jennifer's story

my typical monday weekend update has been pushed back 'til tomorrow, because i have the pleasure of posting another story for the series.

i came across jennifer's blog when kal linked her for purchasing one of her pieces of tiny art. upon first visit, i gobbled it all up. even though she's got a few other projects goin on in her busy life right now that keep her from posting regularly, there's more than enough great stories and old posts to keep a girl busy for a good long while. she's a super talented writer with a kickin sense of humour, and is the epitome of bloggy crush.

without further adieu - jennifer's story.

When I was thinking about what story I wanted to share with you, it suddenly occurred to me that this year marks a significant anniversary for me: ten years ago, I chopped off my hair.

Before the cut, my hair was coarse and thick, with a barely perceptible wave, and hung several inches past my shoulders. It had been more or less the same my whole life, with slight variations – a rolled-under-bangs phase in high school, a spiral perm in college, and a big, loose curls period that required a thick-barreled extra-hot curling iron. I was tired of spending hours trying to get it just right, tired of pulling it into a ponytail out of frustration, tired of all the products and gadgets that cluttered my bathroom counter.

And so, one sunny morning in early summer, I marched into a salon in Los Gatos, California, and asked a stylist to cut it off.

“How short to you want it?” she asked.

“Really short,” I replied. “Like an inch or two long.”

She wasn’t convinced. “How about if we start with a few inches, and see how you feel,” she said.

“Okay,” I smiled, “but I’ve made up my mind.”

Her scissor blades made thick slicing sounds as chunks of my hair fell to the floor. A few stray pieces floated in the air and stuck to my lip gloss. I glanced down; three inches of mousy brown hair lay at my feet.

The stylist hovered over me. “Are you okay?” she said, biting her lip.

“Yes,” I laughed. “Keep going.”

She snipped the next three inches. More stray hairs clung to my lips, and now I had a bob. I could have asked the stylist to stop and curl it into a pageboy, but: I could feel a breeze tickle the back of my neck.

“More,” I said, in response to her question.

Finally, when most of my hair was scattered on the floor around my feet, I ran my fingers through the short tufts that remained; I shook my head, amazed at how light my neck felt. When I stood up to brush the last bit of hair off of my cape, everyone in the salon cheered.

I didn’t walk out of the salon that afternoon – I floated. I felt free, strong, invincible. Is this what boys wake up feeling like every day? I wondered. How have they kept this a secret all these years?

Ten years later, I’m still wearing my hair in the same boyish style. Sometimes I look at women with gorgeous long hair – sleek and straight, lustrous and wavy, or shiny and curly – and I feel a pang of envy. Then I remember all the things I love about this cut: I don’t own a comb. Or a blow dryer. It takes me all of five minutes to get my hair “walk out the door” ready. I can’t imagine going back to the wash/dry/style/fuss routine.

But most of all, I keep my hair short because of this: every five or six weeks, when I walk out of the swanky San Francisco salon where I go to get it trimmed, I feel that same sense of freedom and invincibility that I felt that first day I got my hair cut. I wish I could bottle that sensation and bathe in it every day.

Though I have been thinking that it might be fun to get a wig… just for fun. Every decade or so, a girl should shake it up. Don’t you think?

everybody has a story. i'd love for you to tell me yours. if you have something to share, email me and let's talk!

tiffany's story

whoa! hello monday - how did you get here so fast?

it was, in many ways, a whirlwind weekend. i got some errands done, yes, but most of it was spent trying to catch up from what i didn't get to through the week, and then sitting and waiting for five hours on saturday for the power to come back on after our first spring thunderstorm. (actually, it was more like giving up and going to bed early.)

today's fabulous what's your story feature comes to you from tiffany of the would-be writers guild.

I took my first trip to New York City at 21 years old. Though I had seen the city a million times on TV and movies, I was not prepared for the rapture I would feel standing there and soaking in the city's electricity. I was with my husband and a good friend and the three of us made our way around the city in complete awe, though we wore dark glasses and made it a point to avoid eye contact with anyone (a safety measure in our minds). Without realizing it, my perspective had changed drastically - the world was so much bigger than my hometown and it wasn't nearly as scary as I'd feared. That was a pleasant surprise.

Having my perspective changed has, at times, been painful. When my husband's mother was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2003, I was absolutely certain that she would not die. Why? Because my husband had already lost his father prematurely in 1996, and I thought that there must be some universal rules in place that decreed that while tragedy might strike, it would only happen once. I thought that there was a limit to the suffering one person or family would have to endure. (Go ahead. I'll wait while you say, "DUH!")

She didn't even make it six months.

My perspective changed again - life offers absolutely no guarantees or promises of fairness and equality. At first this was devastating, but eventually it became sort of freeing. No more keeping arbitrary cosmic scores in my head; it was time to live life in the moment. Today is the gift. Most of the time, I'm good at remembering that.

However, last year I lost my grip. My husband had landed his long-anticipated first real job after grad school 2200 miles away from where we lived. We had a complicated laundry list of Things That Absolutely Had To Fall Into Place In a Very Short Period of Time before we moved. I became consumed with the list and obsessed with fear and worry that things would not, could not work out. I became an Olympic-caliber worrier. I imagined thousands of tragic scenarios and lived them out in the wee hours of the morning when I couldn't sleep. I offered myself up as a sacrifice to Worry and it swallowed me whole.

My perspective a year later is changed, yet again. This is what I learned: things work out. Either the way we hope, or the way we fear, or a way we never even thought of, things work out. That is the nature of things - time passes and stuff happens. Worry is a robber of time, sleep, and stomach lining. It takes all of your energy and gives you nothing in return. I am most peaceful when I let tomorrow happen tomorrow.

I'm a different person than I was at 20, 25, 30, and even yesterday. Most of the time I'm taking two steps forward, then one step back. Or, one step forward and two steps back. Or, one step forward that actually results in a face plant. But that's the great thing about life, isn't it? It's always moving us somewhere.

remember - everyone has a story. i'd love for you to tell me yours. email me and let's talk - new features get posted every monday.

katie's story

hello monday!

this week's installment of what's your story was submitted by katie of katelynjane's notebook. enjoy!

When I was 19, my Mom found out she was pregnant. She had given birth to six other kids at that point and didn't go in for an ultra-sound until several months into the pregnancy because she had a feeling that something was wrong with the baby or herself. When she finally went in for her ultra-sound, the nurse - thinking that Mom knew already - mentioned the two heartbeats. Mom's eyes popped "Two heartbeats?"

She was 43 and expecting twins.

I was working at a hardware store at the time, and clearly remember her coming to see me after the appointment, tears falling, with a panicked expression on her face. "What am I going to do? We can't handle this - it's too much!" We were standing in the middle of the store, leaning on laminate flooring. The only thing I could think to say to her was, "Mom, God know's what he's doing. He won't give you what you can't handle".

Four months later, my Mom gave birth to two beautiful baby girls; Sophia and Victoria. Twenty years younger than me, they could have been my own babies. Nonetheless, they were adorable and precious and more than a huge part of our family.

I remember holding them for the first time and thinking, "What if Mom had gotten an abortion? What if she had given into the thought that she couldn't handle these babies?" This had never been an option for her - but what if - I couldn't imagine giving up one or both of these little lives. Their little hands, their little feet, their little smiles. I thought that if a woman would just hold her baby first, before making the decision for abortion, there was no way she would go through with it.

The twins are almost six and just as beautiful as ever. Tory is the mirror image of me when I was little, and Fofie (this is what Tory calls her) looks just like my other sister when she was her age. I can still hardly tell them apart.

remember - everyone has a story. i'd love for you to tell me yours. email me and let's talk.

tea's story

i'm absolutely thrilled to present to you the first installment in my tell me a story series. without further adieu - today's feature is from tea from everyday sugar.

Traveling the world has a way of changing you. Like an earthquake, it can rattle your foundations; I was fourteen and I was rattled. Until then I’d spent my entire life in Canada. I was born in Canada and had never ventured farther than a few trips to the USA. My parents, having spent most of their adult life in North America, were still immigrants, and often spoke of visiting "home". So there I was in the Philippines, seeing "home" for the first time in my life, sticky with sweat, and covered in hundreds of mosquito bites.

I stuck out. Not only was I awkwardly tall for my age, but I couldn’t speak the language - though I could understand it. I didn’t know what manners were expected of me, my clothes were different, and everywhere I went, I felt like people were staring. Even the mosquitoes could tell I was a foreigner.

Never in my life had I felt so uncomfortable. When I was younger, whenever anyone had asked me what my nationality was, and I would answer ‘Filipino’ and never thought twice about it. My friends were a diverse bunch and it never really mattered. Now, in the midst of my relatives, my family, and in the face of my heritage staring back at me, I felt like a tall, sweaty, itchy alien.

When I came back to Canada, the awkward feeling did not go away. Who was I really? I didn’t feel quite Filipino enough, but just calling myself Canadian didn’t seem right either.

It wasn’t until almost ten years later that I found my answer. One day I was in class and the professor took out a piece of string and started winding it around two push pins. There are different kinds of maps, she explained. This was a map of a journey between two points. As she ran her fingers along the string, the answer hit me like a slap in the face. I could feel my foundations settle back into place.

It was simple, really.

I didn’t have to be one or the other. On any given day I could see myself sliding back and forth on the string cradle between two cultures. I could be both Filipino and Canadian simultaneously. I didn’t need a hyphen or a dash. Both cultures made me who I am, and the string would hang limp if one of those pins were missing.

People are complex and full of unexpected contradictions, but that’s part of what makes us human and interesting. You can be an artist, scientist, mother, child, or student… we are all many things at once.

That’s just a bit of my story. The story continues, changes countries, involves letters mailed across continents, and a kiss with a mysterious stranger, but that’s something I’ll save for another day.

remember - everyone has a story. i'd love for you to tell me yours. email me and let's talk.

tell me a story

so over the past few weeks, i've been thinking about people's stories. not just any kind - but the kind that people tell about the things that define them, that make them who they are. their personal narratives. at work, i've been finding out all of these super-interesting facts about people's lives; one of my coworkers is a jazz singer, another one has his black belt, and yet another taught high school before she came to work at the university. all of their experiences and histories - no matter how seemingly small - have contributed somehow to who they are today, and i think that's super interesting.

or maybe i'm just a huge creeper.

a bit of my own back-story behind this whole idea - i started university as an english major but dropped as soon as i discovered that one of the prerequisites was 'approaches to english grammar'. (how many approaches can there be!? i was taught in grade six that there was one - the teacher's approach.) i took sociology instead and, over the course of my studies, i'd encountered the notion of the personal narrative and how, with the advent of new and wonderful forms of technology, it's evolved in several different ways.

(stay with me here, this isn't an academic essay. it's goin somewhere - i promise!)

with the advent of blogging/twitter/facebook/msn and all of the other creative and techy ways to keep in touch, old-school critics have lamented the diminishing amount of daily face-to-face interaction (admit it - how often have you sent an email to a coworker who's office is just around the corner from you?), mostly because it reduces the number of chances that we have to chat. chatting turns to discussion, which eventually helps you get to know people and their lives and their stories, and somewhere during that process, their personal narrative is formed. in turn, when shared, these narratives can help us learn and develop ourselves in ways we might not have the chance to do while limiting ourselves to online interactions alone.

furthermore, let's be honest - more often than not, people heavily edit what they publish to the web. (case in point: how many people put a positive spin on their blog content or facebook updates?) to a certain extent, it's necessary to maintain readers. after all - nobody likes a debbie downer. but at the same time, it leaves me (and i'm gonna make a massive generalization here and expand it to 'us') sometimes feeling inadequate. we start comparing ourselves to everyone else, based on what we see and read.

and this, i think, is absolute crap. i find that my favourite blogs to read are ones that, while including great creative content of all shapes and sizes, also includes posts about their lives, including some of the less glossy-magazine-page type of content.

and so, instead of featuring the traditional question/answer feature interviews, i'd like to delve a bit deeper into those things that helped make you the way you are. it doesn't have to involve a tragic or earth-moving incident of some sort. big or small, simple or otherwise. heck - it could just be about how your love of gardening helps keep you grounded when you're stressed. whatever. i'd love to feature some of that kind of information about the oh-so-talented bloggers and artists and other types of awesome peeps out there.

in short: everyone has a story. what's yours?

email me (notice my new lil email link in the left column!) and let's talk.

the secret philosophy of ju-jubes

when i was sixteen, i was living and working at a resort for two months; kind of like the movie dirty dancing, minus the dirty dancing and the whole pregnancy bit. it was a fantastic summer. it was there that i was starting to grow up a bit more and become more independent; i was making new friends and getting away from the group i was hanging out with in my high school in the city; i was learning how to live life a little bit more on my own terms.

despite the fact that our meals were included with our room at board at the lodge, one of our favourite things to do was to take a cab into the nearby town and go 'grocery' shopping. there was precious else to do during our time off aside from lounging around the fire pit or down by the lake, so every we'd have to get off of the property and cab the 11km back into 'civilization' (which was a town of about 13,000 at the time). our shopping trips were an exercise in unhealthy eating; we'd buy pop tarts, chips, cookies, peanut butter and loaves of bread, pop, and loads of candy from the bulk foods store. any snacks that we could keep in our humid bunk rooms without risking them spoiling, came home with us.

one particular favourite of ours was ju-jubes. we'd lay on our beds trying to keep cool, fans on high-speed (trying not to move lest we break a sweat) and practice tossing the jubes into our mouths in that lazy aloof way that only teenage girls can perfect; bored with the monotony of the world and ever-waiting for their lives to begin.

for the first little while, i'd pick out only the colours that i liked; red, and orange. not yellow, never green, particularly not black. however, one afternoon (and i'm not sure if this was the result of the long morning picking balls from the driving range or the trauma from recurring chicken-a-la-king on my dinner plate), i was feeling rather philosophical whilst playing my ju-jube tossing game. i'd noticed that the red ones, no matter how delicious they once were, no longer elicited the same measure of satisfaction as they once did. nor orange.

after a few minutes of thoughtful chewing, i sat up and looked at the bag of candies. my tastebuds were obviously tired of the orange and red monotony; there was very little variety in there. the only cure for this, i decided, was to re-integrate the black, yellow, green jubes back in with the rest. i took it one step further, even; i envisioned life to be like my bag of ju-jubes. you may not really like the yellow or green ones, and absolutely cannot stand the black jubes, but without them, the reds don't taste as good.

i'm always reminded, now, of that summer, and my ju-jube philosophy. it's ridiculously simple and forrest-gumpy, but it's going to be one of those things that sticks with me for the rest of my life. you may not always like 100% of the ju-jubes that life throws at you... but if you only ever got the colours you like, you'd never truly appreciate them to the fullest. since then, i've never taken a ju-jube for granted.

i hope you all have a red jube kind of day.