I have the very good fortune to look out my window, into the backyard of my neighbors, and witness a love story, it warms my heart. I just want to be clear that I am not stalking my neighbors it is the way the yards are set up, my backyard leads to their backyard, in actual fact, their backyard was my backyard when my house was built in the 1780s and then that part of my back yard became their back yard and that might explain why I see so much if that makes sense.
The thing is that I see their two white heads, as far as I know, they are both in their mid-70s and they work on their property together. The project of the moment is reshingling the ” barn” which in fact was once our property’s barn. The barn is a magnificent old cedar-shingled barn with Ivy growing up the sides. Our friends have decided to re-shingle it before winter comes.
So I see these two white heads together, I see one holding a shingle and the other nailing the shingle. I see one resting and watching while the other one works and then they switch and I see them standing back and admiring the progress. I see them figuring it out!
And I hear, well when I am in my garden I hear, talking not what they say but the tones, I hear the giggling and I also hear the hammering and I also hear the quiet, the way it is with two companions, no need for non-stop talking.
I have just said that what I see is a white-headed couple reshingling their barn, that is only partly true. Cuz what I see is love, cooperation, compassion, and companionship. I see respect, connection, and commitment to one another and the project. I see a love story and it warms my heart. And I think to myself what a wonderful thing it is to love and be loved and I think what a beautiful example of love throughout the decades. I think about Hollywood’s version of love and fairy tale endings and I think hmmm, I would choose the love of the ages over and over again. Maybe, just maybe I see all this because I also have the love of the ages. The love that started so many decades ago at a Christmas party, is a love that not only withstands the years but grows deeper with every passing moment.
I thank my friends for their love and I am grateful to be witness to the love story in the backyard.
Trauma is something we are hearing a lot about lately. Trauma is a universal human experience. Trauma can be big events or smaller ones that accumulate over time. Trauma, while none of us would wish it upon ourselves or others can be healed and that healing can be used as a gift to help others. It is my hope that from the experience of healing from the traumas in my own life, I can serve as a guide to others as they too travel the path of trauma healing.
To begin, let’s understand the word TRAUMA. It comes from Greek and means Wound. Pat Ogden a great pioneer in the work of trauma and the body, defines it this way ” Trauma is any experience that is stressful enough to leave us feeling helpless, frightened, overwhelmed or profoundly unsafe”. Another definition is ” Trauma is any event or circumstance that overwhelms a person’s ability to cope” Susy Giddy. Trauma also varies from individual to individual depending on our unique makeup. previous traumas and the ability and resources to cope at the time of the trauma. In other words, what is a trauma for one person is not necessarily trauma for another! I grew up in Southern California, home to poisonous snakes. As a little girl, I had several snake run-ins quite close together. I saw a rattlesnake eat a bunny rabbit, a snake wrapped itself around my little leg, and my sweet Nana asked me to move a garden hose and well you probably guessed, the hose moved, it was a big snake coiled up. I remain to this day not a super big fan of snakes. My husband a native Nova Scotian, home to zero poisonous snakes, has no reaction whatsoever to snakes. So what was trauma to me was not to him.
Circumstances or events that can cause trauma can be abuse, violence, accidents, environmental events, deaths expected and also unexpected, infidelity, pandemics, health crises, cultural or societal barriers, oppression, and discrimination. It can also be a series of small wounds that accumulate over time.
As I look at this list I see that I have experienced all of these in my own life. I was born into a family with two alcoholics and also rage alcoholics. And then this happened.( Excerpt from 30 + 1 Resilient Stories)
One thing I know for sure as Oprah would say, it is not what happens in your life it is how you choose to respond, that determines the impact that the circumstances will have on your life. You might be thinking at this moment: What if it is something horrific? I know about horrific! When I was 17 years old, the most unthinkable of the many unthinkable events of my life took place on a Saturday in January. One that started out like any other Saturday, but would change my life and the lives of the rest of my family forever.
After arguing over morning chores, I zipped off to the local mall, more of leisure activity with girlfriends, rather than a shopping expedition. When a couple of hours later, I returned home and saw a minister walking down the path in front of my parent’s house. “What happened? Is it my father? Is it my Mother?” “No,” said the grim and paled face minister, “it is Chris, he is dead” This would be the beginning of a whirling, incredibility, that would last for many years, and maybe does even to this day, as I tried to comprehend the “unthinkable.
How could my adorable, pesky full-of-life little brother be D-E-A-D? Then came the horrifying explanation, he accidentally died of autoerotic asphyxiation. In other words, while self-pleasuring, just at the moment of sexual climax, he tightened a belt around his neck and died. The intention is to amplify the experience, not to die.
A practice that takes the lives of many young people each year. At the time, I had never heard of it, and in a pre-Google world, information was hard to come by. We did not talk about how he died. I did not understand what happened, only that he was found hung in his closet by our Mother. Imagine trying to understand an accidental hanging with the additional layer of the sexual context. It was pretty much too horrible, too confusing to grasp. What I know is that he got the idea from a magazine. I also know that all these years later these kinds of tragic accidents still occur. It happens because we don’t know about it or talk about it. So, we can’t warn our youngsters and often don’t know how to comfort the families of the accident victims.
In a world that at that time did not know as much as we now know about trauma, I was left alone to cope with this tragedy and well let’s say that I bungled along adding trauma to trauma by marrying a violent and abusive man and all that went with that. I want to say that all along I knew there was a better way, I knew I just had to find it. The healing began when I met the great love of my life, my husband Martin. The first time I told him about my brother, he just held me as I sobbed in his strong arms and I felt safe.
Out of all of these traumas, the most difficult for me was the rage of my parents lashing out more or less idiosyncratically with tirades of verbal abuse which continue until this very moment.
I share my story only so that it is understood that a lot of trauma can occur and healing can still take place. This is true because the mind, the body, and the heart want to heal and they will.
When we talk about trauma it is crucial to understand that the trauma affects the body, the mind, and the heart. It can often be that the mind forgets the trauma, but it stays in the body and over time can show up in the form of pain, illness, and even disease.
So when we talk about our whole self, we have our mind, our body, and our hearts, right? They are all connected. In my case, I was abused verbally and physically when I would speak my voice or my truth. So I learned that speaking up for myself was dangerous and stopped doing it! Not only with my family of origin but just generally. My mind believed it was dangerous. This made me feel sad and get less than I wanted in life and my body stored it in my neck, amazing eh? So now I know, that when my neck hurts, I check to see if there is some truth that I need to speak and then my heart and mind. My mind is unlearning the fact that speaking my truth is dangerous.
Each of us of course is different, with different innate makeups, different experiences, and different resources. in my work as a Life Coach each day I see clients who have experienced trauma in some form in their lives. It shows up most often as being stuck. Stuck in ways of thinking, behaving, and being in the world that is not in their best interest. It shows up as procrastination, loose boundaries, and feeling less than or not good enough. It shows up as overeating, scrolling, staying in bad relationships, and money troubles. it shows up because that is what trauma does, it keeps showing up until we own it, claim it and heal it.
Mindfulness means being in the present moment. Trauma is about the past. So being mindful is a great tool for healing the past by being in the present. to practice mindfulness means to practice being in this moment and this moment and the next moment. we can do this in formal practices such as meditations, breathwork, yoga Nidra, and yoga. We can also do this by intentionally being present frequently throughout the day. One little example in my own life of being present is when I go for a walk with my dog Ruffus, I never use my phone. I want to be fully present to his over-the-top cuteness not scrolling or talking on my phone.
Trauma lives in our minds, bodies, and hearts to heal from it we have to become aware of it. So we have to learn to become mindful of our thoughts, our bodies, and our hearts.
Here is my Step by Step Process.
Morning yoga Nidra. Yoga Nidra connects the mind and the body.
Midday mindful walk or pause…. walk with Ruffus, go into the garden ( resets0
Body movement( run, gym
Bedtime yoga
These are what I think of as my well-being practice… they form the foundation of supporting my mindfulness, they support my nervous system which has been overloaded by trauma, and they help bring my awareness to thoughts and feelings.
When I know that I am going to be near a trigger for my trauma I do the following.
Get my anchor and do my anchoring breathing meditation. ( add it here)
2. Do two thought models one unintentional and the other intentional
3, Do a trauma-sensitive yoga sequence ( add here).
These practices support the body, mind, and heart to unlearn the trauma.
Here is how it works.
Trauma Boundary setting
Task Have to set a boundary
So I have trauma around setting boundaries. Recently, I wanted to ask a friend if we could switch days of our visit. I know that for some this would seem easy. For me, it triggered fear. Fear of disappointing my friend fear of being abused, fear of losing the friendship, see what I mean, it is a trauma.
So I picked the morning to make the call.
I had already done my yoga Nidra meditation.
I centered myself with my anchor and anchor breathing.
I made the call and naturally it was all great and fine my friend was happy to switch the visit.
I then did the Yoga Inquiry Practice. This made sure any tension in my body was released. ( Insert yoga inquiry practice)
So my mind learned that setting a boundary does not need to be so scary. My body released some of the fear and my heart was happy. This is the healing growth part of post-trauma work. This is where from being broken we mend and we come back stronger, more resilient than before.
Experiencing trauma is part of life. It could be said that it is what makes us human. The fantastic news is that traumas no longer need to keep us stuck in the past but when healed anchor us to the present with gratitude.
For many of us, if not all of us, the last couple of years of the pandemic has been a big challenge. We have had our worlds turned upside down and every which way, with masks, isolation, and rules, and on and on it goes. Just as we might or might not be exiting the pandemic, we now are facing a war, inflation, and gas and food prices crazy, not even to mention what goes on in our personal lives, like health diagnoses, or injuries, losing loved ones all the things that make up life’s challenges. It has been a lot.
One of my coaches, is calling this summer, The Summer of Yes, one of my close friends talks about her light having been dimmed through all of this, I am calling it Why Not? So let’s start saying yes to things that bring us joy and pleasure. Let’s turn off the dimmer switch. Instead of saying ” No, I can’t do that” try saying Why Not?
The other day, I was driving on our lake road when I passed an old Singer Sewing Machine sitting out for garbage. I love old things and love treasures. My pandemic weary brain said “oh you can’t stop for that” and on I drove. About 100 meters away, I thought ” Why Not”? I turned around and headed back and sure enough there sitting in the garbage was a Singer Sewing Machine with the treadle, beautiful wood, even thread, and accessories in the wood-carved drawers. For me, it was like a dream. The kind of thing you see in a magazine, the kind of thing sold in antique stores for big bucks. So we scrambled to put it in the back of the car. Ruffus was glaring at this newfound car companion and off we went with our newfound treasure. Feeling Giddy with excitement.
So by saying ” Why Not”? Instead of no, I now have a treasure and I have the fun of saying yes.
Now, of course, I realize an old Singer Sewing Machine is not necessarily your thing! The point is saying yes, saying “why not” turning your dimmer switch off, to whatever and whoever makes your own heart sing!
Susy, The Orange Theory Shirt and the Sewing Machine
I hope this helps whoever needs to hear this today.
There are a few things I know for sure in this life and one of them is that the Universe has our backs. She wants what is good for us, what is best for us and she will help us find our way! If we listen! The trouble is we don’t listen and sometimes we don’t hear her. She is the Universe and doesn’t have the same tools as we do, like a voice and hands and other human things, so we need to learn to listen. It also appears to me that she uses whatever she thinks will get our attention which can be different for each of us. I have heard of her sending messages through dreams and dimes and animals and waves to name a few. So listen to this.
I have been struggling lately about whether to go see my daughter and grandson whom I have not seen since the pandemic and my heart aches for them. I ache to see and hug my babies and laugh and play with them and do nothing with them. Or do I spend Mother’s Day with my Mother who will soon be 90 and I haven’t seen her since the pandemic and she just had a very bad stroke. Just how many Mother’s Days could we possibly have left to celebrate together? Around and around my thought merry go round I have gone for many weeks, with no clear idea of what to do.
Yesterday, in our garden the tulips bloomed. Bright pink and cheerful. Almost without knowing it, I began reciting this little ditty to my husband. “There are tulips in the garden and tulips in the park but the tulips I like best are the two lips in the dark” ……… My Mom used to say this a lot to us when we were little and of course, it always made us giggle.
My husband and I and Ruffus have discussed this many times on our walks, and have been unable to come to any conclusion whatsoever, so we continue going around and around!
I woke up this morning and said to my husband “I need to go see Mom for Mother’s Day and the daughter and grandson in June.” Boom, done and dusted, clear and certain, knowing.
And I am pretty sure the Universe showed me the path by reminding me of that ditty!
So for me, I have learned that I hear The Universe in nature, in my garden, with Ruffus ( my dog), in the quiet of my daily runs, on our Island. She is not always loud but she is always clear and always always has my back!
While Ruffus and I were out for a run ( and a sniff), yesterday, we passed this sign. I was so taken with the message that I turned around and took this photo. The whole rest of the run I was absorbed in thinking about it. Ruffus, on the other hand, focused on the spring smells.
I was inspired to take the photo to share with a client who is struggling with Reconciliation in her own life and yet I quickly realized this applies to all of us.
I am pretty sure this particular quote is in reference to the Pope’s apology for the abuses of Residential Children here in Canada. An apology is a great start and the question hangs in the air ” now what”. The “now what” is “Action” isn’t it?
Passing snowdrops and crocuses, I was thinking about how ” saying you are sorry” doesn’t mean much unless your words are backed up with action. So if a cheating spouse ” says” they are sorry but continues to cheat, it doesn’t mean much does it?
It seems to me that on both sides of the coin, words and action need to be present. What I mean by that is that when we wrong someone, we need to use our words to apologize and we need to back it up with our actions. And when we are wronged we need to hear the words and experience the actions of the person in order for reconciliation to occur.
It all seems to come back to talking the talk and walking the walk.
There is a spot on Highway 101 in Nova Scotia, known as the Valley Highway, and each time and I mean every time, we pass that spot, we say thank you out loud and once a year on October 5th, we stop, and we get out, that is my husband Martin, our dog Ruffus and I get out of the car and we lay yellow roses, and we cry and we thank the angels, and here is why.
Ruffus
On October 5th 2016, we, that is to say, Martin and I and Ruffus were driving down the 101 towards our cottage in Mt. Uniacke, the car was loaded up with the Thanksgiving groceries and our heads and chatter were all about the upcoming holiday, pumpkin pie, Turkey, wine and peace. Martin who was driving at 110 kilometers per hour says to me ” I don’t feel well” and fainted in my arms. The car swerved down the highway, I could not reach the steering wheel and there we went swerving and making “s” shapes. The car turned completely over and as it landed back on its wheels it stopped right before it hit a cement wall! And there were my angels stopping the car. My father newly deceased ( at the time two months) and my little brother long-deceased stopped the car and said,” It is not your time.” My father was as he had been at the age of 45, in his prime, ( he lived till he was 90) strong and handsome and my brother who died tragically at 14 appeared as his strong 14-year-old self. And in the next moment, the most powerful message came through me. The message was” At the end of your life all that matters is love, how well you both gave and received love”
My husband woke up and said, ” Oh the windshield is cracked”. The emergency team arrived, he had a broken neck at C2, otherwise known as ” hangman’s” for obvious reasons. He made a complete recovery.
People call it a miracle and there is no doubt it is miraculous. What I know to be 100 percent true is that my angels My Dad and my little brother saved us. So that is why we say thank you out loud when we pass that spot and that is why we lay yellow roses each year at the side of the highway on highway 101!
With love,
Susy
Susy Giddy is a Life Coach. She walks the walk and talks the talk!
Once upon a time a long time ago, I was a young, young Mom with two little girls and far away from home in a foreign country and married to a beast of a man. He had a terribly violent temper and was abusive in every way imaginable, he controlled all the money, the car, was cruelly abusive verbally and physically. After smashing my head against a wall and hitting me in front of my two little girls, I knew I had to leave. I had no money, no job, no plan but I knew I had to go and I did.
Christmas was coming. We lived in an elegant neighborhood and no one would have known that I scraped together coins to put food on the table for the girls or that I was selling household items to keep the lights on. No one knew. I was scared but less scared than within the marriage and just knew I would find my way.
One day a couple of weeks before Christmas the doorbell rang, there stood a woman, a single Mom, someone who had less than I did, normally. “Here”. she said “is 200.00 so you can buy heating oil and stay warm.” ” And here” she continued “is my Zeller’s Card( at the time like Walmart) I think there is 300.00 left on it ” she said, ” take it and make Christmas for the girls.” Tears still spring to my eyes all these years later at the kindness from someone who had so little and gave so much. She gave us Christmas and Santa came and my little girls’ eyes sparkled in the magic of the gifts and my heart glowed.
And now many, many years have passed. Those little girls are grown women now, making Christmases of their own. I went back to school and earned the degree I had always wanted. I met and married the great love of my life, I bought and owned my own Indoor Tennis Club, I moved to a tropical island, and have lived at my favorite ski hill. I have known both the greatest joys and sorrows in all these decades of life. I have the great honor of coaching others. I have never once again experienced domestic violence again.
And so at this time of year, I remember with such gratitude, the day such an angel appeared at my doorstep. And I remember to help those in need, knowing that this is the way of the world.
In the middle of a lake, in the middle of Nova Scotia stands an Island, and you know what? She is our Island! Yep, my husband and I own an island and I have to say she is spectacular. Majestic, beautiful, soft, light, gentle, and innocent. She sits there, day in and day out, all year and forever. She has never been hurt by human hands, she offers refuge to loons, and a bald eagle sits atop one of her trees watching over all the lake and all of us in his powerful glory.
To walk on our island is to experience something almost undescribable for it is unlike anything else I know of. The floor is moss-covered and so soft and spongy, underfoot, the trees are serene, the water all around sparkles creating diamonds in the sunlight. We walk until we come to a little clearing, right in the middle of the island, and from that spot, we see all of her sweetness and in that spot lies the ashes of our son and from that spot seems to lie something else and I don’t know what that is.
Something like love and truth and something sacred like being in the arms of Mother Earth.
And we walk to the little peninsula on our island where the loons hang out and mate and take care of their baby loons and make their loon sounds and make us proud and feel like loon grandparents.
And we hear the chatter of little animals who mostly have the island to themselves, wondering it seems why we are intruding on their space and they chirp goodbye when the canoe pushes off… or it could be they don’t quite know what Ruffus our dog is….. and by the way, Ruffus walks around the Island in a similar state of wonder as if he too is experiencing her magic.
And when I am not on our Island which is most of the time, she waits for us and she lives in my heart, and I know that she is always there, into eternity she will stand, in the middle of Nova Scotia, in the middle of the lake.
Gratitude. What does that mean to you? It is not a platitude of giving thanks at Thanksgiving, with the turkey and cranberries, or saying thanks for a lovely gift at least for me that is not gratitude. For me, it is an attitude of gratitude it is a practice of feeling grateful for all that we have, even in a pandemic, even during challenging times maybe especially during challenging times!
One place this lesson was shown to me was five years ago. My husband and I had miraculously survived what seemed like a fatal car crash, he broke his neck and I well survived! The next day as I went to get the personal effects from our totaled beloved RAV 4 at the junk lot, I was sobbing. The big burly, junk lot attendant, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth wearing a lumberjack coat and long beard, approached me. ” Lady,” he said, “You are one of the lucky ones”! ” What the blazes are you talking about I said” My car is totaled, my husband has a broken neck and our life feels in shatters”. “Yes Mam,” he said through his cigarette,” You are lucky, every day I see families come here, they have lost their loved ones in car accidents, or they are brain dead or quads or way worse…..”
Well, I wanted to slap the guy, truth be told. I did not feel lucky, to say the least. And as his words sunk into my thick head, I felt something else. I understood what GRATITUDE feels like. My burly pal was 100 percent right. We were lucky, we were very lucky.
And so I learned at that moment and would practice it over and over again in the long months of rehab that my husband had, to be grateful, to hold it in my heart and my body so that I could feel it and know it.
And I now believe that Gratitude is the most important ingredient to being Resilient. To hold the blessings of your life, and of this moment close is how we live our best lives and that is how any challenge big or small helps us Stop Worrying and Start Living.
So try it on! Each day write down three things you are truly grateful for and watch your attitude of GRATITUDE grow.
When I wake up tomorrow, It will be one year since the dreadful day that we took our most beloved kitty cat Emmy to his one way trip to the vet. The time had come. He was 19 years old, born New Year’s Day 2001, gray and fuzzy and character all the days of his life. He was the kind of kitty you couldn’t help picking up and squeezing and hugging. He was our Emmy. ( We named him Emmy when he appeared to be a girl and when that fact changed we could not change his name). He traveled back and forth with us from Canada to the Dominican Republic. He was as at home there as he was chasing birds in the forest here in Quebec.
The thing about having a kitty so long is they live so much of life with you. Emmy was born at the beginning of 2001! Our children were still at home, our son Robin did not have brain cancer and the world was a different place back in 2001, maybe a slower,gentler place.
It felt as if my heart would break that day, and the next and the next. I talked to my dear friend Kim, well not exactly talked more like sobbed while she listened. She knew how much it hurts. She got it! I put away his bowls and removed his toys but the hurt didn’t go away. We buried him and made a headstone and cried and cried. At such a time you feel like it will always hurt this much, even if you know that isn’t true.
And the next day, although we did not know it then, a little gray kitten was born in the next village. She was born because her Mother’s spay appointment was canceled due to the pandemic, a miracle kitten, really.
About two weeks after Emmy died, I said to Martin “Let’s go look at kittens”. “No”, said Martin, I don’t want another cat. Martin and Emmy were guy pals and Martin’s heart was also broken. “I understand that sweetie, but let’s just go look.” So off we went. And there we met a little gray kitten, long-haired, eyes not open and it seemed to be a boy and it cuddled in Martin’s hand. And so it was that this kitten, that was born one day after Emmy died was to become our kitten. And so we named him Corey. Corey would not come to us for two more months we wanted him to be well and truly ready to leave his litter.
During this time we grieved for Emmy, we remembered all the years of crazy sweetness and we also went once a week to visit Corey. And Corey grew and Corey turned out to be a girl and we couldn;t change her name. and we bought her a new bowl, and litter box and kept some of Emmy’s toys for her.And every week we went to see her and every week we got more attached to her.
And then when she was ten weeks old, the day came to go get her. And so we went. As we had done so many years before with Emmy, we went, we brought her home and she became our kitten. “And so it starts “, I said to Martin and so it starts.
This thing called life, this circle of love and life and loss and death and beauty and kittens and one-way trips to the vet and trips home in the car with the kitten and so it starts. And so as it turns out hearts are made to love, and even when they break over and over again, being broken is, in fact, nothing compared to the power of love.
To Emmy January,1 2001- June 12 2020 and to Corey June 13 2020
