If you had a box that stored all the most important memories from your life what would be in it?Last night I had a strange dream that highlighted this idea. For those of you who know me well you will know that growing up I absolutely LOVED yard sales. Nearly every weekend I would go out searching for treasures. This began when I was very young and my grandparents would take me out each weekend with detailed maps drawn up and plans to hit all of those advertised in the local newspaper in a timing fashion. After my parents divorce and the hit it took to our finances, my siblings and I would ride our bikes around town with backpacks eager to purchase toys, entertainment and the latest tech at affordable prices.
It also meant that we learned the art of negotiation as we bartered for lower prices in order to ensure we had enough saved for future purchases. There are so many advantages to this teaching method through lived experience. As long as you keep to the initial outline and never give in to provide more finances when someone has spent theirs, even when it may mean tears and utter regret for the child at the time. (There were mild exceptions when amazing deals/prices resulted in grandparents or parents purchasing an item and wrapping it up for us to receive months later on our birthday but this was a rare exception). But back to my dream from last night. In this dream, I was in a second hand thrift store; something I have not gotten the chance to do since covid first began. Growing up in the north winters are long and yard sale season is limited so half the year I would get my yard sale fix from these kinds of stores like Value Village, Salvation Army, etc. so it makes sense that my subconscious wanted that yard sale fix. I was with my family and we were rummaging around this store collecting goodies. As I sifted through items I slowly began to realize that some were forgotten items we had lost over the years. A signed t-shirt from our vacation bible school program during summer with all of our friends names scribbled across it…. An old series of attached jack in the box toys with animals that pop out as you press, pull or turn the various buttons…. A fruit change purse… and finally an old bag of ripped up fabric from a craft class at school. Now I could tell you why these items have significance to me but that is far from the point of this post. See these items outwardly appear as a random selection of what could easily be seen as absolute trash. In fact I think I own still own one of them. Yet each item listed marks a key moment in my life. And by key moment I mean a deep inner importance that shaped who I am. Outwardly even to my siblings or parents, and admittedly at first glance for me as well, each of these items seems worthless. There is a reason I no longer even have most of them. Sometimes we don’t realize till its gone the meaning something once held. If you were to find a box with all the items that marked pivotal turnings in your inner spiritual life what might be in it? Now I will take the time to share about one of these items. Seemingly the least significant item – the bag of ripped fabric – is the one that stood out most to me. When I was 11 we were living over in Europe and I was attending school in Austria. We had an arts and craft class at the end of the day each Monday. This class was very different from art class. It was a mix of things like woodshop and sowing and working with wool or in this case building waste paper basket garbage bins from chicken wire, a wooden base, and decorative strips of fabric woven throughout the chicken wire. So why does this matter to me now? When we returned home I brought the basket back overseas along with a plastic bag of fabric because I hadn’t had time to complete the project since it was the final one of the school year and we ran out of time. I hadn’t put much thought into the pattern of mine, and it was the worst mark I received in that class. I simply grabbed the most unique pieces of fabric that caught my eye and strung them in curled directions of various twists and turns like little snakes slithering in and around each other in a giant pit. But I kept it because it was a memory of the life we had while over there. A memory that in some ways slowly drifted off like a lost dream over the years. This fabric was important to me though because of the white blue star and white background fabric that was in and amongst the various strips. This was the same fabric my friend had used for hers. And hers was a beautifully crafted pattern of squares and framed quite nicely. I think she may have also incorporated the fabric with pink stars, however it was predominately blue to my memory. Its been nearly two decades since I’ve seen it. I continued to keep in touch with this friend over the years, chatting often over msn messenger, email, and later Facebook chat. Unfortunately about 8 years ago, after not hearing from her in several months, I discovered that she had passed away. I was devastated. Had I known when it happened, I would have traveled abroad to be at her funeral, but I wasn’t in touch with anyone else at the time. Later I found out that she took her own life. This pains me and I wish I had been there for her. But having been close to that myself I also understand. So for me, this tiny bag of ripped fabric strips is an item that represents a part of me forever changed. Forever changed by the friendship I will always hold in my heart for her. Forever changed by the imprint she had on my life and the way knowing her opened my eyes to so much more about the world. Forever changed by the connection we maintained even after I had moved back to Canada. Forever changed by the impact the lack of her presence has had on me. And forever changed by seeing them importance of providing support for individuals who are ready to give up on life. Do I wish I had learned this another way? Yes. Do I regret that it holds a part of my heart that will forever motivate me in making this world a more inviting, inclusive space for everyone and the desire to build hope for those who are feeling hopeless? No. Forever in my heart. Forever and always. You are still here and your impact on the world will continue on. I will always love you and treasure the friendship you offered, if even for a brief time.
What would be in your box representing the moments that forever changed you? What does that item mean to you and what is the story that it tells? Never overlook the small moments because one day a piece of fabric that had little to no meaning may suddenly become something so much deeper than you ever thought possible.
0 Comments
Apart because it's too hard to start when never near causes fear...Something has been bothering me lately. I’ve been watching a lot of old 90’s sit coms and teen shows lately and I have noticed an unruly pattern. Whenever characters have to separate or face distance often the answer is to break up. Now I know teens should not always necessarily be encouraged to stay in relationships of their youth. In fact it is likely rare that it is a good idea to encourage it. The upsetting thing to me is the reasoning behind it. See most often these characters end up splitting up when they go to college or move to a new city. Surely distance is not something that a relationship can endure. This seems so foreign to me. When I was only 10 we moved to another country for a year. Over seas even. And when we returned I continued to keep in contact with most of my closest friends. Of course it was hard back before Facebook Instagram and Twitter. But with email and msn it was certainly possible. The distance never caused me to feel less of friend. If anything my heart grew fonder of the connections that endured. It proved we valued the friendship enough to take the time and effort to stay connected. As I’ve grown older and near my 30’s (a mere few months away at the time I am initially writing this) my best friend now lives on almost the exact opposite side of the world in Australia. And yet he is the person I speak to most throughout each week. Some days even more so than my own roommates. Why, I ask, should this be any different with love? Why is distance a death sentence for a relationship on television? If you love someone you won’t need to be with anyone else when you are apart. Sure there may be days when its awfully hard and your heart cracks just thinking about the distance (even during moments when you are blessed to be together). But it isn’t impossible. To me it comes down to where your priorities are. If you cannot stand distance than it wasn’t the person you longed for, it was proximity and another human being to numb your own pain. I suppose the difficulty comes that both people need to be fully all in. But if they are, it shouldn’t be a problem. Well, by problem I mean it shouldn’t be a deal breaker. Certainly distance is a problem, but a surmountable one that can be overcome. And there are so many options now adays to get creative and stay connected. Every relationship comes with hardships and problems that will need to be solved. Why does this particular one seem to be one that we would all rather avoid than try to work through? I’m baffled by it. Now I admit that perhaps this may be in part because I do tend to be a lone wolf at times. And to me distance is not a crack in a relationship, but rather brings excitement when you get to reconnect and share about all the growth that has been happening in each of your own lives while apart. Not just in the physical distance way, but having different activities throughout the week when you are in the same city too. Keeping your own identity and walking together through life rather than merging into one to the point that you no longer fully recognize yourself.
I never want to lose who I am in a relationship but rather be celebrated for my differences and appreciated for having my own mind and thoughts. I want to be able to mutually encourage one another to have our own adventures without feeling like we have to put them aside for each other. Even when it’s hard and painful to encourage pursuit of things that may cause temporary distance or leave me feeling lonely for a brief moment. Because my loneliness is my own to deal with and I would never want to expect another person to carry the weight of that. And because I want to be able to love in a way that let’s the other person flourish and be all that they are called to be, even the parts of them that require being on their own.
And as human beings the very nature of interdependence requires that each of us be on our own at least some of the time no matter how committed the relationship is. If we never spend time on our own or interacting with other human beings it quickly becomes codependence and so many studies show the damage that can do. So distance, whether in the physical sense of living in different cities or even countries for a season, or spending intentional nights each week with different friend groups or alone, in my opinion is a necessary ingredient in a relationship. If it becomes a deal breaker than there are other factors in play that constant exposure to one another was simply hiding. Distance is a resource that can be used either wisely or poorly. Only you get to decide how you choose to engage with it. Consider it an opportunity or a detriment. It is up to you. Has life ever felt like a yoyo to you? Do you ever find yourself spinning up and down or side to side in a cats cradle like motion with the same ins and outs of life appearing over and over again each time you swing by? Up and down to and frow repeating repeating repeating. Just when you think you’ve come on to something new the same patters emerge once more reappearing like an old familiar friend. And you try to shift. You try to start anew. Yet it all feels mundane eventually. One of the strangest things about experiencing an illness that comes with flare ups is that there is this feeling like you’ve finally got it managed, and then it rears its ugly head again out of the blue. You never know if you’re just out of flare up mode or you’ve finally found something that has worked to help lessen symptoms. It doesn’t help that the pills for these conditions are often trial and error taking a stab in the dark until you find one that provides support. I’m constantly thinking things are moving forward only to realize that it just hasn’t been cold enough out or I was far enough away from my period to have less severe symptoms and it had little to do with the new diet or supplements or exercise routine at all. And soon with enough tracking everything reveals that the same patters still appear to be at play in the end. We all experience this in one way or another; the round about carousal that is life. So how do we break the cycle? I suppose its with small continual fractures to the system that eventually chisel away a large enough chunk to be noticeable. Just shifting that small micro percentage little by little until it begins to build. One thing here. Another there. Slowly shifting to a new course.
The advantage with small changes is that they are simple to make. The trouble with small changes is that one moment of dreariness, forgetting, or letting your guard down and suddenly you’re back to square one. At least it is quick to remake them again. So we keep stepping forward bit by bit, doing our best to avoid the backtracking and recovering quickly when it does occur. Overtime it does make a big difference after all. If only we believe that long enough to keep going. What tiny step will you take today? How will you take it? How will you ensure that you will continue forward with it at every opportunity you can? Keep believing. Keep trusting yourself. Keep knowing it will eventually be worth it. And someday it will. Have you ever felt disconnect between what you feel you should want and what you truly do want? Most of us seem to experience this at one moment or another. We have our own desires, and then we have all the ones that have been handed down to us; through socialization, through stories, through the beliefs we have been told that we ought to have. Desires are finicky things, because there is what we long for and truly want, and then there is the surface level add-ons that have buried that other information. Discerning our true desires requires a process of being willing to dig through the layers of dirt until you find the hidden buried treasure underneath. This takes time and effort and energy. It can be easy to get tempted to give up. But the only way to ensure that you never build towards your true desires is to never search for them in the first place. And as you start to get close the process becomes quite exciting! It’s okay for desires to shift and for more to get unearthed over time. So many of us are afraid to dig into what our desires are because we don’t know and are afraid of getting it wrong. As we get it wrong though we are led steps forward towards getting it right and knowing what we truly do desire. Everyone had different needs and wants, and until you explore what yours are you will only ever be handed a fragmented version of someone else’s. I am convinced that our true desires will always be aligned with God’s will. See we fear the flesh so much because we think its desires are opposite of our spiritual longing. Yet in reality, the flesh leads us to try to meet real desires in temporary ways that can at times be quite damaging. It is like having a gaping wound across your arm and choosing to wrap a string around it rather than venture to the hospital and get a proper stitch. The string may hold the flaps of skin together, but it will also cut off circulation. It may have the potential to cut additional wounds in other areas of the skin. And it all to easily could tear off leaving the wound to fly back out unexpectedly. Our true inner desires are real and valid. The wound does need attention. The flesh simply influences us to give it an unhelpful form of attention. What are your true inner desires? And how is your mind or flesh offering a false solution trying to convince you that it is the way forward when its not? Suppressing it or avoiding thinking it through only means the true inner desire gets left behind as well. Explore it. What true want is your temporary shadow of a want and desire actually covering over??? What is a healthy way to work towards the true desire or want? Unsure what steps to take to start that excavation process? Reach out for a free 30 minuet strategy session today to find out how our services can help you along that journey. Email [email protected] or phone 705-206-6786 because you deserve your wound to be properly bound. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to truly trade places with someone else for a day? In many ways our society fantasizes about this with Freaky Friday nuances. But have we ever stopped to think about the full magnitude of what it would actually be like to truly trade places? Nothing like Freaky Friday at all. Because you see, in Freaky Friday the trade is merely bodies, but the soul stays the same. We can ponder what it would be like to trade situations and circumstances with another being, but is that truly trading places? Putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes is a limited perspective shift because although we see it from another angle, we still bring our own rose coloured tinted glasses with us. To truly trade places means divorcing ourselves fully from all past experiences, thought patterns, knowledge, growth and everything else that is embedded throughout who we are. Simply put it is an impossible task to truly see things from another person’s point of view. Sure we can have empathy and build a bridge that lands somewhere between where we are and where someone else is. That is a good skill to have and widens our own perspective and understanding. Yet we cannot truly know what it is to see the world through another’s eyes. It might sound fun to trade places, but trading places in full is actually trading who we are at our core. It means exchanging our values, personality, innermost thoughts, and the heart of who we are for someone else’s. Trading circumstances is limited. Growing up I had a book of a Disnified Mickey Mouse version of the Prince and Pauper. A part of me wondered what it would be like to suddenly change everything for a moment. Like that new Netflix holiday video Princess Switch with Vanessa Hudges. It would be an adventure, something new.
Yet try as we might royalty remains royalty and common folk common folk. Having a thrown doesn’t change the inner you, it simply highlights you in a different way. And sure in these stories often leadership qualities come out in new ways, but it is not as though the circumstance suddenly created that within them. No, leadership is built over time and space slowly preparing you for when opportunity arises. It does not appear at random in a puff of magical smoke. Changes are built and created. And we can make our own magic. Why change places when you can design the place you want to be and take who you are there with you? Be proud of who you are and embrace the you that is already in there. Then choose to display it. Waiting for circumstances to change won’t do any good. Embrace it now. Accepting our inner selves is the only way to find lasting unity with in ourselves. Be your own thrown. Don’t long to trade places. Instead, boldly bring who you are into new spaces. Enter with intentionality and work to bridge the gap between the life you want and the one you have. There’s finally a winner to the absolute worst Hallmark movie ever. Every Christmas season my roommate gravitates towards watching all those cheesy Hallmark romance movies that we all have a love hate relationship with. Whether its loving to make fun of them, or loving the feel good moments, and hating the layers of cheese or hating admitting that we secretly don’t - Hallmark Christmas movies are a staple in Norther America. Now I have never been a huge fan, but my roommate was watching one that actually seemed intriguing, so after seeing half while cooking I decided to sit down and join. It was a seemingly lovely tale about a widowed woman who had just gotten engaged after previously loosing her husband to the war there years prior. It seemed like a wonderful storyline of overcoming grief and allowing yourself to move forward in life. That was until the end and I am livid. L-IV-ID. I just watched the premier of “Christmas Bedtime Stories.” On one hand spoiler alerts are coming, but on the other hand if you relate to the premise of the film please read rather than watching as I suspect arriving at the end would do quite the damage. See throughout the film the main character has moments of thinking of her husband feeling like he is still alive somehow – something many of us who have experienced grief know quite well. She feels guilty for being engaged and wanting to move forward with her life. This too is something that many windowed individuals experience. The film seemed to be exploring the natural grief process and layers of complexity that come with it. But as the film draws closer to the end, having these layers of guilt and confusion regarding her deceased husband leads her to end the relationship. Sure this could be an acceptable element as some people find that they do need more time to process, however there seems to be no real basis to this, or at the very least it is extremely surface level. True the couple has differing views on where to live and where to travel for the honeymoon, but these are all basic things even the healthiest of couples has to sort through. But it is what happens next that has me pissed off; especially as a life coach who has worked closely with those rebuilding their lives throughout grief. Suddenly the news mentions that a group of soldiers who were captured have been rescued. And a few scenes later her husband reappears, having been unknowingly alive all these years. Surprisingly, he easily recognizes their daughter, despite the fact that she is now several years older on the dance floor with a bunch of countless other children, and the child happily embraces him rather than having a level of uncertainty towards this now stranger. But why am I most pissed? Because people spend YEARS sorting through their grief and learning to move on. And in your happy ending it requires for the deceased to return? Hallmark what are you thinking? Firstly, what kind of disregard is that to all the family’s whose loved ones never return? Secondly, what kind of false hope is that to give young children who are watching who may have lost a parent to war? Thirdly, what the actual fuck Hallmark? How can you in our world when there is the war in Ukraine and everything happening in Iran and all of the many other layers of disruption to peace currently happening in our world right now, how can you have the balls to show this on television? So many people right now don’t know if they will ever have the chance to see their loved one again. And what began has a film showing the natural process of working through this reality, turned a sickening corner. What seemed to be a heartfelt film about processing and overcoming grief ends in a manner that is so impossible and so far from reality that it leaves hearts torn and empty and regretting their situation all the more rather than acting as an avenue for healing and forward growth. How dare you play this film. How dare you create it. How dare you. The level of damage that something like this can do to a person’s healing journey is unspeakable. I cannot believe that that just happened or that I wasted 2 hours of my time supporting this horrific films view count. What a twisted awful, heartless creation that completely lacks elements of trauma-informed care. I have worked with clients who have spent years processing their grief. Years exploring what it means to have images of someone gone pop into their mind and constant memories pointing them back to those moments. It takes so much effort and energy and intentionality to work through all those layers. And the solution you leave them with is that for a happy ending the person would need to return? What a misrepresentation of grief and the healing journey that is naturally a part of all our human lives. What about those widows who have done their best to move on and remarry? Now you have left them with a story that validates the sense of guilt they already struggle through. If you have lost a loved one please know that it is ok to have another romantic partner, or to build a deep friendship, or to appreciate another human being. It is FAR from replacing them. Every relationship is different and unique. It is okay to continue to connect to people. It will never replace their memory, but will build new ones that you can equally appreciate. And its ok! You are allowed to live life and connect to others. It’s a normal thing to do. Human connection is a basic human need – as essential as food or water. The ending of this film is a total misrepresentation of the grief journey. And I am appalled that this is the narrative we are choosing to feed by having this movie play on our channels. It’s not okay. It’s not okay to any individual who doesn’t know where a loved one is in this world right now. It’s not okay to any individual who has lost a loved one in war. It is not okay to any child waiting for a parent to return. This is not okay. It fails to uphold the stories and experiences of those who grieve. It fails to provide an avenue for healing or holding space for what is reality.
This is wrong. Oh so wrong. And at Christmas when we know that the holiday season is already so difficult for so many people. How could you do Hallmark? How? I could go on but I’m too angry. Perhaps I will dissect it with more clarity in the future. If you have watched this film and need a place to unpack the damage it has done or to process your emotions please reach out: [email protected] You don’t have to sort through it all alone. |
Author:
Life Coach Practitioner Katelyn Townsend helps individuals like you build enriched lives full of joy. Archives
December 2022
Categories |