From the desk of Teresa Jordan – It gets dark pretty early, the tell-tale sign that it is fall. With all of the pandemic alterations to life, it seems I do not drive at night very much anymore. So, coming home after 9 from Haliburton recently I was a little out of practice in the art of relying on the headlights to lead me home.

This realization made me think about how, when driving in the dark, you can only see a dozen metres in front of you, and you must trust your knowledge of the road, the other drivers, and signs and markers to get where you are going.  In fact, it wasn’t until I drove from Sault Ste. Marie to Wawa in the dark once that I realized there is a sign posted to warn of every bend in the road.  I was not familiar with the road, and it had a million bends. I leaned on those warning signs for guidance.

I guess that is how things feel right now – we do not know what our destination looks like, what the long-game after COVID might involve, how things will get resolved or how long all of that will take.  We just have to do the next right thing, watch the signs, look for guidance, trust the other drivers and keep focused on that part of the future is illuminated.  We need to deal with the next right thing, and then the next right thing after that, and sometimes we will need to double back because a sign changed or we learned a new route. Little by little, though, we carry on and without ever seeing the sweeping vistas of the Lake Superior landscape we will reach our destination together.

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From the desk of Teresa Jordan, Executive Director – Where I grew up used to be called The Island, which is sort of bizarre, but it is a piece of land that has the Scugog river on one side and two different creeks that wrap around. The few hundred acres in the middle was called The Island and the local log church of the late 1800’s was … you guessed it, the Island Church. 

My parent’s farm is smack dab in the middle of the parcel, and it is called Island Green Farms.  Consequently, I grew up with ready access to water and fishing. The two bridges near my childhood home are famously popular fishing holes and each has a rather unique feature – hydro lines near the bridge that are littered with bobbers and lures of every description. 

Every now and then, workers from Hydro One come by and pull the bobbers and lures all down, but it only takes a few months for the festive garland of dashed casts to reassemble itself.  I have thought about these individual casts and the person flinging the line that gets tangled on the wire. There would be the inevitably a period during which they’d struggle to try from their position on the dock to pull or untangle the line; then, there must be a eventual decision to cut the line and leave the bobber, lure and/ or hook hanging amid the company of other abandoned tackle that is swinging in the breeze.

I guess that is the way life is sometimes – we want to fix, mend, untangle, make right, smooth over or ultimately control the mistake or mishap or broken relationship. And sometimes we can fix it; we can use our superpowers of empathy, communication, listening and problem-solving to untangle the mess. In those instances, we are stronger, the situation is usually clearer and we are ready for another cast that is a little better informed for having experienced the hazard.

However, and this is the hard part, sometimes there is just nothing that can be done, and we must cut ties. Oh, how icky that feels when we have invested time and energy, when we were really enjoying the friendship, when we thought the job or friend or marriage was forever.  

I guess each fisherperson must be clear when they have done all that they can, and in order to move on, they must cut that line. After all, in all my time living near these bridges I have not seen people camped out for days and days trying to get their favourite lure free; people eventually need to get home, eat, go to work and change out of their favourite fishing hat .   

All we can do is our best, make sure we have done the best with the tackle we have, done our best to understand what got us all tangled in the first place and then if nothing is changing, no amount of holding tight to the line is going to get us back to happily fishing with this particular bobber.

In all cases, there are good memories of the great fishing trips, there are lessons about fishing that were learned and there is always the knowledge that the karmic forces, much like Hydro One, will eventually cleanup the mess. This you learn when you grow up on an island.

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From the desk of Teresa Jordan, Executive Director – The gratitude challenge is around the corner, and I am a believer in the magic of present thanks.

Just like the meditation guru who said, “Try to meditate for twenty minutes per day unless you are very busy, then do it for an hour,” I think the same principle applies with gratitude. There are some days when everything seems to go wrong, and there is just no moment in the day when gratitude feels right.

On those days, write down a few extra items on your gratitude list: fresh coffee, comfy bed, favourite breakfast cereal, hearing a child’s laughter.

On the busy, grumpy, and or sad days take a deep breath – yes whatever is wrong does not disappear, but the pause offers a little free reset where you can visualize the fresh air rejuvenating the weight of whatever – then in the pause think about even just one thing that makes you happy, that you love, that you are thankful was part of your day.

I can have busy days with challenging issues, like all of us, but I always say that I am thankful for my family, fresh coffee and the invention of chocolate. Connect for a moment to the joys, and then dive back in knowing that that still moment of fresh air and gratitude is available to you for free, any time that you need it again.

While this approach is not a magic wand to somehow remove the mountain of laundry, the bills, the meeting schedule or the current crisis, it is a moment that is all yours in the quiet.

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From the desk of Teresa Jordan – I recently had the pleasure of listening to Nancy Brownsberger as part of her webinars prepared for one of our teams.  She challenged listeners to think about this question: “Is the way I am speaking to myself the way I want to live my life now and into the future?” 

I have been trying to meditate more and the one thing I can say that I have mastered is just being more mindful of how my mind chatters away almost endlessly. And some of the time this mind of mine is jumping to nonsensical conclusions about the actions of others. Those conclusions seem to be connected back to my being shunned by a group of girls in grade four … because almost all my conclusions end up being, “I guess they do not like me anymore.”

I think we can all say that there is a small voice inside that seems bent on making us feel like less, having negative things to say about how we look, what we just said or how we are fitting in. Is how we are speaking to ourselves, and is this how we want to live?

Nancy says that we need to look for truth, look for evidence. And yes, sometimes we’ll realize that we have things we need to work on to be more supportive or flexible, but more often as we analyze the evidence, we find that that small negative voice has no business bringing us down today – or any day. 

Counter the voice with facts and ground yourself in the truth of your awesomeness.

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From the desk of Teresa Jordan – One of my favourite team exercises is the resume mash-up. We list all of the workplaces, experience, education, years of service and other assets of each team member and then make one humongous resume. The beauty here is that the sum of all that experience is massive, and this exercise drives home that we all bring a little something to the group that makes the team as a whole super fantabulous. 

These combined competencies and interests, if honoured, can make for an incredibly efficient, problem-solving team.  Working in a team is hard, there is no question. While all of those different strengths and opinions are what makes the team stronger, ideas can clash; there can be misunderstandings and conflict. 

I guess the magic elixir lies within two questions, the first being: Would you please help me to understand where you are coming from? Where we are coming from has a lot to do with all kinds of layers that we carry, how our family did things, our core beliefs, our habits and different experiences. What we do and how we do it makes complete sense to us.

The magic of the first question is that it simply asks to understand. In the outcome of that understanding a different way could be shared and learned. Or the person asking could decide that what at first seemed completely strange is a really great new way of doing things. 

The second magic wand question is: What can I bring to this team that no one else can? Here again we are all so unique we need to remember that a solution that seems so simple to us may not even occur to someone else. 

Our skills and abilities are our greatest asset, and ours alone to bring to the team. Seeking to understand where another is coming from helps us to understand their gifts, and in that understanding we can feel confident that our gifts will be received.  This is the one-two punch of community building and the ultimate mash up of awesomeness.

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From the desk of Teresa Jordan, Executive Director – I have read this analogy a few times over the past year, the notion that lighthouses do not move around. Very simple I know, but the idea here is that sometimes we want to move, play defense, intervene, react, save and otherwise scramble in a million different ways in order to warn those we care about that something is needed. A lighthouse, however, stays in one place and shines.

It is in the knowledge that this lighthouse is there, that the light is there, that ships for hundreds of years have known that there is a cliff or rock or another hazard to avoid nearby. Equally, if a storm was raging or the journey home was long seeing the lighthouse indicated that land was there, and home was close. Stay put, stay strong, stay rooted in who you are when you are your best self, and shine. We can’t actually solve the problems of other people or prevent them from crashing, but we can offer guidance in how we make decisions or commit to improving, how we shine.

And in your own journey who and what has offered you this same warning and comfort? Who was shining and steadfastly there when you have to make a decision? What phrase or truth shone bright when you were facing a dark time?

“Once the lighthouse is seen the rest of the sea is ignored,” Terri Guillemets said. Lighthouses do not move around; they stay rooted in rock. There is a lot of rocky danger in the world right now and we can feel like we are capable of offering very little… but you are so valuable and shiny in who you are and being you, so shine it out! You could be the lighthouse in someone else’s stormy seas.

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From the desk of Teresa Jordan – You can learn a lot if you just pay attention. I spent time in my family cemetery this past weekend. One thing about the area where I live is that there are now 12 wind turbines that can be seen from almost any high vantage point for a 30-kilometre radius. I am not necessarily opposed or upset; however, I know that they are a polarizing issue and they do alter the otherwise serene landscapes of the rolling hills of Manvers Township. 

Sitting at the cemetery for the decoration service I looked to the horizon and saw no turbines. I quickly realized it was because the location of my sitting was opportune in placing trees between my line of vision and the wind turbines. I guess this is how it is with a lot of things that are troublesome or polarizing. 

If there is no way to change the outcome or the reality, then all that is left is the serenity to accept things as they are, and the option to find a different spot from which to look. That spot could offer you a different point of view, hide the issue from your sights – or in fact we could move on from wherever we are stuck in accepting a new reality. I think sometimes it is easy to forget our options with a problem that seems as massive as those wind turbines. 

We may get so fixated on the thing that appears to be altering our state of mind through anger or resentment or exhaustion that it slips our mind that we even have options.  And we always do, we can move our focus, we can breathe, we can completely change what we do for living or where we live in order to seek a better view. The power to handle icky landscape is completely about our line of sight.

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From the desk of Teresa Jordan – I recently was talking with a friend who had an interesting story. She had received a call from a close friend about going on a wine tour in the Niagara region for a few days. It did not take any convincing at all, it was perfect, a few days at the end of July to sip at wine, enjoy the sunshine and scenery with a good friend.  She said yes immediately and e-transferred the money needed. 

The next day the friend emailed all the information for the tour. It was then that it was noticed that this was a biking tour. Several kilometres of biking between wineries and vineyards seems the stuff of Hallmark movies, unless you do not regularly bike. 

I guess the takeaway here is that while lots of things should make us excited enough to agree on the spot, there are a few questions we should ask to ensure we have the whole picture, the whole agenda, know more of the facts. Lots of things may look like a sunny wine tour until we ask key questions. That is not to say that challenging answers or details should change our commitment, but at least we have time to purchase a gel seat. 

I think that we often set goals or determine a direction that we want to go, and then rush the in-between step of breaking that goal down into smaller steps. Ideally, I think that a big goal should be taken in small bites that can be celebrated and accomplished along the way so that we stay motivated and stay on track. In setting those small steps, the details of what is needed will come into focus, and we will know that while we are sure of where we are headed, there could be a lot more pedaling involved than first planned.

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From the desk of Teresa Jordan – If someone bumps into me while I am carrying a cup of coffee and I spill some coffee on the floor, you may ask why did that happen? I may be tempted to answer that it happened because I was bumped into, but the reason is actually that I had coffee in my cup. That is to say, if I were carrying lemonade, there would now be lemonade on the floor.

This reasoning caught my eye first when it was offered in a friend’s reflection, because I was only thinking about the cause being the external force. It seems an upside-down kind of logic that the reason for coffee on the floor is in fact the presence of the coffee.

The thinking here is that whatever we are carrying is what will spill out when we are threatened, challenged, overwhelmed or bumped. We get to choose what goes in the cup. I might say, for example, that my latest tirade about work boots filled with sand that are always in my path at home is about the work boot wearers. In fact, that tirade is spilling out of me, and it is because of that reality that I have choices. I can fill my cup with complaints, fear, negativity, and anger. Or, I can focus on problem solving, positivity, joy, and gratitude. 

We can keep what’s inside all under wraps in either case until we get bumped by a crisis, a setback or a small thing that is just one thing too much. Self care is so much more than the odd pedicure; it is about really focusing on what we are filling up on and making sure that it is not toxic to drink or to put into the environment.

When life gives you lemons… well, you know, fill your cup with that sweet lemonade, step nimbly over the chaos left at the door by the family that you love, and sip sweetness as you choose what you take next in your cup.

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