Tag Archives: personal truth

THIRTEEN

My first-born son is now a teenager. This has both he and I spinning. I HAVE A TEENAGE SON. How this happened I don’t know because I still feel like a teenager myself.

My sweet boy has resisted growing older every step of the way. He has always told us he does not want to grow up – even as young as 3 years old he knew that childhood was the best of times. I guess maybe his father and I have not made adulthood seem like much fun.

In his observation at skate parks and out in the world, teenagers have been both extremely annoying and also terrifying to him. He did not want to become a teenager. He was truly sad about the inevitability of it. Did I mention that neither of us can believe it actually happened? Here we are. With the growth spurts and puberty and cracking voice and big feet and interest in girls and changing vocabulary and eye rolling and everything.

I asked him on his birthday if he felt any different and he actually sat and contemplated this for a few minutes and finally told me the he did feel different. He said he feels SAFER.

SAFER! I mean…WOW. And obviously I asked him why and he told me that he is not a child any more so he is safer. He is a teenager. More responsible and equipped to take care of himself.

God, I could just cry my face off. Why does this seem so profound to me? This recognition that he has reached a new level of independence and it is so real to him? It has always been my job to keep him safe, and of course still is, but he also feels that he has a role to play in is own safety and he is up for the task.

How can he be so self-aware?

And why don’t I ever feel safer? I mean, safer because of my own self and not external forces like a police officer is standing nearby or I have a life jacket on.  If anything I feel less safe as time goes on. More vulnerable. More fragile. More mortal.

Part of me wants to open the can of worms about gender – is feeling safe a right of passage for boys? A natural state? So many questions beg to be asked but I am tired. I am busy. I don’t have the capacity to got there right now and I also wonder if that is a fundamental issue in our society. All of us women are too tapped out to rail against a modern civilized world in which being a female is still considered a weakness. The older I get the clearer it is to me, the more I see it and hear it. This pervasive tone of sexism here in our own very progressive country. AND how to describe the outrage I feel on behalf of all women who are living under total oppression all around the world, and I would go so far as to say hated in their societies. Unable to drive, receive an education, have independence. Made to cover themselves. Made to feel shame. I am ashamed. Ashamed that I do nothing to fight it but feel pissed off and blow off steam in what is essentially a secret blog.

Well, not nothing. I am a Mother to boys. I have a very serious and real responsibility to raise them to understand and respect the differences between women and men, and to shatter every myth that exists in our society about women and their inferiority. It overwhelms me at times. Like now.

I guess what is sinking in for me is that I don’t have much time. Childhood is so FLEETING. Life is a blink of an eye. I feel very urgent right now about reorganizing my priorities and where I put my energy and thoughts and effort. I am working on it.

For now, I take every chance I get to hug that kid as hard as I can AND he lets me. He has never been a particularly huggy kid, but I think he knows our hugging days are numbered, or maybe he knows I need it right now, or maybe someone gave him a stern lecture but I get to hug him and I do not take that for granted.

Holy Shit. Thirteen.

 

 

 

 

Stigma

I am so sick right now. I think it might just be the worlds worst cold, or maybe the flu. I feel dreadful and could barely lift my head off my pillow all day. My eyes are puffy little slits. My nose is running like a tap. I have been using nose flowers (aka stuffing tissue up my nose to absorb the constant drip. The ends hanging our your nose look like the carnations you made in art class when you were 7. You’re welcome for both the imagery and the ingenious tip). My skin is chapped. I am alternating between shivering and sweating – casting off the duvet one minute, wrapping tightly around myself the next. I am sneezing everywhere. I cough.

I am throwing everything I’ve got at this cold. Vitamin C. Vit D. All of the B’s. Various drops and drinks and remedies. Advil and Tylenol and even Midol. I just want to be well. I am pissing and moaning to anyone who will listen to me about how crap I feel.

Because suffering with this cold or maybe flu for 3 days now is just not acceptable!!!!

I have a point here. I am getting to it. It feels hard – because, well, stigma. That is why.

There is a big push to end the stigma surrounding mental illness. For good reason! I’ve been basically just ignoring the campaign. Staying silent. Like a complete total chump. Until right now.

Me, a person who will do basically anything to rid myself of a cold, went about 27 years before I got help for bouts of depression that lasted for months on end, and more recently crushing anxiety.  I mean, I only just recognized about 6 months ago that there was help for me, because I only just recognized that I am not well and that it is not a personal failing.

It happened after I read an interview with Sarah Silverman – a comedian I adore. I don’t remember where I read it, or even specifically what she said. What I do remember is relating completely to her story. And learning that she takes a very low dose of meds everyday to stay well, and that it works. Shortly after that a dear friend told me that meds were the best thing to ever happen to her and she could not recommend them more. Two women I admire openly taking about how these pills saved them from so much misery. It was empowering for me.

The depression started in my teens. I believed that I somehow wasn’t holy enough, or good enough, or something enough and that is why I felt so bad. That it was my fault and that I alone could fix it. It came and went. Rolled in like a storm and would roll out sometimes just as fast. There were two or three episodes that are particularly difficult to look back on now, knowing what I know. That I didn’t have to suffer through it.

Through the six month stretch in my 20’s were I wept in the fetal position in the shower every day. Or the six month stretch in my 30’s were every morning I considered how hurt my family would be if I gave into the urge to jump in front of the Go Train. Or the horrible day last winter when on my drive to work traffic came to a stop because someone had jumped from an overpass. And I related to that person. My thought was just … yes, of course.

The anxiety though… that just came out of nowhere fast and furious. It started right after I had minor surgery 2 1/2 years ago. The anesthetic really fucked me up for days on end and the worst side effect was panic attacks. The first one was just awful and my husband rushed me to the hospital because I was sure, and so was he, that I was having a heart attack. Later, I came to recognize the early signs and do my best to breathe through them praying my pounding heart out, or sometimes taking an Ativan. The anxiety got worse and worse. Circumstances contributed – stressful situations amped it up, and up it would stay. My son had to have surgery… a family member died…I got in a car accident.  I was always so level headed and calm, but suddenly I was a disaster. On a 24/7 adrenaline rush – it was hell.  I went to a Naturopath, therapy, my doctor… we debated meds many times.

Then one day on my drive to work I felt the storm coming. As soon as I got to my desk I called my doctor. I cried while I told her that I could not handle both at the same time. Anxiety on it’s own…maybe. Depression on it’s own…maybe. Not both. She called in a prescription for me that day and that night I took my first Zoloft. It did not go well. I got violently ill. We tried again, this time Celexa. I joined an online forum and by reading literally every post I knew I was going to be up against a nasty few weeks of side effects until it started to work. Two weeks of basically hell. Extreme fatigue. Nausea. Heightened anxiety. This awful feeling that I had the major shakes, but I didn’t, I just felt like I did. Mental fog. I powered through because the internet told me that I was going to be ok. And guess what?

I am better than OK. I AM FRIGGING AWESOME. I had no idea how crushing my anxiety was – until it was gone. I had no idea how much lighter I would feel. I had no idea I could feel this well. I am not in a state of bliss or anything. I am not feeling any false happiness or flatness or otherness. I still get sad. I get mad. I feel like me. Me but without a mental head cold or flu. I feel relief. My quality of life has vastly improved. My husband and kids see it. People at work see it.

If there was no stigma, perhaps I would have taken action all those years ago. Recently we had family over, and I put my pills away in my bathroom. I have only told a few people that I am taking meds. I do not have secrets from anyone… except for this.

Today with this stupid cold I realized that I am part of the problem – I have zero shame about my physical sickness, I don’t blame myself for it. I don’t consider it a shortcoming that I have a cold and am looking for any relief I can get. I consider it perfectly normal and I doubt I could find a soul on this earth to disagree.

If more people were open and honest about their mental health experiences the stigma would not exist and no one would have to quietly suffer, questioning their strength, character, being. I am not saying that meds are for everyone. There are many ways to improve your mental health. Natural ways, therapy, diet, shit tons of options. Addressing inflammation, getting more sunlight. But the meds worked for me, and this is my story.

Now, you might be shaking your head at this point asking yourself why I am writing a blog about having a midlife crisis if I am doing so damn amazing…but the thing is, it is amazing that I am having a mid-life crisis. That I care about my future and how I spend my time and how I feel and that I feel I have something to contribute and have the energy to write about it and the will to make changes for myself and my family  and to really LIVE.

So today I say FUCK YOU MENTAL HEALTH STIGMA! (In my blog, which literally one person reads. Hey…one step at a time).

 

 

 

Life Plan

I have learned many things in the last 10 years of my career, but I think the most valuable lesson has been that setting goals and a making plan to achieve them works. Shit gets done. It is very simple. This is how our business runs.

This may be another one of those obvious truths that other people have always known, but for me it has been a revelation. I always kinda flew by the seat of my pants, living in the moment and taking life one day at a time. Working in show biz (the first 10 years of my career) is very deadline driven, but the deadlines are hours, days or maybe weeks away. Nothing is long-term. Truthfully, I was very happy to live that way. It was exciting and fresh and fun.

BUT… when you are ambitious, and you want to make progress, and living hand to mouth starts to get stressful because you have babies- you need something to work towards that is a bit more substantive than curtain up at 8.

I made my first five-year plan in 2007. Actually, it was more like a shadow of a hope of a plan, but still, it worked. It was simple. Buy a house, live there for 5 years, buy a better house. Somewhere into year two of this plan I went to a corporate offsite business strategy session where we were encouraged to envision what our life could look like in 5 years. It was a surprising exercise. I saw myself sitting in the sun on a dock. I had a nice manicure. We had to draw a picture. I did. We had to stand up and say it, I did. Then… I did nothing.

Flash forward to Jan of 2014. I am packing my bedroom because we are moving to a better house. I am going through my notebooks and binders and folders and purging all of the business documents I really don’t need. I find my drawing. My vision of the future… and my eyes almost pop out of my head as I look at the page clutched between my polished fingers. Because… our new better house is steps from the lake. And we have access to a private dock and beach. And we pretty much live in paradise (for 4 month of the year at least, fuck you every season but summer). My vision became reality…and I didn’t even make a plan. I just saw it and drew it and said it. I believe that subconsciously every choice I made after that point led me to today. To making my vision a reality.

And now I wonder to myself … what can I accomplish if I am consciously making choices to achieve a vision?

I kinda went here on a really surface level in my first blog post, but the other day I decided to do some real soul-searching… which sounds so heavy and labourious, but really all it took was to ask myself these questions: How do I want to spend my time? How do I want to feel? What do I want to see?

In less than 20 minutes  I got this:

Short Term (next 18 months)

  1. Spend more quality time with my husband
  2. Spend more quality time with my children
  3. Space to decompress, re-energize and truly consider my career aspirations in an unbiased and objective manner
  4. Healthy and fit body, mind and soul
  5. Comfortable attire at all times!! Make up for special occasions only!
  6. Cultivate my creativity
  7. Have more sex
  8. Travel with the kids as much as humanely possible while they still will.
Medium term (2-5 years)
  1. Location independent career, or in a location I love, accountable to self.
  2. Find my tribe – live surrounded by people I love where friendship is a priority
  3. Continue to live in a beautiful home on or near water. (In a forest with a pool is ok too)
  4. Flexibility with schedule to allow for Doula work
  5. Kids continue to get a good education and have meaningful friendships
  6. Give a Ted Talk (I know, super weird right?!)
  7. Drive a Tesla or other equally awesome maching
  8. Date night once a week at a min (double or group dates are acceptable)
  9. Travel! 2 trips a year at least

Long term (5 years and beyond)

  1. Retire!
  2. Overwinter or live somewhere warm
  3. Expend energy making a positive difference for people
  4. Travel!
  5. Own and operate a retirement community for my friends and loved ones
These might all change, or they might stay the same. Who knows. What I do know is that when I am making choices I can ask myself…is this in service of my goals? What choice gets me closer to my personal truth? Am I saying yes or no to achieving my vision?
I asked my husband to make a list of his goals for me. He hasn’t done it. He is a musician, and I think when I bug him to do this stuff he feels like I am boxing him in. Maybe I am. I just want to make sure that our goals are aligned, and if they aren’t, reevaluate and adjust our expectations. So far, he has just said that his goal is that I achieve my goals.
Well look out baby because now I plan!!
OR, maybe he will get lucky and I will completely forget that I made this list. Maybe in 5 years I will look back on my early blog posts and see this and be amazed.

 

The Skin I’m In

So here is another post that falls into the category of ‘most selfish lady alive wastes your time talking about her skin care regime while millions, prob billions, of people suffer with real problems all over the world’.  **SIGH**

The thing is, I am kinda freaking out and have been really distracted for days by a decision I made earlier this week. Let me take you back a couple of weeks…let’s say to The day after my birthday. I took my youngest son to a party for one of his friends.  It was a kid/grown up situation and I love those. I love connecting with new people in a non networking setting. I will always come to your party. Please invite me.

Anyways, when I arrived the hostess told me that her sister and her sister’s six grown children and even some grandchildren were all there. Right away I was thrilled because as a member of six kid family it is so much fun to compare notes about things like giant sock piles and washroom schedules and general chaos. I love when I can make an instant connection with people and I totally did. These folks were LOVELY, and I would love to dive into that more, but right now I am seriously running the risk of straying way off topic, so let me make a potentially long story short (haha, let me try at least)

***UPDATE***This is the longest blog post I have ever written.

I met a beautiful woman who I assumed was one of the six kids but nope, she was their MOTHER. Their insanely youthful, hot mother. So I immediately asked her what her secret was and she told me that she uses a certain skin care line, which I immediately wanted. And lucky me because this stunning woman actually sells these products which are only available through a direct sales situation. She told me about every product she uses and one by one I was sold.  Hook. Line. Sinker.  The enzyme peel. The hydration mist. The serum. The moisturizer. The multi-step cleansing system.

So, I got my hands on a catalog and guess what? All of the products that I just had to have cost a whopping $530.90.  Can I just say that this is more than double the monthly income of a person living in Nepal. It is $200 more than the average Turk makes in a month. I could go on. You get my point. Who in their right mind spends that kind of money on Skin care? Not me.  That would just straight up be fucking stupid.

So I went back to the catalog, I spent hours reading online reviews of the various products, I narrowed my wish list down considerably to only two products worth $79.00. I emailed Mrs. Perfect Dewy Glowing Skin with a great personality to boot (hereafter, Mrs. PDGS with GP), and told her what I wanted. She responded with great news. A March Madness Sale.  This opened a whole new world of opportunity up for me. Two of the products I had taken off my list were dramatically reduced. I needed them. What a crazy insane deal!!!! All of that Hyaluronic Acid and peptides and mist could actually be mine for less than half price!! I could achieve the results of cosmetic injections without actually getting needles stuck into my face! WHAT.

And since I was saving so much on those products I could throw in a few of the others right?  And then… another miracle. Mrs. PDGS with GP offered to place my order with hers for an additional 20% off!! WHAT. Sign. me. up.

So I went back to my original wish list. I ordered it all, all 12 products (I currently use 2. Ain’t nobody got time for that (12! Gah), but that is a different issue all together). $226.00 later (Seriously awesome deal btw)  I am sitting here freaking out. Because right at this moment in our lives spending that kind of money on beauty products is not responsible – not that it is at any other time ( you know, unless it is 20X points day at Shoppers or something).

Because I know my husband is going to be really pissed off and there is going to be an argument. Because it is a slow time for him with his work and we are trying to be really careful so we don’t accumulate debt.  I don’t want to contribute to his stress. Sincerely. So I regret that this is coming.

I know it is being delivered to me today or tomorrow and I know that when it arrives it is time to face the music. I’ll have to listen to myself explain my own frivolity. I haven’t paid for the stuff yet. Because Mrs. PDGS with GP very kindly extended her own discount to me, I have to pay her in cash, but not until I receive the order.

I have been scheming. How can I sneak the cash out of our accounts, that are all joint, without my husband noticing? There is no way to do that, and furthermore, I don’t actually want to do that. I don’t ever want to be sneaky in any way in my marriage or work or friendships or life in general.

In case it sounds like my husband is some kind of controlling dick, that is not true. I am totally scapegoating him here.  It is my own music I have to face. My own weakness. My own vanity.  My own selfishness. My own weakness. Did I already say that one?

The fact is, I am all out of cleanser, 2 days away from needing moisturizer and I use fairly decent products so I would have spent at least half that amount anyways and not had this insane guilt going on.

Look, if all of the product claims are true I will write a follow-up blog and prob start selling them myself, and everyone who knows me will ask if I have had work done and when strangers find out my age they will want to know my secret and my life will be forever changed and I will be so happy that I will have to change the tagline of my blog to something else.

But seriously, when have beauty product claims ever been true? (Tell, me, I need that product).  Prob what happened is that someone totally recruited Mrs. PDGS and GP because she is gorgeous and has perfect skin and they knew that her very own face was worth a million bucks. Prob I am a huge sucker.  Def I am a huge sucker.

I am disappointed in myself. Disappointed because I want to just love the skin I am in and shine from the inside. Disappointed because I spent so much time this week fretting about this. I should have just cancelled my order and I can’t pin down why I didn’t. Is it because I am holding out hope that it works or because I don’t want to feel like an idiot calling this lady to cancel?  Either way it involves me caring about what other people think in a way that I don’t like. It involves me caring what I think in a way I don’t like.

I should have taken that $226 bucks and mailed it to a random person in Nepal or bought food for the food bank or given it to a group sponsoring refugees or bought a teenage girl from a low-income family a prom dress or put it into an RESP or RRSP  or  bought 100 strangers a coffee or…

God I suck. I am going to go read the fine print now and see what the return policy is on all of this stuff.

 

 

 

Word Power

So I have been thinking about how I keep using the word crisis to describe my current state of life. It is nagging away at me because the word is just so extreme and not at all accurate for how I really feel. I feel so bratty and ungrateful every time I write it.

Because all over the world people are experiencing real crisis. The millions of Syrians fleeing violence and destruction. The wonderfully kind people of Istanbul who are under increasing threat from ISIS suicide bombers.   The guy I went to high school with who told us on my facebook that his wife died this morning. The little boy with terminal cancer that the community is fundraising for.

I imagine any one of them reading this blog…I cringe. Poor me. I hate my pores and I don’t want to wear a bra anymore. BOO FUCKING HOO. I am basically a monster.

I have learned in the past how powerful words can be. A little while ago my bank card was compromised. I had to reset my PIN number and I froze up at the pin pad and said to the teller “HELP”, I didn’t think about this! I don’t know what to make it that I will remember!” And then, I was inspired by the very words I had just said and I made my pin# 4357 which spells HELP. I use my bank card for everything. Several times a day. The more I used my bank card, the more pathetic I felt. It took my a while to clue in that my PIN # was seriously bringing me down. When I finally realized it was negatively impacting my life  I changed it again. To 4673 which spells HOPE, and all of a sudden I was being uplifted throughout the day. It made a remarkable difference for me.

(FYI my card got compromised AGAIN. So I changed it again. Don’t try to guess.)

Part of my job involves periodically proof reading the work of my team, normally proposals and final reports, sometimes emails.  One of my talents is wordsmithing other people’s writing.  (My own…Meh. Not so much.) I hunt out insecure words like I just, or I think, inserting confident words and partnership words. Replacing words like Challenge with Opportunity.  I absolutely love transforming the tone of business writing to better reflect the values and culture of our company. I want the reader to have a positive experience, feel inspired, know they made the right choice to work with us, and keep working with us.

In a million years I would not let a document out the door that contained the word crisis (Actually, in the context of climate change I do allow it, but that is another conversation) so why would I allow myself to throw it around so casually in relation to myself?

When I met my husband he was using positive affirmations every day and it totally worked out amazingly for him, after all, he found the woman of his dreams!

I know a few other people who have testified to the power of positive affirmations. I myself have never really gone there…I really suck at talking to myself. I can’t even thank myself for giving my body the gift of yoga at the end of class when the instructor suggests it. Maybe this is something I need to work on. Here, I’ll try right now:

 

 

Nope. And No. Not there yet. Maybe not there ever. Maybe it is the cheesy posters that I can’t get behind?

Here is my personal truth. My affirmation for today.

I am blessed. I have so much more than I need. My body mostly works great. I know all the best people (yup, me and the Donald). I have a loving husband and healthy children and a beautiful extended family and the best friends a girl could want or need.

To even suggest something is out of sorts feels profoundly selfish. But yet, something is out of sorts.

Bottom line is that even if technically I am having a midlife crisis, it is not sitting well with my to call it that. To repeatedly say that makes me feel desperate and sick and sad instead of just searching.

So if not a crisis what?  A midlife scavenger hunt? A midlife transition? An awakening? An adjustment? A conversion?  Renewal? Shift? Transformation?

When I figure it out I will let you know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

42

Happy Birthday to me!

All signs indicate that I am in the throws of a classic midlife crisis. Those signs being my 12 year old son and the internet telling me so (because 12 year old boys know everything and those buzzfeed quizzes are never wrong). And probably other people might agree if I asked them. (Question, how do you close comments on this thing?)

My hours of research for a cure have been simultaneously reassuring and terrifying. Reassuring is the fact that I am NOT crazy, even though I feel a little bonkers, restless, and reckless. Even though I have spent several hours on the internet looking at full torso tattoos of cherry blossoms and pricing them out, or googling shit like “How to disappear without a trace and start a new life”. Just kidding. I didn’t do that last one. But I did start doing drugs again. Sort of.

By doing drugs, I don’t actually mean I have been doing real drugs. I was being dramatic so you would be more intrigued.  I mean I have been eating these pot laced lollipops (not technically drugs, at least here in Canada) someone gave me that were made for cancer patients and hardly have any THC and instead of being fun and enlightening it makes me either obsessively reorganize my cupboards, or lie in bed slightly paranoid and very drowsily hiding from everyone. Yup, crashing and burning in a spectacular fashion over here folks.

Back to NOT being crazy. It turns out all of those classic symptoms are a really healthy signal from the soul that I am not “living my personal truth” and it is time to get real. Which brings me to the terrifying part. What is my personal truth? And how do I live it without blowing our lives up to smithereens? And where do I get the courage to do that?

So now, on my 42nd birthday I am going to start a list of things that are true about me, but I don’t live them. Yet.

***Spoiler alert. Not starting off too deep here. That will come later. I think.

1/ I want to sing Karaoke but never have because am completely ashamed of my singing voice which is truly awful. But fuck it. I want to do it.

2/ I don’t want to wear bras anymore. I have tiny boobs and they are holding up ok. Not great, but ok. One is visibly larger the other, but still, technically I don’t need a bra. I have been wearing stupid push up bras my whole bra wearing life, that make me appear to have super nice symmetrical boobs two cup sizes bigger than they actually are. Like, I feel so stupid!!! Make my boobs look terrific, so a dude will want me, only to discover the great deception, and not actually care. I locked Chuck in to the situation 15 years ago, and so who is the push up bra really for? I wear metal and padding on my chest for society in general? It is so fucked up. I just feel like if I stopped now people would be shocked by the real me and it might be scandalous. Plus nipples. They aren’t in right now. UG.

3/ Speaking of wearing things… I want to wear clothes I actually like every day of the week. I am a business woman with corporate clients, and even though business is fairly casual these days…still. I can’t wear yoga pants or ripped jeans to work. Doc martens don’t work with a dress the way they used to back in the day.  And flip flops. Am I right?

4/ Coffee. I want to drink coffee anytime of the day or night instead of just one in the morning because if I have more than one or drink it after noon I am awake all night long freaking out and counting down the hours I have left to sleep and then I don’t and I can’t function and do my job the next day. Friday is my favourite day for many reasons but a biggie is that I can drink coffee in the afternoon. This needs to not feel so special. It is just sad. I guess the bigger issue here is that I have a bedtime. I HAVE A BEDTIME. I don’t want to have a bedtime guys.

5/ I hate winter. Like a lot. My whole life. It is soul destroying for me. Enough with this shit!

Today however the weather is GORGEOUS. Like perfection. So I am leaving it here for now and going outside. My goal is to keep adding to this list and hopefully start making some good progress towards living my personal truth. Stay tuned!