Yearly Archives: 2015

Hey Pharrell, clap along….I found mine

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We all strive to be happy – in our homes, in our jobs and in our lives.  We yearn for success and money, but how many people take the time to consider what truly makes them happy?

Finding true happiness may not be as difficult as you think – you just have to be realistic about what makes you authentically happy, down to the core of your being.  Happiness is not a tangible “thing”, it is a feeling that comes from deep within.  You can be content with your job, and content with your surroundings, but until you delve into yourself and discover what makes you truly happy, you will never have that genuinely satiated feeling.

The definition of happiness is different for everyone.  The things that make me truly happy – a fine red wine, a perfectly cooked steak, the drippings from a roasted chicken, a good book, closing out the world and just writing – would make others shake their head in disbelief.  But that is my happiness.  And those things that make me sincerely content won’t break the bank (except the wine, sometimes) and are easy to achieve.

I am a simple person when it comes to happiness, but it has taken me many years to realize what the word happiness really means to me.  It does not come in monetary form, nor does it lie within anyone else.  My happiness lies within me and does not rely on outer influences to achieve that state of euphoria.

We each need to step back and really examine what is our true bliss.  Perhaps we have been looking in all the wrong places and the jubilation we strive for is at arms reach.  We owe it to ourselves to seek our true happiness and let other’s judgements be cast aside.  No one person, besides yourself, can define your happiness.  They may be able to contribute to the feeling but your paradise is yours to create.

Find your joy and breathe it in at every chance.  You will be happy you did!

You wear what you eat…

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My friend Sandra passed away tragically in May of 2003.  It was such an extreme shock to get the phone call that she never made it home from her vacation in England.  She had been infected with the Streptococcus bacteria that rapidly turned into the Flesh Eating Disease.  In a few short hours after getting on the plane to return home, she was gone.

Her laugh still echoes in my head sometimes.  She had a wonderful sense of humor, a biting wit that matched well with mine and she was just fun to be around.  We both loved to cook and there were many food experiments done in our kitchen when we shared an apartment in Halifax.  We enjoyed cooking together so much that we eventually started a small catering business.

Recipes were followed or created, heavenly smells wafted under our door into the hallway and many bites were nibbled in order to perfect those recipes.  As we noshed on the fruits of our labor, scattered bits of food would inevitably fall onto Sandra’s chest.  She was a well-endowed woman and she always referred to her cleavage as the “continental divide” because everything would end up there eventually.

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As I was making my coffee this morning, I casually looked down at the sweatshirt I am wearing and noticed the stain directly at the entrance of MY continental divide.  I heard Sandra’s laugh before my laugh passed my lips.

Some memories will always find their way back to the present and those are the ones you never want to forget.

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Giving myself permission to feel joy

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“Find the place inside where there is joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.” ~ Joseph Campbell

inner joy

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This past weekend was more painful than I anticipated it would be.  Saturday was the one year anniversary of my mom’s passing and the anguish of losing her took me by surprise all over again.  I awoke at the exact time I received the dreaded phone call last year and spent the remainder of the day secluding myself from society, friends and family.

It was a much-needed hibernation from reality and time that allowed me to reflect on all of the happy memories and not just dwell in the sadness.  I was able to observe many moments of silence and stillness.  Those quiet moments gave me permission to initially grieve but then to take that grief and smother it with thoughts of a happy life spent with my mom and my dad.

After recognizing my mom’s passing, the ninth anniversary of my dad’s passing occurred two days later on Monday.  As it happened on Saturday, I awoke at 2:15 am on Monday, roughly the time my dad passed, and spent many peaceful moments remembering the good times with him.

Grief can be consuming but joy has a way of quelling the overwhelming emotion and allowing happiness to rise to the surface.  It is difficult in times of sorrow, especially when remembering a loved one who has passed, to be able to bring joy to the moment.  But those who have left us would want us to feel nothing but joy.  My parents would be sad to know that I am still grieving and not embracing the spirit they had when they lived.

It is that force that drives me to find joy in my sadness.  It is their energy that wills me to move beyond the grief and remember their lives in a happy way and not cling to the heartache I feel in their absence.  I will always grieve the loss of my parents but I will also begin to give myself permission to bask in the joy I feel having been a part of their lives.  Hopefully, in time, I will be able to carry that joy into my future and the joy will burn out the pain.

It ain’t a party until something gets celebrated

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I love having a project.  I get really excited about planning a function and making as many things as I can myself.   I planned every part of my wedding down to the finest detail.  I made my own wedding cake and created a wedding cookbook for our guests.  The people who were at our wedding said it was one of the best parties they had been to and talked about it for months after.

I had never been on Pinterest until about eight months ago and now I am addicted.  It has given me so many great recipe ideas as well as crafts and decorating ideas.  Where was this site when I was in my planning stages for my wedding?  Regardless, I have certainly made up for lost time.

My brother’s 50th birthday is rapidly approaching and I am excited to be at the helm of the organization committee, which will mostly be me but that’s the way I like it.  I have been relentlessly surfing Pinterest for some great ideas,  collecting photographs and creating an epic slide show on Power Point.  I have chosen to only pick the relatively innocent photographs since my 50th will follow in four short years and I want to stay on his good side!   (James, read that line over again and let it sink in)

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There are so many great ideas I have saved and now I have to sort through the best of the bunch to choose which ones will work for the party.  I am excited to have all of our friends gathered together again to celebrate the half century my brother has been on this revolving planet.  He truly is one of my best friends and I can’t wait to help him celebrate the past 50 years and help him prepare for the next 50.

 

Every little bit counts

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Every person is made up of bits.  Bits of humor mixed with bits of wisdom and intelligence and a few bits of humanity thrown in for good measure.  All of us have bits of our selves.  Some of those bits we share with the masses and some of those bits we only share with those closest to us.

Along our journey through life we choose to share the pieces of ourselves that we feel deeply connected to but we only choose to share them with people we are drawn to, people who will truly appreciate those bits of us and will find those bits endearing.  We all have good bits and bad bits.  There are bits of our past that are tainted but the true friends in our lives will see past those bits and realize they made us who we are today.

When you make a connection with someone who understands the pieces of you that make you who you are, the feeling of comfort is instantaneous.  The bits of you that made you self-conscious no longer exist and you find strength in the bits of you that you once questioned.  Those pieces of your life that seemed foreign now fit into the bigger picture and the puzzle is not nearly as puzzling.  And those pieces of you that you chose to share somehow find a home in the hearts of those who truly get you.  

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At the end of the day we are the sum of all of our bits, good and bad.  It is the strong forces in our lives that will accept us as the accumulation of our bits and look at the whole picture, not just focusing on each of the parts as individual pieces and labeling them as good or bad.   Those people don’t enter our lives very often.  When they do come along they leave a lasting impression.  They will love you to bits and love all of your bits.

The year that went by in what feels like a month

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A year ago today, my brother and I lost the most important woman in our lives.  We released butterflies at her celebration of life and we see her wings in so many places.  I wrote this poem for her.  We miss you mom.  xo

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You left us in the early hours,

so peacefully your spirit would roam.

Through a gentle wind and the rising sun,

He called to take you home.

A ladder was built for your journey to light,

each rung meant to make you content.

While bathed in the glowing light of rebirth,

you gracefully began your ascent.

Loving arms awaited you there,

curling you into their embrace.

Heaven welcomed an angel back home,

 rejoicing her love and her grace.

You leave behind your spirit and joy,

in those who loved you each day.

While our days will be saddened by the emptiness we feel,

we know we will see you someday.

We celebrate your rebirth and your newly found wings,

by releasing these spirits of transition.

And hope we can do honour to your memory

by carrying on your tradition.

Live long and prosper – fiction

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spock

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Space was not the final frontier and neither was death.  It had been weeks since he had left his physical body and yet he knew his life was far from over.  He didn’t know how to classify the realm in which he currently existed.  It wasn’t space, it wasn’t Heaven, it wasn’t Purgatory and it certainly wasn’t Hell.  It simply felt like what he imagined it would be like in the womb.  The sounds around him undulated and he felt like he was floating.

If he could not recall certain parts of his life, those memories slowly returned as if they were on a trailer reel of a film. It all seemed highly illogical but it was happening and he could not ignore the scenes as they played in his head.  Familiar faces drifted to the forefront of his mind and he knew them all by name.

The face that lingered the longest was of a man he had known well.  William.  His name was William.  As the details of William’s face became more pronounced in his memory, he became overwhelmed with emotion, something he had done his best to conceal throughout his life.

Images rushed by now, tumbling over themselves to make room for others and, as the last pieces seemed to fall into place, the movie of his life began.  He watched his childhood, he witnessed himself as a young man falling in love for the first time and he watched as he tried his first cigarette.  He turned away and the movie paused.  That moment frozen on the screen was the beginning of his end.

He focused once more on the show and watched the legacy he helped build, in his personal life and his career.  The words he uttered many times on-screen came true in more ways than one in his life and, even though this life no longer existed, he would still live long and prosper in the minds of those who loved him.

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Written for the Grammar Ghoul Challenge – In memory of Leonard Nimoy the word prompt is illogical and the visual prompt is a scene from Star Trek II – The Search for Spock.  I was extremely sad when he passed.  I spent many of my childhood years watching Star Trek and, in many ways, Leonard Nimoy reminded me of my dad.  LLAP.

 

A welcome distraction

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There have been very few times I ever doubted that the Hospitality Industry was the career path I was meant to be on, and I’m sure those few times were after a 16-hour day when I swore I would find another job.  But I never did.

Our lodge has been pretty quiet since Family Day Weekend and I have become accustomed to my 9:00 to 4:00 desk job instead of the crazy hours that hospitality affords its employees.  We had a small conference check in today and, for several days leading up to their appearance at the Front Desk, I had been dreading their arrival.  I have done this several times after a quiet period of office work.  The thought of the sudden onslaught of extra hours and becoming a jack-of-all-trades for a few days unsettles me but then something wonderful happens.  I get to be the real me again, not the paper-pushing, keyboard-punching desk worker, but the social, outgoing, charismatic person who loves to be around people.

The day truly started for me when the group began to appear at the desk around noon, although my work day started at 9:00 am.  From that moment on, I was on.  I was engaging and witty and I had long forgotten how much I had hoped the group would cancel.   There was a great deal of sarcasm and laughter and I felt like I was where I was meant to be.  After I had finished serving them dinner, one of the delegates went so far as to make the sardonic comment, “Susan, you should really learn to be more social”, to which I responded I was taking classes.

social dinner

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This welcome distraction not only reminded me of why I love my job, but it took my mind off of the looming calendar date coming up on Saturday.  Being busy is good.  Being busy lets my strengths shine and being busy means I get to feel like myself again.