Like many Pandora fans, I have a marriage/relationship bracelet. We had red roses at our wedding, so my “Always and Forever” bracelet centres around red/coral, hearts and roses. I have the new Black Friday present charm on this bracelet to remind me of the first gift my husband gave me when we started dating – a bottle of Neutrogena shampoo! I was so shocked! I said, “You bought me SHAMPOO?!!”... In his defence he said it was expensive, and maybe I wouldn’t buy it for myself. He said I had gone on and on about it, saying how well it could clean your hair if you use a lot of products in your hair, how nice my hair felt when it was clean, etc., etc.

We have learned a LOT about each other in the 20+ years we have been together (we met 30 years ago). He NOW knows that I am a very extroverted person and I think out loud – and I “go on and on” about lots of things! But my husband is a very introverted person, and for him to talk about something with such enthusiasm it would have to be very important.

When we started living together, we would react to each other like, “why would you DO things like that?” or, “what were you thinking?” But shortly after this gift-giving fiasco, we took a workshop about personality types using the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and we read “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” – both of which were VERY enlightening. They allowed us to learn to love and understand – and accept – each other… the way we are.

Last Christmas my husband gave me a present with a little tag saying, “We need a new tradition for Christmas.” When I un-wrapped it – you guessed it – it was a bottle of Neutrogena shampoo.

This little present charm makes me smile every time I look at it, and will remind me, as Billy Joel sang it, “I love you just the way you are.”

just keep swimming

I am now 19 weeks symptom-free with my eating disorder - which means no bingeing, purging or restricting. My reward was the "happy fish" charm. I had a bit of a rough week last week - feeling down, discouraged, tired - so the goal was simply to remain symptom-free by telling myself, to quote Dory from Finding Nemo, "just keep swimming."

Hey Mr Grumpy Gills

when life gets you down,

you know what you got to do?

Just keep swimming

Just keep swimming

Just keep swimming swimming swimming

What do we do?

We swim, swim, swim

see the clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmyUkm2qlhA

walk this way - in the moment

Well, I am back to my blog. So much has happened in the long interval since my last post - mostly lots of health problems that are slowly getting themselves sorted out. But rather than try to summarize all that, I'm just going to jump right back into blogging.

Having recognized that I have an eating disorder, I have done lots of work on my issues and have now been symptom-free for a little over 4 months - no bingeing, purging or restricting. One of the things that has made a difference for me is having goals and rewards. When setting goals they say you should have SMART goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Reward-based, and Timed. So I have set weekly goals and my reward has been Pandora charms for my charm bracelet - something that I am VERY motivated to acheive.

This past week my goal was to go for a walk every day. I am having trouble with my left knee, and with physio the pain had decreased and so the physio told me to start walking, and do squats and side-lying leg raises. Our family was away for a week's vacation at our time-share so it was a good time to make some changes in my habits without all the stress of school, household chores, etc. The goal was to go outside for a walk every day (specific), didn't matter how long or how fast just go for a walk (measurable), which seemed pretty realistic (attainable) since I had two ten-year-olds who don't like to sit still for very long, I would get a charm at the end of one week (reward-based), after walking every day for exactly one week (timed).

Pandora has a new series of charms of charms called Openworks which are like filigree. The openwork charm that I chose is called "Wildflower Walk" - second from the right in the photo. A "wildflower walk" to me signifies a walk that is not a power-walk, or even a brisk walk, just a walk through the wildflowers. Of course given that it was the end of March, there were no wildflowers through which to walk, but still lots to see.

I wanted to think of walking as a meditative process. No measuring of heartrates or speed or distance. To just be present and mindful of my surroundings, and as the was the case last week, to also be present and mindful of those I was with, usually my twins.

In her book The Artist's Way, and the books following that, Julia Cameron suggests walking as one of her basic tools in her spritiual path of creativity. She says, "Walking, the simplist of tools, is among the most profound," and that when we walk, "we experience 'conscious contact' with a power greater than ourselves."

Well, we walked the path along the water's edge, with the kids stopping to throw rocks onto the thin sheets of ice on the lake, pick up sticks, or climb some rocks. We walked into town to the convenience store and the post office. We walked to the tennis court so the kids could bat some balls around. We walked some roads just to see where they went. Sometimes the kids rode their scooters, sometimes they ran ahead, sometimes we walked hand-in-hand. But every day we got out and walked.

Cameron suggests that when walking, "Almost without noticing it, we become engaged with a world larger than ourselves and our concerns." We noticed the temperature. We noticed the wind. We noticed the birds that had returned. We noticed the sound of the wind in the tall pine trees. We noticed the way the rain had carved out the sand at the beach. The walking was, as Cameron describes it, "an exercise in heightened and intensified spiritual listening."

Now that I am back in the city there will not be many fields of wildflowers - although we do get quite a collection of weeds in our garden. But the crocuses are poking out their brave heads, and daffodils are inching their way up. So my daily walks will allow me to observe the not-so-wild flowers of my neighbours' gardens. Somehow going for a daily "wildflower walk" - as I will continue to call them - is so much more appealing than just going for a walk. Maybe that is what Cameron means when she says we walk to "shift" our consciousness.

Cameron promises that, "As casual as a walk may seem, profound wisdom can be its byproduct." Spiritual seekers have always walked - whether pilgrimages, walkabouts, or vision quests. St. Augustine said "It is solved by walking." Whatever "it" is, I will continue my "wildflower walk" to help mend the mind/body split and get out of my head and into my body. And maybe fix-up my knee.