2 blog entries in one day, why not?

The Saskatoon "rock country" band, Wyatt, is in second place in the XS Emerging Artist of the Month and I would love to see them win.  They are a wildly talented group, and I happen to know Danny Fortier and I know how hard he and the band work and how much this title would mean to them.

Let me tell you a story about Danny and his friend and bandmate, Scott Patrick.  I have to first set the context though.  I have a complicated body, and while there are a lot of details of how and why it happened, let me just put it as simply as I can.  I had stainless steel rods fused to my back when I was 12 years old to correct for scoliosis that was a result of my then 6-year-old spinal cord injury.  Some 25 years later, those rods broke while I was pregnant with my daughter.  For many reasons, I had to wait for 7 months after she was born to have the broken rods removed and new ones installed.  It was the worst pain I have ever experienced; every breath I took was a labour.  I was essentially home-bound because I could not safely transfer in and out of my chair and because my spine was so unstable the only way I could hold myself up was through leaning my elbows on a pillow that was tied around the back of my chair.  I was fighting infection in my spine and in my lungs and in many ways, I was also fighting for my life.

Tough times.  That is where Danny and Scott came in.  Literally came in.  To my house!  And performed a house concert.  They played and sang their own songs, and covered the theme from "The Littlest Hobo" which rocked my house off its foundation.  And to end this magical concert, they covered Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah."  I know that everyone loved kd lang's cover - me too.  I have been lucky enough to see both she and Cohen himself sing that well-loved song.  But for me, during one of the most vulnerable and dark times of my life, when my hope was a fragile string that I was barely holding onto, it is Danny and Scott's version that will always be my favourite.  Where we sat in my golden-lit living room and held hands and swayed together and sang along.  They helped make that thin string of hope a little thicker and stronger.  This memory for me is so beautiful.  So so so beautiful.

Let's vote for these guys.  They are good-hearted, hard-working, and again, wildly talented.  http://ckxsfm.com/2013/02/25/xsnewartist991/   Their name is about 1/2 - 2/3 down the list.  They are in second place - so close to winning!  Let's help.

wishing you beauty,
hk

Okay, what on earth is going on?

I am worried about you people.  You see, I have been having a ball putting up "You Are Beautiful" Post-It notes in the spirit of Operation Beautiful, all over the place.  It has taken a bit of imagination.  Since I am a paraplegic and since it is *still* winter in Saskatchewan, and since I am *still* recovering from surgery on my hands earlier this month, I run errands from the driver's seat of my van whenever possible.  (Wheelchair users "get" this; we know where all the full-serve gas stations are, the ATMs you can drive up to, and the drive-thru coffee spots).  So I put my notes up in these kind of places: above the speaker on my favourite coffee drive-thru; on the bottom of the debit machine I used to pay for lunch; and on to the bathroom mirror at my doctor's office (another place I frequent). 

Why I am worried is because I also "posted" virtual Post-It notes in emails and on facebook pages, reminding friends, both men and women, that they are beautiful.  I couldn't make this act anonymous, but I thought it would be fun to do it anyway.  Some of them just thanked me, very few did not respond, but many more said things like, "I haven't heard that in a long time," "I don't think of myself as beautiful," and "Are you sure you meant me?" 

But possibly the most alarming was how my daughter responded.  I told her about Operation Beautiful and how we would do some of this Post-It Note-ing together.  Maybe she was just trying to understand how it all works and maybe I shouldn't read anything more than that into her question, but when she asked me, "What if the wrong people find the notes?" I had to stop everything we were doing and talk about it.

"There are no wrong people, honey," I said.  "Everyone is beautiful." 

Oh, readers.  There is much work to do within ourselves, for others, and in our big, old beautiful world.  Let me leave you with this paragraph.  You probably know it or have heard it.  The original is written by Marianne Williamson although many believed Nelson Mandela said it first.  It has been quoted in the movies, Invictus and Akeela and the Bee.  Here is the version from the movie Coach Carter:  

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It's not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” (Bold font is mine.)

wishing you faith in your own beauty,
hk

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Mixed up in this sometimes dark and ridiculously cruel world are some truly fine human beings.

Tonight, I found one of them as I happened upon a site run by “Caitlin” called "Operation Beautiful:" http://www.operationbeautiful.com/I should be sleeping, but I don't think I can rest until I tell you about Caitlin's project.

Intended for girls aged 8-14, “the mission of Operation Beautiful is to post anonymous notes in public places for other people to find.”  The site is run by “Caitlin,” who you can learn more about from her blog called Healthy Tipping Point:  http://www.healthytippingpoint.com/

Caitlin writes: “I began Operation Beautiful by leaving positive messages on the mirrors of public restrooms — at work, at the gym, at the grocery store.  I scribble down whatever comes to mind — "You are beautiful!" or "You are amazing just the way you are!"  My personal goal is to leave as many Operation Beautiful notes as I can. “

Armed with post-it notes and a Sharpie, I intend to try it tomorrow, hopefully with my seven-year-old in tow.  I will let you know how it goes in tomorrow’s post.  And please, if you give it a go, post what you did either here or on my facebook page. You can also find a facebook page about Operation Beautiful.

Wishing you sweet and beautiful dreams,

hk

For no apparent reason today, I found my mind wandering while I was at the vet's office today (that's another story, maybe later), counting how many major surgeries I have had - 8, and how many minor, 3, and how many scars - 11, one for each surgery.  Plus one on my forehead from one of those I-can't-believe-you-survived-that- kind of an accident you can only have when you are a little kid.  And one other:  the tattoo I have just above my left breast.  The tattoo I chose to get because I had all these other 11 scars that were all for circumstances beyond my control.  I got this tattoo because I wanted the choice to scar myself. 

When I arrived back home and checked my email messages, I had one from my brother-in-law.  It was a photo, and all he wrote to accompany the image was a question:  beauty?  It was a photo of a breast cancer survivor, who had a double mastectomy and tattooed over her whole chest.  This is the link of story I read: 
http://ca.shine.yahoo.com/blogs/shine-on/breast-cancer-survivor-chest-tattoo-photo-goes-viral-193759450.html
I think it is breath-taking.  I think it is a beautiful example of taking a tragedy and marking it on your own terms.  (It also must have really hurt to get it done, but then so would a mastectomy.  I tip my hat to this brave woman).  According to the story, the photo was posted on her facebook page and then taken down.  Posted again, and  again removed, apparently because it violates facebook's rules regarding nudity.  This is the kind of nudity I want to see though.  The kind of nudity that makes me proud to be a woman.  The kind of nudity I want to show to my daughter.  The kind of nudity I want to talk about.  And that is why I am writing about it here.

Although I have 13 scars, I have both my breasts and I can not know what losing that part/those parts of me would be like.  I went to my old tattered copy of Audre Lorde's The Cancer Journals today, and re-read what it was like for her to have a mastectomy.  She writes her story of losing a breast, but also about the bigger questions of what it means to be a woman in this world, and to deal with the pressures of having to look and function a certain way in order to be acceptable, valuable, and beautiful.  It is a most inspiring book, and I encourage you to read it, but let me leave you with a passage on page 66:  "I am personally affronted by the message that I am only acceptable if I look 'right' or 'normal,' where those norms have nothing to do with my own perceptions of who I am.  Where 'normal' means the 'right' color, shape, size, or number of breasts, a woman's perception of her own body and the strengths that come from that perception are discouraged, trivialized, and ignored...I must consider what my body means to me." (My italics)

Not every woman who loses a breast, or both breasts will want to, or feel the need to, tattoo her chest or write a book about it.  But she should not be silenced when expressing what her experience was like, or if she wants to somehow take her experience, choose a different perception of it, and create a new identity for herself.  It is her story.  It is her body.  Audre Lorde also says (page 22): "For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury  of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.  The fact that we are here and that I speak now these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence.  And there are so many silences to be broken." 

wishing you beauty, in any way you chose to define it,
hk

Lorde, A. (1997).  The Cancer Journals: Special Edition.  aunt lute books: San Francisco, CA.

p.s.  Thanks, Curtis.  :)

You know what else makes me crazy sometimes?  Food.

We all eat.  Most of us enjoy eating.  Many of us care very much about what we eat.  There is a feast of nutrition advice available to us, at least in this part of the world, whenever we want it and sometimes even when we don’t. 
The trouble is how complicated that advice can be.  Eat whole grains, but cut out wheat.  Cut out lactose, but get enough dairy.  Eat more vegetables, but make sure they are organic.  Feed yourself fish at least twice a week, but not if it is farmed.  Then there is the saturated, omega-6, and trans fats issue.    Sigh.

I believe that good nutrition is as important to your health as good medicine.  Maybe better.  I do my best to keep up.  Among others, I subscribe to Canadian Living, Clean Eating, and Fine Cooking magazines, and they are full of good recipes, nutrition information, and cooking techniques. I meal plan a few weeks in advance, and similar to how I try to write every day, I also try to cook at least 6 days out of 7, and plan for the fun of trying a new recipe or a new ingredient at least once a week.  But my life is also a bit complicated.  A kid gets sick.  The van broke down.  And more often than that, disability-related things happen to unravel my plans.  A urinary tract infection.  A pressure sore.  And over the last year?  Pneumonia, 3 times.  The last time I had bacterial pneumonia that made me cough so hard I cracked several of my ribs, I turned to a friend for nutritional advice.  While she is not a dietician, she does have a PhD in Food Science. Help me make sense of the conflicting messages out there about nutrition, I asked. What is your best advice on foods that help your immune system? She wrote back in an email a long list of foods I should be eating, including  oats, garlic, and turmeric.   But don’t worry, she joked, red wine and dark chocolate are also antioxidants and therefore good for immunity, so you won’t be stuck eating mushy porridge with turmeric and garlic.  With a chuckle, I read her email out loud to my husband.  What I did not realize was that my daughter was listening.  My then six-year-old daughter who, I had not realized, has been so worried about my coughing.

The next morning, she woke early.  I came out to the kitchen to discover she had made me breakfast:  Porridge with turmeric and garlic.  You can’t make this stuff up, folks.  And I ate it.  Or at least, I tried it.  It tasted about how you would expect it would.  In a moment of sheer parenting brilliance (that I only wish happened more often), I said to her, “You should try this!”

She dug in.  “Oh, that’s not right,” she frowned.

“Maybe it is the spices.  Let’s try again using cinnamon,” I suggested.

Since then, she is into making breakfasts and her latest experiment is salads.  Today, for example, she made me a salad with romaine lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, and peppers.  Yes, for breakfast.  And no, I don’t know how well the vegetables were washed, or if there is omega-6 fats in the dressing she made, but I do know that she made it a beautiful thing adding in equal parts of curiousity, compassion, love, and pride.  I know that even though those things do not get written up in the nutritional breakdown of the meal, that they nevertheless matter. 

Wishing you beauty, but perhaps without a crust of garlic and turmeric,
hk

Sometimes the Internet drives me crazy. 

It can be such a dark and dangerous place, giving anger, violence, and hatred a place to fester.  It is a scary place for parents, who often feel like they are living in a state of perpetual fear of cyber bullying and predators.  It is challenging for all of us to learn how to protect our children from the potential harm that exists there, while empowering them to use the Internet as the vast source of information. 

But at the same time, I also love the Internet.  

I love social networking sites, because it allows me to stay in touch with people who are important to me.  Without Google map, I would figuratively and literally be lost!  I love searching recipes and adapting them. I love reading blogs, shopping, and being able to translate something I have written into another language.  The Internet allowed my family to gather around the computer this past August and watch the Mars Rover landing.  Researching a product on the Internet before I buy it saves me time and energy.  I love having the latest world and local news at my fingertips and I enjoy reading my (7!) magazine subscriptions on my ipad.  Because of the Internet, I have learned how to fix a leaky tap, make a perfect hollandaise sauce, and fold a fitted sheet. 

In order to reconcile my love-hate feelings toward the Internet, I try to remember that it is just a baby, having only been around for about 40 years, and being only accessible for most of us for about 20.  Because of it's youth, we can not throw it out as an entirely bad or good place.  We have so much to learn about it, how to use it, and how not to.  Our electronic enlightenment age will be the stuff of history books (or e-books?!) someday and we must be mindful of the stories we are creating towards that history. 

Today, in this one 24 hour period, the news stories dominating the Internet are, no surprise, sad ones: death, murder, trials, war, and abuse.  And yet, as I weeded through them, I found one of the best examples of how much potential the Internet has to positively change the world.  It is a video by Shane Koyczan, who says he made it on a budget of "love and compassion" and the link is below.  It combines the best of creativity with art and the spoken word, but by sharing it on the Internet, it has to power to reach many.  It is a beautiful piece of art, found when I least expected it.  Enjoy and pass it around.
http://upwr.me/W94EYg 


wishing you beauty,
Heather

It all started with a tan and black animal print scarf. 

It was part of a bag of jewelry and scarf samples that my friend, Jacki, had dropped off at my home.  She had recently become a Stella and Dot Stylist (https://www.facebook.com/JackiAndreIndependentStylist?ref=hl) and although I wasn’t able to do a traditional party in my home at this time, I wanted to help her get her business established and I thought I could probably pull off an online party.  There were many pretty things in that bag – sparkly earrings, bold necklaces, delicate bracelets – and the above mentioned scarf.  I didn’t give it a second look.  I don’t wear scarves.  I sure don’t wear animal prints.  I am not that feminine.  I am not that trendy.  I am not that pretty.  I am too practical.

Jacki knows me well.  She knows how rigid I can be when it comes to how I view my body, so she asked me if I would try on something new from the sample bag every day, take my picture with it on, and post that picture to my facebook page.  This is a way we can make the online party fun  and more engaging for your friends, she explained.  She later admitted that she was excited to see how I would deal with being pushed out of my comfort zone.  It was a challenge.  I felt uncomfortable, weird, and narcissistic, but I did it because I promised Jacki I would.  I put on something new every day; I even wore some makeup for the pictures.  On the last day of our party, I asked my seven-year-old daughter to choose anything from the bag, and I would put it on, take my picture, and post it to my facebook page.  I was secretly glad this little project was over, and I looked forward to this being my last post. 

She chose the scarf!  That ridiculous tan and black animal print scarf!  Not only that, she found a Stella and Dot video on Youtube on “10 ways to wear your scarf” (http://shop.stelladot.com/style/b2c_en_ca/accessories/designer-scarves.html) and insisted on experimenting with all the ways to tie on me.    How did she get so style-and-Internet-savvy?!  And then the most surprising thing happened:  I actually liked how I looked in it.  I liked it so much, I even bought one!  I had found something beautiful in the place I least expected!

My body image issues come largely from having a physical disability for most of my life, but whatever our reasons are I think a lot of us, maybe even most of us, can be like that too.  We can have pretty strict ideas about who we are and what we look like.  I could speak to this all day, but instead I want to end by encouraging you to find your own animal print scarf today.  You might just find something that surprises you.

wishing you beauty,

hk

Although I believe we can choose to make a life change in a moment, like many of us, I see the beginning of the new year as an opportunity for goal setting and new year's resolutions.  This year, I decided to embark on a 52 Week Self-Improvement Plan.  Don't laugh!  I knew there were at least 52 ways I could be better.  I didn't take a lot of time to "plan the plan" and instead I just wrote down 52 things (one new task a week) I would like to do that would possibly improve my way of being in the world.  Some are fun and shouldn't be difficult, like "Give 7 Compliments," "Get Up Half an Hour Earlier Everyday," and "Do A Different Kind of Puzzle Everyday."  Others are more challenging like:  "Speak Only Positively for a Week," and "No Sarcasm or Self-Deprecation or Negative Self-Talk for a Week."

I started with something hard:  "List 7 Hurts and Let Them Go."  What surprised me was at first all I could think about was the ways in which I had hurt myself.  The list was long.  When I made this one of my weekly tasks, I was quite sure I would write about the ways that other people had hurt me - you don't get to be a woman with a life-long disability without enduring some pretty big hurts - but that was not how I began, and those were not the hurts that gave me the most pain.  The deepest hurts were within myself, where I least expected them to be.  And when I was done, I let them go.  The letting go was not nearly as difficult as I imagined it would be, not once after the honest, soul-bearing list was written down.  It was a beautiful thing.  On this day, February 12th, the Bell-sponsored Let's Talk About Mental Health Day, I have to wonder how many of us swallow our own hurts and what that is doing to us, mentally, physically, and spiritually. At any rate, we need to swallow less and talk more, and there needs to be more avenues and supports available for us to do that.  You can learn more about the day at:  http://letstalk.bell.ca.  For every:
Text message sent^, Long distance call made^*Tweet using #BellLetsTalk, and Facebook share of  Bell Let's Talk image, Bell will donate 5¢ more to help fund mental health initiatives across Canada.
wishing you beauty,
Heather

My blog will often include music.  My beautiful thing today is a song, by the wonderful Saskatoon treasure, folk singer-songwriter, Eileen Laverty.  It is "My Own Way Home," from her album entitled, Ground Beneath My Feet.  It is a fitting song with which to begin this blog, and one of my favourite lines from it is:
"Though my map is soaked with tears, gentle music fills my ears...today, I embrace."

Thanks for making beautiful music, Lav.  <3

Clearly, I have a lot to learn.  My "new post" and my "introduction" are the same paragraph. Please be patient with me as I figure this all out.  :)

Maybe you can relate to this.  I am a 43 year old woman who is trying her best everyday to uncover some beauty.  This goal is rooted in my identity as someone raising a couple of kids, who has been married for 23 years, who has a T3 spinal cord injury and has used a wheelchair for 36 years, and who has lived on the Canadian Prairie all of her life.  I am a writer, feminist, disability advocate, aspiring cook, music lover, sports enthusiast, committed CBC supporter, avid reader, yoga attempter, coffee devotee, and ideas junkie.  This might sound pretty positive and upbeat, and it is, but it is also true that life can seem pretty dark to me sometimes.  It is busy, stressful, difficult, tense, hurried, and fraught with stories, messages, and images that are sad, fearful, and hopeless.  I have experienced, and continue to experience, my share of depression that at times have disabled me more than my severed spinal cord.  In this blog, I will not promise to know all the answers, but I do know this: happiness is work.  Finding beauty every day is work.  Hard work.  Sometimes it is in the places I least expect it.  But it is always there.  And that is what I hope to share with you.