Puzzling ….

Have you ever stopped and thought to yourself this is puzzling? What is it to be puzzled? How can we use this experience of being puzzled as a positive and grow through it to complete the picture?

I am listening to some great podcasts and YT video recordings talking about values, beliefs and rock-bottom thinking. Living life to the fullest is much like a puzzle. It comes in a box, called a tiny body, and then we must grow into it and find all our pieces.

Dr. Sue Morter talks about this in her work. She discussed her thoughts about how our soul waits for the bus at the stop and then is transported to this earthly experience. When we land we “splat” she says, and then we seek to put the puzzle pieces together for the rest of our days on earth.

Personally, as I have learned how to navigate my splatted self and gather, tender, and carefully pull this puzzle together, I have been given so much opportunity to test the process. One of the things I seemed to harvest first, early on in my life, was impetuousness and impatience. Now at 66 I have realized they were key pieces to my puzzle. The hard lessons I have endured have been teaching how to find both contentment and patience.

Often all the pieces of our lives make little sense. We can see some semblance and we can match colours, lines and nuance – it does not mean they fit. Fitting only works when the right pieces are put together. This takes patience and contentment to continue working at it. Some call it “trying”. There is no such concept as “try”. We either do it or we do not. Take a piece and if it does not fit, take another piece and see if it fits. With trial and error the right piece will eventually be found. Even if you make a plan of elimination, eventually you will find the right piece. It is not about trying, it is about doing, action, and perseverance. When we take action, have experiences, gain data, we learn and we process. The pillars of wisdom! Learning and Experience.

So like knitting, puzzles, sewing or hiking there must be a plan. A plan to implement what it is you hope to achieve. We are now at the threshold of 2026 and it is a time when many look to see if life is coming together like a well knitted blanket, a complicated puzzle or the journey on a trail. It is not January 1 the decision for a better life is made, it is today, this minute, this hour.

As you look to 2026 and beyond may you begin today to be happy, healthy and content.

Put together your life …. it doesn’t have to be puzzling….

#dancynadventures

#breakingstibah

What’s EARLY!?

Today … and the past week or so I have been up before 6 AM! Why because I am staying with my family and there are two young men in my world daily! One morning I was wakened at 5:45 AM! He stood at the edge of the bed and said, “Gramma, I kind of wet the bed!” How does one “kinda” wet the bed? I went up an he showed me the exact spot that his pull up had leaked! So we began to strip the bed. He quickly hopped up and started pulling the fitted sheet and said, “I know what to do Gramma!” and he did. He knows it is not a sin to wet the bed and is realizing it is his stage of life. He might be a bit late in some people’s timeline but for him, it is simply something that needs to be managed.

As I helped him prepare for the day, cleanup and dry clothes he mentioned something about “being a baby” since he cannot go through the night without wetting. I suggested it has nothing to do with being a baby, he just has not developed that skill yet and his body is still growing and developing. He smiled. He smiled a million dollar smile that told me he was appreciative that I seemed to understand and seem to have a reason for this late bed wetting problem.

In the work I do, I assist aging adults with their “pull ups”. Many call them “diapers” however in the world of PSW work we are trained to call them “briefs”. Diapers are for babies we are told. This labeling is important to the aging adults just like it was important to my grandson. Are we up early in the morning? Are we late? Should we have grown out of something? or are we old and have grown into that stage of life? The idea we tag our years on the planet with bodily functions or with labels has gone by the wayside I hope. Many cannot understand this distinction of “labels” and I try to deeply understand it.

Recently, I walked with a friend and she shared how she was told how someone who has always had a grandson shared how this grandson is now a grand-daughter. Her friend is adjusting to this label change, gender change and this news. The “grandson” no longer exists and so the label of “grandson” needs to be grieved and welcome a grand-daughter she never had before. During their life this child, growing into being an adult, has changed who they are and adjustments need to be made.

It is mid-November and so many people are lamenting the snow has come “early” this year. Is it early? Or is Mother Nature changing her identity? Has she decided now is the time to blanket herself with the masculine energies of wind and bluster? “She” is exercising her right to call us to attention, holding out a poppy in November, remembering winter is coming. It is not early nor is it late, it is simply doing what our seasons do, changing.

One of the greatest gifts and lessons I learn when I spend time with my children and their families is the fact they live their lives their own way. It may not be my way, so that is where I must learn to keep my thoughts to myself, watch and appreciate, while stepping out of their way. As a mother, I often wish I was a bear or a wolf or a bird …. I wish I had the instinct where I birth my children, then when the time is right, move on and let them go. As humans I think we hold on much too long.

Last night, over a puzzle, my daughter and I had a short conversation. I was sharing and she looked at me and said, “Am I wrong that I feel compassion and yet some complacency?” I was touched because I feel the same. I have raised her to realize life moves on and it is in this human holding on we create mass suffering. When is it too early to realize we are born, we grow, we have kids, we age and then we DIE. It is the way it is. We can have compassion and then we can exercise complacency and find joy again.

Being early or being late is relative and objective to one’s life. Where are you on your timeline? Are you early or are you late? I am happy to talk with you about this concept, it just might relieve your suffering!

Is there really no music

There is a story I tell and I have no idea where it came from. I just tell it. It is about a person who argues there is no God! They stand up with fire and fight and say, “I am an astronaut and I have been to the reaches of space and I can attest, there is no God!” Another person in the crowd, a musician, stands peacefully and quietly, turns to the same group of people, holds up his violin, and says, “That is like saying, I have taken apart this violin piece by peace and can attest there is no music!” Believe, joy and witness is not in the factual evidence of our lives but in the living, believing and trust of it. God is not a noun-like tangible presence, God is that which takes you on a journey of faith and love of your life. God is a verb.

I have been talking about being prompted to pull a book of my shelf to read it after carrying it with me for many years. Today I found the purchase receipt inside. It is faded and hard to read however I can see I purchased it October 7, 2008 and am further in awe of the great spirit and the journey I am on. It was just this week I pulled it off the shelf, 17 years later, almost to the day of purchase.

The wonders of spiritual awareness. I am in awe every day!

Time … I have talked about this before

Where does time collapse into? Whether I think about something from 62 years ago, in 1963 like my sister’s wedding where I was a flower girl at four years old, or my thoughts about yesterday’s hike in the woods, where do these memories go for me to then recollect them later? I find that so puzzling.

My sister asked me if I remembered the weather that day was like it is now, very hot! I said no if I didn’t have the picture and others telling me it has faded into a place where I cannot recall it. I do have a tiny memory of a small room in the church maybe … but nothing concrete. It was a long time ago and far, far away!

Today I opened a book I have carried with me for almost 20 years. I have never cracked the spine. I purchased it in about 2007 and have simply carried it with me through all my moves, my education, my life, my journey and yet never read it. Today it was calling to me to be opened and read. It is perfect for NOW. I am absorbed in the first few pages simply wondering why I have not opened it before. I have no answer.

The author’s words are like Cupid’s arrows to my heart. Love queries of my soul! Inviting and challenging at the same time. I have been struggling with a feeling I call “dread”. It is an emotion that washes over me each time I prepare to go to an event, any event. I struggle with it and need to push past it in order to get myself out the door. The ego wins, because it is tenacious, however, the dread resurfaces each time I prepare to go out. My daughter suffers as well, so I wonder is it something I have steeped her in? Is it an element of my sobriety that I am now needing to tease out from my soul? Tell me more, I asked in a journaling moment, please tell me more about what it is you want. I think this book is the soul’s answer to my question.

Am I enough? We all ask this question.

The dread is the remnants of over 60 years of being who I think the world wants me to be. Not my authentic self. I witnessed this transition in the four weeks of “dusting off my fitness knowledge”. As I lead the class the dread made itself clear. My soul verified to my ego, it is time to be authentic and real. How freeing this has been.

Today, as I head out into the sunshine I have a new crack in my vessel where the light is getting into my spirit and inviting it to meet up with this seeking self. Show thyself? Is that biblical? I do not know or care … but as the colours of the leaves remind me that vivid colour too must fall and recycle back to the beginning. Winter is coming a time to see what seeds have been planted and what just might grow in the next season!

Spiritual Gathering

Good Sunday Morning …. it is a glorious morning and these kinds of Sunday mornings often make me reflect on my hunger and need for spiritual community. I used to go to “church”. That which is a Christian community filled with people who have a common belief. The liberal nature of my belief no longer allows me to sit through “worship”. Jesus was a Jewish man who fought for justice and taught lessons of divine truth and I do not believe he would have attended church today.

Jesus was a nomad, a rambler, touring around fishing and sharing stories. He told about the divine nature of people and asked them to watch what they say and do. He suggested we might be taken at any time, through death, and asked the people he taught to care about what kind of life and legacy they left behind. Jesus was not a Christian nor was he “The Christ”. He was enlightened with spiritual wellness and challenged the political views of the day.

Buddha was also a man who followed along a spiritual path seeking enlightenment. He was not a Buddhist nor would he attend gatherings in his name. He taught and asked people to care about how they lived in right relationship with each other and with nature and truth. He did not set out to start a movement. He set out to live his own life in a way that was conducive to being close to the soul.

I honestly do not know enough about Mohammed to even attempt to comment. So I will leave him to his own people and those who have studied and know him best.

What I do know is I hunger, like the Jesus and Buddha I have studied, to be in right relationships, both with myself and with that which I call God. The place where my soul lived and will return. The location that seems to feed the inspiration that drives the painful passion of my existence. We are in a consciousness shift so great it is painful, it is passionate, and it is dangerous to organized religion and those that hold on to it.

I am driven into the wilderness, nature and the quiet of blooming flowers and cobwebs wet with morning dew to walk and ponder who I am and what am I doing with this one beautiful life. The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

I hunger for spiritual community that is nature based. Maybe I will find it again … maybe I will create it … maybe it will find me! Either way, any way, on the way, I am working at it every day!

Recovery …. What is it?

I am in recovery and am open about that. I am recovering from abusing my body for many years, while letting the world think I was fit and healthy and strong. I wasn’t. I was a coward. I was hiding. I was harbouring secrets. I was abusive to myself. I was the opposite of found and in the “depth of despair” as Anne of Green Gables put it. Marilla promptly answered that she had never been in the the depths of “despair” because, “to despair is to turn your back on God!” I never quite understood that cause and effect statement.

What does it mean to be “in” recovery? We talk about people “recovering” from an accident or “recovering” from an experience. The prefix “re” is from Latin and is said to mean “again” or “back” … yet the word “recovery” when broken down then would mean to again cover or to return back to something. So if we are “in recovery” from abuses why would we want to start again? Would it not make more sense to start fresh with wisdom, insight and depth? As I take the time to grow from choosing a bad practice for so many years, I cannot say I feel like I am recovering. It does not make sense to me.

Today I watched a podcast with Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love. The book that went on to be a smash box office success starring Julia Roberts, and she tells her story where that book is only a small piece of the puzzle. She is older now and has learned many more lessons since her life was cast through Julia. It is revealing …. (there is that “re” again) how her life since then, since such a story, has further to unfolded before her.

“Self-awareness will avail you nothing!” says Rich Roll as he listens to her story, and she banters back, “discovery is not recovery”. These quips true to form that just because we know we are self-destructive does not mean we will fix what is wrong in our soul.

I am in awe of the common theme of many spiritual gurus today where the conversation is about a small piece of the human experience being scripted from the soulful place. The growing question does a soul choose to come and the great spirit partner it with a body so that it can come to earth school to learn or experience. I often hark back to the television series in 1994 Touched by an Angel where Rona Downy and Della Reese played angels here on earth to assist in the journey of wholeness or the bliss of spiritual realization. Downy was always seeking her side story, her love of lattes, while trying to be the angel-in-training and be the do good, be good student. This has been on my radar for sometime now.

As we think about body, mind and soul there is a connection. It is a connection that, in order to feel well, needs to be noted. Change is apparent and allowing the mind (or ego) to rule the chicken coop will often lead you astray. The soul is the quiet centre, most connected to the source, that is often silenced, ignored and challenged. It is the gut of the matter that we look back at and with frustration say, “I knew that was going to happen!” The body just goes along for the ride like the shell of the pistachio, hard to crack and resilient to a fault.

As I live in this new place, after almost 8 years of sobriety, I look back and am so grateful for this journey. I was addicted to pain and suffering and alcohol was my crutch. I spent so many years seeking LAVA, (love, approval, validation, acceptance) that the volcano simply continued to overflow burning not only my own skin, or surface, but keeping away any help that might have surfaced.

Walk your LAVA walk and know self-awareness is the gate to change and growth. Look for places you can seed hope and better habits and begin anew each day instead of recovering to a place you really never want to return.

#breakingstibah #richroll #elizabethgilbert #recovery #soulsearching

Settling into an “aging” life

Today, I baked the most beautiful muffins. I used very ripe bananas that I had put in the top of the fridge, in the freezer, and I ground some oats and grouts to use. I ground my own flax seeds and I gently and carefully stirred the mixture.

Today, I went for a walk, a 1 km clip around the community while waiting for yoga to start. I then went to yoga.

Today, I knit. I am working on some sweaters and lap blankets to take to Bolivia when I go in April 2026. I get to meet the children.

Today, the sun is shining once again and the lakes are beautiful, the trees are showing some signs of changing and, at yoga, I met up with someone who said she had missed me hiking. I had been away so missed the past few hikes. She missed me! That was lovely to hear!

I have now been here in Elliot Lake for almost three months. Settling in is a challenge with anything new and this is no different. Not only settling into a new community, but settling into retirement as I am choosing to live it. What does it look like? Honestly, I was not sure what it would look like and each day reveals something different.

Today, I am – the divine declaration – I AM simply being dear to myself. Listening to my own heart and beginning to adjust to this new life I have chosen. Third third means changing landscape and shiftings sands. Third third means allowing for a total shift in “who” we are. The divine declaration, I AM …. must be completed in new ways, with new attachments and with open eyes and heart.

Today, the bloom is on my life’s stem and I must be sure to admire and look at the blossom. The berries may be ripe for picking and the leaves showing the signs of wintering. Third third is about understanding a culmination of life’s journey and the ability to reflect on what is next within the parameters of abilities.

#breakingstibah

Vicarious Trauma in Aging

Well, this has been a week of learning for this third third traveller! Oh! my! Goodness! What a time I have had. First, let me remind you, if you need reminding I have a lovely family of two adult children who are both approaching their 40th birthdays in the next year or so. These adult children in turn have families of their own! This third third mom is now dealing with vicarious trauma …. and ONCE AGAIN am feeling so compassionate towards my own mother and our history.

I was called to assist with the Irish triplets. So I drove the 5 hours from the north to be care provider while my son worked and my DIL was called away to help with her own family. This is where vicarious trauma is now present in my life. Caring for three toddlers, (twins and a baby) is super mom/dad hero worship. After two days I was completely exhausted and broken down. This woman who can, at 66 years old, hike challenging trails, still run 5 KMs, and claims to be aging well was taken DOWN!

Exhausted and drained, I went to meet my walk n’ talk friend and we did a great 5 K walk on a forested trail and that began my restocking of depleted energy. She listened to my exhaustion and she heard me. I then did the same for her. Sharing of our stresses is a way of letting them out and getting physically out of the body. I then joined my daughter’s family and her two boys for a visit. Her boys are older so the dynamic is very different and yet no less chaotic and loud! As a gramma, I live alone and have for over 20 years, so loud is something I really notice.

So how does all this lend itself to “vicarious trauma” you ask? I live their lives for a short time and see how the stresses of 2025 bear down on these young families. I watch, as the changing world affects these young families and watch in wonder as technology and culture is shaping their lives so differently than when I was parenting. I remember my mother wringing her hands and can better now understand where she was coming from. Once again, I want to crawl back pre-2009 (the year my mom died) to say how sorry I am for all I put her through with no understanding of her stress watching me flail around and splash in my own chaos. Letting family learn for themselves is traumatic to the ones watching.

I looked up the term, vicarious trauma (it keeps auto correcting to drama, which is just as important but not the same) and this is the definition AI supplied. “Vicarious trauma is the psychological trauma and profound disruption to one’s worldview that occurs from indirect exposure to the traumatic experiences of others” It may sound dramatic however on various levels it is real. My SIL and I were watching the Blue Jays play last night and we both commented on how stressful it is, when the Jays are behind! That set me to thinking more about the tiny things. Watching the news today, a toddler killed when a SUV went through a daycare. The heart pain I felt for all those involved. The wars, the political upheaval, changing climate are all places where third third livers struggle with the stress.

Where is your world too inclusive and causing you to live the stress of others?

What can you to do bring life back, rein it in, collect your own thoughts and alleviate the stress that belongs to others?

How can you begin to stress where it will bring results and let those you love, the world, and that which is outside your bubble deal with their own chaos?

If you even ponder these questions you will begin to see where change can be made! Let others live the lives they choose and you do the same!

Micro watching

My red coffee cone, black fine grind, yellow container with grounds, blue t-shirt, black leggings …. wet shower, cool breeze in the window, sun rising further into the south and setting the same, red kettle boiling the water, blue sky of welcome ….. the morning has arrived.

I am leaning into this stage called ‘retirement’. With aging comes change in so many ways. Change that comes in micro moments over years, seeming to take forever, and yet often we wake up one morning and find we have arrived.

I have been measuring the sun out the west window since moving to Elliot Lake. This is the first time I have been so strikingly facing west and needing to deal with loving the sun and yet struggling with the latter part of the day when it is setting. Facing the west into the setting sun is hot, bright and requires curtains that work. As I stand in this third third doorway, with my hands spread laterally holding on to the jam, looking at the western exit doorway for the sun, I am asked, “Can you see how bright this is? May you find the joy in the setting of your next 30 years.”

I watch the Young and the Restless and have for years. My mother watched it each day and in her third third and especially after dad died I would call each evening and we would have a chat. I started watching Y&R so we could discuss the storyline. She felt angry when Victor would behave badly. Or when the affair between Jack and Nikki was discovered. She knew whose baby it was and gleefully talked about how Phyllis tried to kill Cricket because she was marrying Danny. We could talk for a long time about the Y&R. Oh, how I wish she was here to talk about the latest antics with Cane Ashby’s identity being revealed.

The Y&R moves like our lives, in day to day increments. Slowly revolving around the story of Genoa City’s upper crust. As I watch, Eric Braeden now 83 years old, still playing Victor as he has for almost 50 years … he has aged before my eyes, in micro moments. Life is a series of micro moments and then is nothing but the sun in the western sky. Slowly setting and leaving in its wake the darkness of the night to reveal the light of the stars. The stars are there all the time we just cannot see them until the end of day. Until the darkness is revealed by the setting of the sun. Only then is the beauty of what is behind the micro moments shining for us to see. Stars that have been billions of years getting their light to this planet.

Today I turned on the CBC news for the first time in a couple of weeks and just like Victor is still thinking he is king of the Genoa City council the headlines are the same and the talking head is reading the same script just different words. I turned it off. At least with Y&R I expect the script to stay the same. In real life we should hope it improves. It is sad that I turn it off, but I do. I turn it off because I need to focus on the micro moments of joy and then when I need to look at the bigger picture pick up the news like the star’s light. Wait and let the big story reveal itself over time. If I care for those close to me, in here in this time, this day, this space then the bigger picture will be as bright as the sun as it sets in the western sky. The world will rotate again to bring it back tomorrow, at least that is my hope, so as it rotates I choose to make the best of my 24 hours. My micro timing will be spent on joyful things and let go of the light of the news star and give it time to land.

I am moving into the next 30 years of my life here on this planet. The interesting part of this 30 is it is the last leg of the journey, the path to the finish line. The other thirds had more to come at the end of each segment. My more is like the sun setting in the west, it will bring darkness for those left to look at and see what my bigger picture has revealed.

I stand on the threshold of my own joy-filled third third. I will make it count.

#breakingstibah #spiritualjourney #personalgrowth #thirdthirdliving #aging

Are you hiding?

I remember being accused of being a mushroom …. hiding in the dark and living in sh!t. I was a mess. A mess of my own making. I spent so many years trying to find my way into the light. While I love mushrooms I don’t want to life like the ones we eat as humans.

I want to live like the ones I see in the forest as I walk about. I want to live like a wee fungus that pops up in just a few hours from the mossy and beautiful moist underpadding of the forest floor. Beautiful and ready for toads to sit on me. Well not really, that is the stories of fairy tales that toads sit on mushrooms as stools. They don’t!

Well I don’t think they do! The tender beautiful wee fungus I saw today could never hold up a toad. It would be crushed. That is how our growth feels sometimes. Like something fresh and green and tender. Like the shoots of a sprouting seed, fragile and yearning to be more than we are.

Be new! Be tiny! Be fragile! Because in being new, tiny and fragile we learn and need sunshine and moisture to get bigger and better. There is a future for that which is new, tiny and fragile, room to grow and prosper.

I want to be like a mushroom and sometimes be in sh!t of my own choosing. It doesn’t mean I am broken! I might just grow strong enough to support a fly!