The Fall Fair 2018

  Here it is in pictures!! The Fall Fair ~ I have been attending as long as I can remember. It is magical, holds history, is run by volunteers, is priceless. It makes my heart indescribably happy. It was the year of corn theme wise. The weather called for rain all day. We go to the fair no matter the weather but this year the rain held off the entire time we were there. It was beautiful. When we arrived for the parade the sun shone through the clouds illuminating the day.

The kids were so excited to get the candy people threw at the parade and my husband benefitted as well :)

My four year old filled my pocket so I would keep his loot safe.

The highlight of the fair for her was getting to play these drums. She was so happy and they were so kind.

Our chicken and corn feast we look forward to once a year. It is extra delicious at the fair.

This little one was beyond excited and fearless in regards to the rides.

We always meet up with family which is the best part for me.

We absolutely adore our cousins and our aunties and uncles.

                                                 Up in the blue, high in the sky ~

                                                                  Fearless and Flying

                                     He specifically wanted the pink/purple horse.

                                                     This piglet was full of love

The perfect ending for these happy hearts. What a lovely day. xo

Camping!

   We are not a camping family really. My husband and I both grew up without dads who were willing to go camping. I went camping a handful of times with other families and each time is a special memory. My husband went camping here and there but his dad never stayed at the campsite with his family. My cousin grew up going camping for extended periods of time every Summer. Now as an adult she has five small children but they have already gone camping more times than I have in my life time.  Camping seems to be ingrained in your blood from childhood. Most every child would love to go camping. If parents can manage it there is a great gift given.

  This Summer our children wished desperately to go camping. We happened on a spot not far from home where there was canoe access only. Their dad felt up to the challenge and camping they went. It was a very wonderful experience for them all minus the lack of sleep :) But they all survived.

                                                         A beaver had big dreams

When All Is Not Well

   When I had cancer as a result of a miscarriage gone horribly wrong, I remember someone telling me I was depressing to be around. I was going through chemotherapy. I was very sick, grieving, bewildered by how life was going. Those words that were spoke over me stuck with me. At that moment in my life I honestly could not conjure up a fake smile, a persona of 'all being well.' My hair was falling out by the handfuls, I was weak, wracked in pain, I was losing so much of myself and my dignity. I didn't want to be depressing, and therefore apparently annoying to others, but I just could not pretend all was well to make someone else feel more comfortable. Yet the pressure and shame to do that was present.

  From that time on, and really even before that, I have fought against that nagging feeling of guilt when I can't pretend all is not well. Many times in my life all has not been well. There have been a lot of hard times. There has been a lot of trauma, a lot of grief, a lot of stress and through it all I have searched for healing, tried to find beauty, tried to give of myself, tried to not give up, tried to go forward and find thankfulness. All through it there has been this constant nagging feeling of guilt that I am not happy enough, not peppy enough, and that I drag people down with my issues. Why do I drag them down? Because I feel unable to pretend and put on that mask? When I am weak, when I am sad, I am not going to pretend. The people who feel pulled down, depressed by me, whatever it is they find fault with....they can move on.

  In this time in our world, in my culture, there are a lot of people who are professional at putting a good foot forward. They come across as quite perfect. In seeing them in public you would never know the reality of whatever sadness or pain they are facing. I have never felt capable of that. I have always felt weak because of it. I am not, nor have been, interested in pretending or trying to be what I am not. It just is not in me. I am not capable. It has felt like a weakness. More and more it is becoming my strength. When people try to shame me because of my feelings or my situations I am just not willing to accept it anymore.

  Life is hard people! Life is not perfect. Life is full of pain and grief. At the same time life is full of beauty. Life has miracles. Life has hope ~ always hope. I am slowly arriving at a place where I am less and less ashamed of my struggles and how my life pans out. I am less and less ashamed of how sensitive I am. I hope that if these are things you struggle with at times that you can arrive at that place as well. We strive to some degree to be different than what we are now. We want to work on ourselves and go towards wholeness and healing deep within us. Our spirits and souls crave that. This is good. There is also something good in feeling the now, in working through the now, in realizing the now might be hard, or dark, or depressing, and sitting with that for a while. Don't stay in it, seek light and grace, get help, but know you are okay just the way you are.

Gleaning Wisdom

   Last week it was time for the big grocery shop.  I am not a fan of grocery shopping. Now a days there is this new fangled thing you can do where you order your groceries online and just pull up in the parking lot and your shopping has been done for you!...have I ever done that? No I have not. Why? I don't know, but maybe I just suck at technology. Maybe I feel too intimidated. Maybe I don't trust the shoppers to care about the produce they are picking for me? When it comes down to it though, I still do my own shopping. This time I was with all four children.

  We rolled in and the youngest one frantically waved at himself in the security camera. He had his soother in his mouth. I caught the eye of an elderly gentleman but looked away. We stopped for a minute to regroup and get ready for this rather large grocery shopping endeavor. All of a sudden someone gripped my arm! It was the elderly gentleman. He was wearing a beret covered in all sorts of pins and he was stooped over a little. He started the conversation giving me a tip on how to break my four year old of his soother habit. If I put mustard on the thing (he did this with his children) it would work like a charm. I thanked him and then he continued his conversation. Somehow he started talking about his life. He grew up in Germany. I learned that his great grandparents had been millionaires. He pulled out actual pictures (bent and aged from an inner jacket pocket) of his ancestral family home and of his home town and then of himself. He was holding large brightly decorated cakes in the pictures because he had owned a family bakery. He also had pictures of his dog and cat snuggled together. His strongest advice to us was to make all people welcome in our home ~ to love others all the same. I think growing up in war era Germany had made that sentiment very important. He told us that this had always been his motto. That he had faced hatred from other nationalities but he had always been open to everyone. He told us that his animals acted the same way. They loved each other very much and people as well. He talked to us for about fifteen minutes. He had no personal space boundaries, and my children listened quite in awe. At the end they all smiled at him and I could see this warmed his heart, and as we parted ways he shouted after us, 'never say goodbye say Auf Wiedersehen ~ until we meet again'!

  I have not taken the opportunity to chat with an elderly person for quite a while. My grandparents are gone and I miss them a lot. My life is quite isolated in some ways and I just don't honestly see many people or talk to them all that often. This small chat blessed me so much. I so appreciated his wisdom, his time, his kindness and his advice. Something similar happened to my husband a couple weeks ago as he stood in line waiting to get into a doctor. He had a long chat with an elderly gentleman who also was full of kind advice and much wisdom. They had never met before and may never meet again, but my husband came away just feeling so imparted to and cared for.

  There is much much wisdom to be had ~ much to be taught, much to be learned from our elders. In this society we take that for granted and don't remember the value of the Ones who have gone before us. If you are from a culture that appreciates and gleans from you elders you are richly blessed.

Have a lovely week
xo

Give A Little

    How do you let people know you are thinking about them? Do you send them a text? Pictures of yourself smiling big? Do you send a letter in the mail? Maybe a package in the post with a gift inside? Do you buy people flowers? Make them dinner or bake them treats? Oh there are just so many ways to let people know they matter to you! To some people these gestures, sometimes just the most simple, mean almost everything. It warms their hearts more than you can imagine. If you are not one of those kinds of people you are going to find it awfully hard to understand why someone would need that little note, or text, or flower, or whatever it is, to feel like they matter. Shouldn't they just somehow know that you are thinking of them? Should they not just feel some assurance that they matter to you? It doesn't work like that for them I guess and that is okay :)

  Today my eleven year old son walked in the house early in the morning and he had gone out and picked me a bouquet of flowers. It is absolutely stunning. To be honest I had no idea that there were so many varieties of flowers and colors in my yard right now and I would never have put them together the way he did. I have enjoyed them all day. I took pictures of them. I thanked him over and over. My little four year old last night picked me two poppies because he saw them, thought of me, and picked them. This means the world. I do a lot for these sweet children. I do everything really. When they think of me, and want to let me know that, and they do this out of their own free will, out of their own sweet kindness and thoughtfulness, I feel so thankful. My husband also used our Air Miles points to order some cutlery. It may seem random, and I was confused at first, and not totally thrilled (just to be honest) but when it got right down to it...he was doing it because he had noticed we never have enough cutlery and he wanted to surprise me! So sweet right?! They arrived in the mail today in all their shiny glory. So not only do I have a bouquet of flowers from my own yard; I have some shiny new cutlery!

  I hope that you are feeling thought of, loved, seen, and that you are doing well. It is September and here it is beautiful. The corn is being harvested everywhere, the leaves are starting to turn bright brilliant colors, and it is a great month to show people in your life that you care. It is a great time to let them know they matter with some sort of little gesture. It really does not have to be huge, but let it come from your heart. It doesn't matter how they respond. It just matters that you feel it and you show it.

Some ideas:
buy a small simple bouquet of flowers
send a card in the mail
make someone a cup of tea
bake for someone
buy someone a little treat from somewhere delicious
get someone a gift card for no reason
wash someone's car
fold someone's laundry
get and give a gift certificate for a pedicure or manicure or massage
call someone on the phone just to chat
drop off a dinner for someone
give a back massage or a nice warm hug
wash a loved one's sheets and make their bed
I love buying beautiful tea towels for people :)
make something for someone (knit, paint, sew, etc)

Just put yourself in whosever shoes you are thinking of and do what they love...not what you love.

   One more thing ~ it is also a great month to show yourself how much you love you too :) Keep that in mind. Give to others, love others, and do the same to you!
XO

Can't You Just Imagine You Are Lying On a Beach Sun Tanning!?

   This is not a question I have ever asked anyone else (and it is not the question in the title) ~ so prepare yourself a little.

  Have you ever had someone (a man) put their hand in your vagina and go up with that hand as far as it could go so they could feel your uterus? In this case he had another hand on my stomach pushing it down so he could feel the orange, or was it grapefruit size tumor, I had growing in my uterus at the time. Before this I had never had anyone stick their hand up there. Especially a strange man I was only meeting for the first time that day. He was my Oncologist (cancer doctor). I remember he had an Australian accent but I dont remember his name. I was twenty two at that time in my life.  He told me he was going to be doing this to me weekly to make sure the tumor was shrinking. I felt incredibly overwhelmed at that thought. I was such a private person, and this was so intensely invasive to me. I asked if there was any way he could arrange for a woman doctor to do this instead of him. He expressed his frustration at my uncomfortableness, but thankfully each time I went in for chemotherapy a sweet and completely kind woman doctor came and did the procedure. She understood just a bit of what I was going through. She was empathetic and apologetic and tried to be as gentle as possible as this was just the beginning of the hell I would experience each time I went in for chemo. Thank God for her ~ and really ~ every kind individual that crossed my path during this time in my life.

  However, at my last visit to the Oncologist, after my last chemo treatment, he decided that before I left he wanted to do the invasive check up one last time to make sure that the tumor was gone. I expressed how uncomfortable it was and how I absolutely hated it. After I had stripped down and was lying flat on the bed with my legs in the stirrups and he was going to start he said to me with frustration in his voice, 'Can't you just imagine you are lying on a beach sun tanning!?' I did not know how to reply. Those were some of the last words he spoke to me and that was the last time in my life I ever saw him. However I have never forgotten those words as I lay in such a vulnerable state. I have never forgotten how they made me feel either. I had gone through such an odd and unexpected, horrifying and traumatizing experience. One that left me scarred forever. It changed my entire life. And those words were how it ended. I got up, went home and never saw any of the doctors in that cancer clinic again. I had to get blood tests weekly for a year to make sure the tumor was not coming back but that was it. There were no further instructions, encouragement, or anything...other than, 'don't try to get pregnant for at least a year and we dont know if you can get pregnant at all.'

    Since I have been in counselling this Summer I have been examining some of the roots of where certain thinking came from and where I started feeling like I didn't have a voice or being that really mattered. I had felt this before but it was during my childhood. This cancer experience happened to me when I was twenty two. I had been married a year. I was a young adult just starting to try to make my way in the world and figure out who I was. My Oncologist was not the only doctor who refused to treat me with kindness or humanity during this time. My Gynecologist was also incredibly horrible to me and most of the time refused to talk to me at all. He would direct all conversation to my mother. She had to accompany me to my appointments as I was so weak from blood loss that she had to help me walk and drive. When I would ask him questions he would refuse to answer. He made me feel ridiculous.  Why? What was so wrong with me? What I was going through was not something I had done to myself. My cancer was a result of a Molar Pregnancy and subsequent miscarriage!

 This month every year there is a day I take to remember the child I lost and let myself feel a bit of the grief around that. I am realizing more and more how this monumental experience I wrote about above shifted me into a state of survival. I am also realizing how many damaging things were said or done to me during that time that cemented certain beliefs I had already in me that were unhealthy. As I went forward from that time on I had those messages dictating my life in a powerful way. Why write about it here? Only because this might strike a chord somewhere in you. You might have gone through something completely different, however it might have cemented certain negative beliefs in you that to this day you live with. These beliefs might dictate many of your relationships and actions.

  In survival mode you just cope in whatever way you can. You put up boundaries where you feel capable, you go through whatever motions you must. Yet deep down if you give yourself a moment you know that you are not whole. You know there is sadness as well.

   Has anyone ever told you that you are valuable just as you are? Can you tell that to yourself? You don't have to prove it to anyone, but you need to know it deep within you. When you can look at yourself and really see that fact with clarity it might not look so pretty for a while. It brings about change. You might need to shift out of survival mode and into really living. You might feel emotions more than ever before (and have to own them) and need to redirect messages and thoughts. Yet at the end there might be this beautiful strong graceful tree growing that is you! Someone who has deep roots, who can give with grace and dignity to those around you and yet accept love and kindness as well. It takes a life time of growth, discovery and change. That's okay. It is worth it because you are you!

Blessings on your journey ~
Xo
Tansy


 

Sunflowers and Fall Fairs And All The Wonderful Things

   There are blooming Sunflowers around here everywhere. I saw a vast corn field completely encircled with Sunflowers and I so appreciated the farmer who chose to do that. What beauty he or she added to my day. Behind my house someone planted a long thick strip of Sunflowers and they nod and sway and beam in the breeze. The Fall Fair is quickly approaching and this is something I always look forward to. My children have planned their entries and crafting and baking have been in full swing. We live near a river and it has been filled with men holding poles hoping to catch their quota of fish for the year. The sky is that beautiful blue with thick fluffy clouds that scuttle back and forth over the expanse.

  Welcome September ~
The fields are full of lush corn that will quickly be harvested and used to feed so many animals throughout the cold winter months.
Cooler evenings are filled with the music of frogs and crickets chirping.
Sunsets set the sky ablaze with beauty.
There are nights where the rain pounds, the wind screams, and you sip hot chocolate or tea while watching movies by a fire.
Warm cozy sweaters and leather boots are brought out and scarves and jackets sometimes make appearances.
Mountains are clothed in scarlet, burnt oranges, yellow, and deep velvety greens, while the sun blazes them to glory.
Children flock off to school where they valiantly attempt to focus and please while the sunshine beckons relentlessly.

  It is a wonderful time to be alive here and I am thankful for each day I have. Some days I moan and groan for different reasons. Some days I feel deep grief and sadness, but overall in my deepest soul I am deeply grateful to be here. May there be many precious moments where you feel that as well.

xo