Tag Archives: dog

friendship, fun, radical sabbatical, words, Wordsmith, writing

Be a Great Pyrenees (Post about Friendships)

February 3, 2023 Be Enough 1 Comment

As a dog, I would previously have been seen as a fluffy, golden retriever.

I love human beings and can talk to anyone, anywhere. I have made friends after a 4 hour plane trip and even made a lifelong friend in a checkout line in Nashville. She complimented me on my shoes. We stayed in contact and then I ended up finding her the same pair of shoes and sent them to her.

My boys often ask me to stop “chitty chatting”!

I might be weird as I will talk to anyone, but I won’t be someone’s friend just because our kids do the same activities , our kids are the same age, we teach in the same profession or we live on the same street.

I love every ONE, but my friends are people who are authentic, straightforward, family-oriented and passionate.

These last three years as I grew through deep loneliness and even discrimination as I wouldn’t share or talk about the greatest science experiment our generation has gone through. My golden retriever spirit died. I have happily morphed into the ever-watching guardian dog, the Great Pyrenees.

I still see you, but I am not going to chase you to hangout with you.

Watching.

Looking for what will happen next, but not engaging.

Watching.

Waiting to see who will “see” me back.

Watching.

I have gotten more mellow, more calm and more still.

Moving from an every chasing Golden Retriever to a watchful Great Pyrenees shifts things up in the friendship realm and many of my friendships fell away in the last three years.

I guess when you are doing a lot of chasing, you can think you have lots of friends, but it is truly the friends that will stand with you in the calm and the storms as a Great Pyrenees that are here to stay.

Thank you to my salt of the earth friends from the past and those to come in the future. I love you and I send you a big virtual lick!

Have an epic Friday folks and love what you do.

xoxo Joanna

author, blogger, mom of boys, Wordsmith

Be Writing a Blog about Your Blog

March 28, 2019 Be Enough Leave a comment

Have you ever thought about writing a blog?

If yes, what would your blog be about?

I started writing this blog over ten years ago. I believe that there is value in every person writing a blog about one thing they are passionate about, just one thing they are passionate about. It can be anything. A blog is simply a post with a title, two or more pictures and some words strung together in a personal way.

My blog is about my passion to see people living as human “beings” not just as human “doings” on the hamster wheel of life. I want to see people:

⭐️ live AWAKE

⭐️ feel ADEQUATE

⭐️ know ABUNDANCE

⭐️ be ASSURED they are “enough” exactly as they are right now.

In my time as a blogger, I have written over 750 posts. I have had over 17,000 visitors visit my site.

A few of my recent and memorable posts have been:

⭐️ Be Learning Lessons from a Lab where I shared lessons our family learned from our dog as we reflected on her life.

⭐️ Be Savouring the Seasons was a blog I wrote when I kept hearing people complain about the weather. This is one topic that human “doings” love to discuss.

⭐️ Be a Toastmaster was a blog I wrote about my experience in that organization. The post was inspired by a task I needed to complete on my Visionary Communication pathway. I needed to write eight blog posts in under one month. I completed this is February, 2019.

I am very grateful that over ten years ago I took the time to start writing down my thoughts, my poems, my song lyrics as well as journeys of people around me through this “beenough” place. Blogging is one tool that has helped me survive and thrive through the death of my beautiful mama, becoming an entrepreneur, leaving my teaching job and being a mom of boys and wife to Sexy Neck.

Tonight, this process of sitting and writing about this blog has reminded me why I blog. As much as I love blogging, I want to see my blog become a book. Why? For me personally, being a daughter of a librarian, growing up with weekly public library visits and being surrounded by shelves of books in our home, there is something about books. I love the smell of them. I love holding a book in my hands and feeling the pages between my fingers. And the sound of pages flipping is one of the most peaceful sounds I know.

Now, I wonder who will join me in this blogging world from my group of readers. I am very curious to see what you would choose to write about.

Blog away.

You are enough.

Exactly as you are.

Be enough.

😘 Joanna

author, blogger, mom of boys, Wordsmith

Be Writing a Blog about Your Blog

March 28, 2019 Be Enough Leave a comment

Have you ever thought about writing a blog?

If yes, what would your blog be about?

My blog is about my passion to see people living as human “beings” not just as human “doings” on the hamster wheel of life. I want to see people:

⭐️ live AWAKE

⭐️ feel ADEQUATE

⭐️ know ABUNDANCE

⭐️ be ASSURED they are “enough” exactly as they are right now.

In my time as a blogger, I have written over 750 posts. I have had over 17,000 visitors visit my site.

A few of my recent and memorable posts have been:

⭐️ Be Learning Lessons from a Lab where I shared lessons our family learned from our dog as we reflected on her life.

⭐️ Be Savouring the Seasons was a blog I wrote when I kept hearing people complain about the weather. This is one topic that human “doings” love to discuss.

Now, I wonder who will join me in this blogging world from my group of readers. I am very curious to see what you would choose to write about.

Blog away.

You are enough.

Exactly as you are.

Be enough.

😘 Joanna

Boys, Family, Parenting

Be ‘Including’ My Children

May 14, 2014 Be Enough Leave a comment

A few weeks ago, I received a comment, an innocent comment, that I have pondered and chewed on for weeks.

“Wow, you guys always do such a great job of including your children in what you are doing!”

I am surprised by this comment because:

🌀 On a daily basis, I love including my boys bustling energy of curiosity with what we are doing.

🌀 I never imagine doing anything without my boys hovering near by or asking to help. Even when I am just folding laundry they often help or play hockey behind me.

🌀 If we do ‘want’ to do something without the boys, we will plan for one of us to take them on an excursion outside of the house or do the activity during Naptime or after bedtime. I must admit that these times are few and far between.

Here is our family in action over the last few weeks working together on landscaping, pool opening, crib disassembling and dog training:

Sexy Neck moves one load of dirt then one load of boys.

JC heard that we were going to take down the crib… One morning he awoke, got the tools, disassembled the crib and brought it all downstairs. He’s seven and had remembered working with Sexy Neck to put it up last summer.