Live and Learn

Wow, it’s been over a month(!!!), since I’ve last blogged. For those of you who keep coming around, I appreciate you, I miss you, and I love you! And thanks so, so much to all of you who’ve been sending emails….we are fine, absolutely, fabulously fine.

I've been in a space of comfortable cocooning (probably due to a long cold snowy winter), and at the same time have been on a sort of healing/cleansing/spiritual quest of searching inside myself for answers, direction, and what it means to be a single mom to a blossoming teenage hatchling. I’ve needed some time. I’ve been living inside my head a lot lately, and then I remembered I have a blog!

Lots of catching up here, you may want to go grab a coffee…
Being an Aquarius and a hippie makes for a very open-minded, idealistic personality. I’ve always embraced diversity and as a result, have a number of friends who are as equally individual as they are fascinating. When you’re as open and free with people as I am, you’re bound to eventually and unintentionally let in someone who is quite frankly, a disturbed individual…..a foul, lying, energy sucking, socially ill individual. I won’t name names, because I don’t want to perpetuate his hateful attacks on my character, but I feel I should explain a bit of what’s been going on. Some of you regular readers may know specifically who I’m talking about, as some of you have contacted me to let me know the lies he’s been saying about me, (thank you). He has a completely negative and destructive agenda and has been inventing and perpetuating lies about me and another friend, not to mention trying to stir up shit within my blogging community which I’ve held so dear for the 5-plus years I’ve been blogging. A quick visit to his blog will reveal that now he has privatized it - an obvious sign that he doesn't want his lies to be read and discredited by me and others who know him. He is a coward who is hiding behind his lies in hopes that readers will believe him.
My blog on the other hand is authentic as am I. I have nothing to hide.

I suppose the whole shift where he began to show his true colours was when my friend removed him from her wedding guest list. To all who know him personally, he is an obnoxious, arrogant, opinionated and insulting person. No matter what you say or do, he never alters his extreme opposition and my friend decided she simply didn’t want the stress of him and what he might start at her wedding, understandably so! When he found out he was removed from the guest list he proceeded to send emails to everyone in her fiancé’s family, telling them horrible and disgusting lies and insulting her in every way he could think of… that she was “white trash and only looking for a guy to support her”, that “she used to be a lesbian”, and that she was a “baby seller” and a “uterus whore” (my friend was a surrogate mother to a couple who couldn’t carry their own child)….and even more disgusting things that I won’t even write here.
He doesn’t have that “switch” that we all do, of what’s right and wrong, what’s moral and what’s not. He has no concept of the difference between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. When he realized he couldn’t persuade me to “boycott the wedding”, he got more weird. And then his boyfriend moved out and he got worse. The results of his behaviour towards me (vicious lies), have been very damaging… for him. He attacks anyone who doesn’t agree with him. He feels justified and thinks he’s “attacking back”, when no one attacked him in the first place.

Needless to say we have all pulled out of our friendships with him once and for all. We “deleted” him from our social circles, so to speak.

I’ve never been the type of person who lives an emotionally guarded life, but in this case, some healthy boundaries NEEDED to be put in place. This is a guy who sent me an email (calling himself a powerful and practicing wiccan) and warned me of the spells he has cast on us now – lol
And YES, I’m embarrassed to admit I was friends with this nut-job for awhile, but whatever...live and learn, right?

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned...Buddha

What’s amazing about this whole experience is that so many of my old friends and kindreds have found their way back to me. I truly believe people can sense negative energy and stay away when they are aware of it. I am only interested in authentic friendships and feel like an idiot for not reading the signs sooner.
Our whole life and social circle can thrive when we release negative people from our lives.


And now about me……

To keep the body in good health is a duty, otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear...Buddha

I’ve had an awful time with my teeth, and having a psychotic fear of the dentist has only made it more awful, but the worst is over and done with. I just have to keep at it. I haven’t said much about it here, but a cyst (benign) removed in the hospital a few years back, from a place between my gum line and my chin…(ewww), created all sorts of root damage; failed attempts at root canals, posts put in to strengthen the teeth, posts removed, and intermittent runs on heavy-duty antibiotics for the past couple of years. It’s all taken its toll. I’ve been emotionally and physically drained. Abscesses and antibiotics wreaked havoc on my system and for the first time in 14 years I am removing myself from the “back burner” and am determined to bring significant changes to my life.
In an effort to get healthy again, I’ve cut out all refined & processed food products, no meat, very little eggs and cheese (but I love my yogurt), and I finally kicked my obsessive need for Tostitos to the curb. If I have one now, I cannot believe the overwhelming salty taste!
AND the demonic addiction of Tim Horton’s coffee is leaving my system as I write this. For awhile it seems, that’s all I was living on.
I now drink green tea, yerbe matte and lots of water. I found a local yerbe matte dealer who sells bags of it -leaves, stems, everything in the plant, at a very affordable price. It’s like a healing balm to my over-caffeinated system.
I make green smoothies daily with all sorts of leafy greens, aloe vera juice, coconut oil, ground flax seeds and almond or rice milk.
I’m scouring 2nd hand shops for glass jars, and filling them with lentils, dry legumes, brown rice, quinoa, barley and so on. Agave nectar and LOCAL maple syrup (like 20 minutes from my house!!!) have replaced white refined sugar. In my fridge are as many fruits & veggies and fresh herbs as I can afford. I’m finding recipes on the internet all the time to incorporate these foods into actual meals. (If I could only quit F%^$#@ smoking!!!!).

My daughter still loves/eats her meat and all animal products. (with the exception of veal, which I will NOT buy). I also have a great disdain for cow’s milk, but she loves it, so I still buy it. The odd time I can afford organic, I buy it for her. If you’ve never tasted the difference, I urge you to try it, even once. I keep hatching educated and informed on healthy eating, processed foods and animal protein without judging or making choices for her……I believe it’s her decision. Thankfully, she is a great fruit and veggie lover because I’ve always made those the snacks that are available in our fridge.
Our local farmer’s market has recently started up again, (woot! woot!), and my friend and I are back into our Sat. morning ritual of having fair trade coffee/tea at a trendy little café in the next town, and going to buy as much local produce as we can. We live in an area where I can even buy organic, local (very local) eggs for my daughter.

Hatchling update….

“It is one thing to show your child the way, it's a harder thing to then stand out of their way"....Robert Brault

We have both been so busy and preoccupied with her first year of high school… which is flying by! She’s doing fantastic, (first semester – honour roll!) She’s growing into a gorgeous & happy young girl and I’m beginning to see where MY body ended up. Lol.
She has found her niche in music, and her acoustic guitar has now fused itself to her body. She sings soft melodies in a way that reminds me of Carole King’s Tapestry album that I cherished, back in the day. She’s strums and sings in a little “garage band” that her teacher set up, and he gets them gigs when he can.
She’s a great kid and has been through many changes this year; has dug in her heels and held her ground. I’m so proud of her. Some of her best friends have turned over their destinies to the allure of boys and alcohol and smoking doobs in the high school “smoker’s pit”. One of her friends is pregnant, another is dating the school’s infamous drug dealer, and yet another of the girls my daughter used to hold close to her heart, now holds her boyfriend’s pot in her cleavage….enough for my hatchling to “drop these friends on a dime” and find her own new tribe of like-minded friends, while sticking with the few kids who she’s known throughout elementary school, and who, like herself, have bucked the whole peer pressure, “let’s get high and skip school” thing.
I find it all very fascinating, and disturbing at the same time – what makes a good, sensible, naïve, kid switch gears so quickly? I’ve known these girls since they were in grades 3 & 4. It’s a small town and many of them came to our house often after school and on weekends. They were sensible, goal-oriented, good kids with good parents. I just don’t get it. Is it the sudden onset of hormones and changing brain chemistry? More freedom than they’ve ever known in their lives? After all, high school teachers don’t check the smoker’s pit, it’s off school property. It doesn’t help that we live in a crappy, employment-deprived town with a higher drug, crime and teen pregnancy ratio than any of the surrounding cities/towns.

My top and only priority has always been my daughter and I think I’m presently witnessing the payoff. If you think it’s not important to “talk” to your kids, think again. I have always been straight up and truthful with my kid, have tried really hard to be easily approachable and non-reactive to what my hatchling wants to share with me. Of course what a 14 year old wants to talk about is much different from what a 5 year old considers crucial, but the trick, (I think), is to always listen and be present. Always validate their feelings; never dismiss them as silly, and never, EVER let them see you sweat! The foundation of mutual and respectful communication I’ve laid has resulted in a huge payoff….as she gets older and her life more complicated, she knows she can talk to me about anything….friends, boyfriends, sex, drugs, love, self-respect, self-worth, education, the future, etc. My hatchling is solid, and I’m so so proud of her. Unlike most teens I’ve known, my daughter has this crazy-cool ability to see beyond the immediate moment. I think she is a very wise, very old soul.
So I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing in my single- mom journey and hopefully these next few years she will choose to stay on track. Because it’s pretty much now about her choices and wading her own way through the shit and making good choices. I’ve laid a foundation the best way I know how, have given her the tools and the “voice of experience”, and can only hope that she continues to act responsibly and positively. I love her so much, no matter what, and she knows it.

It’s good to be back!
Peace out!