Make new friends, but keep the old…

First off I want to say thanks everyone for your kind words after the big “reveal” in the post Valentine’s Note to Peanut. It was so heart warming and wonderful to receive so many comments, emails, and Facebook notes from each of you…. so thank you so much for filling our hearts and our new little heart with so much love.

Yesterday (Thursday) I took the day off. I had some overtime hours and I decided to put them to use by hanging out with my friend Tia. Tia is a lifelong friend. We met in Kenya in 2006 and have remained close friends. Together we have traveled throughout Sub Saharan Africa, had hilarious episodes of “white girl” moments in Kenya, and learned to scuba dive in the Indian Ocean, despite having failed our final written exams… ooopsies. I visited Tia in 2009 in Israel and it was one of the most memorable trips of my life. You can read more about that here.

Despite miles apart we manage to see each other somewhere in Canada each year and fortunately, for me, this year she decided to extend her Canadian tour to Vancouver and Victoria- yah!  We only had one day together but even one day feels like a soul’s worth of conversation. As many of you probably do, you have friends where you can pick up with immediately, where time has literally stood still and somehow you come back to the same conversations or different conversations with complete ease. These are lifelong, bosom buddy friends people- do NOT let them leave your life. Hold them close to you and even if you don’t email or call every week, know that when you see each other again you will feel immediately at “home”.

 

as you head into your week, remember this….

A valentine note to Peanut

I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately,
Will you have your Dad’s calmness? His ability to take life in stride?
Will you have my enthusiasm? My positivity?

Or maybe you will be your own little person,
A person who is generous, kind, forgiving, willful, confident, appreciative…

I wonder how you will smell, how you will smile, blink, wave, laugh?
We talk at home about what kind of laugh you will have…
Perhaps a giggle? Or a full belly laugh?

We haven’t come to a consensus on what to name you,
So we call you Peanut, our little Peanut.
But, I think you will be more than a small being,
I think you will be larger than life, boisterous, exuberant, and perhaps a handful,
A beautiful edition to this wonderous world.

Will you have your Dad’s soft voice? His bright blue eyes? Or as he will tell you…
They are grey, not blue.
Will you have my frantic curls? And perhaps, like me, you will wish them away when you are a teenager,
Wondering why you were given this rat’s nest,
But realize, as an adult, like so many attributes bestowed on you, this too is a gift?

Will you have your Dad’s belief that opportunity comes once in a lifetime?
Like him, will you seize the moment when the moment arises?
Will you be a daredevil? A snowboarder with a triathlon problem?

Will you have the same naiviety that I hold, that everyone is good until proven bad?
Will you take the benefit of doubt?
Be positive when the world is negatively holding you back?
Will you be a dreamer? An artist? A writer? An athlete?

We talk about this at home, will you like music?
Like how your Dad loves playing music or
How I pretend to sing at the top of my lungs?

Whatever you are, or whoever you will be, know this…
We can’t wait to meet you,
To hold you,
And watch you become the person,
You want to be.

Forest Bathing

I am teaching an online course at Royal Roads University and one of the topics of last week was Work Life Balance. In one of the discussion forums a student posted the following about walking in nature. It is an excerpt from an article published in Alive magazine.

“Shinrin-Yoku – or translated from Japanese means “forest bathing”. Spending a short, leisurely time in a forest setting, for the purpose of absorbing the forest’s healing ambience. Key to the experience is the inhalation of wood essential oils, similar to natural aromatherapy, but visual, auditory, and other sensory stimuli are also important.

The result? A host of health benefits, including a boosted immune system, an increase in cancer battling proteins, and improved blood pressure, among others. Studies have also found psychological benefits, with forest bathers seeing significant increases in positive feelings and decreases in negative feeling.
It is fair to say, then, forest bathing is good for both the body and the spirit, and while studies have so far found some of these benefits only appear after subjects have spent two to three days in the forest, some benefits appear after a mere half hour.

Japanese researchers examined the physiological response of 280 subjects to relatively brief encounters with 24 forests. For each forest, sic subjects spent approximately 30 minutes walking and gazing, while six others spent an equivalent amount of time in an urban area.

Those who were exposed to forest settings had a greatly improved cortisol (stress) levels, pulse rates, blood pressure, and parasympathetic nerve activity levels versus those who were exposed to urban settings.

Related Japanese studies show similar benefits, from boosting intracellular anticancer proteins in female subjects to improving the body’s immune function naturally.

I went for a forest walk yesterday. Walking along the water and in the forest is one of the many things I love about living where I do.  I am fortunate enough to live and work a spitting distance away from nature and it is something I am always grateful for.

The Happy Secret to Better Work

Got 12 minutes? Stop. Listen. Watch. Laugh.

Rituals

When I was a kid, say about 8- years-old or maybe even earlier, I came home from school one day and declared that WE as a FAMILY should go to Church and that I wanted to go to Church that Sunday. My parents complied. Many of my friends attended Church or Synagogue on the weekends and I wanted to be a part of this “fun” ritual. They would talk of having to go to CCD class or Bible study and I secretly wanted to be Catholic or Jewish.

As I look back on WHY I made this declaration that my parents dutifully followed until I left home for University, constantly reminding the 16-year-old cranky pants on a Sunday morning “this was YOUR idea”, I realize now that what I craved was ritual. I loved the rituals of Synagogue and Hebrew school that my Jewish friends went to during the week and then on the weekend. I loved the ritual of communion and of everyone simultaneously kneeling on the benches at the Catholic Church.

Although I don’t go to Church on Sundays as an adult I am still fascinated by rituals. I may not have a regular Sunday ritual of sitting in a pew, but rather my ritual is a bit different.

I wake up earlier than Jeff to have some quiet time in the morning. This is my time to read, make breakfast, drink coffee, and just be solo in our house. I then head off to the Yoga Studio for my volunteer gig, where I volunteer twice a week in exchange for unlimited yoga. I love it. I see many of the same yogis every Sunday and I get to chat with them about their weekends or their upcoming weeks. After my volunteering I will head into a yoga class, and then head on home from there. I feel refreshed, contemplative, calm, and sometimes ready for a nap…. which, as I recall, were the exact same feelings I had as a kid going to Church on Sundays.

Elizabeth Gilbert talks of rituals in Eat, Pray, Love:

“This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don’t have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping. And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn’t have the specific ritual you are craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising, fixing your own broken-down emotional systems with all the do-it-yourself resourcefulness of a generous plumber/poet.”

Do you have a Sunday ritual? What is it?

Sunshine.

I work from home on Fridays, which means I can take a walk around my neighborhood or take a nap at home. Today I chose the walk. It is spring-like outside. The sun is shining, kids are playing outdoors, umbrellas have been put away (momentarily), and friends are chatting in outdoor cafes.

Here are some snap shots I took on my walk at lunch today.

Vibrant blues

 

Embracing our own uniqueness

Why we need to embrace our own uniqueness and be authentic to who we are.

A species in which everyone is General Patton would not succeed, any more than would a race in which everyone was Vincent Van Gogh. I prefer to think that the planet needs athletes, philosophers, sex symbols, painters, scientists; it needs the warmhearted, the hardhearted, the coldhearted, and the weakhearted. It needs those who can devote their lives to studying how many droplets of water are secreted by the salivary glands of dogs under which circumstances, and it needs those who can capture the passing impression of cherry blossoms in a fourteen-syllable poem or devote twenty-five pages to the dissection of a small boy’s feelings as he lies in bed in the dark waiting for his mother to kiss him goodnight….Indeed the presence of outstanding strengths presupposes that energy needed in other areas has been channeled away from them.

 

- Allen Shawn

Love Thursday: Remodel Sexy

http://www.sexyfoodtherapy.com/melissa-ramos/

Courage

I recently returned from a fabulous long weekend away in Calgary. I went there to see friends, relax, and see old sights. It’s been a while since I have been to Calgary, perhaps as far back as 2009 or 2008? I admit it, I try to avoid returning to the city, as though I believe it is the “city” that caused my troubles, but in reality it wasn’t the city. It was me, my situation, and I chose to dislike a city versus deal with the issues I needed to deal with directly.

I am so glad I went to Calgary. I was able to leave that dislike, discomfort, and dis-ease of how I felt about being there a long time ago, and I thoroughly enjoyed the moments. My friends are strong supporters. They are champions and cheerleaders. They are outdoorsy, motherly, hilarious, creative, writers, photographers, and seekers. They are women I have come to admire in so many ways and I was so glad to see each of them happy, and in their place. I was able to be with them exploring the mountains and the city streets, and not feel like I was constantly looking over my shoulder. For what? I don’t really know.

In my yoga class this week the instructor spoke about courage. She said it takes courage to overcome anxiety and the anxieties we have are fears of the past or fears of the future. I reflected about my trip to Calgary as she said this. I didn’t have one sense of anxiety when I was there, and I truly believe it was because I was able to let go the fears of the past and the fears of the future- or that fear of looking over my shoulder. Sometimes it takes a small ounce of courage to take a step forward without reflecting or being fearful of the past.