A Bright Shiny Day

2012 is off to an amazing start. I decided the perfect way to start my year to shine was to polish and overhaul areas of my living that are not quite shiny. Today I made progress in the following areas:

• I re-organized my kitchen. I created a new organization system that I like much better and now all of my items have a place to call home.
• I got rid of all the gluten containing items in my house. I put all of the unopened items in a reusable bag to donate to the local food bank and gave the rest to my gluten eating friends.
• I set up my Tassimo. Now I can have coffee and/or hot chocolate and/or chai tea lattes with in minutes.
• I baked gluten free cornbread and made a gluten free vegan lasagna. I was beyond thrilled this weekend to find gluten free lasagna noodles that are oven ready. Colour me over the moon.
• I perfected my shamrock green smoothie recipe. It was inspired by the Fresh Restaurant Shamrock drink. But it has added protein powder and no banana.
• I made my first batch of overnight oats in more than six months. I kind of want to peek and see how they are doing but I will just wait and be surprised tomorrow morning.
• I started counting whenever a negative thought came up
• I watched Breakfast at Tiffany's

Today has been amazing and I am looking forward to many more days like it this year. How was your first day of the new year?

2012: The Year To Shine

Bonjour 2012!

It is the first day of 2012 and I am excited to share my word for the year, shine . Over the past month/year/couple of years it has become clear to me that we have the option to choose light or choose darkness. For the most part, I have been choosing darkness and not allowing myself to see all the beautiful light and radiance that surrounds me. This year I am going to focus on shining as bright as I can.

Magical Thinking and Grief

Life changes in the instant.

The ordinary instant.

You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.

Joan Didion: The Year of Magical Thinking

It was a beautiful January morning when my life changed forever. The sky was blue, the air was crisp and snow had just blanketed the ground. I got the phone call. I was standing on the side street behind my work. I heard the words "suicide" "pronounced dead" and "identify the body." I dropped the phone. It smashed in to more pieces than I could pick up. It was an ordinary morning. I ate oatmeal for breakfast and flat ironed my hair. Life changed in the instant.

It has been just over ten months since that day when my life as I knew it ended. I thought I was coping somewhat well with the grief. I mean I have for the most part been able to pull myself together and be a competent and capable adult. But I too have been guilty of magical thinking.

You see even though I can pretend to be doing alright. The truth is that deep down I believe that if I change myself, if I make myself perfect for her, than she will come back. It is for this reason I haven't packed up her condo or moved a single item since she died. Her dresses are still hanging colour coded in her closet. Her perfume is still sitting on the table opened as she left it. Her laundry is still in the hamper. Her mug of lemon tea is still on the counter. It has to be this way so that she can come back and wear her dresses, drink her tea, spritz her perfume and do her laundry.

I have tried over the past ten months to become the perfect daughter. I have added to my goal list all of the things she wanted for me. But I haven't been able to become the perfect daughter for her. I can do a lot of the things she wanted. I can lose weight and be nicer to her family. But I can't undo the one thing she wanted most from me. She wanted me to recant. To say that she didn't abuse me. And I can't do that.

So now I am stuck in the middle between magical thinking and the reality that I will never be the perfect daughter my mom wanted me to and therefore she will never come back.

Raising My Voice!

Hello lovelies,

I was going to launch this blog with the story of how I lost my voice for four years when I was ac child . But as I was unpacking and taking the first steps to building my new life, the universe intervened as I was unpacking and gifted me with a quote that I think fits the spirit and nature of this blog. I randomly drew this quote from a selection of quotes during a trauma group. It is by the inspirational and amazing Audre Lorde.

"I write for those women who do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified, because we are taught to respect fear more than ourselves. We've been taught that silence would save us, but it won't"

For so long I thought that being silent and not talking about abuse or my sexual orientation or my eating disorder would save me. That the silence would keep me in a protective bubble that wouldn't allow me to get hurt. But I have learned that silence does not work in my life.

In this blog I will share my experiences, raise my voice and embrace my inner lioness. I invite you to come along for the journey and share your own process of healing.

Together we can speak for those who have no voices and show the world that we will not be silenced.

(A special thank you to the lovely Ellie D who encouraged me to take this leap and begin a blog again. You can check out her personal blog here and her kick ass business Headologist here.)

Brave in Love!

A couple of years ago, Kelly Rae Roberts wrote a post where she talked about being "Brave in love. Brave in Sadness." I read it recently and since reading that post I have been really inspired and have been trying to make this my mantra for living.

This blog will thus be my attempt to live a life full of love, to embrace instead of run from love, to trust in love, to be brave no matter what life throws at me. This is the beautiful beginning. This is me opening my heart and saying that I am going to love and I am going to bravely do.

My life has been full of sadness lately. I lost my health. I lost my apartment. I lost my safety. I lost my mother. I lost my faith and yesterday I lost my job. But through all of this, I have been supported by wonderful amazing people who have remained constants. Showing me that no matter what journey life brings us on, if we have love, we will prevail.

This blog will show my journey to be brave in sadness and brave in love.