Monday morning inspiration | Tribes

Good morning and happy Monday!

Tribe. It’s a common enough word, yet not a word you hear everyday. But last week I heard it everywhere I went. Someone raised it in a meeting, pointing out the diversity that exists in the workplace. Someone else, a speaker at an event, gave this advice to be successful in life and in business: “Build your tribe”. 

What she meant was that to be successful, you need to build a community of people around you who both support you and who share your hopes and values. Some people might call this being "on the same wavelength". 

So I just want to say this: thanks for being part of my tribe. You inspire me everyday.

And because March 25th is Tolkien Reading Day (of Lord of the Rings fame), and he happens to be one of my favourite authors, I want to share a quote from one of his most famous books, The Hobbit:

“Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?” 

I do wish you a good morning and an inspired week. The rest I leave up to you!

Monday morning inspiration Feb 4 | The Snuggle Factor

Good morning and Happy Monday!

“Why do I live here?” is the question I ask myself every winter when the deep freeze descends and the air outside hurts my face and my spirit. But there could be a bright side.

A study by the University of Michigan found that cold activates a special receptor in fat and nerve cells that in turn activates a gene associated with longevity. Mammals have this receptor, so in theory, cold weather could increase your life. (Interestingly, wasabi also activates this gene…so maybe we should all eat one of my special sesame-tuna sandwiches with wasabi mayo).

I found these more practical reasons to be grateful for the cold. We tend to cozy up to those we love, reducing stress (the snuggle factor..remember hygge?). Cold burns more calories (and maybe because of this, or because of the layers of clothing we wear, our body image tends to improve). Cold also helps you think more clearly because your body burns less glucose (studies suggest that too much glucose affects mental acuity).

Embrace the cold and have a snuggly, smart and inspired week!

Monday Morning Inspiration | Shift in Perspective

Author's Note: This morning I am sharing an inspiration from a Monday morning a few weeks ago.

Good morning and happy Monday!

I was chatting last week about how people get entrenched in their ideas and become unwilling to consider other options. “It’s got to be blue”, says one, while the other is set inextricably on yellow. Neither one is willing to shift. Result? Conflict.

It reminded me of a course I completed many years ago while pursuing a certificate in facilitation and negotiation, called Shifting from Positions to Interests. People tend to get entrenched in their position, without considering what the underlying reason for that position is. For example: Maybe the goal is to evoke an atmosphere mimicking the feeling you get outdoors, and thus you think blue is perfect because it represents the sky. Your colleague thinks yellow is perfect because it represents the sun. You both want the same thing, and yet your positions (blue vs. yellow) get in the way.

In work, as in life, it is worth discovering underlying motivations, as this could reduce conflict and help people reach their common goals. It involves a shift in perspective. The piece of fine art created by “environmental artist” Thomas Deininger displayed in the link below illustrates what a shift in perspective can achieve:

http://www.tomdeiningerart.com/marilyn.html

Monday morning inspiration | Imagine Better

Author's note: Every Monday morning, I send a small inspiration to my team. I've been doing this for over a year now. Since they seem to like them, I will share some of them with you too.

Good morning, and happy Monday!

I picked up a small book this weekend. It turned out to be the commencement address given by J.K. Rowling at Harvard in 2008. I laughed as I read the opening, "Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility, or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out I can't remember a single word she said".

I've had four Convocations, and I can't remember a single word either. And that is why I choose to share a quote from hers (Rowlings), which I think is inspiring:

"If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. We do not need magic to transform our world; we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already; we have the power to imagine better."

Wishing you a transformative and inspired week!

The Great American Eclipse Road Trip

"Let's go see the eclipse". It's late July, and my husband turns to me. "I'd really like to see it". It becomes evident as he talks that he has been doing some research. "We'll go down to Casper, Wyoming", he says, "but we won't stay there because the hotels are all full. We'll get a room in Billings, Montana and drive there there morning of the eclipse". It is highly unusual for my husband to plan a trip. It's even more unusual for him to have done all this research. I know I am beaten before I say, desperately, "But it's a really long drive for two minutes of eclipse!". Like, really really long. About 13 hours each way.

Before I know it, we have a hotel booked in Billings. Which is actually kind of fortunate, as I find out later that hotels, motels and campsites in the path of the eclipse have been booked, in some cases, years in advance. I guess there was a run on rooms in Casper last November. The only one I find online is a dingy motel selling its last available rooms for a mere $1500 US a night. Holy crap, Batman. So the $135/night hotel is Billings seems like a deal, even if we will have to drive four hours to get to Casper to see totality.

And totality is what it's all about. Only in the narrow zone of totality will you experience the shadow of the moon completely blocking out the sun. When this happens, you can look at the sun with the naked eye. Day turns to night. I admit it sounds cool. But twenty-six hours of driving! I had also promised myself that I would not visit Trump's America. I am not usually that political, but I've been watching what amounts to a hateful, misogynistic, country lead by a six-year old with-histrionics and an itchy Twitter trigger finger American political train wreck every single day on the news and what I see is troubling. I do not want to support that administration in any way. But I convince myself that the eclipse falls under the "Act of God/force majeure" clause in the contract as events outside of human control.

It sounds pretty cool to my 16-year-old nephew, too, so we invite him to come with us. His 19-year-old sister also thinks it sounds cool and so we have a full car. I stock up on Skittles, Hawkins Cheezies (the only real Cheezies), root beer, and my passport and hope for the best.

The line-up at the border crossing is longer than might be considered normal, almost an hour. You would think that they might have anticipated heavier than normal traffic. We inch forward to the Coutts/Sweetgrass crossing, the air around us hazy from smoke drifting in from the BC wildfires. Once across the border we can see the Sweetgrass Hills looming out of the haze, erratic and insubstantial.

Unsurprisingly, Northern Montana looks a lot like south central Alberta. Huge fields, pretty flat, some badlands. But there are differences. I've thought about it and the word I'd use to describe much of Montana is ramshackle. It looks a bit like an untidy attic. The difference is population: Whereas southern Canada holds most of the Canadian population, the Northern States are kind of like that attic, scarcely populated and with some older assets.

As we approach Billings, the flatness is interrupted more and more often by treed gullies. Billings itself is in a large, badlands-rimmed valley. It's quite beautiful, rimmed by vantage points over those rimrocks looking down at the city. It's still a bit hazy though, possibly still from those wildfires. I'd been here when I was a child, on an international Girl Guide camp (Camp Canusa, I think it was called). I remember making knick-knacks to trade with other campers out of that plastic stuff you stick in the oven that shrinks and hardens, little cowboy hats with "Calgary" written on them in black felt pen, with a pin-hole so you could fix it on your hat. I didn't remember anything of the city, other than I and two other girls were billeted at someone's house the first night, pre-camp, and we ran around the neighbourhood and through people's yards in the dark with our pajamas on, screaming and laughing hysterically. I was probably about twelve. That is my one memory of Billings.

The next morning we stumble out of bed unreasonably early, in order to make it to Wyoming in advance of the eclipse. It would be devastating to drive all this way and miss the zone of totality by a few miles. I am also praying that it will be clear, because here in Billings it's still quite hazy. We break out the Skittles quite early (it's a road trip, after all and besides the Cheezies are all gone) and hope for the best.

While Montana might be ramshackle, Wyoming is beautiful, in a rolling, green, empty kind of way. Montana is the attic; Wyoming is the guest bedroom, pristine and a bit austere with not too many guests. At some point on our right (to the West) we can see, beyond the Bighorn hills, the snow-covered peaks of the Tetons. We pass a sign directing us to Yellowstone. One day, we will go. But not today. We set the cruise control for 80 miles/130 km/hour and watch the scenery flash by. There are quite a few cars with Alberta plates on them, also evidently eclipse-chasers, but the traffic isn't heavy by any means.

As we approach Casper, the traffic gets a bit heavier. We start to see cars pulled over on overpasses, and realize we have reached the zone of totality. Charles has picked out five possible viewing spots on Google Earth, with their precise GPS coordinates, which he has programmed into his GPS unit. However, as we get closer to Casper, those overpasses and secondary roads start to fill up with more and more cars. We decide to ditch his original plans and just pick a secondary road that doesn't have too many cars on it. We don't want to miss the main event.

We join the few dozen cars on our selected road, pulling off onto the grass and opening the tailgate to sit on. My sister had the foresight to source eclipse glasses several months ago before the run on them, and so we have ISO-certified viewing glasses. A few minutes after we pull off, we can see the tiny bite of the moon's shadow on the face of the sun. Without the glasses, you wouldn't know anything at all was happening. It's still bright, and warm, and sunny. Through the glasses, the sun is a lot smaller than we were expecting it to be. So small, and yet all of our life depends on it shining, not too cold, not too hot, but just right. Our Goldilocks.

But that shadow keeps taking tiny bites out of the sun. When three-quarters of the sun is gone, you can feel that it is no longer quite so warm, nor quite so bright. I think of the first Narnia book, The Magician's Nephew, when two children visit a dying world with a dying sun. With the naked eye, it's just barely noticeable, as if a cloud was obscuring the sun. But it continues. The temperature drops noticeably. If this were a hundred years ago, or a few hundred or a thousand, I think what happens next would be seen as a sign from God, perhaps of wrath, or perhaps even as the end of the world.

The moon's shadow takes a final bite out of the sun. The world goes twilight dark, and some of the brighter stars can be seen in the sky. But I barely notice as I whip off my glasses. The sun has become a dark-centered glowing black daisy in the sky, its white petals flaming out with the sun's corona. It is fantastical, magical, awe-inspiring. Someone else sees a black hole into another dimension. For two minutes, the world holds its breath and we do, too. Then there is a brief bright flash of corona and someone shouts, "diamond ring!" and suddenly the sun is too bright to look at again without protective glasses.

My husband hugs me. His face is joyous. "Thank you for being here with me. I am so glad I got to share it with you!" And now I know why some people become eclipse-chasers, travelling the world for two minutes of totality. It is in fact other-worldly, awesome, mind-blowing. We are so small in this universe that a shadow can throw us into a twilight world. It makes me feel that we must do a better job of protecting this fragile world. We are a shadow away from all that we know.

I forget that we still have a thirteen-hour drive to get home. "When did you say the next one is? 2024? Maybe I should book something now," I say, as we climb in the car for the journey home.

My Journey, Part 3

Every morning when I wake up, I lie there for a few minutes. I review things in my head, trying to find reasons to get up. They can be small reasons, like having to brush my teeth, or that I can hear the birds singing so it must be a nice day. A lot of mornings it is touch and go as to whether I can get out of bed, and most days it is an act of sheer will. It still isn't easy to move. To get up, I need to clutch a sheet or part of the mattress, and slowly haul myself up to a sitting position. From there, I use my hands to help get my legs over the side of the bed, where I slouch for a moment or two. I am usually a bit dizzy from the exertion and don't want to fall. While I sit there, I make small challenges for myself. Can I both brush my teeth and shower today, or do I only have enough energy to brush my teeth?

We have a timeshare at a condo in the Windermere valley, and we have a week coming up. For obvious reasons, we haven't used it for a while. Charles is itching to go. He really needs a break; this hasn't been easy on him either. So I ask the doctor if it is possible for me to go. I am really supposed to stay within a 45-minute drive of a hospital right now, but I have been pretty stable, so the doctor agrees that I can go. I am really nervous, but willing to give it a try. In order to fit it between hospital visits, we are going just for one night.

The drive is a beautiful one, and usually filled (for me) with nostalgia because of all the summers spent there as a child. Twenty minutes out of the city, my back is sore from sitting. "Why don't you lie back and close your eyes?" my husband suggests. Trouble is, my back is still too curved. I can't uncurl my spine enough to get my head onto the head rest from a sitting position. I can feel every crack in the road as we go over it, jarring me. I try not to cry from pain. Three hours later, we reach our condo. All I can think of is that I will have to do that all again tomorrow, on the way back. Charles gets me settled on the couch for a nap while he walks to the village bakery for a coffee and pastry, and when he comes back looking a little more relaxed I know that it was worth the journey.

Slowly, things improve. Every night as I lie down, Charles tells me that things will get better tomorrow. Hang in there, I need you! he says, and kisses me on the forehead before turning out the light. Most days, he is right, but it is a slow road. All summer, I try to get stronger. We go for short walks around the block, using my cane or my walking sticks. Managing 1 km is a milestone, and I am exhausted but happy. My hair is starting to grow back, and this time it is black, grey, and curly. One of the nurses says that often chemo patients re-grow hair that is curly. She calls it angel hair.

My friend Alana comes in the late fall to visit. It is so good to see her! I have been dreading the anniversary of my diagnosis, but we decide to celebrate making it a whole year by going out for dinner. For me, it is an act of independence and survival. I wrap my head with a festive, sparkly gold scarf and put on some lipstick. In the restaurant, people stare and then shift their eyes away as I lurch through to our table, but for once I don't mind the determined invisibility of the disabled, thrown over me like a cloak by my fellow able-bodied citizens. I even have my first post-treatment glass of sparkling wine to celebrate. With my super-sensitive taste buds it doesn't taste great, but I drink it anyhow.

Improvement must happen everyday, but it is hard to see on that scale. Month-to-month, though, I can see improvement. I am a bit straighter, a bit stronger. A bit more able to accomplish the small tasks of living that most people don't even think about -- getting out of bed, brushing one's teeth, bathing on one's own. Being able to reach down a box of cereal from the cupboard. My insurance coverage for physiotherapy runs out, but I hire one to come to my house every week just to make sure I am improving. The drugs I take make me anemic, and many days it is hard to move and breathe at the same time. I lie on the couch, reading or watching TV.

It is possibly too many episodes of "Say Yes to the Dress" that scourge of daytime TV, that spark the desire to celebrate our 22nd wedding anniversary. It gives me a goal, something to plan and for which to get stronger, and "Take 2 @22" is born. We decide to have a party at the hotel where we were married. Planning it takes up lots of my time, choosing a dress, the menu, getting out invitations. It gives me a purpose for which I am grateful. It makes waking up in the morning a little easier, knowing I have something to accomplish and about which to dream.

For Charles' birthday in March we decide to fly to Victoria to celebrate, as it is a "milestone" birthday. My friend Susan lends me her condo on the harbour front. The trip is really stretching my boundaries. I am scared of being so far from home, and it will be my first time on a plane in a long time. I now wear a medical device, and I don't know if air travel will affect it. I am still not very strong, either, and I am worried about getting on and off the plane. But I manage it, and the simple act of leaving home for a few days and returning alive gives me more confidence.

Many of my family and friends are planning on coming to Calgary in August for Take2@22, and I want it to be a good party. I plan the food and the ceremony, and hope the dress I ordered online will fit. It arrives and I try it on, with help from Charles so I don't fall over. It is made for a tall willowy goddess of a woman, probably around 6 feet tall. I am meanwhile a shrunken version of my former self, having lost at least two inches, close to three, in height to land at around 5-foot-four. In other words, the dress needs to be taken up by at least eight inches. Still, it's pretty, and I think I will continue to get straighter in the next few months. My neck is stiff so it's hard to look in the mirror to see it all, but Charles tells me I look beautiful in it.

I have learned that beauty is more than how I look. I know that sounds odd and somewhat poetical ("beauty is in the eye of the beholder"), but around the time I lost my hair for the second time, while I still couldn't really move or pick up a glass or brush my own teeth yet, I realized that the people who loved me loved me not because I was pretty on the outside. They loved me bald, skeletal and make-up free just as much as if I was still healthy and made up to look like a model. In fact, they might even love me more. Now that I am able to apply make-up again, I find I don't bother much. I have nice skin, and even though I don't style my hair very often either, I just appreciate having some. It's still curly, and I have been to the salon to have its randomness cut and shaped. My sister drives me, that first time, and helps me when I can't lean back far enough to get the shampoo rinsed out of my hair, leaning back in the chair by the stylist's sink the way I didn't even think about before I got sick. My stylist, Patrick, and I have a good laugh when he tells me that the hair on the back of my head is growing faster than the rest. "So what you are telling me," I joke, "is that I have a natural mullet!"

August 7th is my wedding anniversary. It was my grandmother's birthday. She died a number of years ago now, but that's why we chose the day originally. Take2@22 is planned for August 6, the Saturday night to allow for guests to take part more easily. I am nervous and excited. I hope that I can make the walk from our room to the viewpoint where the ceremony is supposed to take place. I am running on a lot of adrenaline, which I am finding can help when you are low on red blood cells. With a little help, I manage to get into my dress and am thrilled when I discover that my hair is long enough to hold the delicate ornamental comb I ordered. Everyone is at the viewpoint as we walk in. It is cloudy but the rain holds off long enough for the ceremony to finish, and for all of us to get back inside before it pours. It poured twenty-two years ago, too. They say rain is lucky for a bride. I have to agree. Twenty-two years ago I managed to pick out someone who loved me enough to stick with me through the hard times. When we dance to the same song we chose for our wedding, I am clumsy but it doesn't matter. Take two.

The Cool Side

I flip my pillow to the cool side, and think of my grandmother. It’s something she used to do when I would sleep over at her small, one-bedroom apartment, something that happened only as a treat when I was young. After an evening of homemade chips fried in bacon fat (her specialty), Bugles, and Wink (a lemon-lime soft drink), and several games of Cribbage and Crazy Eights, she would put sheets and blankets on her small sofa, and tuck me in.  I’d lie there, listening to the tick, tock of her carriage clock, before falling asleep. Sometime in the night I’d wake, briefly, as she would come out and turn my pillow to the cool side.

I noticed a sign at the hospital today advertising a 6-week course entitled “Cancer patients and insomnia”. I am relieved. I now know it isn’t just I who struggles with sleeping.  When my husband asks why I can’t sleep, I can’t really tell him. It’s something to do with fear, and with the heavy weight of being a survivor. I toss and turn, sometimes for hours, listening to the snores of my husband. He has the ability to lie down, put his head on the pillow, and fall asleep in about 60 seconds. I find this annoying on many levels, although I envy it too.

People don’t understand this thing, this survivor’s guilt. But it’s heavy, and it’s real. I’ve heard other people, on TV, people who have escaped great disasters maybe. They say, “Why me? Why was I spared?” Why, indeed? Maybe it is to share my stories, to witness other’s stories and share them, too. Maybe it is to be more involved in the world. Maybe it is because of science, and the great advances that have been made in treatment. Or maybe it was just chance, and I won the lottery. I know of two others who were diagnosed with cancer after I was. They were good people, who were loved, and needed, and they are both now gone. Can you begin to understand how the weight builds?

It’s not every night I struggle. But it’s been getting worse over time. I finally ask the doctor for a sleeping pill. I do this because I am going back to work, and can’t afford to lie awake until 2:00 am only to get up five hours later, groggy and tired. It is bitter in my mouth, but it seems to soothe the frantic churning of my mind enough that I can fall asleep more quickly.

I think of my grandmother fairly often these days. Whenever I see a chickadee, for example, which I do almost daily because we have a bird feeder in our backyard. I sit at the counter in our kitchen, sometimes along with two of my cats, their tails twitching and jaws snapping with hunting fervor, and watch them. We get sparrows, redpolls, downy woodpeckers, magpies, and flickers along with the chickadees, but the chickadees are my favourites. My grandmother used to sometimes sing me a song, when she stayed with us during the endless, innocent summers at our cabin on Lake Windermere. I'd climb into bed, the one with the headboard with "secret" sliding doors where I would hide my most treasured possessions. It still resides in my basement. I can't bear to throw it out or recycle it or donate it. It is like a memory time capsule. I can't remember the song though, other than it started “Chickadee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee”. She would rub my back with her calloused, rough hand, and I’d fall asleep quickly and fearlessly.

At the cabin, my demons lurked in the clothes closet next to my bed, where there was a gap in the ceiling that led to the mysterious attic. I could sometimes hear the squirrels that infested it scrabbling in the walls. Once or twice a summer, my dad would go up just to check and make sure everything was ok up there. At night, I’d flip on the light switch and close the closet doors, leaving a glow that reassured me no monsters would appear in the dark. It occurs to me now that I need to build a closet in my mind, with a light switch, where I can close the doors and switch on the light, and fall asleep knowing that fears are contained, illuminated into non-existence.

Sometimes when my husband is late coming to bed, I leave the bedside light on. I pretend I’ve been reading, but what I really want is a shield against the darkness when the fear comes. I feel all courage has been sapped from my body and I lie there, tense and wakeful like a three-year old, fearing monsters.  I try to think of my grandmother then. She was born in 1900, which means she lived through two world wars, the great depression, and many years of limited means. I’ve been told that she was also on Canada’s first women’s hockey team, and in my mind I can see an old photo I think I have been shown. In it, she had long dark hair and what I know to have been blue eyes, and a team uniform. I only knew her when she was old, of course, with short white hair, but her eyes were always that soft, cornflower blue colour. But she had courage. She had to have had.

I hear my husband coming, so I quickly reach over and turn off the light. When he opens the door, the room is dark. I say nothing as he climbs into bed beside me. This helps, the closeness of another person. Some of the fear goes away, and my breathing slows. When I hear his breathing calm into sleep, I turn my pillow to the cool side, and close my eyes.