Tag Archives: metaphor

Be a Great Pyrenees (Post about Friendships)

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

Be You/Do You 

Yup, do you!  

Two words that I heard a few weeks ago and they have been spiralling around in my brain like a bad swear word that you wouldn’t want to say in front of your mom.  It kind of sounds dirty but it was profound for me. 

I realized, in a light bulb moment that, I am doing so many other people in my daily life that I am forgetting to ‘do me’! 

Nothing like a good sexual innuendo, isn’t there!  

But, you know me and my fairly open-minded conservative diatribes, so what in the world am I talking about. 


What I am actually talking about is the beautiful metaphor of putting the oxygen mask on yourself before helping those around you.  

As I walk through my life I literally see people running out of air.  I watch them rush to drop off their children at school. Rush to pick them up.  Rush to activities.  Rush to make dinner.  I think you can see the ‘rush’ I am showing you.  This ain’t one of those good ‘rushes’, if you know what I mean!  They are holding their breathes through life, like I have the last few weeks.  

So, what am I suggesting that we do with this naughty analogy? 

🥇 First, stop doing everyone else.  Look around at the people in your life, look at your “to-do” list that you are creating on a daily basis and ask yourself “How many of these things on the list do I want to do?”  

🥈 Second, find a way to ‘do you’.  

Be you.  

From within you and then out to others.   

What pleases you? 

What do you enjoy? 

Doing you. 

How did I figure out how to live this “Do you” philosophy in life? Because really inspiring quotes and words are only great when we create some ‘action’ to go along with them.  Right?  Here’s what I did: 

I looked at the ambiance I wanted to create in my everyday life: I realized that I like having music playing while I make dinner and a candle lit when I am on Zoom calls for my nutritional coaching.  

I wondered about who I do in my life: I saw that I am able to have authentic, real and beautiful relationships without shame. I don’t have to stroll down the ‘walk of shame’ no matter what happens!  That shame thing was old stuff for me.  

Lastly, I looked at my assets and what I could give to the world: I realized I was giving away my greatest gift like a floozy, my time. I can choose what I want to do with my day and what I want to wear while doing it.  I am 100% responsible for my greatest asset, time.  I have started to treasure, organize and find freedom with my 86,400 seconds each day (and not be so free in throwing it away to anyone that walks by.) 

Ambiance. 

Relationships. 

Assets.  

How to ‘do you’! 

What are three simple things you could think of to ‘Be You/Do You’? I know it will be simple.  It may even be fun along the way.  Ponder all the energy and vitality you will have to share if you ‘do you’ first.  

No one else. 

100% you.  

Just you.  

Getting to know you.  

All day long. 

Do you! 

Be Off Track

I was a racehorse running a race on a track that I hadn’t signed up for.

Living the life that I thought was expected.

Trying hard to be ‘good” to all people, but myself.

I was running hard and fast.

I was constantly pushed around the track by the daily winds and the other horse and riders.

Feeling like I could never train enough, do enough or be enough to run the race.

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One day my main cheerleader, my amazing listener, my main supporter, my incredible mama died.

This horse stopped dead in her tracks.

I chose to hit the pasture in the middle of the race course.

I made a decision to eat some of the best food on the planet right now.

I decided to rest with the other horses on the inside of the race course.

I stopped in my tracks.

I went off track!

Yup, that’s me in the middle of the race course hanging out, living out of this race called life.

I am off the track.

AND I FLIPPIN LOVE IT!

My expectations on myself and those I choose to be in relationship with are GONE!

My idea of what my life could look like has completely changed.

My time is precious, the greatest gift that I can share on this earth.

I am full of gratitude!

I am able to be myself.

Full of thoughts tumbling in my head and words pouring out of my fingers as a Wordsmith.

Energy radiating out of my being as I move through my day.

Love flowing from my heart for those I see living life around me and through the beautiful medium of Facebook.

Peace sitting within my being as I hold and allow myself to be imperfectly where I am.

Honest, authentic and often waaaaaaay to blunt for some people’s likings.

Yup, me hanging out off track!

AND DID I TELL YOU HOW MUCH I LOVE IT?

Love a duck, I am the most fortunate woman in the world.

I have found my path in life, the way I am meant to wander.

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Off track.

In the trees, like I am ten years old.

Playing in the powder with my boys.

Full of emotion, wet kisses and lots of hugs.

Having the time of my life as I play, make mistakes, learn and LIVE in all areas of my life!

I am alive!

Off track.

AND LOVING IT!

 

 

Be the Power of a Penny

This blog post was started in the summertime as I was playing a “healthy living” game with my friend Penny and an old neighbour and her friend T.  I had to add to the post after our ski vacation a few days ago… and finally introduce you to one wonderful human being and friend.  Formally know on my blog as Princess P and now just Penny.

Here is a photo of the people playing our summertime game: My teammate Penny and I on the right and our wonderful opponents on the left. 20140704-135917-50357437.jpg

Here are my boys sharing some after dinner books at Auntie Penny’s house. My boys cherish the wonderful books she had for her own children.  We love going over to their house for dinner!

20140704-135916-50356828.jpgPenny made a special point to celebrate our middle guy’s fifth birthday before she went on an European summer holiday. He was thrilled with the very special transformer and book she bought him.

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And now while they were working hard to renovate their bathrooms and get ready for their own three wonderful children’s arrival, Penny and Bob came to spend a few wonderful hours with our family on the ski hill.

Penny knew my mom always made PJ’s for my boys at Christmastime and look what she got the boys:

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One of the other gifts that my mom has always given me over the years is a knitted scarf and look what I pulled out of the Christmas bag from Penny:

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A very lovely, hand-loving-made scarf!

The depth of gratitude I feel is incredible.

When you lose someone important in your life, there is a HUGE hole.

Forever.

The greater the love, the deeper the hole.

But others will lean in and close the gap.

The hole won’t pull you in and down.

People are holding me up right now in prayer and physical presence and “knowing”.

Penny has brought us such joy through these beautiful, thoughtful, handmade gifts.

These were very important to our family.

Healing through fabric.

My mom is gone, but never forgotten.

She lives on through all of us who “knew” her.

Generous.

Thoughtful.

Caring.

Kind.

Mom.

And now the power of a Penny!

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Be Having Nothing to Give (choo choo!)

We are on a one way track to healing.

Chugging down the track, snotty horns a blaring into my Kleenex.

The rickety old train with its heavier than normal road.

Chugging along.

Not making a stop.

Not picking anything up.

Just chugging along.

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You want to get on this train?

Observe carefully.

Run along and jump.

This train can’t stop.

It may never start again.

This train wants to hide in the shed.

But with three wee train cars on the back, there ain’t no rest.

Weekends, the big handsome steam locomotive comes along to give us a pull.

But other than that we are stuck with the dirty, coal steam engine.

Chugging.

On the track.

Teary eyes forward.

Trying hard not to fall off.

Wow, this is one big hill.

“I think I Cann, I think I Cann!”

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