I don’t fancy myself a gourmet cook; however, I do love to add new recipes to my repertoire.  In the good old, pre-pandemic days, when we shared meals with others, I especially loved to taste the creations of others and then get their recipe to try myself.  One easy little appetizer recipe I got from Greg and Cara – Greg made it the night we had it, but it may have been Cara’s recipe, was for toasted crostini bread, topped with cream cheese, a slice or two of fresh strawberry and drizzled with a balsamic vinegar reduction.  Fancy?  Not really.  Difficult?  Not at all!  Delicious?  Yup!

Before watching Greg make this about five years ago, I would have skipped right past any recipe asking me to make a balsamic reduction.  I would have simply assumed this was far above my skill level.  It turns out, the reduction is so simple, I can’t believe I might have missed out.  All it requires is to pour some balsamic vinegar into a shallow fry pan and gently heat it until the water evaporates off, and a beautiful thick balsamic reduction is left.  It might take slightly more than five minutes, but it won’t take a full seven. 

A reduction, it turns out, is exactly what it is advertised to be.   It is something that is made smaller or less in amount, degree or size.  I also like to think of it as something that has been reduced to its essence. 

My friend Brenda, and I have been heading out on Tuesday Treks since late last summer.  We meet every Tuesday morning, with a new trail mapped out, ready to spend a day with our friend, the great outdoors.  This past week, Brenda recommended hiking a trail we’ve only done once before.  Last July, we navigated Tom Snow and Ridgeback 1, 2 and 3, but we haven’t done it since there has been snow on the ground so we assumed it would be a nice new adventure.  We were not disappointed! 

With a fresh falling of snow Monday night, there were no tracks to guide us.  The trail is fairly well marked at lower altitudes and we each have an app on our phones allowing us to use GPS to make sure we stay on track at higher elevations when the trail is impossible to pick out.  We thought we had all our bases covered.  We had our phones, we had our trail downloaded onto our app, we had food and water and great hiking gear.  We left our start point and route with Jim and Daryl, and we left early in the morning with a good forecast ahead of us.  What we didn’t account for was this: when it snows 10cm in the city, more often than not, the mountains where we hike get about triple that amount.

As the hours marched by, and we marched higher and higher, our memories about snowfall amounts became much clearer.  By the top third of the hike, we were pushing through snow well above our knees.  We knew we’d come to a ‘road’ at the top that we’d walk along for about 1.3 km before beginning our descent.  We were looking forward to the reprieve for our tired legs.  Surprise doesn’t begin to describe what we saw at the top.  Not only were there no footprints anywhere, there was no sign that any human had been to the top all winter.  The only thing that told us we were on a road was there were no trees on it! We were now well above our knees, surrounded by the beauty of it all.

As we finally reached the summit, we heard the sound of motors approaching.  We knew it could not be a car or truck, since the road was impassable for vehicles.  It turns out it was two snowmobiles, driven by workers heading to remote gas, pumphouse station near where we were.  We waved as they slowly went past, working hard to push through the deep snow.

We knew our trailhead back down was located near the pumphouse station.  However, it wasn’t until we got near the snowmobiles that we recalled how difficult it had been to find the trailhead in July, even with clear ground, uncovered by snow.  In the deep, untouched snow, it became much harder.  With our most confident expressions locked on our faces we headed toward what we thought was our best bet. 

In snow now up to the top of our legs, it took some time to get far enough to recognize we had made a mistake.  Had we continued we’d have had to cross a significant ravine.  We had no way of knowing the depth of snow in the ravine, so erring on the side of good sense, we decided to retrace our steps back up to the road, get to the other side of the ravine, and head down again.  As luck would have it, the two workers were still at the transfer station collecting their data.  We didn’t want to appear as though we were having trouble (how could they possibly guess?!) and Brenda mentioned she wished they had left already.  As we got closer, with our legs absolutely burning from the climb, I said in a quiet voice, “Ok, Brenda.  Look calm, act casual”.  That was all it took; with exhausted legs, bruised egos and a healthy sense of our own silliness, we were both gave in to gales of laughter.   Everything else just stripped away and we embraced this unexpected but welcome reduction.  We’d been reduced to exactly what we aim to do each Tuesday - find a way to fully feel the incredible gifts nature can offer; peace, acceptance, joy, beauty, friendship, simplicity, escape, and health.

Pondering reductions has given me some needed insights this week.  I spend a lot of time in my head.  My busy little mind can create and follow multiple stories at once.  I can wrap myself up so tight in the doing of life, it’s easy to forget the importance of it sometimes. Not the importance of my busyness, but the importance of exactly what, when I’ve reduced it to its most pure form, I am trying to accomplish, what impact I am trying to have.  When I am thinking and rethinking the exact colour to use on a quilt I’m designing for a special person, I can get bogged down with all the possibilities.  When I reduce it to remembering what I’m really sewing is love in a blanket form, the hamsters in my head can rest.

I don’t ever want to be reduced by others; to be reduced to a sentence or a proclamation about me.  No one appreciates this kind of reduction.  This is diminishing.  It doesn’t acknowledge all of the bits and pieces that make each of us who we are.  The kind of reductions I find helpful are the ones where I can reduce my actions to a basic intention.  These reductions provide clarity and sometimes even grace.

I had some devastating news about one of my most precious friends this week.  I’ve been shaken to my core.  I want to fix things. I want to know magic and miracles. I want to know just the right thing to say and do.  When I’ve allowed myself the grace of using my recipe of reduction, not the one for strawberry crostini but reductions for life, I know what I really want to do is make sure they know how precious they are to me, and how loved.  That’s it.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What reduction is needed?’
​
Elizabeth is a certified professional Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership coaching.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups. She has particular expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how to create spectacular reductions.

Jim and I didn’t have any particular plans for Family Day this year.  This is partly because of our continuing restrictions in Alberta where visits indoors are still prohibited, and partly because outdoor visits, while not prohibited, didn’t feel like a viable option with our sub -25°C temperatures.  We hadn’t really talked about what we might do during the day this past Monday.  The good news is, that meant we weren’t disappointed when our day got very busy, very fast.

When I came down the stairs in the morning I came with an armful of laundry.  I threw it in the washing machine and then proceeded to sit at my desk and catch up on a few things.  I did hear a not-quite-usual water sound as I typed away.  Normally, I’d instantly go check things out.  For no good reason, on this morning I did not. 

Luckily for us, it wasn’t many minutes later that Jim opened the door to the laundry room on his way to the garage, and stepped into a lake of water.  He called out, I came running, we got the machine turned off and set to work.  The floor wasn’t just a bit wet; it was a lake.  Using a bucket and mop, one of those spinning kinds we had purchased after an impossible-to-resist demonstration at the Stampede one year, we were able to get most of it up.  We still didn’t really know where the problem lay.   Our first suspicion was the machine itself.  But once we pulled it out from against the wall, we could see the lines drawing water into the machine were completely dry.  Jim suggested I turn the machine on again so he could locate the source of the problem.

It took mere seconds to discover that the water draining from the machine during the spin cycle, was flowing down the tube which went into a pipe, and there it met up with a completely frozen pipe, causing it to back up and spew everywhere.  We both had the same thought; we definitely had a frozen pipe, and it was possible it had burst.  This led us to the basement, to the room directly under the laundry room.  Sure enough, there was water, water, everywhere here too.

Again, we mopped and dried and tried to see if there was still an open source.  There did not appear to be.  As we took a minute to figure out next steps, Jim turned and spotted another problem.  I won’t give the exact quote but suffice it to say he did NOT say, ‘Oh wow, isn’t that a coincidence!  Our hot water heater is also leaking all over the other end of the floor’.
That’s kind of how the day went.  Water, water everywhere.

Much, much later that day, once the floors were dry, the plumber had come and gone, the new hot water tank was ordered for Tuesday, and we were sitting dumbfounded, I picked up something to read.  I read about a vineyard in Oregon.  It sits at the base of a large mountain.  One of the things giving it its value is the water draining off the mountain, has, for hundreds of years, been providing rich nutrients to the soil, allowing it to produce incredible grapes used to make valuable wines.

I had to chuckle to myself.  Even in my attempt to escape the day, I found water. 

Water drips into all our lives.   Sometimes we get lucky and experience the predictable and steady runoff of nourishing comments, acceptance, compassion, and uplifting encouragement.   Even if we have one person who provides such a steady and positive influence in our lives, we know we hold a gift.  Sometimes we experience more than a drip, we experience a rush of water, so much of it we can’t quite process it all at once.  My friend Betty found herself in this position last week after she was deluged with kind calls and emails following a medical procedure.  Sometimes in our surprise at this kind of outpouring, we start to mop up the ‘mess’, trying to get back to normal, before we can even absorb the beauty of the gestures.  Luckily Betty had the wisdom to remind herself to ‘be a gracious receiver’, as she accepted her calls and visits, texts and emails.

The flip side of the water dilemma is that we also drip onto others.  In a perfect world, we’d each drip kindness, love, acceptance, compassion, tolerance and steadfastness.  We’d do this regularly.  It would become part of the fabric of who we are.  Alas, in a world that has taken more from us than she has given this past year, many of us find ourselves dripping attributes we wouldn’t want used to describe us too often.

Jim and I were able to find a good solution to our water problems.  The frozen pipe is thawed, and the new hot water tank installed.  These drips were temporary.  Some of the other drips we receive and offer up to others are not so fleeting; words last, actions have consequences and feelings endure. 

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What am I dripping?’
​
Elizabeth is a certified professional Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership coaching.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups. She has particular expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how to be a drip – a great drip!.
 

I took a brave step this week.  I called my friend Carey Gruber, person extraordinaire, and director of the world-travelling, and I assume world-famous, Big Rock Singers.   Carey and I worked together for many years when I taught at RDL.  Carey worked with students in crisis as our family support liaison.  She and I spent hours together in her office creating plans to help students.  Between us, many a tear were shed as we figured out how to best help our at-risk students.  Truth be told, there were a few times when we met there to create a plan to help one or the other of us too!

After my surgery in November, I was warned there could be some impact on my vocal chords.  I knew this might be temporary or permanent, serious or mild, or none at all.  Given the tumour they were removing from my thyroid was wrapped around the nerve supplying the vocal chords, and considering the tumour was tennis ball in size, and pressing right up against the trachea and forcing it well off course, it might have been too big an ask to think my poor vocal chords would survive unscathed.

The first week after surgery I had plenty of hoarseness, but this was an expected outcome for any throat surgery.  Now, however, after a few months, the picture is coming into sharper focus.  I’ve been lucky.  My speaking voice is pretty good.  I can carry on an easy conversation with no difficulty.  However, my voice doesn’t have any strength.  I couldn’t, for instance, hope to address a large group, like I often did, and hope to do again post-pandemic.  Even more unsettling to me, (since I know there are microphones that might make up for my speaking voice shortfall), is my singing voice has been reduced to a range of very few notes.  Very few.

The good news is, this won’t affect my paycheck.  I haven’t ever fancied myself to be a professional singer.  That doesn’t give me much solace.  It just means I will continue to not sing professionally as I have always not sung professionally.  No change. The thing that does bother me is this; I love to sing.  I love it.  I love to sing in the car where I have my favourite playlist at the ready.  I love to sing while I’m doing mundane tasks.  I love to sing with my sisters and brothers.  I love my memories of singing from my past, around campfires, in choirs, in our living room, with our cousins, at Christmas time, at Betty’s Kitchen Party and on and on.  There is something about music, and about singing good lyrics and tunes, that sooth my soul.  I feel like I’ve gone home when I sing.

Needless to say, I miss it.  I also fully realize that in the larger scheme of things, this ranks very, very low.  I understand this.  Yet it feels like a great loss to me. 

I have a suspicion this is not permanent.  I’m hopeful because while in the first month I might have had a total of about four notes I could reach, last month I’d say I had a solid 6, and sometimes, if I sang very, very quietly, I could even reach more.  Like all of do-re-mi more.

My first lesson with Carey was on Tuesday via Zoom.  I knew I had made the exact right decision the moment her beautiful face appeared on the screen.  My eyes filled, as did hers.  To simply lay eyes on such a dear friend was wonderful.

I amazed absolutely no one at my lesson.  I know I have months of practice and exercise ahead.  I’m perfectly fine with this.  I’m thrilled to be strengthening my voice and to be working with Carey.

More than finding my singing voice, it is just as truthful to say I was also finding my voice when I sent my very first email to Carey, inquiring about the lessons. 

Sometimes when people think about finding their voice, their thoughts run to the idea of firmly, sometimes loudly, stating their opinion.  This can sometimes feel like they are defending themselves, or challenging someone or taking a defiant stance.  There is a different version of voice-finding worth considering.

We each have a little voice inside ourselves that is always calling to us.  Sometimes it is a whisper, one we hear but push to the background as we get on with the busyness of our lives.  Sometimes it is stronger, and is accompanied by a potential opportunity.  Sometimes it is a feeling, a knowing that acting on it will bring us much closer to our true self. These little voices are reminding us what makes us who we are.  The voice reminds us how to find our ‘home’, our truest self. 

Over the years I have thought of calling Carey about singing lessons many times.  For a while I convinced myself I was too busy.  The truth was, I was busy, but I was also concerned about judgement by others.  For another while I believed it was too late, but I still felt the nudge.  This time, when I recognized I could lose this part of my life I love so much, I followed the whisper. 

I have found so many voices over the years that have called me to be in alignment with who I want to be.  I’ve been lucky to be able to discard some of the things holding me back.  I love to create through my quilting and knitting, I love to be in nature and I have found incredible ways of satisfying this through biking and hiking, I love to move my body through dance and yoga, and I love to experience the feelings that I can’t seem to reach any other way except through music.  

Each of us has voices inside us, begging to be heard.  Luckily for us, they are persistent, they are wise and they help us become the best versions of ourselves.

I am full of gratitude for the gift of Carey, for the six little notes I can sing, and the hope for more to come.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What voice is calling to me?’
​
Elizabeth is a certified professional Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership coaching.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups. She has particular expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how find your voice.
 
 

I received a message from my friend, David, last week.  David, or Kamishina, as he is known in his Kenyan community of Ewaso Ngiro, has been one of our partners in the Building Hope project since its inception over ten years ago. 

David was verifying that the money we had wired for teachers’ salaries, and for one new cow! had safely arrived.  Building Hope Academy, the school we raised funds to build, and now support, has suffered in the same way as the rest of the world in this global pandemic. Perhaps in some ways, their struggles with the pandemic have been greater; just as their day-to-day struggles for school supplies, food security, personal safety, and opportunities are greater.  To add to their stress this year, donations for teachers’ salaries have understandably greatly diminished as donors in Canada have also had their share of financial hardship.  It’s been a month-to-month guessing game to know where the next months worth of teacher’s salaries are coming from.  My approach remains as it has always been; the right people will appear at the right time to help. 

In David’s message he not only confirmed the successful transfer of our funds, but also updated me on the growth of the new herd of cows.  This herd will eventually become a source of income for the school.  David’s message is as follows:
Halo Liz.  Thank you for the teachers salaries.  I received it and also Emma’s gift of the cow.  Pass my great appreciation to her and my love to her family.  The school herd is surely growing.  Thank you so much for the support this new year.  The Encowment project cows are now 14 in total.  May God bless your generous hands. Stay safe.

Generous hands.  These two words have been rolling around in my head since then.  Generous hands.

I have never stopped to think about whether my hands are generous.  I know my hands don’t work quite with quite as much dexterity as they once did.   I know I love to use my hands.   I love to create things through knitting and quilting. I love to cook for my family. I love to make my chocolate chip cookies.  I love to hold Ben’s little hand. I love to write.  I’ve never really stopped to think whether my hands are generous.

I found myself looking for generous hands as I went about my life last week.  I had another procedure done at the hospital; a bronchoscopy, to check out my lungs.  The experience in this operating room was completely different than the last.  Whereas the last time the room felt clinical, this time it was welcoming.  One of the respirologists recognized me from the previous day when I had been in for some different testing and he acted as though he was delighted to be in on my procedure.  The anesthetist was engaging with his easy conversation about his family and he was curious about mine.  His question, ‘What music would you like me to play for you?’ completely surprised me.  What a simple but generous gesture.  Generous were his hands that cared for me.

When Dr. D entered the room, the staff was clearly delighted to see her.  She immediately asked how everyone was and then noted it seemed cool in the room.  Her comment, ‘I think you’d feel better with a warm blanket’ got my attention, but not as much as the fact that she went to retrieve it on her own.  She did not send one of the nurses or aides.  No authority was exerted by her; only generous hands.  It’s no wonder she is respected and admired.

Two days after the procedure, although it was bitterly cold outside, I needed to get out for a walk to try to clear my head.   Jim and I bundled up and made our way through the neighbourhood.  Not many people were embracing the frigid temperatures.  As we walked along the main street, with only our eyes exposed, two people walking together, approached from the opposite direction.  They were having an animated conversation.  The woman was looking intently at the man as he spoke.  This struck me since Jim and I were both really just looking at the ground trying to avoid slipping on the ice.  I noticed he had no gloves and wondered how he stood the cold.  As they got closer, I saw he was using his hands to sign his words to his walking partner.  She was carefully ‘listening’ to his hands.  What generous hands had he.
We are limited in so many ways during these months of endless restrictions.   Luckily few restrictions have been placed on our generous hands.  While we are discouraged from shaking hands and touching common surfaces, there is so much more we can do.  We can still text and make phone calls.  We can wave.  We can take photographs and share them with others.  We can leave flowers on a doorstep of a friend.  We can create beauty.  We can be good people.

I’ve been more mindful of my hands this week.  I worry less about what they cannot do and wonder more about their capacity to be generous.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘How generous are these hands?’
​
Elizabeth is a certified professional Leadership Coach, and the owner of Critchley Coaching.  She is the founder and president of the Canadian charity, RDL Building Hope Society.   She works with corporations, non-profits and the public sector, providing leadership coaching.  She creates and facilitates custom workshops for all sizes of groups. She has particular expertise in facilitating Strategic Plans for organizations. Contact Elizabeth to learn how generous hands increase satisfaction with work and life.