Another year has gone by – roughly 525600 minutes (song from the movie Rent) and I sit thinking about how blessed I am. So many magical moments deposited into my soul bank. I’ve been fortunate to have had so many amazing experiences this past year. Exactly one year ago I was in Maui with my parents. Their first time on island and their experience was so amazing they decided to go again in October. I was blessed enough to join them again and created many more memories. The highlight of the trip was meeting my artist friend and him sharing his work and world with them. This was one of those moments that is so precious to the soul.
The year seemed to involve a few last minute planned trips. I made more memories in Florida with my sister, her family and my parents. I got to see my sister proposed to at Disneyworld (she said yes) on my niece's 8th birthday. The day made for a magical moment at the Magic Kingdom - dreams do come true there :) Jumping ahead to December I was honoured to be by her side at their wedding and it was an amazing day celebrating their love and the uniting of two families. Back to the Florida trip, I also squeezed in a visit with my old beach partner. It was so great to see her and her family and their new home. Next Palm Springs called and I headed with a girlfriend and played 54 holes of golf in 3 days. That caught me up on my golf and we also experienced a 5.1 magnitude earthquake that shook us and the house pretty hard - definitely an unreal experience. There were also a couple one day trips to BC - Sparwood and Abbotsford. They made for fun times enjoying a long overdue catch up over beer and chicken wings in Sparwood and a whirlwind road trip cake pop delivery in Richmond, BC. The last trip of the year took me to Windsor to celebrate my sister's wedding and to spend Christmas with my family. It was so great to see my siblings and all their kiddos. My nieces and nephews are a great range of ages and it was amazing to see them all growing and happy. I adore each of them and we shared some great moments.
Another big part of my year was my many cake pop creations! I had so many fun orders and am so grateful for getting to be part of your lives and celebrations. As I look back on all the fun designs I'm so thankful for the ones that I got to create. I ended 2016 with an epic order for Nandos Head Office and created cake pops for all their Canadian Stores! Such a cool thing to be part of and I’m so grateful for the opportunity to share the cake pop love with almost 1100 more people because of this order!
The year was also filled with many moments with my “kiddos”. I may not have birthed any children in this lifetime but I have been beyond blessed with some amazing friends who share their children with me! Be it road trips to Edmonton to watch two sweet boys visiting from the north, or visit a brand new baby boy who charged into this world 5 weeks early; or times in Calgary where I’ve had fun Friday nights playing trains and saying goodnight stories (Goodnight Moon being my fav read) to sweet little souls. I was even blessed with the opportunity to spend four days and nights watching two sweethearts who added so many more moments of joy into my gratitude jar.
Even though I retired from volleyball I was blessed to coach and since I wasn’t playing on my weekends I took to the mountains. Oh how I missed them the past 20 years playing beach every weekend in the summers. I found myself out there many times on some great hikes with old and new friends. There was one adventure where we took the “path less traveled” on a well-known hike. We definitely had some laughter about it when we got back down from the top and realized where we went “wrong”. Yet our wrong turn led us on a great path where others weren't on a crowed day. One other hike resulted in finding the long lost “wild turkey” which will remain a mystery like Big Foot. Another brought a ptarmigan that wanted to chat with me, and so I did for about 5 minutes. There was a combo of a bike/hike which involved a mountain bike ride up the mountain then a hike across the meadows to the BC border. Needless to say each trip into the mountains brought me such joy and so many great moments with friends.
I also found more time for my love of astrology this past year and dove into it headfirst. I’m grateful to a few souls who have shared their astrological wisdom with me and look forward to learning so much more from them and the resources they provide.
My year wouldn’t be complete without mentioning my many “coffee dates”, breakfasts and walks with some amazing souls. *Please note: the “coffee dates” should really be called “chai tea dates” as there usually isn't any coffee consumed on these visits. Only in some cases there is an actual java ordered. However the topics we cover range so vastly and are so interesting it's been unreal. I don’t think there wasn’t anything we didn’t cover and I’m so grateful for those times.
Well, the list could go on and on…and for that I’m grateful but I’ll end here. This post is similar to one of those letters folks send out at Christmas time to share their past year and what they have been up to. It felt important for me to do this here on my "year end" and start of a new one sharing the things I'm most grateful for. To all of you who have been a part of my quilt of life so far in my existence MAHALO. I look forward to our next moments, our next connection. Even if it’s been years and our only contact has been through text or on Facebook I’m still honoured and grateful for our connection. Who knows when or how our paths will cross again. But for this moment please know you are loved and I look forward to the next 525600 minutes in this 47th year of my life. Sending so much love and aloha your way. Always love, Jodi xxoo
Well, the week has come where I wasn’t called to write about a specific topic. If I was a writer one might call it a writer's block. However, for me it was just silence. I’m okay with this as it reflects the space that I’ve been in for the past week. I’ve felt the need to “shut down and not think”. Dancing in the flames, always open to shifting and evolving, learning and growing I quietly found refuge in stillness. I found myself wanting to retreat from it all for no reason and allowed that to be enough. I had no inspirational ideas come to me for the blog. What was beautiful about that was I just let it be. No topic meant there was no agenda, yet it didn’t mean that there wasn’t a message to share. So I’ll take a moment to write about how it was OK for me to just be and not have an agenda. That I would allow the week to unfold and make choices to do the things that filled my soul but that didn’t “advance” the agenda. The beauty in that I believe is that I “advanced” in so many other ways that weren’t necessarily on the ‘agenda’. Many times we need to just sit and allow the work we have done to weave itself into us.
During the week I pulled from my Angel, Tarot and Oracle card decks. I wasn’t surprised when twice I pulled the hermit card. It validated where I was at and I embraced my shutting down and not thinking.
To explain further, in the past I was someone who felt like quiet time was wasted time. That I needed to be accomplishing something always – always striking an item from the list, checking a box. This past couple of years I’ve learned that quiet time is just as important as ‘busy’ time. That as with everything there needs to be a balance. Writing the blog is something new and allowing this ‘balance’ to happen with quietness was a great lesson. As I write it I’m calm and not asking the questions that I would have asked in the past. I accept it for what it is and that I gave myself the time I needed to subconsciously process what was going on for me.
Venus is now in retrograde. I jump to astrology as it’s something that intrigues me and taking a moment to look to the stars for some guidance always calls to my soul. Many hear the word retrograde and think horror and doom. For me it’s not that at all. In every retrograde there’s a gift to go back through some of the lessons you’ve learned and to assess where you’re at now and see if things are different. Did you see the lesson? Were you aware of the choices you made and how they affected you? Do you feel like you’re on a wheel going nowhere? Are you happy? These are just a few of the questions that come and as I write this perhaps my week of “no thinking” was in preparation for the next 40 days. Next week is my birthday and I get reflective every year at this time. I find the gratitude for the friends and family that I have and that I keep in touch with. All the small joyful moments that can often go overlooked. For my health as the clock ticks and I age. For the opportunities and lessons that the previous year afforded me. As I type now I realize that I’ve begun the processing to make space for the old to leave and the new to come. That in my quiet time I’ve shifted the things that needed shifting and I’m ready for “what’s next”. Understanding that the “what’s next” will reveal itself when the timing is right.
I’ll end here, knowing that I’ve shared what I could. That the boat navigating on the ocean waves of life plodded along another week and withstood the elements. With big waves crashing, but none big enough to overturn the boat and enough sunshine to keep smiles on my face and in my heart. I decided to use a photo from when I was 17 months old. I’m so grateful for my love of water and trees and connection to the earth. This photo always makes me smile as it depicts that for me. I wanted to find a photo that spoke to the feeling of just “being” and this one does just that for me. Happy baby in her diaper feet bare and connecting to the earth. Thanks for being alongside me this week. Sending much love and aloha your way. If you’re going through some tough times I wish for you the gift of “you” time. That you give it to yourself without any judgement or justification of the ‘why’. That you find peace within that space and allow yourself to heal or find answers to the questions you have been asking. Always love. Jodi xxoo
Gratitude. It doesn't cost us a thing and it can be given for everything. Whether the situation is labelled good or bad - we can find threads which deserve our gratitude if we’re willing to look. Sometimes we cannot find it in the thread in that moment. Yet, if in that moment we quiet the voices in our head that want to be heard and demand sometimes to be heard thus quieting our mind and connect to breath we can speak then from the heart and find gratitude. This isn't always easy as the moment might be one that is pushing us, rubbing our rough edges and making us smoother. However sometimes in the "getting smoother" we can't find the gratitude. We don't understand the "why" but want to know “why”. Sometimes there isn't an answer to the "why" because the journey is a lifetime and we might not ever have it answered. We have to trust the "no answer" and find gratitude in that space. Sometimes it cannot come in that moment. We are buried too deep in the "story" and cannot find the strength to stop the story and take a breath. We feel that if we stop to find breath, to find gratitude we will lose momentum of the story and the power it holds. This too is okay, as if it's where we are at there is a learning in it too.
There are times when we need to "sit in the stew" as I call it. When a lesson needs us to sit patiently as it unfolds. Too often we are quick to get up and "run" and say it's over and we've walked what we needed. Sometimes the gift is in the sitting in the stew. The staying and letting the emotions wash over us. Allowing ourselves to feel and to heal in order to truly learn the lesson and move on. There's times when we run away too soon. If that's the choice we make it's not the wrong one, it just means the lesson will probably return in a different form. The hope is when it returns we have the awareness to see it for what it is and perhaps choose to sit in the stew and not run. Yet, if we run again it is just that and we have other things to learn before we can complete the lesson. This may sound vague, or even fluffy, but I challenge you to sit quietly with your breath and think back on the past year. Were there moments that challenged you? Did you run? Did you ‘sit in the stew’? Were you able to listen to your gut tell you whether to "go or stay"? Can you see the spaces where you found gratitude? Where you found frustration? Where you were tired? Where you were energized? The beauty in reflection is that we can see our strengths and weaknesses and find gratitude for them. We can understand more about ourselves and as we return to the present moment we can see if we are making the same choices or different ones. Are we telling ourselves stories to help continue the suffering or are we creating new chapters, possibly even new books.
We are all here to walk our journey and experience life. We build our beliefs, habits, and our foundation. Over the years we shed our skins as we grow and change. Gifts in all of these moments and to allow ourselves the ability to find these gifts a gift itself.
This past weekend I was called to ‘sit in the stew’ as the New Moon/Solar Eclipse beckoned my soul to take a cathartic break. Earlier this month I did an energy healing where I uprooted many things that just didn’t serve me anymore. It was a powerful healing session and I am still feeling the ripples of the effects. Normally I would have found time to do many activities over the weekend. Yet I was called to just sit and so I did just that. I wanted to write this blog, yet my hands felt tied and so I honoured that gut/soul calling and just sat. Here I am finishing my writing the day after and smiling as I had written a chunk of this prior but didn’t read it all again until today. I felt that inner giggle and validation as I read the words written about gratitude and sitting in the stew. See, I’d forgotten that I’d written all of that and smiled as I read the words knowing that’s exactly what I did yesterday.
I trust that you will be able to take away something from this week’s post. The waters of the ocean seemed to gently calm themselves for me and I trust that you too have felt this. That you are able to close out the second month of this year and find some space for the things you are grateful for. I know I’m drifting along peacefully today as I silently thank myself for honouring me and ‘sitting in the stew’. A long exhale of breath as I look forward to what’s to come. Sending much love and aloha, and thank you for your time and for drifting along with me again this week. I’m honoured to be sharing space with each and every one of you. Blessings; Mahalo; Thank you, Thank you, Thank you (head bowed and hands in prayer- Namaste) xxoo Jodi