Category: Writing and Reflections

It’s That Time of Year Again

~ pebblesandclay ~ 2 Comments

IMG_0656.JPGI always stop to greet this guy on my annual visit to the doctor.

I went for my annual doctor’s appointment with my endocrinologist yesterday. Anyone who has ever had a cancer diagnosis, and maybe even those who haven’t, know the slowly creeping tension that builds before these visits. I’ve been thinking about this lately because of something I have been experiencing but haven’t been able to put into words until just recently.

Every year around my birthday for the past while I have been experiencing a malaise, a fear, that begins slowly but gradually intensifies to the point where I have to stop and take notice. It calls to me to begin reactivating all of my self care practices. My journal pages get filled again, I take longer walks, and book that massage I’ve been meaning to have. I call in my support systems and generally ride it out.

The interesting thing is, I have noticed this pattern and have made some connections, but also usually wonder if there is something else happening as well – some new physical ailment I should be monitoring. I never fully understood it until recently. You see, it was around my birthday seven years ago that I had an operation to remove half of my thyroid gland. We knew my thyroid was displaying unusual activity but couldn’t get a clear diagnosis without removing part of it. It wasn’t good. I had a smallish cancer located inside the tissue they removed which meant two things: a) I now had a cancer diagnosis and b) a second operation had to be scheduled to remove the rest of the gland. It was not good news and rocked the world of this highly sensitive person to the core. I lived in fear through the whole thing – the second operation, the follow up treatment, and finally the recovery.

I was lucky and had good doctors and my prognosis was always very good. But it happened. And it was traumatic. Which brings me to what I learned this year which has changed things for me. My husband recently read an article about a connection between a cancer diagnosis and people experiencing PTSD because of it. Hearing this has changed everything for me. I am so much better when I can name things that I am experiencing. Maybe next year when I feel the fear creeping in again around my birthday, I can be more tender with that vulnerable side of myself that was so frightened for my survival and well being seven years ago.

I am already practicing. When I got off the elevator yesterday at the doctor’s office and felt the floor still rising and my heart beating just a little too fast, I remembered to comfort myself with these three sentences.

I’m feeling vulnerable.
That’s okay.
I’m grateful for the wonderful doctors that I found seven years ago.

Winter Lover or Hater?

~ pebblesandclay ~ 30 Comments

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If the hard frost these mornings is any indication, winter should be showing up any day now. (This line and picture were from yesterday.)

This is the scene this morning.

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I’ve been thinking a lot about winter lately because as it approaches many of my friends and acquaintances are busy making plans to escape her reach. Winters here are long and cold, so this strategy is not all that surprising for people who have the time and the means to make different choices. But the pervasive attitude, for many,  is that winter is something to be endured – not embraced.

I began wondering about what the winter haters are believing about winter that is different from winter lovers. The winter haters seem to believe that winter is too long, too cold, too dark, and too limiting. It requires energy to get through a Canadian winter, so it becomes something to be endured or escaped. Winter lovers, on the other hand, are believing that winter is something to be welcomed and enjoyed. Although it feels long to some, the snow is usually here only from December to mid March. One group finds the cold and snow invigorating, the other something to hide from. It’s all a question of attitude, it seems.

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I happen to be lucky enough to live near a ski town, so I see first hand all the people who have embraced winter and are actually enjoying it. I meet them walking around town in their lightweight, brightly coloured parkas and they all look great. Their faces are flushed and beaming from the cold. They look happy and invigorated as they shop for food to be enjoyed with family and friends later in the day – by the fire, I’m imagining.

I couldn’t help but think mindset has a big influence on whether we are a winter lover or hater, so I was particularly interested in this article I read in The Atlantic titled, “The Norwegian Town Where the Sun Doesn’t Rise,” by Kari Leibowitz. She was there to research how the residents of northern Norway protect themselves from wintertime woes in the hopes that some of these findings could be used to help people who were suffering elsewhere with this issue.

lead_960Kari Leibowitz ( The Atlantic)

Tromsø, Norway is a tiny island 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. There the Polar Night lasts from November to January and during this time the sun doesn’t rise at all.  Interestingly enough, the residents of Tromsø have lower rates of wintertime depression than would be expected.

How do the residents of Tromsø protect themselves from wintertime depression? Some gave credit to cod liver oil or lamps that simulated the sun by brightening at a specific time each morning. Others thought it had to do with community and social involvement. Most residents though just talked about the Polar Night as if it wasn’t a big deal. In fact, many didn’t consider the summer months as being the best season.

So mindset, eh? I’m crediting the people of Tromsø for supporting me in not particularly enjoying the month of July here in southern Canada. As for winter, I’m sorting through my winter clothes, dusting off my snowshoes and cross-country skis, stocking up on candles, and, oh yes, will also be buying that cod liver oil.

Do any of you have winter plans?

 

*You can read the complete article on Tromsø  from The Atlantic here.

*Clinical seasonal depression is not like the wintertime blues and is something that needs to be taken seriously and treated appropriately.

 

Let’s Talk! The Lost Art of Dialogue in a Divided World

~ pebblesandclay ~ 9 Comments

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When did talking to each other become so hard? Somewhere along the way, maybe as the church lost its importance in our communities, it became easier to sort ourselves into groups rather than gather as a whole. We began to hang out more and more with others who shared our lifestyle, or interests, or education, or had similar financial means. I know this happened to me. I was a teacher in the public system, so I certainly ran into a mixed pot of people at work, but when I came home and got comfortable, I spent most of my time with the same group of friends. Talking to these people was easy because, for the most part, we shared the same values and rarely had disagreements of any serious kind.  That’s the problem.

We get lulled into thinking that everyone is like us and thinks like us. So it comes as a BIG surprise when we discover differently. Think of last year’s American election and the shock awaiting the Democrats and much of the rest of the world when the results came in. Where were we? It seems all of us surprised people had not been talking to Trump supporters. I vowed then and there that I wouldn’t knowingly allow myself to be so isolated and naive again.

If  we’re going to move in closer to others who think differently, we have to practice talking to each other and this isn’t easy in these emotionally and politically charged times. I find that it helps to be generous to people who I disagree with. My generosity is made easier when I look for things we have in common. I find that most of us want at least some of the same things for our families and loved ones. Getting to these shared places is the tricky part.

Where I live in Quebec the government has just passed Bill 62 which does not allow Muslim women wearing the niqab or burka from receiving public services while covered. This blog post is not about that issue per se but about the discourse around this issue. It is polarizing because it has all the elements that make it a “hot” topic. It touches on fears and freedoms, oppression, misogyny, religion, and race.

I had two very different discussions around this issue. In the first, there was a feeling that people were locked into their positions so fiercely there was no room for dialogue. A real exchange can’t  happen when people aren’t open to listening to each other, don’t agree on the “facts,” nor have a willingness to find common ground. I felt discouraged.

I had another dialogue a few days later with someone else which had a totally different flavour and gave me hope that we can find ways to work ourselves out of this great divide.  We did not agree, but as soon as I spoke I could see that she was listening to me and maybe even finding what I had to say interesting. She didn’t feel the same way as I did and brought up her own points. I listened and was thoughtful. In that moment, I knew that in order to find our way out of this mess this is exactly the kind of conversation we need to be having with each other.

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I long for more of these talks, now that I know it’s possible. Maybe we can change the world one discussion at a time.

 

*Some of the language “to sort ourselves” and “to move in closer” comes from theories researched by Brené Brown in her book Braving the Wilderness. I highly recommend this book if you are interested in finding your way to “true belonging.”

 

 

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

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It happens every year and every year it is shocking. It is shocking how much faster the dark descends each day. To give you an idea of how fast this happens, I went to a site that records sunrise and sunset and the total number of daylight hours for our area. This past Monday the 23rd of October we had 10:29 daylight hours. On Sunday, October 29th, we will have 10:10 hours of daylight. That’s a whopping 19 minute drop in one week. It feels as if the dark is descending quickly, because it is!

How does one live in sync with this seasonal rhythm of darkening days? One of the first things I have noticed is that we tend to eat dinner earlier, not because we are hungry,  but because it is so dark that all our body systems tell us to adjust: eat a bit earlier, go to bed earlier, rise later. There’s a slowing down.

It’s impossible to ignore the descent into the dark, but the upside is that it makes the light we do have all the more special.

IMG_0546Cow grazing at sunset.

In a season that is becoming darker by the day, I find myself looking for all the surprise moments of light.

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And just maybe, that’s what we need to be doing all of the time – looking for surprise moments of light in the dark.

 

*If you are interested in checking out the daylight hours in your part of the world you can go here.

 

 

 

Out of My Comfort Zone

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fullsizeoutput_300.jpegIt’s been a big week. As you might have surmised from reading my blog,  I find my inspiration and most of my peace from living a quiet, reflective life in the country. But some weeks take me out of my comfort zone and this past week was one of those. There were two issues making headlines. The first was  the #metoo campaign which grew out of the allegations against Harvey Weinstein. This was followed on its heels by Bill 62 being passed in the legislature here in Quebec which prevents women wearing the niqab or burka from receiving public services while covered. This includes riding on public transportation.

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Both of these issues touched on things I value: the safety and well being of women. And I have decided that I can no longer remain neutral about things I value – not in this world, not now.

Speaking out publicly in support of these women’s issues has taken me out of my comfort zone. I have run up against disagreement and heated public discussion. I practiced civility and I have listened with the intent to understand. It is not always easy. Was it the right thing to do? Yes. Has this openness to understanding different viewpoints changed my mind on key issues? No. But it sure has opened me to the complexity of many of the problems facing society at the moment.

I am wanting to get back to the forest now, both metaphorically and physically. It is here that I rejuvenate and get clear about the next right things to do in my life. I have missed the simple ordinariness of most of my days: exercising, working, cooking good meals, reading. The ways of the world took me away for awhile and might do so again, but for now I am just content to be “home”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conkers, Brights, Shiners, Cheggies, Obblyonkers,Cheeses

~ pebblesandclay ~ 2 Comments

 

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Gawd, the Brits have the best words for EVERYTHING! In the American midwest they call them buckeyes. Not to be outdone by the Brits, they have even come up with a peanut butter and chocolate candy made to look like the nut – also called a buckeye. In this part of the world we just call them chestnuts or, if we’re being really fancy, horse chestnuts.

There’s something about chestnuts that take me back to a simpler time – not necessarily a better time, but simpler. Sometimes I wonder if these times were simpler just because I was a child. My parents might have a very different story to tell.

IMG_0285Drilling holes in chestnuts to make necklaces or to play conkers is stored in my memory bank in the same file as wild bicycle chases playing  “cops and robbers” and games of hide-and-seek lasting long after dark with the neighbourhood kids.

These games seemed to have met the same fate as the chestnut trees in North America. At one point, 25% of the forest here in the Appalachian range was comprised of chestnut trees.  In the early 1900’s a chestnut blight ravaged the forests and now there are very few old specimens left.

I have had two chestnut trees play a role in my life. One was in my hometown watched over guarded by an old lady called Mrs. Moody. (I couldn’t make up a better name if I tried.) The other is a lone surviving tree by an old foundation up the road from where I live now.

I feel the same way about the chestnuts as I do the bats that also got decimated by a fungus. There are now only two bats on our road which swoop over our heads on evening walks when in my childhood the air was full of them.

I’m wondering if I’m hanging  onto these memories because it’s a good thing to wish for survival of a species or if it’s just hard to say goodbye to what once was.

 

Ruthie’s Clothesline

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My friend, Ruthie, takes pictures of her clothesline and it says as much about her as any selfie could. From this picture, you might have surmised that Ruthie is a colourful person, living a fairly relaxed lifestyle in the country. And you wouldn’t be wrong.

I began being curious about clothes and how they can tell our stories better than any photograph after reading an article in  The Book of Life called The Serious Business of Clothes. The article ended with this line, “Our wardrobes contain some of our most carefully written lines of autobiography.” After reading this, I decided to write my autobiography around different clothes I wore throughout the years.

I began my autobiography  with the first article of clothing that I remembered being truly excited about. Here is my recollection:

“I can still see them resting in the cardboard box with the cellophane lid. It couldn’t have been a better gift if the prince himself had delivered them. My six year old hands trembled as I carefully lifted the first one from its tissue paper nest. The sunlight shone on the sparkles in the clear plastic and they whirled and danced inside. Magic.

Tentatively, I slipped both feet into the glass slippers and inched my toes under the white elastic band with the pink and chartreuse flower embroidery. I took my first hesitant steps trying to adjust to the pressure under my arch that supported the kitten heels. There was something about those heels that caused me to hold my head a little higher and move with a grace I hadn’t known before. There was power in those shoes.”

I grew up in a very masculine household with an energetic father and two brothers. My mother was British and wore “sensible” shoes. This was one of my first remembered experiences of what it felt like to be a girly girl – a princess, if you will. And I loved it!

In the spirit of Ruthie’s clothesline as self portrait, I decided to take a self portrait of my own. Since I began my autobiography with a story of shoes, I thought it fitting that my updated self portrait  be of shoes. I tried a few combinations, as you can see.

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It’s not as easy to take a self portrait as you may think. I’m liking the relaxed look of Ruthie’s clothesline  more and more after my experiments this afternoon.  My self portrait might be considered interesting, but relaxed, no. And that just about says it all.

 

*The Book of Life is the “brain” of the School of Life co-founded by modern day philosopher Alain de Botton. It is a gathering of the best ideas around wisdom and emotional intelligence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ten Things I’ve Learned In the First Three Months of Blogging

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I’ve learned that:

  1. The people at WordPress are very, very smart. Something went wrong on the third or fourth post I made: pictures that I had embedded into the blog began to duplicate themselves. Luckily, help was just a few taps on the keyboard away. I had the above mentioned very smart person stumped for a few minutes but not for long.
  2. Taking an online blogging course is worth the time and money. The six week course I took was just right for me. It walked me through startup to the finer skills of improving and maintaining an online presence. I also loved the private Facebook Page that was set up for the people taking the course. It was a chance to see other people’s work, share my own stories, and ask for feedback. At the end of the course, I had set up my blog and was ready to get started.
  3. Self promotion is not easy or natural for me but is a necessary part of the process. I began tentatively sharing with friends, then progressed to Instagram and Twitter. I have only recently begun posting new blog posts on Facebook because many people who follow me are neighbours and acquaintances and not necessarily people who would be interested in my blog. Creating a Facebook Page just for my blog might solve this problem.
  4. Checking stats on WordPress is addictive. It is fun to see how many people are reading the blog and from where. The bar graphs are also nifty, but is this really what I should be focussing on, especially at the beginning? I began a blog because I love to write and as long as that remains my focus all should be well no matter how many people are following me.fullsizeoutput_1e8
  5. My trusty Warriner’s English Grammar And Composition is coming in really handy. If people are going to be reading what I’m writing, I can do them the favour of having it well punctuated and grammatically correct. I have been looking up far more in this book than I thought I would be.
  6. Having a designated writing time is critical for me. I have been setting my alarm for six or six thirty and do my writing before the rest of the day begins. On many days the early start takes some discipline but having this creative time before the busy-ness of the day feels right and good.
  7.  A trusty supply of index cards is very useful. Most of my creative ideas do not come to me when I am writing. They come to me when I am on a long walk, or falling asleep at night, or driving in the car. I jot down these ideas on index cards, ready for the morning when I can develop them into a blog post.
  8. Blog posts that are photo based seem to generate more interest than word based posts, so I try and alternate photo journal type posts with longer more reflective pieces.
  9. Writing a blog is great creative fun and it is also another “pot to stir on the stove” so to speak. Be prepared for the time, effort and thought that goes into writing a blog on a regular basis.
  10. The visuals in a blog are really important. I have learned that taking a picture in the right light makes a huge difference. I am not a big fan (yet) of all the filters. I love a good picture taken in natural light and that often means taking them in the early morning or just before dusk. (But I’m not sure I’m a good person to be taking photo advice from because I’ve been taking all my pictures on my iPhone 6s.)

Hearing a Hum?

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An acquaintance of ours who lives a few country roads over from us called a couple of  weeks ago. He wanted to know if we had been noticing any new sounds recently. Sound travels in mysterious ways in this mountain valley: there are always new noises arriving on the shifting winds. I can, for example, hear a cannon’s sonic booms on stormy days in the summer coming from a neighbouring village which is a famous apple growing region. The cannon’s booms are thought to protect the trees from hail that might be forming in the clouds. And I hear the “beep, beep” backup sound of a truck early in the morning that we have traced to an industrial dairy farm just south of us in the United States. But, no, I have not been hearing a hum.

The hum he described was as if a truck were parked outside with its engine idling. (Some people have described the sound as an idling diesel engine with a pulsating sound pattern.) He has been hearing this sound at his home and in the surrounding area since May of 2016. It is constant and disconcerting and he is trying to discover its source both anecdotally, from asking and talking to people, and scientifically.

And herein begins the mystery. It seems that some people are able to hear low frequency sounds without being able to identify the source. My acquaintance, for instance, hears the sound but his wife doesn’t. And this is not a new phenomenon that has befallen just him. Over the past twenty years reports of this hum have surfaced around the world, most often in rural areas and small urban centres. There have been a concentration of people affected in such places as: Windsor, Ontario; Auckland, New Zealand; Taos, New Mexico; and Bristol, England. The two largest funded studies of this phenomenon were carried out in Kokomo, Indiana and Taos, New Mexico and all of the results have been inconclusive. The Windsor Hum which was investigated by the Canadian government was thought to originate on Zug Island across the Detroit River in Michigan. Even when there is a likely source, as in this Windsor study, it seems to be hard to prove conclusively.

My neighbour reports that he hears the hum inside his home and outside as well. It seems stronger in enclosed spaces like a parked car and in his home. Here is where it gets interesting. He hears the sound in and around his home but not in some of the neighbouring villages. This would seem to point to an outside source.

There have been all kinds of theories that have been put forward to explain what seems to be a mostly unexplainable phenomenon. They range from conspiracy theories to cellphone towers to VLF (very low frequency radio waves). It has even been suggested that these people are sensitive to certain vibrations that their ears interpret as sound. Tinnitus, a disturbance of the auditory system, has also widely been considered as a possible cause of the hum. It doesn’t explain, however, why the hum would not be heard in certain places.

This we do know, people who are affected have had to learn to live with this constant humming sound. My neighbour reports hearing the hum 24 hours a day. It is invasive and frustrating and he is not sleeping well. He is doing all he can to try and trace the source of the hum and is looking to the scientific community and universities for help.

My one hope is that he and all the other sufferers find some kind of relief. I’ll keep you posted.

 

Sources: http://www.icben.org/2008/PDFs/Cowan.pdf
http://theconversation.com/cracking-the-mystery-of-the-worldwide-hum-60296
https://newrepublic.com/article/132128/maddening-sound
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum

The Clay Jug

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Pot by Vicki Tansey

Clay Jug

Inside this clay jug there are canyons and pine mountains
and the maker of canyons and pine mountains!
All seven oceans are inside, and hundreds of millions of stars.
The acid that gets gold is there, and the one who judges jewels.
And the music from the strings that no one touches, and the source of all water.

If you want the truth, I will tell you the truth:
Friend, listen: the God whom I love is inside.

Kabir
version by Robert Bly

 

The third post I made on this blog was called Clay…And Me.

It began: I tend to process things more deeply (some might say intensely) than many people, so it is no surprise that some of my favourite stories are of transformation. And some of my favourite stories of transformation revolve around clay. 

I just rediscovered this Kabir poem and it seems such a natural fit with the other clay references I posted. You can read the full post here.