muse to have full reign over my being present, aware, alive.

It feels great to be alive this morning. Great to breathe. To sit in silent contemplation. To be in awe. To be creating.

The Muse refuses no offering and the universe refuses no life for every life is a unique expression of Love.

What a blissful knowing to carry me into my day.

Namaste.

 

 

Hope. Peace. Love. Joy. And Advent Invitation

Posted on by
10

FullSizeRender (61)I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought for you are not ready for thought.
So the darkness shall be light, and the stillness the dancing.
T S Eliot, “East Coker,” Four Quartets

We have entered the season of Advent. The time of anticipation and preparation of new life, new birth, new beginnings.

Here in the northern hemisphere, the days grow shorter, night falls quickly and the dark surrounds us.

We are waiting.

So often in our fast-paced, let’s get ‘er over and done with world, this time of year becomes a continuous flow of too few minutes jam-packed with shopping and decorating and baking and partying. We rush from store to store, furiously crossing items off our list in our quest to buy that one special thing that one special person truly needs. We rush into everything for fear we won’t get ‘er all done before nightfall only to throw ourselves on our beds where we toss and turn worrying that we forgot one gift, one more thing to bake, one more person to see, one more place to go.

So often, the meaning behind gift-giving and family gatherings and friends visiting gets lost beneath the pace of our constant rushing to acquire, get and do whatever it takes to create the perfect holiday season. The perfect family dinner. The perfect memories of all of us together.

If we just had time.

Let us slow down. Let us stop and breathe deeply. Let us celebrate this moment, right now, in which time is all around us, flowing through our being present in every moment and every thing we do.

Let us shift our relationship with the season. Let us shift our relationship with time, the darkness, the waning or the waxing of the light at the end of each day.

There is no time but this time right now.

And there is time. There is always time. To do what must be done. To get what must be got. To finish what must be finished. But first, we must enter into this time with our hearts open to the abundance, beauty and awe of this moment passing right now.

Let us Make Time for the Sacred.

 

Week 1

A few years ago, I created an Advent celebration: Make Time for the Sacred.

It is a weekly email that contains a reading, an audio meditation and a few contemplative questions designed to bring you deeper into self-awareness and understanding of this special time of year, of your relation to the sacred and your connection to the holy and reverent state of being present here on earth.

Over the next four weeks, beginning today, I will be posting each weekly meditation on my website and invite you to join me throughout this season of Advent in an exploration of the quiet hours before the dawn, the silent time before the coming of new life, new birth, new beginnings that this time of year represents.

No matter your faith, believer or non-believer, my vision is that Make Time for the Sacred will connect you to the deeper essence of our shared human condition, our shared holy presence on this planet earth we share.

Week 1

Embedded in this graphic is the link to the PDF for Week 1.

Within each PDF is an audio-file link to the guided meditation.

In Hope, Peace, Love, and Joy.

Namaste.

You are here because you matter.

Posted on by
14

Why am I here?

It is a question many of us ask at some point in our life along with its cousin, “Do I matter?”

You are here because you matter.

We want to make it so much more difficult. We want to know the details, the particulars of why as if ‘the why’ will make it all worth it. As if ‘the why’ will bring some intrinsic value to the equation of our life we haven’t yet seen. There’s nothing else to the equation for you to see — you are here because you matter.

What makes life worth-it is living whole-heartedly through each step of the journey fearlessly confronting the why’s of our existence with the one answer that can quell the fearful questioning of the why of our existence. I am here because I matter.

We get to live the ‘how’ of how we matter through living this one precious, beautiful, life by taking each step of our journey in love with all our being wholly present to the truth of every human present on this one planet, one earth, one place we share and breathe and walk on every day — I am here because I matter.

Questing after ‘the why’ is what holds us back from being present, being whole-hearted, being whole. Searching for answers to ‘the why’ is what keeps us from knowing that we are here to be our own unique selves and that in being our truth, our beauty, our magnificence, we matter, we make a difference, we are worth it, and, we are worthy.

The universe, God, Yahweh, Allah, Buddha, divine beings of whatever your belief system, do not question our worthiness. We humans question our worhtinness, our existence, our presence on planet earth. We humans are the creators of our own angst.

 

Just for today (and everyday if you’re willing to be very brave!), let go of questioning your worthiness and invite yourself to live outside ‘the why’. Invite your whole self into being present, fearlessly accepting that the reason you are here is because you matter.

You do. Matter.

A lot.

Now, repeat, after me…

I am here because I matter.

I am here because I matter.

I am here because I matter.

I am here because I matter.

I am here because I matter.

I am here because I matter.

I am here because I matter.

I am here because I matter.

I am here because I matter.

I am here because I matter.

Believe it.

It’s true.

Namaste.

Our human condition is a journey through love.

Posted on by
6

 

Choices is an experiential journey. It is an exquisitely constructed series of teachings and processes that have been honed and developed over 35 years to fulfill on founder, Thelma Box’s vision of Changing the world one heart at a time. For over 35 years, Thelma Box, Mary, Joe and Greg Davis have created a safe and courageous space for people to step into the wonder and awe of discovering who we truly are when we let go of the negative self-talk and self-defeating games we all inevitably employ to protect our hearts and keep ourselves safe from being hurt by others or to prevent them from seeing we are hurting.

We humans are interesting beings. We are all born magnificent. It is our birthright.

We come into this world crying out for belonging, for love, for connection and then life happens and we quickly forget the birthright of our magnificence as we adapt our behaviours to meet life’s sometimes confusing, sometimes challenging, sometimes painful teachings. We walk through each day into unknown and known places, face strangers and people we know fearing they are judging us, measuring our journey against theirs, or examining our flaws with such intensity we feel naked or invisible. We try to hide in plain view, or stand out in anger, contempt, judgement fearing we will never find peace, love, hope, joy, contentment and in our fear, do everything we can to prevent ourselves from having what we want.

In our struggle to get what we want, we set bars so high we cannot see them or don’t set them at all because we are convinced we will never reach them. And in our fear of constantly having to measure up or our fear of continually falling short, we do not see, it is our judgements of ourselves that are hurting us most. It is our negative self-talk that is killing our dreams. It is our self-defeating games that are keeping us stuck living in the shadows of our fear; we do not matter, we are not worthy, we are unloveable.

At Choices, I am continually blessed to witness people awakening to their magnificence. I am blessed with being part of miracles unfolding as people open their eyes to the truth of who they are when they let go of fearing who they are will never be enough.

We are all enough. Exactly the way we are. Exactly as we were born to be before we forgot that our value is not found in the things we acquire or the things we do or people we know or places we’ve been. Our value is in our being present and true to our hearts. It is found in how we treat ourselves and one another. Our value is intrinsic to our nature of being human when we let go of fearing who we are and remember, we are all magnificent.

It was a beautiful and inspiring five days of connecting heart to heart to one another. Of seeing and hearing the beauty of each person’s heart beating freely and fiercely with the truth that who they are is greater than their fear that they were unworthy or undeserving of Love.

We are all deserving of Love, no matter our human condition, because our human condition is a journey through Love.