Margie Warrell

Submitted by Ginny on 1/6/10

When my 2 children were newborn and 22 months old respectively, I faced a challenging time. I am sure everyone feels challenged with children, especially newborns! But I felt like I was in survival mode. It was January and a record-snowy winter. My husband’s work hours meant that I was on my own A LOT, my friends were all working, and we weren’t in a financial position to be enrolling in Gymboree-type programs. I felt a little helpless, and couldn’t understand what had happened to the once-competent business owner that I once was. Then I looked around at all the people who had children, and wondered how they survived. I decided that no matter how supermom you are, or not, the sun comes up tomorrow and your kids are one day older. I knew my kids would be fine, I just needed to support my mind! With that I decided not to wallow any longer, packed my kids up for the park and set out. Over the next few weeks of park visits, I sought out other women who were in similar, or sometimes even very different situations. The two things we had in common were our geography and our kids. I started a rotating playgroup/coffeetime which cost nothing but a pot of coffee and some animal crackers when it was your turn to host. Nobody looked at the dustbunnies on your floor when they visited, we just chatted and supported and comiserated and celebrated. It took some guts to approach and propose my idea to this group of women, but I can safely say that this group got me through the darkest months of that winter and beyond with less ‘survival’ and a lot more smiles.

Submitted by Ginny on 1/6/10

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Submitted by Gigi on 11/5/09

When I think of courage, I think of someone saving a child from a burning building or people who dedicate their lives for the sake of justice. I personally have little resemblance to a courageous person and consider myself more of a coward. I am always worried and assuming the worst. It is easy to see it in my face. I’m an open book and the pages are all associated with fear and worry.

A few years ago, my younger brother was hospitalized with major stomach pains. The doctors weren’t sure what was wrong and he was in the hospital for two weeks. I was with him in the hospital room by the end of those two weeks when my brother begged the doctor to go home. He finally released him with me in what I saw was a reluctant decision because of pressure from my brother to escape. I was scared.

Later that night, my brother felt major pains in his stomach again. He tried to hide it but we all knew he had to go back. He cried and pleaded not to go to the hospital but I grabbed his hand and said we had to go. The fear in his eyes killed me inside. On the way to the hospital, all that was going through my head is “they don’t know what is wrong with him and he is going to die in this condition. What will my life be like without my only sibling? I have to start mentally preparing myself for the worst.”

When they admitted him into the hospital, the doctor on call said he had an intestinal blockage and that he would have to put a tube in his nose again to empty his stomach. My brother detested that tube. When he saw it, he became hysterical. I looked out to the doorway and saw my father crying as the doctors tried to put the tube in his nose. Inside I was dying in the midst of this scene but outside I was strong and telling my brother “You can do this! I am with you.” I wondered if he could see the worry in my eyes but from his reaction, he was able to calm down. I was shocked.

In the midst of crisis, it is crazy to think that you have the ability to be other than your usual self. When my parents looked scared and worried, I was able to reassure them. I might not have believed what they were saying but I stood strong for them and my brother. I felt like an imposter because deep down inside, I thought the worst. Months later, when my brother was fully recovered, he told me that my support helped him to get through it. My parents told me, specifically my dad, that they were amazed at how calm and cool I was and how helpful I had been. If they only knew. I guess I have a little courage in me but honestly, I feel that my brother was the one with courage. He had the courage to lean on his worrisome big sister when he needed support the most.

Submitted by Gigi on 11/5/09

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I’m heading to Florida tomorrow for a few days of sunshine. Friends who have a home in Key Largo have invited us down and we figured it would be a fun place to spend Halloween! The last time I was in the Florida Keys was nearly twenty years ago. I was backpacking around the US and hired a rental car with a friend in Miami. We drove down to Key West and then slept in the car overnight to avoid paying for accommodations. We showered in the public showers. We ate cheap food and saved our money for the bar. It wasn’t comfortable but it was a hell of a lot of fun. Looking back over the ensuing twenty years I’m hit with the amount of change I’ve experienced since then. If you’d told me back in 1990 that 19 years later I’d be living in Virginia with four kids I don’t know if I’d have believed you. Ahhh, what an adventure life has been. Which is why today’s post is going to be a reflection on change.

Change is a constant in our lives and yet so often we resist it. As human beings we are wired to avoid change because any type of change, even change for the better, involves a level of discomfort in some shape or form. The whole concept of comfort zones evolved to explain the hedonistic psychological drive in all of us to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Comfort zones — characterized by the familiar, the known, the predictable — are where we risk little except, of course, our spirit’s deepest fulfillment. Change, by its very nature, requires us to step beyond our comfort zone and let go of something we’ve become familiar with — whether it be a the structure of our company, a relationship, a routine, a neighborhood or a physical environment in which we’ve lived or worked — and adapt to something new, something unfamiliar.

As someone who has moved around a lot over the last decade and had four children along the way, I know all too well that change can not only be uncomfortable but it can be inconvenient and, at times, quite overwhelming (as every new mother will tell you). However I also know that unless you are willing to embrace change in your life, you will miss the opportunities your ever-changing environment presents and will be unable to create for yourself a life you really enjoy living.

Perhaps you are someone who feels very averse to change. A creature of habit you call yourself. That is all fine and good. But if your aversion to change has left you unwilling to address the areas of your life you don’t feel good about and fulfill your own unique potential then it is coming at a cost to you. In my experience when people choose to avoid [...]

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Life doesn’t always go to plan. Sometimes things don’t work out as we want. Sometimes people let us down. Sometimes our hopes, dreams and expectations crash to the ground with a thud. Over the years I’ve felt disappointed more times than I care to count. An opportunity that looked promising fell through. A person I thought highly of acted poorly. A job I wanted went to someone else. Just last weekend, I felt a stab of vicarious disappointment as my oldest son Lachlan missed out on making the select basketball team. He’d had his heart set on it and when my husband told him the news, I found myself struggling in vain to hold back the tears for the sharp disappointment Lachlan felt. (Oh how we parents hate to see our children in pain.) I am sure that you have had your own share of disappointments. Perhaps you are working through one (or several) right now.

Disappointment is an emotion we feel when we don’t get the outcome we want or expect. When reality fails to conform to what we think it should be, disappointment (often combined with resentment or frustration) rises up within us, sometimes with an intensity that knocks us down hard. As human beings wired to become attached to certain outcomes, we are destined to experience it throughout the course of our lives. Having just spent two days last week with the Dalai Llama, I now know that even the most enlightened among us are not immune to emotions such as disappointment. Rather they have just learnt how not to let those emotions take hold. But I believe deeply that if we only ever had things work out the way we wanted, we would never value success and we’d never develop the resilience or wisdom God (or the universe or whatever you choose to call it) intended us to.

It’s the knocks in life, the setbacks and disappointments that allow us to savor and fully appreciate the wins and successes. As I work through disappointment I am called to deepen my faith — in the belief that everything is exactly as it should be (even though that’s not always how I want it to be), in myself and in my own resourcefulness. It also calls me to listen more closely to my own intuition and to trust that within every disappointment lies the seed of an equivalent or greater benefit. I just have to find it. You just have to find it. Does that lessen the blow for Lachlan as he comes to accept a reality that is different from the one he’d attached himself to? Nope. Not much. But I have great faith that his character, in his resilience and in his ability to deal with other disappointments that may line his path through life will be strengthened because of it. [...]

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Learning to Trust Myself submitted by Christine: 10/19/09

Eighteen months ago I found myself stuck in an all-time low. My boyfriend of seven years announced that he no longer loved me and wanted to part ways. While I had sensed for a while he wasn’t happy, I had no idea he was that unhappy. It was a huge shock and left me feeling devastated, rejected and unlovable. The break-up was a great opportunity for me to really assess who I am, where I am and what I want from life. When it came down to being really honest with myself, I realized I hadn’t been happy in my marriage either. I just hadn’t had the guts to admit it. I also realized I wasn’t happy in my work and that there were many areas of my life where I’d been settling. It was around this time, a girlfriend gave me a copy of Margie’s book, Find Your Courage. It came at the perfect time (a year earlier and it would have sat on the shelf). Her words really struck home and I came to see how much my own fears and self-doubts had been running my life.

I’d married my husband because I was afraid that if I didn’t I might be alone. I stayed in my job because I was afraid if I left it, I wouldn’t get a better one. I stuck with my mediocre life, because I was afraid this was as good as it would get. I am so pleased to share that change is possible. Even for someone like me who has always loved security and loathed change. I have gone back to college part time, I have (in the midst of all the news of doom and gloom and job cutbacks) started a new job with a great company and I have met a wonderful guy (who does want to be with me!). The experience has restored my faith in the belief that we are our own biggest enemies and that by selling out on ourselves we bring a lot of unnecessary misery in to our lives. Of course I don’t know what the future holds, but I know that if I just trust in myself to handle the challenges as they come along, and refuse to settle for less than what really want, that I will continue to attract great people and opportunities into my life. Living with courage is not always easy, but it is always important and most of all, it is always possible.

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