Erin's Journals

Just a thought… I believe sharing stories and experiences is the best way to teach people to empathize. [Jane Goodall]

And…it’s suddenly eerily quiet. There are chores to do and fingerprints to wipe down, but all of that will wait. Today I want to share with you a sit down video chat I did with a very special lady. I promise you’ll enjoy it.

About one month ago, I got an email from Dianne Raynor, RN saying she wanted to interview me for a summit series she’s doing to help boost morale and offer support to health workers during COVID. My first response was literally “who, me?” and I wrote back asking if perhaps she was looking for the Christian author who shares my name. When Dianne confirmed it was me she was looking for, we got down to talking.

Dianne has done a series of video chats with people from all walks of life who have messages that support her mission. This North Carolinian (whose accent I found myself sliding into within the first minute of chatting) wanted me to share my story of love, loss and reclaiming joy – the basis of Mourning Has Broken.

I hope that you’ll click on and enjoy the interview from The Hearts of Healthcare Professionals: Rebalance and Renew Your Resilience. It’s only available to watch for another 24 hours (it was posted yesterday for 48 hours but I didn’t have a journal that day, so….).

There’s a little gift in it for you if you’re interested – something I haven’t offered to share before – for which you can email me once you’ve seen the interview. I call it my ED talk.

So for now, grab a coffee, tea or whatever gives you comfort, click this link and just watch. I wish I could be talking to you in person, but for now let’s share time together this way.

Take good care and enjoy this (gulp) final weekend of August. I’ll be back with you here on Monday.

Just a thought… You can’t recognize true joy if you’ve never known heartbreak. Pain makes you stronger. Fear makes you braver. You can’t know hope if you’ve never known despair. [Eve Silver]

One month.

It was on this day in July that in a house we’d decorated for a festive “Christmas in July” theme, we counted the hours until our Ottawa family landed at our local airport.

In just days, tomorrow or the next, this sweet foursome will spend their first night in their new home. While they’ve had possession of the house for a little while and their truck arrived just over a week ago (minus a Dyson vacuum – the only real hiccup and one that we have slim hopes of being rectified), we’ve taken a slow but careful route in getting the house set up so that they feel like it’s a home. A big grocery shop happens today, and then we move pieces and suitcases in from our house to theirs.

What a luxury is a gradual move – one that Rob and I haven’t really had in all of our relocations! The best part of it, though, has been getting to know everyone in deeper ways that only living together can bring.

Brooke and I have experienced each other only through the briefest of whirlwind visits (ours to their home in Ottawa) and long, heartfelt phone conversations. During those times, I was always happy and positive; she hasn’t known me to be down or tired, frustrated or moody. Over the course of a month, she’s seen the real me.

The sullen moods and simmering frustration have resulted from the countless headaches we’ve encountered just trying to navigate the barbed-wired red tape that has come with selling a property in the US (IRS ramifications and COVID closures that have caused more legal headaches than anyone could have imagined), as well as more unexpected hassles like a broken-down fridge and beastly expensive repairs to an air conditioning system – you name it, it’s gone sideways over the past month. All of these things have kept us scrambling during the day and awake at night wondering how to get things done before the sale closes this week.

Of course, there’s a bright side there, too: a friend of my sister lives near our house in California (far from the fires, thank goodness) and dove in to help us get our personal possessions out. While we FaceTimed, she put aside the few belongings we wanted shipped home and has them boxed up and ready to send. There are angels among us, I’ll tell you, and I don’t know how we’d have managed this long distance move without her!

Over the past month, well-meaning family and friends have quietly asked how we’re faring with four extra people in our house. While there have been adjustments (pajamas for one thing!) it’s been a pleasure: from hearing the excited squeals of a baby and the pounding of Colin’s feet running the floors to cooking for a big family instead of just noshing at odd hours as Rob and I are wont to do; it’s all been an exercise, not so much in patience, but in pleasure.

Our place will be so much quieter come Wednesday evening, when we sit back and sigh with the satisfaction of knowing that their family is settling in, safe and sound, comfortable on a small street with friendly neighbours. The people we’ve met who live around them are a mix of retirees and young families just like theirs and we’re hoping that they find a friendly feeling of belonging to this street on this island in this new province sooner than later.

For us, I believe a sense of quiet and normalcy will set in as we come to realize that this past month wasn’t all a dream or just a visit after all. Sure, there was the dark backdrop of trying to make a difficult transaction happen in a place far away – something over which we felt little control at times – but in the forefront was joyful noise, music, games and the sense of play that comes with having little children in the house after so many years of it being “just us.”

Yet another new beginning awaits. How lucky we are in this year of uncertainty to have been given the gift of joy! Here we go.

Just a thought… To be trusted is a better compliment than being loved. [George MacDonald]

This week I met the man who lives in our basement.

I know that could be the opening line of a Stephen King book, but it’s a real life story and one that has some interesting background. So settle in, and I’ll tell you our story of a man named Iman.

Last year at this time, Rob and I, planning to spend the winter in California at the home we purchased in the spring of 2019, decided that it would be best to have someone in our home for the winter. We thought that it would afford us added security and, in exchange for a lower-than-market rent, we’d have somebody keeping an eye on the place and maybe even watering the two little palm trees out on our deck.

We’d have someone here, even when we weren’t in California, so that if we took a trip, they’d watch over Molly for us. Besides, we knew that affordable rental properties are at a premium on the Saanich Peninsula, so it seemed a real waste – a sin, almost – to have this place empty when we could be helping someone else, while also helping ourselves.

My friend Nancy, whom you’ve heard me mention numerous times, put out her feelers and found a woman – an engineer – who worked at a company near us and was looking for accommodations. The woman was a perfect fit and she was kind, gentle and quiet; we loved having her living in the fully furnished, above ground, one bedroom that came with our house. Free deer sightings, too!

It worked out beautifully until she found herself in a position to buy her own starter home. Unfortunately, when she told us this, we were just about to leave for our winter down south. What to do? We would have no one to help the house look occupied (um, because it was) or to keep an eye on things in our absence.

Fortunately, she found a co-worker who was in need of a place just like the one she was vacating. But the timing was just not good and we didn’t get a chance to actually talk to or meet this man. What to do?

Once again, it was Nancy (and her husband) to the rescue. They met up with our prospective renter and not only approved him on our behalf, they almost fell in love. Also an engineer, he was quiet, gentle and likely to become a perfect tenant. So he moved into our home in our absence. We kept in touch via text, he paid his rent on time every month and even though we’d never actually met this man who had full run of the place, it all worked out beautifully.

Then, his work got in the way. When one company merged with another, he found himself travelling to work in Toronto while his possessions were still in our place. And when COVID hit, he was grounded in Ontario while we were scurrying to get back to Canada. Our paths didn’t physically cross until this week.

To make a long story short, he came “home” to BC this past Monday. Just as we were told, he’s kind and sweet: he greeted us with gifts of an old Beatles album he found at a store on Queen Street West, plus some lovely saffron and candies from his homeland of Iran.

He’ll store his few things for now, but plans to come back to stay with us in the future, once his time in Ontario has wrapped up, while his family hopes one day to buy a home here. We’ve already given him a realtor’s name for when that search begins, however far down the road.

Some might say it’s foolhardy or risky to have a stranger in your home when you’re not there, but rightly or wrongly, Rob and I see things through the lenses of trust. We trusted our tenant and friend who was moving out to recommend someone who’d be a good fit for us; we trusted our other friends to vet him and see if his predecessor was right.

We trusted him to care for our place like it was his own – because part of it was – and we trusted that doing something for someone who needed it was just the right thing to do. He was everything our friends said he was (and more) and we look forward to getting to know him better when he comes back. Our doors will be open to him.

We believe that sometimes you just have to trust and believe in the good in people. After all, we’ve certainly been the grateful recipients of an awful lot of it, Rob and I.

Thank you. Back with you here on Monday.

Just a thought… Someday – you will just get sick of being hungover. [@JannArden on Twitter Aug. 16 2020]

Whew – what a weekend! We got a call on Saturday that the kids’ moving truck would be pulling into their driveway the next day, and so it did; so far, so good. We are hoping all boxes are accounted for, although to be honest, we only got in about four hours of hard-ish labour. With one adult entertaining a baby, we’re down a pair of hands, but we have lots and lots of time to figure this out.

Last night we celebrated with pizza, DQ cake and PJs. A lovely, unexpected development in the weekend.

I’m reminiscing a lot these days: it was a year ago yesterday that my six weeks in rehab came to an end. There’s an email hanging over my head that I really need to answer and I thought that as I mark this anniversary (my one year sobriety came and went on June 30), I’d write a response to her. 

The past year, I’ve found myself being contacted by women who see themselves in me (or vice versa) and I’m eternally grateful for the fact that it’s something that anyone can relate to: my even talking about stopping drinking and getting help with the problems that led to me picking up again in Dec. 2016.

I often joke that if you can’t be a good example, then you’ll have to be a terrible warning. And so I’m responding to the most recent email I got (and I’ve let her know privately that I’m doing this) in hopes that if you find yourself in my sandals or know of someone who does, you’ll be able to share this with them.

Because You Wrote Asking How I Did It…

by Erin

You’ve gotten to a point where you’re worried that you’re more than a “social” drinker. Whether it’s self-isolation, recent retirement, boredom or stress, you have found your intake of wine, cocktails, beer – whatever – on the rise. And you don’t like it.

I mean, you do like it at the time – most of us do – but you don’t like the knowledge that when you open that bottle of Pinot, you know you’re not leaving any by the time you go to bed. You might even open another, right? 

You like how that first sip of an icy martini or a spicy Caesar just gets you a little warm all over, like a wash of wellness and comfort that starts at your toes and gently rises up until the colour comes to your cheeks. 

That colour. Rosy red that is starting to show on your face the morning after. Are those broken capillaries? Huh. You haven’t noticed them because you’re busy applying concealer to the dark circles under your eyes. Under-eye concealer, eye drops, ibuprofen: the i’s have it. As in “I think I have a problem.”

You likely chide yourself for having such a thought; you know plenty of people who drink way more than you, and none of them considered asking for help or thought they might need to examine their intake. I mean, how many DUIs have you had? Well, none.

You plan ahead and do your drinking at home; no one in your office or circle of friends would ever imagine that after sipping your one beverage slowly when you’re with them, you go home and can’t wait to crack open that bottle that has been patiently anticipating your return.

You can’t have a problem: you really only drink on Fridays and weekends! And never alone. Okay, rarely; you deserve to sip a glass or three of wine while you read a good book. It’s civilized; all of the memes online say so. Cook with wine (and even put some in the food!). Drink to survive parenting. Drink to survive COVID. Drink to deal with stress. Drink to forget. Drink to celebrate. Drink to mourn. Drink. Drink. Drink. What kind of a wuss would you be if you stopped?

Your clever brain tells you that you don’t possibly have a problem: you count your drinks, after all. You aren’t like those people whose elevator has gone all the way down, living in the streets with no home and seemingly no hope; you know when to stop.

You can’t imagine walking yourself into a 12-step meeting (although all you know of them is 50s movies with smoky rooms filled with forlorn, fedora-wearing failures). You forget the glamorous types: Mary Tyler Moore, Dick Van Dyke, Ringo Starr, Elton John, Jann Arden, Robert Downey Jr., Bradley Cooper, Rob Lowe, Demi Lovato, Daniel Radcliffe…and that’s just a few. 

But if they do cross your mind, you remember that they’re all rich; they must all have gone to some posh resort and gotten sober in anonymity, your sharp mind tells you. Yes, most of those people, if not all, have a lot of zeroes in their bank account (in the right places, mind you). But you’re forgetting the meetings, those 12-step gatherings, where there’s no bouncer at the door, just a greeter. Who you think you are, what you earn or what you have is immaterial; it’s what you want – sobriety – that is the only price of admission.

I was tired of hiding. Tired of feeling ashamed. Tired of not moving forward. Tired of looking so tired. Tired of the weight gain. Tired of the lethargy. Tired of depression. Tired of the fog: forgetting words when I needed them, having to check emails to see if I’d answered, tired of not knowing how a movie ended. Just. So. Tired.

If you’re tired, you know, a brighter morning awaits. And however you decide to stop –  whether it’s writing to a stranger or calling a friend, Googling “find AA meeting near me” (online these days or safely distanced in a parking lot somewhere), looking up treatment centres or picking up a book that resonates with you (for me it was A Thinking Person’s Guide to Sobriety by Bert Pluymen) and reading it, then re-reading it numerous times – it’s never too early and never too late. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” they say.

Some of us quit in our forties (and again in our fifties); others in their twenties, and some even in their sixties or seventies. It doesn’t matter what year, just the day you wake up and say you don’t want to feel like this anymore: sluggish and filled with regret and remorse for the precious days you’re just wasting, the days when you feel like doing nothing except counting the hours ’til the wine comes out of the fridge or it’s time to crack that beer. That’s the day it all begins. The day you say no more – but just for today.

Because that’s all it is. Today…and hope for another one. Why else do you think we say “One Day at a Time?”

I’ll be back with you Thursday. And, oh, so grateful.

Just a thought… Your home should tell the story of who you are, and be a collection of what you love. [Nate Berkus]

How’s your week going? Well, I hope; I’ve got so much going on in our house these days and so much of it has to do with OTHER houses. First off, some great news: Phil and Brooke’s three-bedroom in Barrhaven, outside of Ottawa, went up for sale yesterday (after they’d moved out and had it tarted up) and there are no fewer than 13 showings booked for today.

An actual offer came in yesterday but they’re just kind of biding their time. Who could have imagined that in a time of such uncertainty and upheaval in almost every other area of our lives, the real estate market would be red hot in so many places?

Actually, we had an inkling earlier this summer of how things were going when we were helping Phil and Brooke find their new forever home here on the island: most of the houses in their price range were gone before we could even get a viewing! We all count ourselves lucky that they found a lovely place so close to ours. But for now, they’re really close – right here.

Tomorrow it will be three weeks since they landed at YYJ…and still no word of where their moving truck is. When Brooke checked in with the small company yesterday she was told it was “in transit.” Um-hm. (Like their truck, or whomever they’ve farmed out to, doesn’t have GPS or something?)

How fortunate they are not to be paying a nightly hotel rate or enduring some other huge inconvenience. We’re just loving having them here and we even get to sleep in a little while they’re quietly starting their day. Perfect! There are a lot of blessings to count and, trust me, we’re doing it daily.

Next week I have the opportunity to record a podcast with Sarah Richardson, launching on crea.ca in early September, for the Canadian Real Estate Association show that I do monthly. In talking with Sarah, whom you know as a designer, creator, author and broadcaster, she brought up something really interesting – and quite true – about the current housing situation and it extends not only to homeowners but to those folks who rent as well.

With the self-isolation and work-from-home world we have inhabited since March of this year, people have come to see where they live through different eyes. For many, our homes have multi-tasked as restaurant, office, gym and hotel. And people are starting to look at their surroundings and ask what if this isn’t just a 2020 thing?

We’re changing how we see our homes and want to make them suit us for so much more, if we are able. It’s why, in the early days of staying locked inside our homes, paint stores were doing a booming business. People decided to make their homes more livable. And why not? I mean, as long as there is the money to do it, a coat of paint can be the next best thing to a renovation.

It ties in with a motto I’ve long had: we should live in our homes as if we’re about to sell them. When does your place ever look better – cleaner, more orderly, fewer paint chips or broken door handles – than when you’re listing? Yesterday when she saw the pictures and video of their Ottawa place, our daughter-in-law said, “It almost makes me want to live there!”

Fortunately, that feeling passed and the door has opened – literally – for another family to call their freshly painted, cleaned and touched-up house “home” – and soon!

At about the time their house closes (we hope), our tribulations with the house that we bought in Palm Springs will also be over. Having left it in a flurry in March, I swear to you as I said a quiet good-bye in my head, it occurred to me that I might never see it again.

Wondering if the pandemic or political fall-out might lead to a complete societal collapse, I let the thought cross my mind that we would never return. And I was right. Of course, we made this happen because of the happy turn of events in our lives north of the border, but who knows when we’d have been able to get travel health insurance again anyway?

Yesterday we spent three hours on FaceTime with a kind friend of my sister who is packing up six boxes or so of our belongings to FedEx back to Canada. We don’t know how else we would have done this and are eternally grateful for her time and work and considerable inconvenience in helping us get some clothes, books, a few kitchen items, family photos and odds and ends back to us here in Canada.

Of course I got Rob a guitar last Christmas! It’s on its way too; we sent an empty case down via FedEx on Monday. The headaches are enormous and we’ve been having to deal with the IRS, which mistakenly thinks we’re making a cent on this sale. (Actually, far from it, lest you think everyone who sells in a pandemic is coming out ahead.)

We are not complaining – not in the least. I remind Brooke when she feels guilty about us saying good-bye to the place in California that if someone had come to me while I was floating in the pool in February under clear skies and said, “You can have this, or you can have your family living just a few kilometres away – which do you want?” I’d have been packing my bags in my bathing suit.

After chasing happiness, it’s come to us. So the least we can do is be here to welcome it with open arms, right?

Have a good weekend and we’ll be back with you on Monday.