Never Can Say Good-bye

Looking at an old friend’s profile on Facebook, the caption under the picture read “Grade 8 Camping Trip’.  An innocent enough thought floated across my mind.  “I don’t remember that trip”.   And then, it hit me.  I was long gone by the time this picture was taken. And I cried – very unexpectedly – my heart broke and I cried into my hands because I missed the Grade 8 camping trip.

While my best friends, Cheryl and Anna and Harriet (not pictured) were off eating smores and enjoying the final days of middle school – I was far, far way.  In the life of an eleven year old – the ten miles between sleepy, rural, Queenston and the gritty border town of  Niagara Falls, was impassable.

On a recent road trip to Ikea with my mother, I asked her “Did I say good-bye to my friends when we left?”  She couldn’t remember and felt immediately guilty.  Just another thing to feel bad about. I reminded her that she had a lot on her plate at the time. This was no ‘Daddy’s got a new job’ departure with smiling friends waving away the moving truck.  No.  This was a somewhat stealth operation with neighbours peering from behind curtains muttering things like “thank god she’s getting out before he kills her” kind of move.

My mother tells me that we didn’t sneak away. She says the move was planned and discussed and there would have been plenty of time to say good-bye. But I don’t remember it that way.   Or, perhaps, it’s more honest to say — it didn’t feel that way at the time. After years of wishing and hoping – it all just seemed to happen so fast. The truck came while he was at work and by the end of the day we were gone – with exactly one half of the furniture.

I do recall an awkward moment at recess when I had to tell my friends I was leaving….and part of me wanted to pour out the whole horrible story but where do you start after so many years of not talking.  So, I just blurted out something civilized that I’d heard on a Sunday night movie.  “My parents are getting a divorce”.  And I started to cry. They thought I was crying about my parents getting a divorce which was the only thing I was actually happy about.  I was crying because I had to leave them and I was crying for all the things I never told them.  I was crying with relief.

Our new life as single mother and three kids was a hard-won battle to get from the frying pan into the fire.  In the blink of an eye, I was swept away from the radiant innocence of my best country girl friends and our school newspaper, carnival dates and awe at the notion of french kissing.  I landed in a concrete world of city girls with their sharp edges and empty eyes, all cigarettes and sex and swearing.  Predators everywhere.  I turned myself into a tough girl and there was no going back.  I did not go camping in Grade 8.

I never did get any better at saying good-bye.  This was the beginning of simply walking out of one phase of life and into another without so much as a backward glance.  I have many an old friend or lover that could testify to that. Until just weeks ago, I had not one single connection in my life from before the age of 21. Family doesn’t count because they follow me everywhere I go. I’m the one that sneaks out of parties.

If I could go back in time – I would say a proper good-bye to Harriet and Anna and especially to Cheryl.  I would tell them what great friends they were. And we would  swear a blood oath to to meet somewhere exotic like New York or Los Angeles  for tea and cakes when we were really, really old….like 40.

Insomnia – Who’s Laughing Now

Those of you too tired to read the introduction — proceed directly to the last paragraph.

I stopped worrying about ‘beauty sleep’ a long time ago.  After a couple years of chronic and extreme insomnia, ’sanity sleep’ is more like it. There are two types of people in the world: those that have faced down the dragon of insomnia and those who have not.  I’m not talking about the occasional rough night. I’m talking about a serious lack of sleep.  You know who you are.

Let’s be clear.  I’ve made ALL the lifestyle changes to support healthy sleep.  I’m not going to list them all — because you already know them — because you’ve probably done them too!  I’ve also taken melatonin and valerian (no result to speak of) and GABA (some result). I meditate, exercise and everything else.  And, while it’s true that each and every change I’ve made as a result of insomnia has improved my quality of life — I still wasn’t sleeping.  And while I work really hard not to let my mind dwell on it, I knew that ultimately it would take precious years off my life.

So let’s cut to the chase.  It started with a casual comment by a naturopathic doctor that I work closely with. You see, I’ve been taking this incredible natural product for about three months and the results have been amazing.  I’ve been blown away, and, while it was improving the quality of my sleep – it still wasn’t quite right.

He said “some people find that this product makes them sleepy”.  Ding!!  Say again.  The product I’d been taking for three months has a sister product that is very similar but it has a few unique ingredients added to it. He said “because it naturally increases melatonin levels, some people find they get sleepy so it doesn’t work for them”. That was enough for me.

So I tried it.  OK, seriously now people. From the first day I took this product I slept like the dead (in a good way). My dreams exploded. I was sleeping about ten hours a night.  Now, having been sleep deprived for a long time, the first week I was very tired. My body was just not used to living without the stress hormones created by and caused by insomnia.  Now, my sleep has balanced out to 7-8 hours and no tiredness during the day.

I wanted to tell everyone but I didn’t. I wanted to make sure it lasted. It’s been one month of perfect sleep. I fall asleep within minutes of my head hitting the pillow. I wake up at 5am ready for yoga and meditation. And as I write this, I can feel the gremlin of superstition rearing its homely head trying to scare me with “jinx, jinx”.

But, I have to share this information. I owe it to my bleary – eyed brethren. Will it work for you? I can’t say. Is it worth a try? I truly believe it is.   It’s called Xperia. Don’t bother looking for it in a store.  Contact me and I’ll give you all the information you need to check it out.  They have a great money-back guarantee – a real one — that actually works.

Sweet dreams.

Your Insomnia Survival Guide

I recently came out of a four month period of extreme insomnia. I learned a lot about myself during this time. In the end, no one thing brought it to an end. It was a slow crawl out of what quickly became a habit of being awake at night. I got so used to being present during the wee hours, that on the few occasions I had ‘normal’ sleep, I felt like I had missed something. The thing I know for sure is that my body was releasing fear that had been stored in my cells, unexpressed, for many decades. Other contributing factors include: unexpressed anxiety about major life changes, increased levels of electromagnetic radiation at home and at work and burnout from intensely draining energies at work.

Below is an article I wrote that was recently published in Living Positive Magazine.

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You’ve been tossing and turning in bed for weeks. Worried about the loss of sleep affecting your already stressed immune system, just the thought of approaching night fills you with dread. You don’t want to take more pills, but what other options are there? Plenty. A mix of alternative therapies, self-care, and self-knowledge may be your ticket to a good night’s sleep.

Let’s face it, if you go to your doctor, you’ll likely get another prescription added to your regime. Just what you need. North Americans spend over $4.5 billion a year for sleep medications. Yet research shows that sleeping pills don’t greatly improve the quality or length or quality of sleep—on average, they’ll give you only 11.4 additional minutes of sleep.

Effectiveness may be the least of your problems when it comes to sleeping pills. Daniel Kripke, a medical doctor and sleep researcher at the University of California in San Diego, has found that regular use of sleeping pills significantly impacts mortality rates. He compares taking sleeping pills 30 times or more a month to the risk of smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Sleeping pills appear unsafe in any amount, he writes in his online book, The Dark Side of Sleeping Pills.

Kripke believes we’re being misled about the existence of a sleep disorder epidemic and the amount of sleep we actually need, thus causing unnecessary anxiety and overmedication. He led a six-year study involving a million people in the U.S. age 30 to 102 and found that people who slept only six to seven hours a night lived longer than those who got eight hours of sleep.

Of course, the need for sleep varies from person to person, and you may require more sleep in times of deep healing. Whether you prefer six or eight hours, a deep, restful sleep is key to maintaining health. A full night’s rest can give you everything from a bounce in your step to a good hair day.

Coping to minimize the effect of sleep loss

If pills aren’t the answer, what can you do to achieve that deep sleep? First, find ways to cope with your insomnia. That means doing whatever you can do to minimize the effect of sleep loss. To maintain health and sanity during a period of chronic insomnia, intensify all efforts at self-care. Help your body and mind by being as good to yourself as you can. Whatever you normally need for balance—water, fresh air, peace and quiet, meditation—now you need more. Resist the temptation to use stimulants such as coffee to get you through the day or alcohol to help you relax at night.

Don’t let your mind psyche you out! Use affirmations to tell yourself that you’re okay. You may be getting more sleep than you realize. Even small amounts of micro-sleep are beneficial to your body. Resist the temptation to work or watch television when you can’t sleep. Lying quietly, resting the body in a dark room, and keeping the mind calm with deep breathing can leave you feeling quite rested for days, even weeks in a row without a full night’s sleep.

Alternative therapies

In addition to self-care strategies, there are countless alternative and natural healing approaches to insomnia. Educate yourself, but use the Internet wisely. What’s the conventional approach? Does it work? Who stands to benefit the most—you or the manufacturer? What alternative therapies are being used successfully?

Let’s be truthful. Wellness can be a lot of work. A naturopathic doctor isn’t going to give you the latest magic bullet. Alternative medicine requires active participation in your own health and taking responsibility for your choices. It usually requires giving up some of your favourite habits.

On the bright side, alternative medicine offers long-term change and doesn’t require enduring a lifetime of horrible side effects. Better yet, there are positive spin-offs. If you start meditating to address insomnia, you’ll likely increase your immune function and be more relaxed and productive during waking hours.

Among natural remedies, the most common supplements taken for sleep disorders include melatonin, valerian, and lemon balm. There’s very little research on natural and herbal remedies and even less on herb-drug interactions. Kava is the most hotly debated natural supplement used to promote relaxation. It may be toxic to the liver, although some research has shown that it’s still less toxic than most prescription sleep aids.

Taking sleep aids, herbal or prescription, for the rest of your life isn’t the answer. Herbs and supplements can be used to help you through short periods of sleeplessness.

Curing your insomnia

While sleep aids are a short-term remedy, ultimately you want to get to the root cause of the insomnia and restore restful sleep.

It’s generally accepted in both conventional and alternative medicine that the most common physiological cause of insomnia is a hormone imbalance resulting in decreased sleep hormones (melatonin and serotonin) and increased stress hormones (cortisol and ACTH). But the root cause of this is stress. Needless to say, people living with a life-threatening illness generally experience higher levels of stress for countless reasons—from the shock of diagnosis to the loss of income, relationships, and health.

The first step in curing insomnia is to take an honest look at your lifestyle and environment to assess it for stressors and sleep disruptors. Explore your relationship to stress. Are you prone to excessive worry? Do you overreact to life’s challenges? Do you work too much—including volunteer work and/or caregiving? Enhance your self-care and seek out activities that help you relax.

Direct sleep disruptors include caffeine, recreational drugs, alcohol, and excessive television and computer use. Get outside during the day to feed your body fresh air and expose your eyes to natural light. Spending eight to 16 hours a day looking at the artificial light of your computer or television can disrupt the production of melatonin. Your body needs to sense darkness to start producing sleep hormones. Unplug and turn down the lights earlier in the evening and rediscover books and the fine art of conversation.

That artificial light of your monitor isn’t the only problem with your computer. Eelectromagnetic radiation (EMR) from your wireless connection in your (and your neighbour’s) computer, cell phone, and other electronic equipment has been shown to decrease melatonin levels and thus create sleep disorders in both animals and people. This isn’t good news, because no matter how much chamomile tea you drink, without good levels of melatonin, your sleep will be disturbed. There’s a burgeoning range of new products, available mostly on the Internet, that act as personal EMR protective devices. As always, thoroughly research the effectiveness of these products before purchasing one.

As with any illness or life challenge, insomnia can be an opportunity for learning. Let it show you what you no longer have energy for. The experience could end up helping you say goodbye to some unhealthy habits, roles, and relationships. It might also inspire you to get more involved in your community. The EMR and insomnia connection is a potent reminder that electronically accessed community can’t replace human contact; we’re all connected in our pursuit of wellness. At the end of the day, a good night’s sleep can’t be created in isolation from the world you live in.

Evin Jones, Evin Jones

Sing to the tune of Mrs. Jones…

Evin Jones, Evin Jones. We’ve got a thing goin’ on. Not that kind of thing, the other thing. This is my friend Evin Jones. If any one out there is upset that we moved to the Okanagan you can direct all complaints and dirty looks to her. It’s her fault. You see Evin has this amazing power to cause me and mine to move here, there and everywhere.

Seriously, now. She is my oldest friend (sorry Melissa, she beat you by at least a year – maybe more) and we’ve known each other since forever. Evin is connected in some way to most major events in my life. When HB and I were considering our flight from the Matrix (Vancouver), it was Evin’s idea that we come ‘check out’ the Okanagan. We loved it and here we are.

Electric Car Made In BC

The Dynasty Electric Car is made right here in Delta, BC. Yes, they are for sale and legal in BC right now. At $19,000 they can’t be considered cheap – however, your savings at the gas pump will begin to add up immediately.

Critics complain that their speed and range make the electric car unattractive. Let’s consider a few facts. The vast majority of trips are under a distance of 50 kilometres and when is the last time you drove over 50 km per hour in Downtown Vancouver. Legions of people are firing up gas powered – sometimes V6 or V8 – cars to drive downtown or a few blocks to the grocery store.

An electric car is a great second-car alternative for larger families. Even if the electric is your only car, you can always rent for longer trips. Last year, my husband and I rented a car for a full month and put 6,500 km on it and it cost us only $1,100. Renting also allows us to travel in a car we can’t afford to buy (a Prius for example).

Here’s a Global News piece on the Dynasty Electric Car called the IT.

$1,400 raised for Kenya Food Hampers

Just to update you that $1,400 was raised enabling Harkirat to buy 150 hampers for Kenyan kids and families. That’s a week’s worth of groceries for 150 families.

But it’s not just about the food or the money – it’s about the amazing flow of energy between strangers, thousands of miles apart.

Thanks so much to those that gave.

Harkirat’s Kenyan Food Project

My friend Harkirat is in Kenya doing great work. Below is the contents of an email I received from him today. If you’ve always wanted to send some green energy to the situation in Africa – but didn’t know how – here’s your chance.

I write to you from Rongai, a town on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya,
surrounded by acacia trees and vast rolling african landscapes in all
directions. I have been staying here for the past three weeks
participating in a lunchtime feeding program for 120+ orphan children.

Christmas is around the corner and I know many of you are buttoning the
hatches and bracing yourself against the consumerist barrage of
buy.buy.buy. For many families here – the season will come and go without
much of a celebration for lack of food in the cupboards. So I am
inviting you to buy some food hampers for the orphans to take
home to their households – you can buy one for $8. two for $16. 10 for $80.

The background:

School is on holiday for a month and a half here in Kenya. As primary
education is now free, schools are very full. For many children -
especially orphans – lunchtime at school is the one and only meal that
is guaranteed in a day. So a group of us found ourselves aligned into a
feeding taskforce to “stand it the gap” while school is out, to continue
providing lunches and playtime for the orphaned children in the
neighbourhood (Kware).

The kids come to the grounds at 10am – pray together, play soccer
together, skip rope, work on plays and songs, do some yoga/exercises -
generally do what kids do best and just be kids – and then they sit down
to eat a big filling meal together before they head home around 2pm.

It has been wonderful to watch the children’s spirits be nourished and
filled with love on a daily basis at the same time as their bellies.

How can you get involved? Our goal is to get:

120 hampers for the children (8$ each):

One hamper (can last a family approx one week):

* one 2kg package of maize flour (to make ugali)

* one 2kg package of wheat flour (to make chapatis – everybodies fav!)

* one bar of cooking fat (frying up chapatis)

* one bar of soap (washing those clothes)

* one 1kg package of sugar

* one package of kenyan tea

* 100ksh cash for whatever

cost = $8 cdn per hamper

How to buy a christmas hamper(s):

Good old paypal. You can sign up for a free account, if you dont already
have one, and can use visa/mastercard/paypal to buy. Just follow the
link below:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_xclick&business=abangbart%40yahoo%2eca&item_name=Christmas%20Hamper%20for%20kids%20in%20Kware%2c%20Kenya&no_shipping=1&no_note=1&cn=Note%20to%20the%20kids%3f&tax=0&currency_code=CAD&lc=CA&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF&charset=UTF%2d8

We are having a special Christmas meal and pageant on Saturday Dec 22nd
and would like to buy the hampers before then! We are inviting the
children’s relatives, my friends from Nairobi and anyone from the
community who wishes to attend. The kids will present a christmas play,
sing some songs, play games and then sit down and share a feast
together. It is then that we would like to send the children home with
the hampers you’ve sponsored.

God bless, please share this with others and drink some eggnog for me -
I have no idea if you can get it here in Kenya but I miss it… like I
miss all of you.

Bartholomew “Fisher” Harkirat Sullivan

Please forward and share this note with others you feel moved to…

Monkey Business

Four writers, in a desperate attempt to escape their day jobs, go off to a $1 Character Development workshop at a local high school. Alas, the presenter doesn’t show up thus proving that you get what you pay for. They find themselves wandering aimlessly through the deserted corridors of their high school memories and in the end, discover that pre-school was way cooler.

The characters in this film are entirely figments of your imagination and any perceived similarity to real people or circumstances is projection.

Bored Ultimatum

I just reaped the whirlwind that is Bourne Ultimatum. I couldn’t help leaving there feeling just a little bit like my life – at least two hours of it – was swept up in the heady intrigue of top secret intelligence. What would it be like to be followed by secret agents in trench coats and earpieces? Who are these people that get their phones tapped and have their name on files behind doors accessed only by those with the highest levels of security clearance? Who are these shadowy figures that walk amongst us?

Then I remembered. I am one of those people. Well, perhaps it would be more accurate to say I was one of those people. You see, in the 1980s – when the number 10 still came before the number 11 – there was very little for our Canadian secret police to do. It’s Canada for God’s sake – in the 80s. Was anyone causing any trouble in the 80s other than my friends and me?

Kingston, Ontario was a little hotbed of political activism during a time when the rest of the country was so high on the new car smell and hair mousse, they couldn’t have cared less what was going on. You name it, we were all over it: anti-apartheid, Oka. There were even some very cheeky covert operations involving, on one occasion, those black lawn jockey things and, on another, some posters of a campus rapist that was getting away with it because of his family connections. There were secret late night meetings and yes, once I even wore a balaclava. But for the most part our activities were mundane things like petitions and peaceful protests that attracted a hundred students on a good day.

When people started talking about being followed, hearing clicks on their phone and our meetings being infiltrated – I thought they were completely paranoid. We were just a bunch of mostly middle-class university kids. Why would our country’s precious security resources be spent on people that had a ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ bake sale?

But then, I started hearing the clicks on my phone too. There was no explaining it – one day no clicks then every time I talked on the phone – click, click. I started seeing dark windowed cars parked outside my house. I kept telling myself these were all coincidences. I was determined not to let my imagination run away with me. Then one day on my way to an organizing meeting, I saw them. Two tall, clean-shaven men on a roof – I swear to God – in trench coats – taking pictures of me.

I almost felt sorry for them. I have no doubt that when they took a lie detector test as part of their job interview they didn’t imagine themselves following a skinny, vegetarian ex-girl scout with a concealed staple gun and can of paint in her purse. Was this the equivalent of secret agent detention? How embarrassing? How boring?

I have to say; in a weird way it kind of made me feel proud and very happy to be Canadian. If I was our greatest security concern – things must be pretty good. At the end of the day, I don’t know if they really considered us a threat to national security. Maybe we had just become a real pain in the bum and the university administration called in some favours. All I know for sure is that on graduation day, the Dean looked me straight in the eye, handing me my degree and said “thank God”.

Playing The Field

I’m back from four weeks vacation in the SouthWest and I have just one question to ask. Why am I so different when I’m on vacation? Why is vacation-me so different from regular-me? Who is this desert doppelganger? I’m just a nicer person on vacation. I smile more. I laugh more. I relax. I know I’m nicer to my husband when I’m on vacation. I know that because we have the best sex on our vacations. At home there are endless things to worry about. On vacation, I can barely remember who I am, much less what my problems are.

The guy that pumps the gas and the woman selling ice cream are more interesting when I’m away from home. There is a direct correlation between how many miles from Vancouver we are and my belief that the person I’m speaking to might just turn out to be Don Juan or the psychic that will change my life. I hang on their every word – mining our meaningless chit-chat for a vein of gold.

I use words like ‘howdy’ and ‘okey dokey’. I take pictures of my feet.

With each passing day I let go a bit more. The ties that bind me to my old self in Vancouver become stretched – thinner and thinner – until one day they just let go. Leaving me list-less. The tape loop stops. I forget my endless account of things to do, problems to solve, karmas to burn, destinies to deliver. Life just is. On vacation, I find what is so elusive back home – that slippery thing we reluctantly refer to as ‘the present moment’. I find it and I want to take it home with me.

I’ve been down this road enough times to know that no matter how much I hope and pray – it won’t last once I get back on her turf. We’ll pull up to the house and she’ll be there – waiting for me – frowning and a bit annoyed. This miserly-me is slightly surly because despite the fact that I haven’t worried about anything in weeks – I’m fine. She’ll meet me at the door – list in hand, bills to pay, people to please, and neuroses to nurture.

There was a time that I dreaded coming home to her. But this time was different. Oh, she was there waiting for me all right. But this time, I wasn’t plotting how to kill her. Something was different. I found her kind of cute (although I’d never tell her that). I actually felt kind of grateful for her and maybe a bit sorry for her. Something was different and that something was that I knew that her tenure of tribulation, her dynasty of doubt was coming to an end – maybe not today or tomorrow – but soon.