I was sleeping when my cell phone rang. I only keep it on my bedside table as a clock I can quickly refer to should I awaken in the middle of the night — the light from clock radios bothers me.

Last night, when the phone rang I shook off sleep and answered to hear my eldest daughter’s voice. She needed to de-brief a conversation she’d just had with a distraught friend. We chatted for a few minutes, I reassured her she had done her best and we agreed, her best is good enough. We said our “I love you’s”, hung up and I went back to sleep.

How far I’ve come.

I remember a time when the cellphone beside my bed was not there as a sleep aid. I remember a time when its ringing in the night would awaken me to fear, my heart pounding, my mind reeling into a black chasm of darkness sucking me under. I remember a time when that tiny electronic device was an umbilical cord tying me to the terror of a man who believed lying and deceiving was the only way to keep me from flying free.

Someone asked me yesterday if there were any copies of my book, The Dandelion Spirit, available. No, I replied, the publisher no longer exists and I need to edit it before reprinting.

I’m not sure that’s the truth.

I’m not sure if it’s more a case that I have moved so far from those days of overwhelming terror that I have forgotten the difference that book makes.

Because I know it does.

Make a difference.

Two years ago when they were filming the documentary, Devil in a Pinstripe Suit, I told my eldest daughter who the producers had flown in from Vancouver to be part of the filming, that I didn’t feel any emotional connection to those events, or even to the man in question. I did feel an emotional charge around the pain I caused the people I love — and I needed to move into forgiveness to remove any residual shame and self-loathing that was clinging to my peace of mind.

When I wrote that book six years ago, I wrote out a lot of the pain and fear I’d felt. I consciously wrote my way into well-being because I knew that getting the story out was the best way to shine a light on living free of abuse. As I wrote about those dark days, the emotions that would have kept me from living my life in the rapture of now, gently flowed out into the sea of life brimming with joy and love and beauty all around me.

I am blessed. My life today is far greater, far more beautiful than even before I met that man. But, still, there are pockets of unease that sometimes trigger with an unexpected call in the night, reminding me of those days that are no more. Those days when I believed to cut the cord feeding me his lies would kill me.

And I smile as I write that line. And fall into love.

That woman back then who believed he was all she was worth, is me. She deserves my love and attention. She deserves my tender loving care.

And that book I wrote to help myself and other women and men free themselves from the shame and self-blame and self-denigration that ensue from loving an abuser, deserves my attention.

That book has made a difference in hundreds and hundreds of lives.

And to keep making a difference in the world, I need to do whatever I can to be of service.

See — I’ve been stalling on ordering more copies of the book to have on hand when people want to buy them. Not because I don’t know what a difference the book makes, but rather, because I’ve been stalling on turning up for me and my work in the world. I’ve been questioning my motivation in speaking up about that story, speaking out against abuse. It isn’t about reliving those days, or carrying pockets of anger. It’s about shining a light on what happens to our spirit when we turn away from the truth of our magnificence and move into the darkness of believing, I am not worthy.

And in speaking up, in shining a light on abuse, I free myself from the past to live freely in the rapture of now.

My phone rang late in the night, and I am reminded that to live my magnificence today, I must live in the wonder of now, speaking up for all I’m worth, creating a difference with every breath, every act, every word.

Time to…. begin again.

Because, no matter where I’m at, it’s important to love myself and start right where I’m at.

It’s time to…Always begin again.

Alberta has been in the news in the past few weeks because of an E-coli outbreak in a meat-packing plant in the southern regions of the province. Millions of tons of beef have been recalled and dumped in landfills. Workers laid off. Children, mothers, fathers, have become ill across the nation.

And Danielle Smith, leader of the official opposition in the province suggests giving it to the homeless under the premise — if you cook it right, you can kill the e-coli so why not give it to the hungry?

Let’ not worry about killing people on the margins. Heck, they’re poor anyway. Let’s give them tainted beef. It’s better than nothing.

Now, I don’t blame Danielle Smith for her ill-advised remarks. She wasn’t thinking beyond the margins of her limited view of poverty. She was trapped in her perception that if you have nothing, then even tainted beef is better than the nothing you’ve got.

And, sad to say, she was possibly echoing the thoughts of other’s who see those who walk our streets and crowd our homeless shelters as second class citizens who should be grateful for whatever they are given.

There is no us and them.

Yesterday, I gave a workshop on homelessness. As I do in all my workshops, I asked the group to say a word that they would like to be known as in the world — honest, passionate, dedicated, loyal — were the responses I got.

Now, what words would you use to describe those experiencing homelessness, I asked. Addicts. Bums. Mentally ill. Lazy…. none of the words on the first list appeared on the second.

It is always the same. When we think of those on the margins we do not first think of the words that describe their humanity. We see only their condition.

Like Danielle Smith, we see their condition and filter our thoughts through the measurement of their lack.

What most individuals experiencing homelessness and poverty don’t lack is gratitude. It never ceased to flow at the shelter where I worked for almost six years. Groups came in to serve and clients applauded them as they left. A volunteer gives a man a jacket from the clothing room and ‘thank-you’ is the first response.

Gratitude is a human response to kindness. And when you have nothing, you encounter a lot of opportunities for gratitude.

You also encounter a lot of places for anger. And outrage. And disgust.

But mostly, you don’t encounter opportunities to express them for fear you might be cutting off the hand that feeds you — even when it’s tainted beef.

How do you say thank-you to the notion feeding you tainted beef is okay? How do you feel gratitude to a society where someone in a position of power not only thinks it but is willing to say it out loud — even if they later publicly apologize, how do you rid yourself of the foul taste clinging to your every thought about what you know they think you’re worth?

As outsiders looking in, we can feel outrage, disgust, anger, as righteous responses to Danielle Smith’s comment. And then we can carry on to the grocery store to buy an alternative source of protein. We don’t have to eat the beef. As the butcher told me last night at the grocery store, sales of pork and poultry are far exceeding beef these days.

In a shelter, you don’t have the choice to eat something else. You eat what you’re given. And when someone publicly suggests you eat tainted beef, a collective sigh of despair rises up from the huddled bodies crowded into the dining hall.

Shoulders shrug. Heads shake side to side.

Why bother to speak up? Nobody’s listening. And anyway, there’s nothing new in what Danielle Smith said. She’s only voicing what everyone knows — we’re second class citizens with little voice in public discourse. Heck, people don’t see us as human beings first anyway. There is no equality in our social condition. There’s only us in here, struggling to figure out what happened to our lives and how do we rise above this abject poverty driving us down, and them out there who think it’s okay to feed us tainted beef.

It’s not.

Because, if it’s not fit for me to eat, why should it be good enough for someone else?

Charity isn’t about feeding someone tainted beef. It’s about feeding their humanity dignity, respect, compassion.

Suggesting we feed someone tainted beef is a measurement of the smallness of our thinking of what it means to be homeless, immersed in poverty, trapped in the margins.

We have the power to change our views on how we serve our fellow human beings experiencing homelessness and poverty.

We have the capacity to evolve beyond the belief feeding someone who is down and out tainted beef is better than feeding them nothing.

I remember a moment when I felt totally ‘wrecked’. My heart broken, my thoughts dark, my body heavy, my mind numb.

Those are the moments, writes Jeff Goins in Wrecked: When a Broken World Slams Into Your Comfortable Life, that should break your heart because, “a broken heart isn’t enough of a deterrent from doing the right thing, even when it tears your life apart” he writes.

I’ve had many of those ‘wrecked’ moments in my life. Those moments where fear wasn’t the enemy as much as inaction could have been, and at times was. It is in those moments, writes Goins, that we need to ‘lean into the things that hold us back, to move through the pain and push forward’.

Two and a half years ago a man passed away at the shelter where I worked. At the time, he gave me permission to share his story and I was blessed. In his story, my heart was touched and I was wrecked. Through his story, people woke up to the human face behind homelessness. They woke up to the beauty, and the darkness, of life on and off the streets.

When Terry Pettigrew passed away, he gained national attention. Not something he would likely have received in life. He was just a guy. A wiry man of 58 who had lived a transient life since he was 8 years old and his father booted him out of the house for some transgression. How a little boy could do anything that warranted being sent to the streets at the age of 8 defies my logic, and for Terry, it defied his capacity to trust and connect to his fellow human beings.

Terry’s life was not remarkable. He drove cattle across the country. He worked the rigs. He worked on ranches. He did things he wasn’t proud of and like all of us, hurt people he never meant to hurt. He didn’t say, “I’m sorry” very often. Didn’t often say, I love you, either. He was a man of few words and those he did share were usually laced with  witty humour to deflect eyes from seeing into his heart.

Terry was not the first man to pass away at the shelter in whose passing I was wrecked.

The first man was a man of even fewer words than Terry. James Bannerman had lived at the shelter for many years. I often met him along the river pathway as I walked to work and he set out for the day. We’d stop and chat and he would show me his bag full of bottles and cans he’d picked up along the river trail. “I’m doing my civic duty,” he’d say. “Keeping the paths clean.” James was also a photographer. He’d come to photography late in life. At the shelter. I’d given him a disposable camera one day as part of a project that invited clients of the shelter to take pictures of their world. With that camera James was hooked and we connected through our shared passion for the arts.

James passed away on December 8, 2009. I was holding his hand as he took his last inhale of breath. I was holding his hand waiting for the next exhalation that never came. I didn’t want to let go.  I waited. One minute. Two. Finally, I could hold my breath no longer. He didn’t exhale. I called the nurse at the hospice where  James had been taken earlier that day to live out his final hours, and she pronounced him dead.

I was wrecked.

It is an important place to be, this place of being ‘wrecked’. It is a place of vulnerability, openness and possibility. It is a place where we can choose to take action, or not.

According to Goin, it is a place of sacrifice, of letting go of our comfort zones to move into that place where we know, we make a difference when we commit to doing the thing that scares us, or intimidates us, or makes us feel uncomfortable because we are so far beyond the edge of the life we know, our life will never be the same again.

Working at a shelter made my life, and me, different.

Working at a shelter reminded me, every day, that it isn’t just some stranger suffering, it’s one of us. One of my fellow human beings.

When one of us falls on the street, we all fall on the street.

Reading Wrecked, I am awakening to an idea that was born on Terry’s story. It is an idea I’ve decided I must put bones around because not taking action would mean I am ignoring that place where I was wrecked and laid open to the power I have to make a difference.

I’ll be sharing more in the weeks ahead. As this year draws closer to its end, this idea is awakening to carry me forward into action.

Namaste.

To read the story of James Bannerman:  click HERE.   To read about Terry Pettigrew, click HERE  and this is the MacLean’s Magazine article on Terry.

Jeff Goin shares a story about ‘Wrecked’ on the Youtube video below. He’s not very old but he sure does get the message — we are all connected.

Sometimes we meet people and know we are in the presence of greatness actualized. Being with Jim Simpson is like that. Sitting having a coffee with him, I know I am in the presence of a man whose heart is open in love, joy, compassion, humility. Him is a man with a vision. A man taking action to make a difference in the world by creating community, creating opportunity for people to come together and share their gifts.

Today, Jim shares a story about the source of his compassion and love. Today, he shares a story of his mother that pierces the heart with its aching beauty and honesty.

Thank you Jim for sharing your gifts and showing us how in loving life we must also let life love us back.

Helping Mom

Written by Jim Simpson

The scene remains crystal clear in my mind although many years have now passed. I am a young boy of 10 or 11. We are in the front hall of our home. It’s a home from the 1940’s where space and size is not what we experience today. The entry hall is just stepping in from the front door. The hallway runs the length of the house with my parent’s bedroom door off one side and the living room door off the other, further down the hall is a bathroom, my sister’s bedroom and the kitchen. A couple of years ago, my parents were excited because we got wall-to-wall carpet. It’s green and Mom talked with all her friends about it. Behind the front door are the three hooks where my parent’s or their grown up visitors hang their coats. My sister and I use a closet by the back door.

My Mom and I are heading out to walk to the store. The grocery store is two blocks away. At the store there will be a candy counter and I usually get to pick out a treat. But the getting ready to go part can be hard. Mom struggles to get her coat on. Ever since she was in hospital last year, for what seemed like forever, life has been different.

Mom’s left side no longer works like it did before. I’ve heard Dad say that Mom had a stroke and other words I don’t really understand. I wonder if it will ever go back to how it was before.

On her left leg, there are two metal rods attached to her shoe that go up as far as her knee. She can’t walk at all without it but even with it on, it’s not like before. With it on, she swings her left leg forward; steps normally with her right leg and with a cane in her right hand can walk for a few blocks but really not that far. Not like before.

But at least we can get to the store and back.

Stairs are harder too now especially without a railing. Like down to our basement. She has to bump down on her bottom. Sometimes we have races to see who can bump down faster. I can still win. We can still laugh.

I can tell she is getting upset trying to get her coat on. It’s hard. Her left arm hangs limp all the time. There seems to be no way for her to move it at all. So putting on a coat is hard. I look up at her and I want to help her but I am just a little boy. I think if I stood on my tiptoes I could stretch and reach her coat up that arm, I am sure I could help her. I could make a difference for her. But I know she likes to do things on her own. Proving that she can still do things on her own and that the stroke hasn’t robbed her of everything.

Our eyes will meet. She will see in my face a young boy scared of the changes that have happened so suddenly to his world. She suddenly wonders if her drive to try and prove to herself that she can still do it all might be pushing away a little boy who just wants to help his Mom. Who wants to say it’s okay Mom let me help you – I know I can. So she stops and says, “Can you help with me my coat? It will mean we can get going quicker to the store and we can see what the candy counter holds today.”

So now as I look through eyes that are older than my Mom was back then, I remember that letting people help me is as important as when I want to help them.

Sometimes you need to let people make a difference in your life.

I hold her memory so dear to me because she taught me how to help and be helped.

How to love all that life can bring you and let life love you back. No matter what shape the package or where the road may take you, life and love are there for all. For loving life and the people you walk with is the value of life. Helping and being helped allows us to be in community together and celebrate the value in all of us.

Making a difference and allowing others to make a difference in your life is how the community thrives.

Written by:  Jim Simpson

Last Saturday, I took part in a conference on the theme of “Community”. What is it? How do you get it? How do you know when you’re in it? Why does it matter?

The conference was organized by members of Scarboro United Church — heartfelt people of Divine essence who are intent on creating community where everyone feels accepted, valued and  connected. One of the individuals at the helm of the organizing committee is Jim Simpson. I met Jim last year when I spoke at TEDxCalgary. He was the one sitting in the front row, an electronic clock in front of him that kept ticking down the minutes I had left to speak. He made me nervous. Well, he didn’t, but that clock sure did. A couple of weeks after my speak, when Jim contacted me to ask if I’d meet for coffee, I met a man so much deeper, more heartfelt and complete than that clock ticking down time. Tomorrow, Jim will share a heart-warming story of his mother and the difference she made in his life. Today, I want to celebrate Jim, and the wonderful people at Scarboro United Church.

Jim Simpson and the wonderful people at Scarboro United Church are heroes!

At 28, Kate MacKenzie is more than a teacher, she is an inspiring leader opening minds, touching hearts and lifting spirits up to soar free. I didn’t meet Kate at last Saturday’s conference, but I did meet her husband, and watch her video that she’d created just for the event. What an amazing woman, and couple. What an amazing project she has created with Worldviews Project!  Do visit her website and check in out — in fact, on her blog today is the story/video of  Izhar Gafni and his cardboard bicycle — which I heard about earlier on CBC this week and thought was intriguing enough to include here — just follow this link to Kate’s blog…..

Kate MacKenzie, all the students who participated in her first project, and all the people she met around the world who let her film their stories are heroes!

Chris Turner knows a lot about sustainable development. And he’s making a difference, sharing his knowledge, creativity, ideas and passion through speaking, writing and activism. Chris is the author of, The Geography of Hope and The Leap – How to survive and thrive in the sustainable economy — and he’s an inspiring speaker. He believes in creating a green economy and is working hard to make it possible.

Chris Turner is a hero.

Who are your heroes today? Celebrated anyone recently?  Go for it!  Get inspired!

And… because I like to share wonderful things I find throughout the web, I’m sharing this 2 minute video of the evolution of the world — just think about it — 14 billion years portrayed in two minutes. Like life, it’s brilliant and it goes by in a flash. Treasure it!

Yesterday I listened to a panel of ‘experts’ being interviewed on another angle of the Amanda Todd story that disturbs me. A woman in Calgary, after finding an insulting comment on the Amanda Todd Facebook page, tracked down the man who wrote it through his FB page, contacted his employer and they fired him. (Christine Flavreau gets Toronto man fired for negative Facebook comment)

I understand her desire to stop online bullying. I understand the need to hold people accountable. I do not understand the need to create more victims.

Years ago, while working on a play with a group of street teens, I took the unusual measure of going eyeball to eyeball with johns in order to understand what young teen prostitutes go through standing out on the street, selling their bodies. I was fortunate. I had two police officers watching out for me. I had been coached both by the police and the girls, several of whom were part of the group writing the play with me.

It didn’t matter how prepared I was. I was terrified that night. Terrified and feeling alone. Terrified and feeling shamed. Terrified and feeling exposed.

It was awful.

And, it was enlightening.

Prior to standing out on the street posing as a prostitute I carried a lot of opinions about the johns. Evil. Perverse. Perverted. Scum… I was full of judgments.

And then, I stood beneath a streetlight, my body exposed in scanty apparel. Strutting the walk. Striking the pose.

Men drove slowly by inspecting the wares on display. My job was to entice them to stop. I smiled. Looked ‘alluring’. Did my best to be the one they picked. They drove around the block, circled back, again and again until finally, they’d stop and I’d approach the car.

They’d roll down the window, sometimes I’d open the door and lean in. We’d have ‘the conversation’ until eventually, I would step back, close the door, say, “Not tonight” and they would go on to pick another.

I was fortunate that night. I never had to get into a car with a stranger, drive down some dark lane and commit some sexual act for $50 bucks or a $100, depending upon the act. I never had to perform beyond the pose I struck on the street and the brief conversation that ensured I had the chance to go eyeball to eyeball with these men who disgusted me.

I was safe. My guardian angels sat in two separate unmarked police cars watching over me.

But I didn’t feel safe. I felt scared. Frightened. Confused.

What was wrong with us? Where was our humanity? What drew these men to troll the streets searching for release through sex for hire?

It wasn’t because they were healthy. It wasn’t because everything was ‘all right’ in their lives. It was much deeper. Much more complex than just men abusing their power and control on the seedier side of life.

It was hell that night. And yet, I came away with something I never expected.

I stood out for four hours that night and when Ron and Glenn, the two police officers who were watching over me took me for coffee after my turn on the street, I cried.

“They’re all victims,” I told them. “Every car that drove up I imagined a bucketful of shame dragging behind them. They don’t do this because they ‘like’ it. They do it because it’s the only way they know to push back the pain of living.”

Doesn’t make it right. Doesn’t make what they’re doing justified.

But it does make it possible for me to feel compassion for these men who are so broken, they cannot see that their actions are breaking the lives they touch.

I thought of those johns yesterday as I listened to the panelists discuss the right and wrong of what Christine Flavreau did. I understand ‘why’ she did it. I don’t understand what makes it right to do.

Bullying bullies creates bigger bullies.

Treating symptoms does not cure  the disease.

What happened to Amanda Todd is tragic.

What that man posted was wrong.

Had he been an alcoholic and created a scene at the Christmas party, his employer might have helped him find treatment, instead of dismissal.

Had he been suffering from depression, they might have offered him counselling.

What he wrote is a symptom of the unease/disease within him. Publicly shaming him is not the path to awareness. It’s no way to stop bullying.

Until the root cause is found, he’ll keep doing it only now, he’ll have a victim story to tell that keeps him pinioned to the shame of what he did and how he was wronged.

Bullying a bully doesn’t give him or her pause to reflect upon their actions. It doesn’t give them cause to seek help or find ways to change.

We cannot stop bullying by labelling someone a bully and letting them go.

We need to find a more compassionate, humane and caring way to heal the wounds that are causing us to act out. We need to stop the pain within if we are to create a world without bullying.

My amazing friend Howard Parsons wrote a beautiful inspiring post on his Hopeful Notes from Howie J this morning. He asks the question, “What inspires you?”

Life inspires me.

Every moment. Every day.

And then there are those moments where I just want to crawl into bed and wish the day over and sleep into tomorrow!

But they are not often.

Those days, the ones that don’t inspire me are mostly awakened when I take my attention off the wonder and beauty all around and let despair settle in for a visit.

And yes, there are moments in this life that I do feel despair. That place of thinking, what can I do? The problem’s too big. The issue too vast. The complexity too deep. What can little ole’ me do to make a difference anyway?

Lots.

But when I let my victim voice have its say, I think myself into powerlessness. I woo myself into despair.

I allow 100% of what happens in my life into my life. I am 100% accountable for me. And what I put my attention on grows stronger in my life.

Giving into my victim’s voice, giving way to despair does not nurture, nourish nor inspire me. It just brings me down into that place where darkness feels more welcoming than light.

It’s not about false optimism or faking joy. It’s all about knowing, I cannot change the world. I am not powerful enough to stop starving children in Africa dying. I am not powerful enough to stop war from waging.

I am powerful enough to change how I am in the world and in that change, I am powerful enough to create a ripple. In my ripple I want to be inspiring and uplifting. To live my ‘want’ on the other side of my fear — I am not enough to make a difference, I must live from that courageous belief that I am capable of doing my best to ensure whatever I’m doing and being is founded in my highest intention of being the change I want to create in the world.

We all can. Make a difference.

It’s like when I got out of that relationship that was killing me. While in it, I didn’t believe I was powerful enough to change him. And that was the truth. I wasn’t.

I cannot change someone else. I can change me. And in that relationship, I couldn’t change what he was doing or who he was — it is who he was — but… because I was so focussed on thinking about what I could do to stop him treating me the way he was, what I could do to change him, I didn’t see I had the power to stop abuse in my life by changing what I was doing.

Abuse hurts. Stop it.

War kills. Stop it.

We can ‘stop it’ when we stop believing it’s up to someone else to stop or change or be someone/something else.

And in the stopping it in our lives, we can create the world we’ve always imagined. As long as we don’t stop believing in our power to create change in our life, as long as we don’t stop believing in our capacity to make a difference.

We all have the capacity to make a difference. It’s up to each of us to determine what that difference is, and then to act on our capacity to create what we want to see more of in the world!

I want to create a world of beauty, a world where hearts open to the truth of their magnificence, where minds open to the wonder all around and where spirits soar in the freedom to become their most miraculous selves.

And in my desire to create, I am 100% responsible for me and my ripple.

What inspires me Howie J? Waking up to the beauty and wonder of life. Waking up to the magnificence of my being and becoming all I’m meant to be when I let go of believing, I do not make a difference.

We are each of us miracles of life. We are each of us magnificent.

Our very presence here on earth makes a difference. It’s up to each of us to make our difference a song of life we want to share. It’s up to each of us to live it up for all we’re worth and in our living it up inspire others to set themselves free to live from their magnificence shining brightly for all to see.

Namaste.