Savouring Summer

by Heather Plett | Aug 20, 2010 | Uncategorized

I’m getting ready for a lazy, luxurious week at a cabin with my family, so my thoughts are only dipping into the shallow end of the pool these days. No profound insights, no soapboxes – just easy, sweet gratitude for all that is good in the world.

Here’s are a few of the things I’m savouring this summer, and a few that I’m hoping to savour next week:

• Bike rides. Oh how I love them and how sad I am that I blew a tire and couldn’t ride today.
• Lazy afternoons on the front lawn with a book and a glass of iced tea (or wine, if I’m in the mood)
• The world’s best pizza cooked outdoors on a wood-fired brick oven
• Easy conversations on my brother’s verandah
• Paddling a canoe through some of Canada’s many beautiful lakes
• Connecting with incredible, adventurous women around a campfire in the stillness of the wilderness
• Beach afternoons with my daughters
• Inspiring, energizing, easy conversations with some new and beautiful friends (you know who you are)
• Brave and honest and hopeful email exchanges with other friends (I’m talkin’ about you and you)
• The promise of EVEN MORE conversations and connections with people who inspire me (you could be next!)
• The excited energy I get when I think of what will be blossoming for me in the near future
• A lunch date with a dear friend and mentor
• Wandering through a lazy beach town with my beloved on our anniversary
• Thai food and wine with some of the beautiful (and local) women I met at ALIA
• Watching my daughters play soccer and making deeper connections with some of the other soccer parents
• An upcoming walk on the beach with a cousin who’s become a friend
• Folk Festival (of course!)
• Tonight’s yoga and dinner night on a patio overlooking the river with a great bunch of women
• Chillin’ in the lazy river at Valley Fair with my girls

As I look over the list (and this is only a partial list of all the goodness in my life), I realize that most of the things I’m savouring are the connections I’ve made with people in my life. I am so blessed to be the recipient of such great love and friendship.

What are YOU savouring? (And, yes, that IS the way we spell savour in Canada!)

This post is dedicated to the voices that are not being heard

by Heather Plett | Aug 17, 2010 | Uncategorized

Yesterday I picked up the textbook I’ll be using to teach a series of courses on Writing for Public Relations. That’s the cover of the book you see above. Does anything jump out at you when you look at the picture?

Think about it… three well-known men at microphones, and one anonymous woman at a keyboard, presumably writing their speeches and press releases. What does that say about who’s allowed to have a voice? At the same time, though, whose wisdom might be in the words those voices expresses?

Now, I know I have been guilty of over-analysis before, and some of you  might be clicking away from this post already because “Heather’s on her soap-box again”, but bear with me for a moment, will you?

I haven’t read the book yet, so I cannot judge it, and I suspect that whoever designed/published it had no intentions of making any gender statements, but none-the-less, statements are often made by the subtle ways in which we communicate our values and opinions without even being fully aware of what we’re communicating. When I started in the position I’m about to leave, for example, I had to work very hard at changing our publications, website, etc., to ensure that the images we used to represent our donors weren’t all white men over fifty. (That’s not a dig at my predecessor – I just don’t think anyone noticed before.)

(Confession time: just this morning in a management meeting, we were talking about a part time job that’s available at our office, which requires more hours in winter than in summer. I said “it might be perfect for a working mom who wants to be at home with her kids in summer.” And the male feminist sitting next to me nudged me and whispered “or the working dad”. I was duly chastised. Hence I have no right to suggest I always get it right. Old habits die hard.)

Back to the textbook… I find it rather interesting (in a “God directs us when we’re paying attention” sort of way) that while I’m getting ready to walk away from my day job to teach people how to be better communicators and to lead people in imagining a world where we all trust our feminine wisdom more and let those voices be heard in our leadership, politics, art, healthcare, schools, etc., I am faced with such a strong image of what continues to be acceptable in our society.

Let’s face it – men’s voices are still heard more often. Men’s leadership is still trusted more broadly. Yes, we’ve definitely seen some significant changes in that regard, and I acknowledge that I probably wouldn’t have had a chance to work in some of the roles I’ve worked in fifty or a hundred years ago.  We may have come a long way, baby… but… it’s not okay to become complacent and assume that it’s smooth sailing from here on in.

That’s why some of what I mentioned in the last post worries me. If we forget the hard work that our feminist fore-mothers and fore-fathers did to ensure that ALL of our voices can be heard, and if we get too caught up in living self-centred, consumerist lives because we are “entitled and empowered”, then women the world over will continue to be marginalized, abused, genitally mutilated, sold into sex slavery, etc., etc.

Below is a photo of some young women I met in India. They had been rescued from slavery by the staff of an incredible organization that we met with in a remote rural town, but their families didn’t want them back because they are damaged goods. I wish I could remember their names (and part of me – quite honestly – is not sure I have the right to use their picture without at least that dignity), but I don’t. None-the-less, it is for these women – and others like them – that I hereby commit to following this calling wherever it leads, to speaking up when I am called to do so, to encouraging others (women AND men) to trust their feminine wisdom, to not be satisfied with the status quo, and to teaching each and every student in my writing class to remember the power of their own voices.

I admit, I have not always remembered the power of my own voice and I have too often deferred to what I perceive to be the “voice of power”. But now is the time to begin to make that right. For these women. And for my daughters.

Just a reminder…

by Heather Plett | Aug 13, 2010 | Uncategorized

If God is an Artist

who paints mushrooms just for fun,

and we are created in God’s image,

it seems to me we shouldn’t have so much trouble believing (and acting like)

we are artists.

(And don’t even get me started on bird songs, or the dances of schools of fish, or…)

Note: All photos taken within approx. 100 feet of our campsite on a recent canoe trip. And this was only a sampling!

A book called Happy

by Heather Plett | Aug 6, 2010 | Uncategorized

Once upon a time there was a book.

It was a very special book, with a pretty pink cover,

and lots of pretty pages where people could write things, glue things, or paint things.

This book had only one pupose in life –

to remind people of all of the reasons they had to be happy.

Because of that, they called her

The Happy Book.

(All here friends called her HB for short.)

HB was a globe trotter.

She loved to fly from city to city,

meeting people everywhere she went and reminding them

of all the happy stories they had in their memory banks.

HB didn’t mind if people were sad once in awhile – she knew that sadness was an important part of life –

but HB wanted people to remember that happiness was always there, under the surface, waiting to be found again.

One day, HB arrived in a Canadian city named Winnipeg.

HB was very excited about her next adventure.

She was going on a CANOE TRIP with a new group of friends!

Packed safely in a dry-bag (HB didn’t want to get wet and soggy if she got dropped in a lake),

she traveled by van, by canoe, and by foot

to a beautiful place on Lake Manoman where her new friends set up camp

and let her sleep in a tent for the first time in her life!

HB loved traveling with her new friends because they did a lot of laughing – even when it rained!

She was especially fond of the evenings when the seven women would sit around a campfire

and she would hear all about the stories of their lives.

She heard about their children, their husbands, their jobs, and about all of the things

that filled these women’s lives with both happiness and sadness.

It was all very good, especially when HB got passed around the circle

and got to meet these special women one-on-one.

The whole weekend was exciting for HB…

but there was one moment when HB was happiest of all.

HB was carried to the beach and… while she sat quietly on the rock…

the women, who were giggling and a little self-conscious,

took off their clothes and went

SKINNY-DIPPING!

What made HB especially happy at this moment was that

these women decided that they weren’t going to care if they were fat, skinny, lopsided, hairy, jiggling with cellulite, or sporting big boobs or small (or even surgically altered) –

at this moment – far away from any eyes other than those of these lovely women whom they trusted – 

they were all FREE and comfortable in their bodies

and HAPPY!

(HB even heard one of them say she felt like she was safe and fresh in a womb.)

Soon after that, HB, carrying a picture of that moment with her, set off on her next adventure.

*Note: This is my contribution to the Happy Book Mailaround.

Embracing solitude

by Heather Plett | Aug 4, 2010 | Uncategorized

On the canoe trip this past weekend, my friend Jayne remarked that in the nine years she’s known me, she never knew how much I enjoy solitude. This comment came after I woke up early in the morning to sit for an hour alone gazing out over the magical foggy lake, and after I’d wandered off into the woods in the middle of the afternoon for a bit of quiet meditation on a moss-covered rock.

It’s true – solitude and I are old familiar friends. I can barely function without a little solitude in my life, whether it’s my bike ride to and from work, a wander through a bookstore in the middle of a busy weekend, or a business trip that offers me a few evenings with nothing to do but wander alone through a new city.

It’s not that I’m extremely introverted – I’m not. That’s why it surprised my friend Jayne. She’s mostly seen me as an outgoing leader/communicator who’s always willing to contribute to group discussions, host parties, facilitate workshops, etc. In the 4 or 5 times I’ve taken a Myers-Briggs survey, in fact, I’ve fallen just over the line into the extrovert category (though I tend to be  a fence-sitter on that one).

But solitude… oh how I love it! It has to be in balance with the outgoing communicator stuff – I’d go a little crazy with nothing but solitude – but without it, I think I’d be a stressed out zombie much of the time.

I didn’t always embrace solitude. Back in my twenties, in fact, I thought solitude was something to be avoided. I was pretty sure if I spent too much time alone I would look pathetic and anti-social. So I did everything I could to make sure I was seen to be an active member of the social scene.

But then things changed around the time I turned thirty. Partly it was marriage and motherhood that changed me. Having people always present in my home made me realize that sometimes – though I loved these people dearly – I just needed some quiet time alone. Thankfully, my introverted husband understood, and started figuring out that if he’d occasionally send me out of the house for some alone time, I’d come back a much happier woman.

Embracing solitude can be a little scary at first. The first time you eat alone in a restaurant, for example, you worry that you might be the person everyone is staring at and feeling sorry for. But once you’ve done it a few times, you begin to sink into it and learn to appreciate the opportunity to quietly enjoy your food and do all the people-watching your heart desires. I used to take a book or magazine along to help fill the space between ordering and receiving my food, but I don’t always need that anymore.

I think that the more comfortable we are with ourselves – all of the good stuff AND the bad stuff – the more confident we can be in our solitude.  We start to care less about what other people think and start to feel more relaxed just having our own thoughts for company. When we’re feeling insecure, it’s hard to sit still with our own thoughts. Mostly we want to keep busy and keep a little noise in our lives to drown out the sound of our own voice.

When I was in the woods on the weekend, the idea came to me that I should challenge myself one of these days to see just how much solitude I can handle – just how comfortable I am with my own thoughts. Perhaps I’ll do a vision quest – find a place in the woods where it’s just me, my thoughts, nature, and God. Will I embrace it, or will I run back to civilization when things get too quiet? I don’t know, but I think I’ll try – even though it feels a little scary. I’ve done lots of solo trips, but there’s a big difference between sitting alone in the woods and sitting alone in a hotel room.

This little video has been floating around the internet and I’m sure many of you have seen it by now. It’s a good little reminder of the beauty of being alone.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7X7sZzSXYs]