People are longing for before; before Covid.  Before Covid, we had no idea how wonderful and free our lives were.  We were free to socialize without giving it a second thought.  We hugged and kissed.  We ran into stores to pick up single items without ever considering putting on a mask.  We stood in lineups, sometimes even making small talk with those in front or behind us.  We planned trips.  We smiled and others could see our smile.  We flew on planes.  We drove in cars with friends.  We went to weddings and celebrations of life.  We sang and danced with reckless abandon.

Before.

Before is a dividing line in our lives.  It clearly separates our lives into two very distinct sections.  We talk about before kids, before we had this job, before we knew each other, before we moved, before that was said, before Dad died.
Sometimes before is better.  Sometimes it is worse.  Sometimes we recognize when we are stepping across the line from before into after, but often we don’t notice we’ve made the journey until we look back and see that very clear line.

This past week I had a before moment.  Little Benjamin, figured out his ‘gr’ sound.  He now says Grampa and Grandma and Uncle Greg.  Before, we were Mamma, Mampa and Uncle Legg.  Ben was thrilled with his new consonant blend.  He loves to talk and he is delighted that he can communicate his thoughts and ideas.  We too were thrilled when he called to share his new little skill.

But then I realized I would never hear Mamma again.  Mamma was before.  The line had been crossed.  And as we know, once we cross the before line, there is no turning back.

I love being witness to the new life stages of little Ben.  Often one just morphs into the next and I don’t even realize we’ve stepped into a new phase.  All parents will recognize this.  Parents are so up close to the changes, it’s hard to see them.  Like one of those collage pictures made up of hundreds and thousands of miniature pictures, you can’t see the big image until you get a bit of distance from the details. 

Life is like this too.  We are each in the mess of the details of our lives.  It is so rare we get the chance to stand back and notice how those details are creating the story of our lives.  Our ‘gr’ moment was one of those.  Up close it was just another thing.  Seen from a step or two back, it was a milestone, never to be returned to.  It was such a perfect reminder to cherish each of those special mini pictures, each utterance of Mamma.

As I’ve pondered this before concept, I recognize that before is not always what has transpired in our past.  I notice when I look at that line on the ground, the before line, I am facing backward.  This is the line separating the before from where we are now.  There is though, also a second line.  This line separates where we are now from what is before us.

This new before line is different from the other.  It too is permanent.  But it is not a closed chapter or completed phase.  It does not signify an ending, but rather a beginning.  It gives us a glimpse of what is before us.  It is expansive and open-ended and full of possibility.  When we step across this line, we step into a place of creation.  We have the opportunity to design our next mini picture, the one we will one day stand back from and say, ‘Oh, that was before…..’

I’m going to miss my before I was Grandma, when I was Mamma.  I have many, many other befores I also miss.  I remind myself how lucky I am to have had so many things in my life worth missing.  I know that for every before I see when I look back, when I face forward there are an equal number of befores before me. 

Covid has been awful.  Awful.  Yet, someday it will simply be a mini picture in my collage of life.  I’m remembering this as I look before me, to all the ways I can create a rich and satisfying life in the midst of the awfulness of it. 

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What is before 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 to recognize your opportunities at before.
 

This week I was lucky to have an extra day with little Benjamin.  I usually get to spend one day each week with him, but this week I got a bonus.  Our days together have a familiar routine.  The mornings are spent mostly outside, followed by lunch where homemade macaroni is the most requested item on the menu.  The early afternoon involves a nap for Ben and an hour to ‘get stuff done’ for me.  We round out the day with a hopsicle (popsicle) on the deck, then a little ‘driving’ time for Ben as he sits in the driver’s seat of my SUV delighting in turning on every possible function available on the dashboard, before I take the wheel and drive him back home.

No matter where we go on our morning outing, either to the park or the lake or on some other excursion, if Ben sees other children, he loves to ‘play’ with them.  Being only two-and-a-half, and having been cooped up like the rest of us since Covid hit, he really has very little idea of what it might mean to play with other children.  For now, he thinks that playing in a park with another child means chasing them.  Sometimes they are aware he is doing it, other times they too are only about two or three years old, are wrapped up in their own world, and have absolutely no idea he is chasing them.

Recognizing that we are in our very last precious weeks of summer, Jim and I have been trying to take Ben to the lake as much as possible.  We’re stretching this outdoor season out just as far as we can, understanding there is a long, bubble-filled, winter ahead of us.  Recently, while at the lake, Ben and I wandered down the beach.  There was a young boy, around nine or ten years old, there with his mom.  Ben saw him and said to me, ‘I’m going to chase him’.   I gave the young boy a questioning look to make sure it was ok and not receiving an immediate negative response, Ben was off.  You can just picture this little chase.   Ben’s little legs just turning over and the older boy not really having to move much at all. 

The little boy was simply amazing.  He didn’t have any more clue what to do than Ben did but he so kindly indulged Benjamin in his chasing.  Ben was in his glory, running after the boy who would simply get a few steps ahead, change direction and wait.  When it was all over, less than ten minutes after it started, Ben had never ‘caught’ the boy.  I thanked the boy for his kindness, complimented his mother on her remarkable son and Ben and I returned to our spot on the beach where we drove his trucks in the sand and splashed in the water.

Ben continues to talk about the chase.  He loved it!

I’ve been thinking about it too.  Not so much about the actual chase, the one where the little boy was so kind to Ben, but about chases I’ve been on in my own life.  I always thought I was someone who prefers the completion of an activity or task, prefers the check mark on the list when an item is complete, rather than being the person who lives for the actual doing of the thing; the chase.  Yet as I really think objectively about my life, it turns out I might be someone who loves the chase.  I hope I am.

In the biggest chase of our life, no one is really that keen to be first to the finish line.  It’s kind of final.  And we only get one chance at it.  So, assuming all of us can say this isn’t the chase we want to win, we are left looking at all the other little things we will find ourselves chasing in our lives. 

As teenagers, we chase adulthood, imagining all the freedom and excitement that comes with it.  As adults, we wonder why we didn’t enjoy that chase a bit more; the shine wears off the ‘freedom’, and the reality of being responsible sets in.  In our jobs, some of us chase promotions, imagining the joy we’ll feel upon receiving them.  Sometimes we are right; the new promotion really does bring us joy.  Sometimes, we wonder how we could have forgotten to enjoy the job we just left.  As middle age approaches, many of us chase retirement, imagining all the carefree, travel filled, health improved years we will have.  Sometimes, the shock of having no one relying on us, of recognizing how quickly we were replaced, and of spending some of our newfound freedom noticing new aches and pains, we wonder if we might have been wiser to enjoy the chase more. 

If we look even more microscopically, we’ll notice we have little things to chase each day.   Sometimes we’re just chasing the day away, waiting for evening when we can relax.  Sometimes we’re chasing through meetings with friends, knowing we can put our feet up at the end of it all.  Sometimes we’re chasing through traffic, trying to arrive somewhere.  Or chasing through winter waiting for spring.  Often, we overlook the joy we could be having during the chase, as we aim at the finish line.

I never chase away my days with Ben.  Nor do I chase away my days cycling in the mountains or spending time with our children.  I don’t chase away opportunities to develop new workshops, nor do I chase away spending time on our project in Kenya.  I don’t chase away visits with friends or time spent with Jim.  This week I was putting some details on a little quilt I’m making for Ben.  I noticed I am in no hurry to finish it.  I’m loving adding some special finishing touches.  I recognize how lucky I am to have fingers that still work well enough to do some fine sewing, and how even luckier I am to have a grandson to sew for.

I’m trying to take a page from Ben’s book.  He loved the chase.  He never once mentioned that he didn’t catch the boy; for him, that was never the purpose.  It was the sheer joy of being in the chase.

My inquiry for you is, ‘How much am I enjoying my chase?’
​
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 maximize your chase.
 
 

When I was a little girl, my grandfather, Grampy, my mother’s father, would arrive on the train from Newcastle, New Brunswick to spend time with us each year.  From my perspective, these visits were just filled with love.  He spent his time doing everything he could to lighten my mother’s load and to have fun with us.  I can picture him standing in the kitchen making dinner and then doing dishes, in his grey dress pants, suspenders, and white pressed shirt with the sleeves rolled up.  He had lots of funny expressions that he used to treat us to.

He loved to treat us to new clothes and he would often give us some money to buy a new outfit.  It seems impossible, but my sister, Mary, only three years older than me, would most often take me on a shopping excursion with our money to get something.  Mary couldn’t have been older than eleven or twelve when this was happening.  Grampy would walk us to the door as we headed out on our venture and when we thanked him for the money, with a twinkle in his eye, he’d say, ‘Don’t spend it all in one place!’  When he served us supper, he would laugh as he cleared the table.  If most of what he had made was eaten he’d say, ‘That sold well!’  Looking back, I think my favourite expression of his was “Well that will give you ‘something to write home about’.” He used this one when we told him about something interesting in our day, or when we were excited about something, or going somewhere special, or sometimes just to tease us when we were making a mountain out of a mole hill. 

‘Something to write home about.’ 

I haven’t heard this expression used in a long time (other than by me or one of my siblings!) but I read it the other day in a blog written by Tara Mohr.  It has really stirred my memory.  I recognize how lucky I am to live a life where so often I have something to write home about.

Growing up this expression made complete sense to me.  After all, we had both sets of grandparents, and all of our cousins, living on the East Coast, while we lived in Ontario.  We were used to writing letters.  My parents called the East Coast, home.  When they would describe where we were going they called it ‘down home’.   I always felt like my letters were being sent home.  I wrote to both sets of my grandparents until their deaths.  Grampy lived long enough to celebrate that I had two children, even though he did not have the chance to meet them in person.  He and I wrote each other one letter each week.  I set aside Sunday afternoons to write my letters, and I usually received one back from him sometime toward the end of the week, so I can only guess this is when he wrote his too.  When he was too frail to write in his own hand, his housekeeper did the writing for him.  I grew up taking notice of my world; watching for something to write home about.

Reading Tara’s blog last week, reminded me of the significance of this writing home.  In days gone by, when telephones were only used long-distance in absolute emergencies, and when news took a long time to travel, it wasn’t easy to update those in our lives, those at home.  I, like my parents before me, left my home province and travelled away to live.  And like my parents before me, I saw and experienced things the rest of my family had never seen.  These things became things to ‘write home about’.

I have a treasured letter, written by my mother to her sister, where my mother, facing terminal cancer, tells her sister about her week.  There was nothing earth shattering in the letter.  Mom had not been on a fancy trip, nor had she bought anything new.  But she was reflecting on each of her children and my dad, and trying to face her diagnosis with courage.  This certainly, was something to write home about.  We ‘write home’ when we see new sights, and experience new things.  We also write home when we discover something new about ourselves, about our beliefs and values and about what is important to us.  We might write home when we are afraid, or trying to make sense of our world.

This week, as I pondered writing home, and what might make it into a letter if I were still spending Sunday afternoons doing so, I went on a short, early afternoon bike ride.  As I rode along the Bow River, watching the sun sparkling on the water, and the fishermen standing in their hip waders casting their flies, I came upon two men; one who looked to be middle aged, and the other who I assume was his father.  The father was in a wheelchair.  They were about two kilometres from the nearest parking lot so I knew the son had wheeled his dad to this spot.  They were eating lunch together.  The Dad was holding what looked to be a nice homemade sandwich in his shaky hand.  The son was standing beside him eating his sandwich too.  They were not talking when I cycled past.  They were peacefully looking out over the river, caught up in a moment of contentment, peace and love.  If I was a photographer, I might have been able to capture the image I have of these two in my mind.  It was most certainly something to write home about.

I could imagine the son writing home about this most precious afternoon he spent quietly with his aging father.  I could imagine the father writing home about his gratitude for not only the time with his son, but for the thought and effort put into the outing.  I could imagine them both writing home about how perfectly right this moment felt.  There was something about the flowing river, the passage of time, and the fleetingness of it all that was etched into my mind as I watched them for just a small moment.

Most of us don’t write too many letters anymore.  Nor do we need to.  We might however, re-institute the habit of not only watching for things to write home about, but also of creating such things.

May your upcoming week be filled with the best of things to write home about.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What will I write home about this week?’
​
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 notice and create things to write home about.
 
 

I’ve had school on my mind all week.  Perhaps it’s the news, the regular updates on the opening of schools, the absence of a perfect solution to whether schools should open or not, and of course, the sighting of the little ones as they arrive at the school at the end of our street, decked out in their ‘back to school’ outfits.  It’s also likely that it’s just September.  When you’ve marked the beginning of your year with going back to school for as many years as I have, this time of year always feels exciting, like a fresh page, just waiting for me.

I heard the most wonderful back-to-school story this week.  One of my daughter’s students, on the very first day back, upon being welcomed by Kaitlyn, said, ‘Mrs. Hanson, I am so glad to be back.  I was afraid my parents wouldn’t let me come.’  The student was so earnest, and clearly delighted to be back that Kaitlyn followed up asking if the parents had been considering keeping their child at home.

The student confirmed that yes, she had been lying in bed one night in August, as the decision date loomed, and she could hear her parents discussing the matter.  To her young ears, it sounded like the decision may not land in her favour, which was to return to school.  She could not sleep.  When she felt her parents were safely tucked in for the night, she got up, turned on her computer and created a PowerPoint presentation, outlining the merits of her returning to the school she loves. 

This little story might be the perfect snapshot of the conundrum surrounding school openings this year.  Each side has sound, thoughtful, correct, compelling reasons for either attending or not.  We will never know which side is ‘right’.  This makes it very difficult.  To make matters worse, there is fear involved.  There is fear on both sides; fear that if children return to school, the spread of Covid 19 will be exacerbated, and fear that if children do not return to some kind of normalcy, their mental and academic health will suffer, as will our economy.

What I absolutely love about this anecdote, is the advocacy demonstrated by this young student.  She had so many options available to her.  She decided to forego having a tantrum, forego being helpless, forego ignoring the issue, forego indifference, forego manipulation and instead chose advocacy for herself.   Not only did she advocate for herself, she did it in a way that left all the players in the situation, with full dignity intact.

It is something I could do better.

I’ve been thinking about how and when, during the span of my life, I have and have not advocated for myself.  I’ve been thinking about what kind of PowerPoint presentations I might have made that might have helped me do such advocating.  

PowerPoint is used most effectively when the creator of the slides sticks to a few basic rules.  The most powerful PowerPoint presentations include slides containing as few words as possible.  The same can be said for advocating for ourselves.   Once we get crystal clear about what we really want or need, there is no need to start our advocacy with a review of every past missed opportunity or every slight we have endured. 

It’s advised we avoid using all capital letters on any slide.  I’m thinking this might be a good rule for self-advocacy too. When we are typing in all caps, it is the equivalent of yelling at our audience.   This very rarely elicits the response we are hoping for.  Calm, clear, rational thoughts rarely force the listener into a defensive mode.

When preparing our convincing presentations, our slides shouldn’t overuse special effects such as animations, sounds and flashy transitions such as fly-ins either.  Same in life.  Drama, theatrics, crying, yelling and finger pointing very rarely get us what we want.  On the rare occasion they do, we end up feeling so badly about our own behaviour, the victory seems hollow. 

The young student in Kaitlyn’s class has given me a new tool to use.  I happen to have a few upcoming places where I will need to advocate for myself.  I’m going to start imagining exactly what I might put on my PowerPoint presentations for these occasions.  I’m also going to imagine how I want to present myself; hopefully showcasing me at my best, most integrous, thoughtful and intelligent.  I also think this idea will give me a very good litmus test for what exactly I will find important enough to advocate for.  If I can’t be bothered making a slide presentation, perhaps I might reconsider how much value I actually place on the issue at hand.

I don’t plan on showing up anywhere in the next weeks with my lap top and power cord in hand.   I do however, think I’ll be imagining myself giving some real award-winning presentations.  I can only hope to achieve the same kind of results as Kaitlyn’s young student.

My inquiry for you this week is, ‘What will serve me best in my presentation?’
​
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 the fine points of PowerPoint.