I want it all - Turning my dreams into achievable goals

Where do you see yourself in five years? It is my most hated interview question. I usually answer something about working for whatever company I am applying to and moving my way up in knowledge and positions within. While this is not a lie, it is not my true five year plan. Of course, my five year plan is turning out to be ten or more years in the making, but that is a whole other thing.

My honest, outside the interview answer is : A successful author, living in England. 

Moving to England is a slightly more recent dream. I have always loved accents, British, Irish, Scottish are my top three (with a special mention to the Newfounlander accent - which is a more recent addition to my list), but I digress. I loved the pomp and circumstance of England - or what I imagined it to be. England was this romantic notion to me. And I dreamed of visiting. 

About twelve years ago I made some awesome online friends in England and we are still friends today! Chatting with them, skyping with them, it made my dream of visiting more - it made it a goal. Now I had two friends offering me a place to stay when I visited. All I needed was to pay my plane ticket! 

It would be eight years until my daughter and I got on that plane and spent three weeks in England for the Christmas holidays. I don't want to sound dramatic, but I really feel it's true. The moment I stepped off the plane in England - it felt like home. And it was on the way home from that trip - as my daughter and I talked about our experiences - that we decided together that moving to England was something we wanted to do. She will finish high school here in Montreal and then the plan is to move to England. 🇬🇧 I start the process for the paperwork to get my citizenship this coming year - with the help and experience from my amazing brother who wants his big sis around! 

Being a successful, *cough* famous author has been my biggest dream since I wrote my first story in middle school. I'd been making up and telling stories long before I ever put them to paper - my Barbie dolls had quite the adventurous and tumultuous lives! 

It's still my biggest most audacious dream. But while England has made its way to goal status, the famous author dream is still seems a little more out of reach. Something like this is not as easy to start to map out as eventually moving across the ocean, but I am working towards this dream.

My best friend and I have been writing a a series of novels. It is an amazingly fun labour of love. We are coauthoring these novels in different countries, on Facebook messenger. It is wild that we have over ten first drafts of novels for our series all written this way! But even with all those novels, chapters and words, we kept going. We kept saying we wanted to keep the momentum. Which is true. But sometimes I think we are afraid of starting the editing process because it means we are one step closer to putting out work out there to be scrutinized. 

This month we have begun that next step. We have gone back to the first novel in the series and have begun the process of editing, adding and rewriting. A tricky thing to do when we  are still working on Facebook messenger to do it, but I am excited to say that we have found our groove in this process as we did in the initial writing. 

This week we took another step toward making getting published a goal rather than a dream. We began posting our first book on wattpad. I heard Anna Todd talk about how she had written the whole After series there and was approached by wattpad to publish her work. While I don't necessarily believe that will also happen for us, I think it is an important first step for us to put our work out there where strangers as well as friends can read. (For those who are interested here is the https://my.w.tt/q1nyUs7Jk0)

These two steps have begun to make my dream of being a "famous" author a little more tangible. It is nerve wracking and exhilarating all at once.

What are your dreams and what are you doing to make them more tangible - to make them goals? Remember, most any dream can become a goal if you have a plan! 🥰

Put Your Pride Aside: Learning to accept and ask for help

There is a saying about raising a child taking a village. Basically saying, no one can do it all alone. This is not just true of raising a child. There are many instances in life when we are in over our heads. That is when we are meant to accept help when those around us see us stuggling - or better yet, asking for help when we are a little too good at hiding our struggles.

I am the queen of - putting up a strong front - suffering in silence - and sucking it up, sweetheart. I don't show my struggles because a) I don't want certain people to worry about me, and b) I don't want certain other people to know I am struggling. The problem is when these times of struggling hit I have a tendancy to pull inward and go quiet. I  am pretty good at throwing on a smile and faking it for a little while. But people who know me well enough, the ones I don't want to worry, can usually see through that smile pretty quick if not immediately. 

So, why try to do it all alone? Is it pride or is it something else?

I don't know exactly when I decided I should be able to do everything on my own. Maybe I'm just a control freak who believes that if you want something done right you have to do it yourself. Or maybe I have been let down in the past and just feel it's better not to ask for help than to be disappointed someone lets me down again. The whole food me once - fool me twice thing....

The ironic thing is a spent the better part of last school year, when she had to redo her third year of high school in a special class, trying to convince my daughter that there was nothing wrong with asking for help when you need it. Actually, I might have been trying to convince her since she started high school and things weren't clicking as easily for her. She fought me tooth an nail, convinced that she should be able to figure things out on her own and that she didn't want or need anyone's help. I didn't realize it then, but I think she may have picked that up from me....

Here's the thing about both of us: We are both people who are always there to help others. So, why would it be such a bad thing to need help too sometimes?

This year has not been all rainbows and unicorns for me. I spent the first five months of this year struggling. Struggling to keep up with my workload that almost doubled after a coworker left. Struggling with the changes in my relationship with my daughter (all very natural as she approached her 16th birthday). Struggling with my mom being away and having to juggle responsibilities I was used to sharing on my own. I coped by eating my emotions - stressed, sad, lonely, overwhelmed - food was there to fill the void and y sleeping a lot. The only thing that wasn't suffering during this time was my work. I was successfully juggling the tasks at work, but everywhere else I felt like a failure. Almost every conversation I had with my daughter ended in an argument or shouting match. I was gaining weight again. Still, when my mom asked me how things were going I put on a smile and tried to make like everything was fine. No use her worrying that my daughter and I might kill each other from all the way across the ocean. 

Finally, I reached out. I spoke to friends with older kids and they assured me that this was something eveery parent went through with their children. I wasn't failing and I wasn't alone. I reached out to my WW community Connect and was honest about my struggles as well. Not only did many of them understand what I was going through and my struggle with using food as a coping mechanism, but something crazy happened -  some people were thanking me for sharing my struggles because it let them know they weren't alone! I reconnected with some friends - breaking the silly self-imposed rule of going quiet when I didn't have anything "good" to share. I told them about how I had been struggling and how I didn't want to burden them with my struggles. And you know what? They told me that it helped them to know they weren't alone in feeling that way either!

I slowly began to understand that we all do this. We all hold back. Our Facebook, Instagram and other social media is this currated version of our lives. We don't want to burden or bring anyone down with our troubles. But the problem is by doing that other people think our lives and great. They don't see out struggled and so they think they shouldn't be struggling either....

I have been working since May to be more transparent. First, with those around me - family and friends are there to help and listen to me, just like I am for them. Then on social media. I started with Connect - it's still the place where I feel the safest sharing things. I think because on there everyone is striving for a similar goal - healthy weight loss and a healthy relationship with food. Then I began to also share a little more on Instagram - there are less people following me there so it is still a safe little bubble. After my birthday in July I started this blog, I was determined to put this journey of rediscovering who I am out there for anyone to read. That meant posting this on a public forum and sharing the link on all my social media. Again, the response has been astounding to me. To have so many people calling me brave and inspiring - to have them tell me they identify with what I am saying and feeling - it is nothing short of amazing. 

So, I challenge you all to share your struggles - maybe not on social media, but at least with those closest to you. Seek support, guidance and help. Delegate some things to others and know that you don't have to know it all or do it all alone to be successful! You just might help someone else realize they aren't alone after all. 

💕💕💕💕

Mindset shift - Does thin = healthy?

Healthy and strong, that is my goal now. Do I have a number in mind for the scale? Sure. But the number is artbitrary. I chose it for the purpose of my WW account. I have been that number. Actually - and ironically - when I was last that number I thought I was fat. 

I have been thinking a lot about how thin and healthy aren't always the same thing. People do insanely unhealthy things in the name of being thin. When I was thin (back in my teenaged years) I was anaemic, I had dizzy spells, and was easily tired and far from physically strong. To be clear, I was not starving myself or any of that. I ate 3 meals a day, every day. I just don't think I was eating the right things.

Funny enough, when I was at my heaviest post-pregnancy weight a few years ago (2016). I was easily tired, had dizzy spells and headaches, and the only thing that made me at all physically strong was carrying around that extra weight. I was eating 3 meals a day and "snacks" and I was definitely not eating the right things. I mean I would add veggies to mac 'n cheese and such in an effort to make things more "healthy" but who was I kidding?

These similarities got me thinking about my desire to be "thin again". I really wasn't much better off back then. I actually feel better now, 40-50lbs heavier than I was then. 

I have a new attitude toward my body now. Sure I would like to be slim or trim or thin, but that is no longer my priority. Becoming healthy and strong means I I am becoming more slim and trim, buy it doesn't mean I will be thin or skinny again. And I am becoming more and more okay with that. It's a process, like anything else. A journey towards the realization that being thin never made me happier, even though being heavier may have made me miserable. And as I get older I I have no doubt that strong and healthy will serve me much better than thin. I don't want to be the frail old lady afraid to fall and break something. I want to be the kickass granny running around showing up all the young folk!

❤