Tag Archives: gratitude

The River Runs Loud

Posted on by
9

Channeled into an ever-narrowing strip of water, the river runs loud in winter.

Geese huddle on ice islands stretching out from the two bridge buttresses that stand, immovable, in the middle of the river’s flow.

Two squirrels play tag amongst the trees. Unimpeded by leafy greens filling the space between each branch, black puffy tails flicking rapidly, back and forth, back and forth, they chase each other in and out and around tree trunks and branches.

A lone duck floats swiftly past, unseen webbed feet paddling fast.

Cerulean sky stretches from horizon to horizon.

Immersed within the sacred mystery of the world embracing me, I stand in silent wonder to greet the morning light.

In Silent Wonder

Standing at the gateway
great mystery unspent
beckons
time well spent
time frittered away
time wasted
silently drifts
into the shadows
of the past year
spent
of all that was not known
when the bells tolled
their welcoming clarion
to a new year.

Standing at the gateway
great mystery unspent
unfurls
moment
by
moment
leaving all that was spent
in the invisible hands
of time
passing by.

from where I sit

Don’t look back now.

Posted on by
2

When I taught skiing, I would tell students that the whole process began with their feet. They needed to ground into their feet, feel the soles of their feet inside their socks and their boots and then move up through their body — always remembering to be grounded into their feet.

When moving, the objective was to not watch the tips of their skis but to be scanning the route – 3 turns ahead (particularly when going fast through the moguls)

The reason for scanning ahead was to be constantly assessing the terrain, where to turn, where to adapt, where to make adjustments for changes in snow, steepness etc.

If you want to look backwards, I’d tell them. Learn to ski backwards. 🙂

What made me think of this yesterday as I was walking with Beau along the river was the fact I was navigating the rocky shore and noticed my eyes were on my feet and the very next rock in front of me. Remember my ‘3 turn’ teaching, I lifted my eyes a bit and scanned the rocks in front of me, constantly looking out for the best path through.

It worked. Rather than being slow, cumbersome and uber cautious, I moved wiht more agility and grace across the rocks.

Like life.

If we spend too much time looking behind, we get stuck in yesterday.

If we forget to scan the terrain around us, we lose our agility because we’re so focussed on each step we miss how each step is connected to the next and risk being taken by surprise by obstacles along our way.

If we look too far into future, we don’t see the beauty along our way.

The older we get, the closer the end of our story draws near. The secret to living each moment fully is to not focus on the ending but the beauty, love, wonder and awe along our way, keeping ourselves grounded always in the beautiful friendships, connections, memories we’ve made on our journey.

That’s the beauty of memories. We carry them with us. And those that do not add joy, harmony, love and peace to our lives, we are free to let go and move on free of their burden.

The Beauty In Pain

Posted on by
12

Aging isn’t all sweetness and laughter. As we move from 20 to 30, 30 to 40, 40 and on, the changes in our body become more noticeable, and in some cases, more defining of who we are or how we live our days.

Some days, we stand in front of the mirror and pull back our skin from the corners of our eyes, our mouth,, our cheekbones and wonder… Dare I? Do I need to? Is it worth it? Am I ok the way I am?

And everyday, we see a new tiny fragment of a line. Feel a new tiny little pain. Will it grow bigger we wonder?

I remember, probably around my middle 50s, waking up one morning and realizing that the pillow crease embedded on the side of my right eye (the side I sleep on) was not going to vanish as the day moved on.

It was humbling. Scary. Unnerving.

It was also a relief.

If it’s not going away, I’d best learn to accept it. Maybe even fall in love with it. Because, to love ALL of me, I must love everything about me. Including those crinkles at the edges of my eyes that don’t disappear in the morning.

Life (which fundamentally is the aging process) is a process full of joy, laughter, love and pain as well. Exploring for and uncovering the beauty in pain, letting the essential nature of its presence be revealed in the exquisiteness of all we are becoming, is an act of courage, hope and strength mixed up with a bit of defiance too!

Ultimately, aging is about expanding into loving all of yourself. ALL of yourself. The parts you celebrate. The strong parts. The falling apart parts. The parts you’d rather not see. The parts that make you want to undress in the dark before crawling into bed. The parts you’d rather your lover didn’t touch.

Expanding into all of yourself is a journey best taken with a whole bunch of laughter and LOVE.

And perhaps, that is the greatest gift of aging. Expanding into all of ourselves, doesn’t leave much room for fixating on the pain of what we’ve experienced to get here, or the how of how we look because how we look loses its luster against the brilliance of loving all of ourselves, however we look, whatever path we took to get to this moment right now.

This week, I hope you join me in exploring the expansiveness of aging and falling in LOVE with ALL of YOURSELF.

Thank you for being on this journey with me. I am so grateful for the stories, wisdom, hope, laughter, you share. I am so grateful to have your company on this path. As I said to a friend yesterday when she asked if I was afraid of aging, “So much of this exploration is about trying to figure out how I FEEL about this thing called aging. I’m not sure what I FEEL. I know I don’t feel scared. Or unhappy. But how do I FEEL? Excited. Curious. Sometimes confused. Sometimes just tired of the whole conversation.”

Which made me laugh.

I’m the one who started this conversation here. And I’m loving it! Wanting to “know the ending first’ is how I read books! 🙂

Life doesn’t work like that. The story’s written one day at a time. And each page turned leads to a new adventure – no matter your age and woven into every page are the joy, laughter, sorrow and pain we’ve experienced along the way.

As long as I’m turning each page and living each day in its joyful fullness, it doesn’t matter how long I’ve been on this journey of my lifetime. What matters most is that I’m on it, loving all of me as I go.

I am so grateful for this day.

Namaste

Day 11 – Week 3 — DAre Boldly: No Matter Your Age

I Am Grateful

Posted on by
4

Thanksgiving Weekend, 2021.

Our second Thanksgiving under the thrall of Covid.

I am grateful for our health.

Our second socially distanced dinner.

I am grateful for our food.

Our second Thanksgiving without gathering family and friends around a crowded table, laughing, sharing, connecting.

I am grateful for the knowing no matter how far the distance between us, we are always connected.

I am grateful for the love.

The friendship.

The sense of belonging I feel because of the people in my life who make it so rich and beautiful.

I am grateful.

Yesterday, I shut down my computer after my third Zoom meeting of the day and decided to create.

I took Beaumont the Sheepadoodle for an early evening walk along the river, (darkness comes early here above the 49th parallel) and when I came home, sat and chatted about our days with C.C. who was just finishing off a Zoom meeting.

Dusk was settling in as I went downstairs to my studio, which has also become my at-home office now that I am working with a client on advocacy and social engagement, and decided to create.

We are able to have a couple of family members for dinner on Sunday, and I know friends who would normally be at our table, are also doing the same, so I decided t start working on nametags for the table.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do and let my ‘unsuredness’ be my guide.

“Go outside and gather some branches and leaves,” the muse whispered.

And so I did.

“How about mono-printing?” she teased.

And so I did.

I pulled out my mono-printing pad (a gelli plate), laid down a layer of paint, pressed some branches onto its wet surface, lay a sheet of mixed media paper on top and rubbed all over the back, trying to get the paint lifted while leaving white space wherever the leaves lay on the pad.

And then, as C.C. rattled around in the kitchen making dinner, I dove in.

Colour me delighted. Paint me at peace. Splatter me with joy.

And here’s the thing. This morning, looking at the one at the top of this post, I see where imprinting one of my hand-carved leaf stamps onto the bottom of each and painting it white will really add value to the others.

I have a couple of zoom meetings today and some documents to go through and then…

Well… You know where you’ll find me!

I am grateful.

For this day. For the beauty outside my window where I sit typing. The sun is bathing the sky with rosy hues, the river flows deep in silent communion with nature’s beauty and the golden leaves of autumn hang still in morning’s light.

I am grateful for it all.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

Forgive And Grow. Forgive and Grow.

Posted on by
18

We are, once again in the season of the long shadows. The sun’s light dims and shadows reach far across the earth like a memory that will not die in yesterday.

“How do you forget the awful things someone did to you?” a friend asked me awhile ago.

“I don’t strive to forget,” I replied. “I seek to forgive.”

When we forgive someone, or ourselves, it is not that we are saying the deeds that hurt us do not matter, or that it was right for those things to happen, or that the other is not accountable for what they have done.

Forgiveness isn’t about righting wrongs. It’s about accepting the wrong happened and letting go of the pain of reliving the wrongs day after day after day. In letting go, we become freed of the past. Freed of the past, we are free to walk in the light of today savouring its beauty, wonder and awe without carrying the burden of the past into our tomorrows.

To forget we must be able to wipe the slate of time and our memory banks clean. I’ve never found the magic wand that will do that.

What I have found is the power of forgiveness to take out ‘the sting’ of remembering. Just as when stung by a wasp, it’s critical to take out the stinger so that you can heal more quickly, removing the stinger from the past frees you to embrace this moment without the pain and trauma of what was in the there and then casting long shadows over your journey in the here and now.

Forgiveness takes conscious practice.

I remember when I was in the depths of healing from a relationship gone really, really bad, well-meaning people told me that to heal I needed to write a list of all the awful things he’d done so that I would remember how awful he was.

I didn’t need reminders of how awful those days were. The evidence was all around me. His transgressions were many. My brokenness profound.

I was not powerful enough to make him change or even be accountable for what he’d done. I could be accountable for my role in the debacle and aftermath of that relationship. I could make amends in my life. To do that, I needed to focus on sifting through my brokenness to find myself in peace, joy, harmony, love.

And it all began with forgiveness.

Forgiveness was my path to setting myself free of him. It meant, whenever a thought of what he’d done and what had happened arose in my mind, I repeated to myself the simple phrase, “I forgive you.”

No listing of the countless ways he’d ‘wronged’ me. No remembering of all that had happened. I did not need to recite the litany of his sins. Recitation wouldn’t change them. Repeating “I forgive you,” could and did change me.

“I forgive you” had nothing to do with him. It was all about me. And after almost five tumultuous and devastating years of his abuse, I deserved and needed to make my life all about me.

It also meant I had to forgive myself. To write a litany of all my sins in those first heady months of healing, to force myself into ‘the remembering’ of all I’d done to cause pain to those I love would also have forced me to relive the trauma. And in those early days of healing, I was not strong enough to withstand my desire to whip myself with the lashes of all my transgressions.

I had to rest beneath the soothing blanket of being free of his abuse, until the cold, harsh winds of the self-destructive voices inside my head that wanted to ensure I never forgot how much pain I had caused in the lives of so many, abated.

Just as every spring’s arrival awakens new life, forgiveness awakens gratitude for the beautiful dawning of each new day.

In gratitude, there is no need to remember, there is only the call to forgive and grow. In gratitude. Joy. Beauty. Harmony. Love.

Forgive and grow.

And slowly, like snow melting under spring’s lengthening days, memory will release its hold on dark days and cold nights. As shadows shorten and the sun’s warmth awakens the earth, buds will once again appear and beauty will grow brighter day by day by day.

Look Upward

Posted on by
13
6th two page spread in Sheltered Wonder Art Journal project. – Watercolour & acrylic on watercolour paper.

Prayer is the intermediary to Grace. Prayer connects us to the mystical, spiritual, divine essence of Life.

It’s not a religious thing for me. It’s a spiritual openness. A portal into the divine essence of life where, when I look upward, I remember the Grace that imbues life with all of Nature’s wonder, awe and possibility.

Because, when all feels lost, when there appears to be no exit, no safe recourse, no possibility of another step, I look upward and I pray and Grace finds me wherever I am, how ever I am and fills me up with hope.

This morning, as I sat at my desk and watched the river flow and the rain fall and the bright-green, newly budded leaves on the trees shimmer in the breeze, tears gathered at the back of my eyes and my heart filled up with gratitude that flowed upward from deep within my body and soul.

On this morning in 2003, I stood by a gentle flowing river, looked up into the blue sky and I prayed. Hard.

I prayed for death to take me.

I did not want to live. My life was one long, fearful moment running blindly into the next. At the time, the abuser and I were in hiding while he evaded the police and tried to get out of the country. I sat in silence. Never threatening the status quo. Never making waves that might disrupt him. Though, given his propensity to fly into a rage no matter what I did or said, avoiding making waves was kind of impossible.

On this day, it had been almost three months since my daughters, or anyone from my past, knew where I was or if I was alive. They feared the worst.

I prayed for the worst. I wanted him to end my life because I was not courageous enough, or strong enough, to do it myself. At least, that’s what I told myself. Though my words were not so kind. They bordered on the abusive, a mirror of the names he liked to call me.

By that time, everything in my life had become enmeshed in his lies. The only truth I held onto was that I loved my daughters. I could not make a lie of that truth by taking my own life.

And so, I prayed for release by him or some other outside force.

My prayers were answered. Not as I expected but by a blue and white police car that drove up and arrested the abuser at 9:14am on this morning in 2003. It wasn’t the physical death I was seeking. It was, however, the death I needed. The end of that relationship.

I am grateful my prayers were answered. I am grateful the Universe, The Divine, God, Allah, Yahweh, The Light, Almighty, All Powerful, however you call it/her/him, answered my prayers in a way that was life-giving, not life-ending.

But then, that’s the thing about Grace. It creates. It opens. It welcomes. It does not destroy.

Up to that moment of being released from that relationship, I had prayed for gravity to magically release its hold on my body so that it could fall of its own volition into the river and be washed out to sea.

Instead, Grace descended and embraced me, washing away my fears, my horror, sorrow, grief, anger, shame leaving me free to do what I needed to do to reclaim my life and Grow Wild. Live Strong. Love Always.

Seventeen years ago today I was given the miracle of my life.

I am grateful.

This morning, I look upward and say a prayer of gratitude.

And the sky and the trees and the river and the grasses and the flowers and the squirrels tucked safely in their nest in the hollow trunk of a tree that protects them from the rain coming down, and the geese huddled up against the riverbank, and the songbirds sheltering in the grasses, answer my prayers with their gift of nature dancing wildly in living colour, in Love with all of Life.

Namaste.

The Future Is Not Now

Posted on by
26

Years ago, when I got out of a relationship that was killing me, my future was pretty grim. I was broken. The ‘me’ I thought I was had devolved into the puppet of his command. I had no voice. No sense of ‘I’. No future worth living for.

I had two choices. Stay traumatized. Heal.

Going through that relationship was hard. It almost killed me. Getting out of it, I had PTSD. I had no money. No job. No home. No belongings. Nothing.

What I did have was a miracle. He had been arrested and I knew deep within me, that was the miracle that saved my life.

I could not waste my miracle. I had to choose to heal. How was up to me.

Armed with my miracle and the belief I didn’t get it to live in pain and sorrow, I had to decide to heal. Me. Broken relationships. My life.

My number one priority was to heal my relationship with my daughters. By the time of his arrest, we were estranged. I wanted to be part of their lives again. To feel and share the love that had flowed so strongly between us, before I got lost in an abusive relationship.

To heal that relationship, I had to heal myself first.

To heal myself, I had to choose to let go of the things that did not serve me on my healing journey. Bitterness. Regret. Resentment. Hatred. Anger. Fear. None of them moved me closer to healing. Giving into regrets and bitterness only made me feel worse.

There were so many questions for which I had no answers. How could he have done the things he’d done. How could I have been so blind? So selfish? How could I do the things I did to cause my daughters so much pain?

I had to choose to let those questions and all the heavy, life-sucking emotions that went with them, go. Those questions could not be answered from a place of weakness. I had to grow strong enough to face them without losing myself in their seductive, self-annihilating web of pain.

I could not go searching for answers in the past if I was to build a bridge to a future where I could be myself in all my darkness and light, beauty and the beast, warts and wounds, wonder and wisdom.

The past was too painful a place to tread without the light of love to guide me and the future could not be conceived without Love being my constant companion in the now.

The only place I could find myself was in the now. And, the only thing that could sustain me in the now was Love.

So I chose Love.

Every moment of every day.

No matter how broken and helpless I felt, no matter how lost and afraid, confused or tentative. Whatever I did, I had to do it in Love – with me, myself and I. All of me. The broken down, beat up, worthless feeling me. The shattered me who included the mother who deserted her daughters in the final throes of that relationship because the only way she could conceive of getting him out of their lives was to give up her right to live free of his abuse.

May 21st is approaching. It has been many years since that day in 2003 when a blue and white police car drove up and gave me the miracle of my life.

Time has deepened and enriched my gratitude.

I am grateful for my family and friends who loved me through it all.

Grateful for my daughters whose love, even in their pain and anger, never deserted me.

Grateful for the beauty and joy and Love in my life today. For the wonder and awe I experience with every breath.

And I am grateful I chose to heal In Love.

My life today is a beautiful tapestry of light and love, beauty and shadows that shimmer in the dark corners of my life as well as the wide-open expanses of possibilities unravelling with each new dawn. It is woven through with threads of fierce courage, gratitude and grace, joy and soul defining oases of calm.

It is my life lived In Love.

I still have down days and dark moments. I still experience cloudy skies and murky waters. This is life. Beautiful. Complex. Complicated. Messy.

But, no matter the times or the weather, one thing never fades. The Love that instills this moment right now with such beauty it takes my breath away.

Living now doesn’t mean giving up on the future. It means choosing to fill this moment, right now, with so much Love, the future becomes all that is now.

Namaste

What will you do with your 30,000 days?

Posted on by
6

Three separate yet connected events inspired this post.

  1. An interview on CBC radio, The Current, where several authors including, Neil Parischa, shared the books that changed their lives. Parischa talked about the life expectancy of the average Canadian as being 30,000 days. That got my attention.
  2. On Monday, I co-presented to a group of first year medical students on homelessness in our city. Before the session began, I chatted with a palliative care doctor who has started a program here in Calgary to deliver palliative care to people dying in homelessness. His passion, his commitment to provide care that respects the individual, treats them with dignity and provides them support in their final days was inspiring.
  3. A share on FB of an article on CBC Radio on palliative care in the homeless sector in Toronto. (Thank you @NFalvo )

homeless-graphic

And then, I heard the 30,000 days quote and wondered, what will I do with my remaining days — whatever the number I have left.

What will you do?

By the law of averages, I have used up approximately 2/3rds of my 30,000. Like everyone of my 30,000, the next 10,000 are precious. Filling them with heart-driven purpose is vital to my well-being.

But what about the 2/3rds already used up? How well did I employ them?

Fact is, I cannot change the days past. They are gone. Used up. Spent.

Today is all I have in my bank account. How will I spend it? Because, spend it I must. I can’t save it for a rainy day. I can’t deposit it into some huge cauldron where days not spent are accumulated so that I can get the biggest bang for my buck by using all my days together.

I only have today. How will I fill it with meaning and purpose? How will I inspire the best version of myself today?

How will you?

Here are 3 + 1 ideas to inspire you on living this day of your 30,000 well.

  1. Say ‘Thank you’ to yesterday. 

Gratitude is the seed of joy. Be thankful for everything that appears on your path and in your life. No matter how dark or grim, no matter how bright and shiny, be present to the opportunity to experience it by acknowledging everything as an opportunity to learn, to grow, to become. And remember, just because something appears on your path, doesn’t mean you have to keep it there or pick it up or hold onto it forever. It simply means, it’s on your path — what you do with it is your choice. Choose compassionately.

2. Let yesterday go.

Whatever you did, or didn’t do, whatever embarrassing moment, hurt or slight you perceived/received, let it go. Holding onto slights from the past will not improve the quality of your life today. It will only get in the way of living today freely. (And yes, I know. They were mean. They didn’t hear you. They didn’t care for you the way your deserve.  You cannot change what happened, just as you cannot change what they did. You can change how you hold on to it, how you respond. Find a way to respond that sets you free of carrying someone else’s stuff.) And if you caused someone pain or hurt, acknowledge it, apologize, make amends, commit to doing better and let it go.

3.  Live today free of guilt.

A friend was telling me how they feel so guilty about the fact they have….. and then they listed the beautiful things in their life. Later, another friend was telling me about how guilty they feel about something they’d done to someone else that they knew they shouldn’t have done. They’d already apologized but the guilt was killing them, they said.

Guilt is just a way of staying trapped in the ego. Guilt keeps you roiling around in the past, preventing you from living compassionately, authentically, lovingly in today. Guilt is not your friend. It’s the enemy of joy. It’s the killer of hapiness. Make the decision today to let go of guilt. To get out of your ego’s desire to be the centre of attention (good or bad) and set yourself free to live in this moment right now unburdened of guilt. You can’t change whatever was done to you, or whatever you did. You can change its hold on your joy and appreciation of this moment right now. Let guilt go.

Whatever days we each have, living them as if each one counts is what matters most. Because everyday counts. Every  moment creates the possibility of the next being filled with the more of what you want in your life — what ever that is.

Which leads me to the +1 idea.

4. Whatever you do today, make sure it creates ‘the more’ of what you want more of in your life.

Whatever you are faced with today, choose to do the things that bring you closer to your ‘more’. In your ‘more’ is where your passion lives.

The Gift Project

Posted on by
Reply

the-gift-project-copy

“I’ve been sober 18 months!” 

It is the first thing she says to me when I see her. I haven’t seen her in at least 4 years. Not since I worked at the emergency shelter.

I barely recognize her. I am thrilled to see she is alive.

We share a big hug.

Her eyes are clear. She’s grounded. Smiling.

She’s living independently in her own apartment with support from Keys to Recovery. Keys provides housing and supports to individuals leaving addictions treatment who would otherwise end up back in homelessness. It’s hard enough to maintain sobriety after treatment. Living in homelessness multiplies the risks of lapsing.

We are in the apartment of another man in the building. He has offered up his delightful, homey space to our video crew so that other tenants, all clients of Keys, can come in and film Christmas wishes on film. We’ll be putting the wishes up on a website (thegiftproject.ca) which will be live in the next couple of weeks.

Everyone on the film crew is a volunteer.

Corkscrew Media, has volunteered time and energy to be part of The Gift Project.

“It’s been meaningful for all of us,” he says as filming wraps up. “Life-changing even.”

Along with the tenants who have agreed to go on camera, and a staff member from Keys, there are five of us present. Brent Kawchuck, Corskscrew’s Executive Producer, Mike the camera man, Blake the director, Paul Long a Calgary-based writer/creative director and myself. About a month ago I had mentioned my idea for The Gift Project to Paul and asked if he would be willing to help out.

He didn’t hesitate.

He immediately checked in with Brent and suddenly, an idea went from ‘conceptual’ to being ‘in action’. Paul’s also connected with Six Degrees Studios and they agreed to do the sound editing.

All pro bono. All because they want to make a difference by being part of a project that aims to connect people to what lies at the heart of Christmas.

It was a question Blake asked each of the participants yesterday.

“What does Christmas mean to you?”

The answers were heartfelt. Poignant.

Belonging. Love. Hope. Being together. Sharing with family and friends. Childrens’ laughter.

“When I was a kid it was all about gifts, the receiving,” said one of the interviewees. “Now, it’s all about gratitude and what I can give others.”

Sobriety is the gift that keeps on giving. And giving.

For some of the individuals interviewed, this Christmas will be the first time in years, they’ve been sober during the holidays.

It is a gift they all treasure. Value. Cherish.

Sobriety.

It is the gift they all said they wanted to share with others.

As one woman so beautiful described it, “I wish I could bottle some of the good things I’ve found in recovery so they could have a sip of it too.”

‘They’ are the people still struggling on the street. Sill searching for a way out, for the courage, the hope that this life, this life of hopelessness and fear, feeling lost and alone, could end.

For the thirteen people we interviewed yesterday, there is life beyond addiction.

It is a miracle kind of place to be.

I sat amidst miracles yesterday. Listened to people tell their stories of struggle, pain, addiction and their journeys into hope, possibility, sobriety.

I felt blessed.

I felt humbled.

I felt grateful.

Thank you Crystal, Gwen, Doug, Tracey, Randy, Kim, Michelle, Jayme, Vivek, Cheryl, Kelly, Brittney.

Your words and courage touched my heart. Your courage is beautiful. Your journeys’ inspiring.

Thank you Keys to Recovery for being part of The Gift Project.

Thank you Paul, Brent, Blake, Mike and Six Degrees.

Your generosity gives me hope. The compassion and care you have brought into this project makes a world of difference.

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

As The Gift Project comes online, I shall keep you posted.

Namaste.