Erin's Journals

Just a thought… Hey, I know it’s Monday but it’s also a new day and a new week. And in that lies a new opportunity for something special to happen. [Michael Ely]

You can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

So, full disclosure: I shot my journal a few days ago as I underwent some dental surgery Friday. So, yeah, no popcorn for a while. Or ever. Thank goodness I still have my front teeth, but the three that were removed thanks to some root canal infections….I wish they each weighed about 10 pounds so I’d have something to be celebrating today.

Welcome to Daylight Saving Time. No, just the one S in Saving. It’s not a bank account. There. Got that out of my system. I want everybody to be happy today. And I’m borrowing from a bit that Seth does on Late Night with Seth Meyers where he shines a light on uplifting stories. With so much darkness and, yes – stupidity – in the world today, let me bring you a little levity. So here we go with:

There have been some incredibly sad stories out of Ukraine, but there are a couple of joyful ones that may have escaped your attention.

First off, did you hear about the woman who took down a Russian drone with a jar of preserves? Well, even if you did, I have some more details. See, there’s this woman and she hears a buzzing off her apartment balcony in Kyiv at dusk. Olena first thinks it’s an injured crow, but then she figures out what it is, not having seen a drone before.

She figures if she runs inside to get something to hit it with, it might be gone, so she picks up what’s handy: some preserves by her feet. She grabs, not a jar of pickles (which frankly sounds funnier because who doesn’t love the word pickle?), but lobs these tomato/plum preserves at the drone as hard as she can. Not only does she take down the drone, which she suspects is from Russian marauders, but later Olena and her husband go down and gather up the glass from the jar so no one’s dog steps on it.

Honestly – does Russia really think it can win in a country where a woman like Dead-Aim Olena is defending her home? Oh, hell NYET! Also, the Jays can use her arm when the 2022 season gets off the ground.

And THIS is the kind of story that’ll make your day.

A German multi-billionaire has rented three hotels at the Polish-German border for three months for Ukraine refugees. He’s turned meeting rooms into playrooms for children and kindergarten teachers. All meals will be covered, too: breakfast and supper buffets are included. And that’s another of the Kind of Story That’ll Make Your Day.

You can say, “Hey, that’s a drop in the bucket for these people,” and yes, maybe you’re right. But it’s a big drop in the right bucket. And these days, we’ll take what we can get.

Speaking of dropping, one more thing. Tomorrow, a new story drops on Drift, and in honour of St. Patrick’s Day, it’s an Irish take on the Cinderella story. Fair, Brown and Trembling is about three sisters and this one does not end how you think it will. That, I promise you.

Have a gentle week – hope you’re caught up on your sleep – and I’ll plan to be back here on Thursday.

Just a thought… The fact that suffering, mundanity and beauty coincide is unbearable and remarkable. [Mari Andrew @bymariandrew]

You can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

So heads up: I’m going to post a journal here Monday, but I wrote and shot it this week. Why? Because tomorrow I’m going for some dental surgery, so I’ll be talking, chewing and, well, doing everything more carefully over the next few days. If I swell up like I did with wisdom teeth removal, I’ll look like a chipmunk. I promise to take a picture, though, because I’m always good for a laugh, especially at myself.

You know it’s okay to laugh, right? That was one of the hardest things I had to practise after we lost Lauren – that laughing wasn’t disrespecting her or a sign that our devastation was anything less than total; it was us healing and living our lives in the best and fullest ways we could.

I tell the story in Mourning Has Broken of watching on the PVR the last week of David Letterman’s Late Show. He wrapped up his run there in May of 2015 and when we took a breath and finally got around to watching, Rob and I found ourselves laughing. And then looking at each other because it felt like screaming in church. Just so unnatural – and yet it was good. Like the first time you resume your sex life when you’re grieving. Yeah, it’s a thing. And if nobody is talking about it, they should. Don’t put pencils in your ears, I’m not going there. (That was for Brooke). But it’s part of life, part of going on. And besides, am I going to deprive Rob of all THIS? lol

So it was with interest that I came across an article on HuffPost.com that addressed the discord that I and so many others have been feeling over the past several weeks: how we go about with the joy in our lives when so many others are suffering (something to which I referred in Monday’s journal about our nature walk). But here are some things I think you’ll want to hear.

Guess what? Having guilt is a totally human reaction to the conflicts and pain in the world. I had it during Covid when so many families were separated, while ours came closer. So I get that in a deeply familiar sense (in more ways than one).

You may ask yourself “Am I being complacent?” “Am I doing enough?” and those answers are found in whatever you can do. Are you doing it? Perhaps you can’t afford to pay for a night or two at a Ukrainian Airbnb as thousands of Canadians are doing: renting rooms or homes they never expect to visit, just to send money to their owners. Brilliant! Maybe you’ve found a way to give – perhaps through listening to Drift with a Ukrainian folk story released on Tuesday, knowing that with every free listen, there is money going to Red Cross Canada. There are so many ways to give, to support and not everyone has the financial wherewithal to do that.

It’s okay to feel depressed about things in your own life, feel pain over an injury or joy over a new baby, when so many others are suffering. We are complex beings. We are able to feel more than one thing at once. It’s why I don’t get it when people are so adamant and angry about putting out Christmas decorations before November 11^th; veterans themselves have said that it’s fine by them for us all to feel joy and happiness. We can anticipate a happy event, while remembering and commemorating those who sacrificed. It’s why they sacrificed. But don’t @ me on this one: it’s not, to put it clumsily, a hill I’m willing to die on. I’m just pointing out how we are able to hold more than one thing in our hearts.

I feel brief waves of this with our vast love for Colin’s sister and his parents. Is it disloyal to Lauren to embrace Colin’s mom and her husband and their wonderful little girl? I mean, look at her.

Of course it isn’t. Have we forgotten our daughter? NEVER. But it is only right to recognize joy and be grateful for what we have, while also honouring and remembering what we lost. This is how we live our lives and respect those who have lost theirs. How we don’t crawl into the metaphorical grave with them. There’s plenty of time for that somewhere down the road. One tragedy doesn’t cancel out your right to feel sadness.

Maybe – just maybe – set against the darkest backdrop, we are meant to examine the perspective and be grateful for the moments that raise our hearts and spirits. Nothing is black and white and for us to miss the colours that are there is an afront to those who dream of seeing them again one day. It’s why this picture touched so many of us deeply: the hope and kindness of people who left strollers at a Polish train station, to be used by other mothers when they arrived.

#polishstrollers should be shorthand for who we are – the best and worst in us. We struggle. We roll on. We grow. We are grateful. We are human.

You can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

Today’s quote is coming in a moment. First, thank you for spending some time here with me as we try to make sense of the world, of the tragedy and tolls of the invasion of Ukraine and, of course, of our own lives at the same time. We strive for balance – to take in the news, but stay here where love lives, as Nanea Hoffman @sweatpantsandcoffee (a terrific follow on social media) put it so beautifully in a post this weekend:

For me, love was lived in the company of friends and family this weekend, all the while being grateful for both.

On a sunny spring-like day, we hiked for about six kilometres through forest, up and down paths, over roots and rocks and through mud, walking planks…and eventually lunching on a quiet beach before heading back the same way.

It was all quite perfect, especially set against the backdrop of the atrocities being forced upon other families, other children and grandparents, at that moment.

Of course, at any moment there is always tragedy happening: while we are blowing out our birthday candles, somewhere else, life support is being turned off. It is the reality of our lives as part of the family of humans on this tiny blue dot we call earth, and only we can control how much of that reality weighs upon us at any given moment.

I watched these boys – our friends’ grandsons and our own – digging in the sand, laughing, waving sticks at each other and throwing shells. In that moment, of course, thoughts of terrified children fleeing for their lives from shells of a different, deadly kind also pecked at my brain like the pileated woodpecker we had heard jackhammering on an empty trunk in the woods.

We came home exhausted from that hike and as I showered before preparing a warm and filling dinner, I was grateful to be washing off the dirt and the day and thinking of people who had no water, never mind hot water, to do the same. And then it occurred to me: every day in the world there are people in the same situation. I should be grateful with every single shower I take. Every toilet flush. Every illuminated room, every warm bed I climb into. (Okay, that sounds like I climb into a lot of beds. There’s really just the one, but you know what I mean.)

We can watch, we can pray, we can worry, we can lie awake wondering how to help. It can and does all feel pretty futile. But one thing we can do is use what we see, hear and read to remind us of how damned lucky we are.

Our gas prices are high, but we have (many of us) vehicles to drive. And they – we – are not being bombed.

We aren’t always happy with our government, but we have the right and the privilege to vote. We do not have a dictator, we haven’t lost any freedoms. We are not shot for voicing dissent.

We may think at times that our neighbouring country is unhinged (see 2016 to 2020 in particular), but it isn’t coming at us with warships.

We are weary of masks, but we can take them off and breathe air that is not acrid with the smoke of destruction or tainted with radiation.

We can let the events in Ukraine – the worry of what’s next and what’s possible or probable – consume us, or we can take a deep breath (or several) and count our blessings with each one. May these terrible and turbulent times heighten our compassion while also amplifying gratitude for the love that is where we live.

Peace.

Just a thought… People say, “What is the sense of our small effort?” They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time. [Dorothy Day]

You can watch a video version of this journal on my Facebook page, or here on YouTube.

First of all, thank you – as always – for coming by. For a lot of this week I’ve wondered what on earth to write here. There is no way of putting a shine on anything that is happening which, of course, changes minute by minute. Our hearts are in Ukraine and with the people sheltering, fleeing, suffering and dying. So many families shattered forever – and for what?

Anyway, staying here with the positive, I came up with an idea.

On Monday I told you that the Canadian government is matching donations to the Red Cross, up to 10 million dollars, by its people – us. Rob and I made our donation and then, as I lay awake in bed ’til 3 am yesterday, I wondered, Okay, what else?

That’s when the idea of sharing our bounty (in more ways than one) came to me. You know I do these Drift sleep stories, right? As I hope you also know, they’re absolutely free now: no cost to download, no fees, nothing. Just yours as a gift, my thanks for the many days I woke you up…and now get to put you to sleep.

Luckily for me, I have partnered with two Canadian RNs who started up a company I love, whose product I love and have used for some two decades now, called enVy Pillow. Kathy and Kim were the first people I reached out to when Rob and I took control of this dream project of ours, and they said “yes” to partnering and sponsoring us right away.

This isn’t a sales pitch – and if you don’t know me better than that, well, I don’t even know what to say, except that, of course, I’m not talking about Ukraine in one breath and asking you to give or help me in another. No, this is free to you.

With every download, every listen to a Drift story, I will take the money that I receive for the short Envy Pillow announcement I start each story with, and donate it all directly to redcross.ca. Rob and I are doing this for the month of March – so we’re two days in already and I’ll go back to the first to start counting. It won’t be a whole lot, but it’s something. And I do it with Kathy and Kim’s blessings.

Right now, every bit counts. And all you have to do – get to do – is listen. Go to Drift, where there are already dozens of sweet age-old stories – and a few I’ve written myself – that start with gentle music and a few breathing exercises to get you into the perfect spot to start to drift off. Then, after a half-hour or so, if you make it to the end of the story (and I hope you don’t) you’ll hear soothing waves for five minutes.

To mark this new start today we’re making available to you a story that I think fits the times: The Brave Warm Heart of the Steadfast Tin Soldier. It’s a tale from Hans Christian Andersen of loyalty, of duty and of love shining through – even among the ashes.

This truly is the least that I can do, and in making this and the other 40-some stories available to you for free, thanks to enVy Pillow, it’s my hope that you’ll find some rest for your weary mind and body. It’s my wish that you’ll be sleeping just a little better, while perhaps helping someone else to do so, too, somewhere down the road.

Thank you – and I wish you, wish us all, peace this weekend and always.

You can watch a video version of this message on YouTube.

It’s a fact – decluttering your space actually helps clear your mind, and can bring you greater peace: something we can all use, now more than ever.

Declutter.Diabetes.ca wants to give you a nudge to get you started and why not give it up – for good! Like gently used clothing (you know, stuff from your previous life that doesn’t fit any of your new life) – things the kids have outgrown, or even small household items.

For 40 days between today and April 14, gather an item a day. Then bag it up and schedule a FREE home pick up, or locate a donation bin. Just visit declutter.diabetes.ca.

I’ll be back with a regular journal here tomorrow.