May — Things I Don't Want to Forget

When I sat down to think about May, I wasn't trying to write a review. I was trying to make a list of things I didn't want to forget. I expected to find two or three standout moments. Instead, I found page after page of memories. There were a few rough days, as there always are, but what surprised me most was how many good days were hiding in the month when I looked back.

 

Physically, I am doing very well. My blood sugar and blood pressure both moved into the normal range, at least according to my doctor. Aquafit has become part of my life rather than something I'm trying to establish. This week I completed almost an entire class without using the wall for balance support. I have established a 5,000-step baseline and reached almost double that on several occasions. My weight has remained steady at 196 pounds all month. Perhaps the most visible reminder came when I tried on a medium dress that I was sure wouldn't fit. It did, and comfortably.

The numbers only tell part of the story, though. More than once this month I caught myself noticing something that hasn't come easily in a long time: I was happy. Not every day and not all day, but often enough to notice. There is a bounce in my step that has been missing for years. Music has started finding its way back into my days. I laugh more. I sing more. One of the things that made me happiest was watching Nessa ( my daughter) decide to try Aquafit herself. Part of me is proud that my example may have helped, but mostly I am proud that she wants to take steps toward better health too.

Creativity found its way back into my life as well. I continued writing this blog, creating Pinterest content, working in my daybook, and began retraining some long-neglected visual design skills. The skills were rusty, but not nearly as rusty as I feared. It felt less like learning something new and more like returning to something familiar. There were moments of frustration, but there were also moments when I remembered that I knew more than I thought I did.

Not everything was easy. There were worries about people I care about, difficult conversations, and reminders that compassion and responsibility are not the same thing. I spent time looking at old patterns and old stories. At times I slipped back into habits I thought I had left behind. The difference this time was that I didn't stay there. When I look back at May, I don't see a happy month or a difficult month. I see a month where movement returned. A month where life felt a little bigger than recovery. And that's something I don't want to forget.

So I am stepping into June with gratitude for what May gave me. Not because everything was perfect, but because it reminded me that life can be bigger than recovery. June's theme is Summer Threads, and over the coming weeks I hope to collect small pieces of summer the same way I collected small victories in May—one ordinary day at a time.

Looking Back, Not Staying

"I looked back, but I didn't move backward."

 
There are times I look back at my life and go what the hell? We are what we were raised to be even when we fight against the things we went through ourselves. We either emulate what we knew growing up or we do everything in our power to go in the opposite direction. Either way we are shaped by it. We carry pieces of it with us whether we want to or not.

For myself there are memories I keep and others I avoid as much as possible, but lately some things from my younger years have been making their way back into my thoughts. Certain decisions I made in my twenties have come back around and I have found myself responding to them differently than I did then. Some of that is simply lessons learned. Some of it is pain given and received without closure. Either way I have been looking back more than usual.

Part of that happened because my family and I have started looking seriously at leaving Peterborough and moving somewhere healthier for us mentally and physically. We have been looking toward the Niagara region and trying to think about what that might actually look like. Funny thing though, before we could really think about where we were going, I ended up looking at where I had been.

When my kids were little we lived in Housing for about a year and a half. There was damage to the kitchen after a pipe burst one winter and after that I seemed to get turned down every time I applied for housing. I never really knew why. I always assumed I owed money and I thought I had taken care of it years ago when I paid off old debts after my dad passed away. Still, I never checked. The denial simply became a fact in my head. It became one of those things I just accepted as true.

Now that I am sixty-five and considering another move I thought I would ask. It turns out I had paid the arrears and Housing had no record of me owing anything. There was a note saying money had once been owed but nothing outstanding. I was encouraged to apply again and I cannot even explain how much relief I felt hearing that.

What struck me afterwards was realizing that I had carried that around for years. I had accepted it without questioning it because I thought I already knew the answer. Looking back did not change the past, but it did change the story I had been telling myself.

I think I have been doing that in other areas too. I switched Pinterest to a business account because I was curious if anything I was doing was connecting with people and I discovered the Things I'm Learning series has been getting a lot more attention than I expected. I was surprised by that because while I enjoy creating pins, the truth is they are part of how I cope with things and work through them.

The poetry has been harder. Those poems came out of one of the most difficult periods of my life and sometimes working through them means revisiting things I would rather leave alone. Still, each time I finish a set of pins for one of the poems I feel a little lighter. I am dealing with difficult things, but they are reminders of what was, not what is.

I also found myself explaining some things to my granddaughter that I had never really explained before. Not because I wanted to excuse anyone, but because understanding where someone came from sometimes explains why I protect them so fiercely.

Even my weekend away ended up teaching me something. I realized how much I dislike feeling managed or directed around as though I cannot make my own choices. What surprised me wasn't that I felt irritated. It was realizing how strongly I felt it. Maybe that says something too. 

On the brighter side I spent time wandering through stationery stores and walking around a historical part of Toronto. I walked much more easily than I expected. My feet got tired and sore but nothing else did. I knew the YMCA classes were helping, but I had not realized just how much they were helping. I also got to share that time with family this week and it turned out to be unexpectedly fun.

So much happened this week that I kept trying to figure out how to put it into some kind of order, but maybe it is simpler than I thought. I looked back at routines that drifted, old doubts, family pain and old emotions. I kept the parts that helped and carried them forward.

I looked back, but I didn't stay there.

I continued moving.

I continued creating.

I continued showing up.

In Between Seasons

I'm somewhere in the middle of catching up with myself. The last few days have felt busy and full. I am home again now, but I don't feel fully settled yet. Some things are still moving through me while other things have stayed the same. Things are shifting, but not fully. I noticed how much can happen in a few ordinary days. I am still me. I still need rest. I still come back to familiar routines. But something feels a little different too.

Maybe that was the theme of the weekend without me realizing it at the time. Everything felt a little in-between. I was happy to get away, but happy to come home too. I was tired, excited, overwhelmed and interested all at once.

Of all the things I've gone through this month, one thing I'm certain of is that I like my home. Messy as it gets sometimes, I am always glad to get back here. Home feels familiar in a way that few other places do. It feels settled, even when I don't.

This weekend in the GTA with E and GD#1 was busy. We spent so much time in malls. Have you ever noticed that most malls have nearly double the amount of clothing stores as they have anything else? Every time I go to Dixie Outlet Mall in Mississauga I see acres of clothing stores, but then it is a discount mall. I saw so many things I wanted to buy. It's not like I don't have a lot of clothes already, but something about walking into that mall and seeing floral patterns everywhere made me very happy. Nearly every store I walked into had at least one item I liked, and sometimes three or four.

I could have spent a lot of money in them. I didn't though, because E over the years has instilled in me the desire to look at all the offerings before I buy a thing. So instead of coming out with a dozen new dresses, I only got one. It's a medium so I'm not sure how well it will fit, but I loved the pattern so much that I decided to get it anyway. Looking back now, I think that was another little in-between place. Wanting things, but being more careful. Loving something enough to bring it home, but still wondering if it will fit me the way I hope it will.

We went to Square One, but after spending a few hours at Dixie I decided to have a nap while GD#1 explored it for the first time with E. We ate at Mandarin. If you ever get the chance, go to a Mandarin. They have a buffet-style menu that caters to every taste from the most stringent vegan to the confirmed meatatarian. With everything you can eat for a fixed price, even the money isn't really an issue. You can get lunch for $25.99 and dinner for $35.99 most days, though holidays are a bit more expensive. Mind you, for holidays they also add holiday-specific foods to the menu so it's worth it.

It was a little strange this time, but it really proves the point about the value there. There was a baby shower happening in the room beside the one we were in. It was loud enough that you could almost feel like you were part of the celebration even if you weren't in the room. There had to be twenty or thirty people in there including kids. Like I said, if you ever get the chance, go to one.

The next day we went for a walk on Queen Street West. It is one of the oldest areas in the city and the architecture is fabulous. One of the iconic places on the stretch we walked was the Drake Hotel. I didn't get to have lunch there because it can be a bit pricey, but maybe next time. I went to two stationery stores (The Paper Place & Paper Plus Cloth) and picked up some scrapbook supplies. They really are one of my happy places. I could lose myself in one for hours, but E & GD#1 were with me, so I could only indulge a little. We had gelato after the first half of the walk. From Queen Street West we went to First Markham Place specifically to a shop called Oomomo, which had a stationery section that rivaled the other shops we visited, but with much better prices.

Not everything about the weekend sat as lightly as floral dresses and scrapbook supplies though.

The weekend had a couple of emotional incidents as well. I finally got around to telling GD#1 why I make excuses for my son and it made me cry. I don't want to go through it again; suffice it to say my boy got very sick when he was nine months old and it caused changes inside his brain, making him look normal but leaving him developmentally delayed. As he gets older the difference between his physical age and his mental age becomes more apparent.

It is another one of those things I don't usually tell because why? What difference would it make? Except now I feel like I don't really have a choice because people are becoming more aware of his differences, and I won't stand people being angry at him for something he can't help.

One other incident caused me to have a bit of a meltdown. E was being stupid and so was GD#1, steering me around and pulling me along as if I was a child. I move where I want and I don't go around people or wait for them to pass me. I own the path as much as they do, and perhaps a bit more since I am a senior. It irritated me to no end because it made me feel like a child on a leash, and I hate seeing that. Why would I want to be that?

Maybe being between seasons isn't really about weather at all. Maybe it is being considered old and frail when I'm not. Maybe it is about the stage of life as much as it is spring drifting into summer or, in my case, autumn fading into winter. Maybe it is that feeling that I have many years ahead and I want to make the best of them. Some things are changing. Some things are staying the same. I still need rest. I still come back home and feel relieved when I walk through the door. I am still learning to be myself, and that is okay.

The Small Days Count

This has been a good week in some ways and a lousy one in others.

On the plus side, I walked nearly 10,000 steps and did not collapse into a fibro flare afterward. In fact, this week has been harder mentally than physically.

 Thursday was nearly a perfect day aside from getting lost on the way back from getting my sugar checked. Even that turned into a positive because I ended up walking over 9,700 steps and used my bus pass for the first time in a long while. But that was also when the bad luck for the week seemed to begin. When I got home, my key would not work in the front door, so I had to use my phone to get into the building. I assumed it was a one-time problem and just sent a message to Ruth to let her know.

Friday I stayed home and did food prep using what I had left in the freezer. I managed to make enough dinners to get me through to Thursday, which felt like a small victory in itself. Other than being tired from all the walking the day before, it was not a bad day.

As the weekend went on, though, the front door still was not fixed. Each day I sent another message to the building manager, and tenants started stopping me to ask about the problem or tell me their own experiences with the door. I also sent an email to her and her boss because it was becoming clear this was no longer a minor issue.

Then on Sunday, when I went to do laundry, I found a broken crack pipe outside the laundry room. After that I checked the hallway connecting our wing to the other side of the building and found a pile of garbage blocking part of the fire door area. Again, I contacted the building manager.

 Later that same day I discovered someone had stuffed paper into the latch section of the outside door so people could come and go freely without needing a key or access code. That was the moment the situation stopped feeling frustrating and started feeling genuinely unsafe. I live in an area where there are a lot of crack houses nearby, and with the building now easily accessible, outsiders could come and go as they pleased. Many people in this building do not lock their apartment doors during the day. Suddenly the possibility of break-ins did not feel abstract anymore.

Sunday was also Mother’s Day, which always brings its own wave of dysthymia with it. Physically I was fine, but depression has a way of making everything feel heavier. Mother’s Day usually leaves me struggling for a few days because of my mother, now gone, and the complicated history between us.

By Monday the depression was still sitting heavily on me, so I stayed home from the Y and decided to work on my poetry instead. Unfortunately, the poem I chose to work on was one about living inside depression at its worst. Unsurprisingly, that did not exactly help.

Physically, aside from a stupid headache, I am okay. Mentally, not so much.

Which brings me to today and the pièce de résistance for the week. I tried to contact the Landlord and Tenant Board and instead ended up being scammed by a site pretending to be legal help. On top of everything else, I now need to replace my bank access card.

I know situations like this eventually pass, but sometimes when I am in the middle of them I have a hard time remembering that there is always a way around or through even difficult circumstances. “This too will pass” is something I have lived with for a long time now. Sometimes it is the only thing holding hope open long enough for things to begin easing again.

 And the small wins — walking nearly 10,000 steps, preparing meals for the week, continuing to show up for my life even while mentally struggling — they matter. They count.

Sometimes far more than the bad days do, even when the bad days temporarily seem louder.

What Stayed -What I Chose to Keep

 

The theme of May is nostalgia and memory. I chose it because Mother’s Day is this month, and while working through my poetry, my mother appeared once again, bringing with her something I had not fully realized before. A part of me that is also her.

We shared a history that women of neither generation openly acknowledged or talked about. I wish that silence had passed with time, but it hasn’t. There is a statistic I have remembered for years, one that still makes me terribly sad. One in three women will experience sexual violence in their lifetime. It is called many things, but when it happens to a child, it is still violence. It is still a violation.

 I have five granddaughters. Statistically, two or three of them may experience or has experienced some form of that harm in their lives. That thought weighs heavily on me sometimes.

I am not entirely sure why this is where my mind went tonight. This week was supposed to be about “what stayed,” and at first all I could think about was mental pain. Maybe it is because this is Mental Health Month. Maybe it is because memory does not separate itself neatly into pleasant and unpleasant things. Our memories are often built from the moments that shaped us most deeply, and for many women those are not always happy memories.

What happened changes you. I know that now. It changed my mother. It changed me. It changed my daughter. Trauma leaves behind fear, anger, shame, and mistrust that can touch nearly every part of life if we let it.

For a long time I believed that was the only thing that stayed.

But as I kept writing, I realized something else stayed too.

Compassion stayed.

I often say that I do not know how to love properly, but people tell me I have a big heart. What I understand best is compassion — recognizing the pain in others because I know what pain feels like myself.

 I try to listen more than I speak. I try not to judge people too quickly because I know how much hidden suffering people carry. I give hugs instead of harsh words whenever I can. Sometimes my words still come out wrong, and when they do I think about it for hours afterward because I genuinely do not want to hurt anyone.

 My father used to call helping others because you can “being a good neighbour.” That stayed too.

So did determination.

People have called me stubborn all my life, but I think much of that stubbornness is really resilience. I decided long ago that I would never live only as a victim of what happened to me. Life has given me many setbacks, including cancer, but somehow I have continued moving forward through all of them.

And maybe that is part of what stayed as well — the refusal to let suffering make me cruel.

I remember when I told CAS about what had happened to my daughter. My mother was scandalized by it, but my daughter protected her own daughter fiercely from experiencing the same thing. That matters to me. The silence did not continue unchanged. Something shifted between generations, even if imperfectly.

That realization may be the most important thing I have learned.

We are not our history.

Our experiences shape us, yes. They leave marks. They influence how we move through the world. But history does not have to repeat itself forever, and pain does not have to consume every corner of our lives.

We still have choices.

 I may not always be able to prevent painful things from happening, but I can choose what I do afterward. I can seek counseling. I can learn coping strategies. I can remind myself that what happened was not my fault. I can remember that I am not alone in suffering and that I do not have to spend the rest of my life trapped inside old pain.

What stayed was not only hurt.

Compassion stayed.
Resilience stayed.
Choice stayed.

And after everything, I still want to be kind.

A Bit of a Shift This Week

Bit of a shift this week. I’m experiencing SAD symptoms even though it’s no longer winter, which is making today’s writing difficult.

I did manage quite a bit after hearing from the radiologist that there is no recurrence of the cancer. Even so, it took me about a week to return to most of my usual routines. During that time, I spent a lot of it working with ChatGPT on pins for my Pinterest boards. I uploaded Awakening and Becoming Visible from Currents of Becoming a poetry book I’ve been planning and added a couple more lists to “Things I’m Learning.”

 

I also started a new board that I still can’t name in any coherent way. It began as Grandmacore (Grammacore), inspired by a set of pins that felt connected to the values I grew up with. An article called Grandma’s Rules really sparked things, and I spent time turning those ideas into pins and building the board around them.

When I stepped back, though, I could see it had drifted off brand. I tend to prefer soft watercolor and pastel tones, but these pins leaned heavily into sepia. It works for a vintage feel, just not the one I was aiming for.

I tried again using my May palette—cream, blush, and moss green. I liked the look, but I still couldn’t find a clear direction. The board seemed to want to be too many things at once. In the end, I hid it and stepped away. If I can’t find cohesion, I’ll likely take it apart and reuse what I can elsewhere.

One thing that did come out of it was experimenting with images. I tried recreating my living room setup and ran into trouble describing a wall hanging my daughter gave me. Uploading a photo instead made a big difference. The first result stayed very true to the space and surprised me. The ones after that were decent, just not as strong.

 

Yesterday I tried using photos from my trip to the Y. Those didn’t work as well, mostly because the photos themselves weren’t great. I’m planning to try again and be more intentional about what I take. I’m not even sure where I’d use them yet, but I’m curious to see what happens.

I walked to the Y yesterday morning for my swim class. I ran out of energy about halfway through but kept going. It was my own doing—I forgot to eat before I left. Even having a grilled cheese after class didn't help. I still needed a ride home and ended up taking a nap. A reminder that with diabetes, regular meals really aren’t optional.

I’ve also been thinking about the people I see around me. Living where I do, most of what I see is Caucasian, with some Indigenous presence. Being French Canadian, I’ve always thought of myself as mixed, though it’s a bit more layered than that. My mother was English with Black ancestry, and my father was White and Indigenous.

It’s an unusual mix, but it has its advantages. I’m 65 and don’t look much over 50—aside from the hair, which shifts between silver and white depending on the day. Slight side step there but matches the way my mind is working today.

It also leads into May, which brings Mother’s Day and a pull toward memory and nostalgia. I’ll likely write more about nostalgia. Memory tends to live in my poetry. Nostalgia, for me, is about continuity—the things I learned and valued growing up, especially the parts that lead back to my mother.

 

If this kind of reflection resonates with you, you’re welcome to follow along. I’ll be leaning into nostalgia and continuity as we move into May. For now, I’m taking this as a week of small returns—to routine, to energy, and maybe to a few things I thought I’d left behind.

Not the Kind of Adventure I Expected

Tests, quiet fear, and the small ways I kept going while I waited. 

The type of adventure I have been on this week is a little different than the others. It started with a pain in my left shoulder. I assumed it was just a simple rotator cuff issue and didn’t think much about it. I worked around it, took something for the pain, and carried on. I do regular self breast exams after my run-in with breast cancer a few years ago, and I noticed a strange texture along the skin that connects my underarm to my breast—on the left side, the side that was operated on. I noticed it, but I didn’t really notice it. I told myself it was probably just skin changing with age… but only on the left side.

I didn’t go to the doctor until I put on a bra and saw the swelling on the outside of my left breast. That was the moment it shifted from something I could ignore to something I couldn’t. The doctor didn’t seem too concerned, but he sent me for a mammogram. The next day, they called and said there was some thickening and that I needed to come back for an ultrasound. That was on Monday. 

There’s a space that opens up when you hear something like that. Everything keeps moving—appointments get booked, days go on—but underneath it, there’s this quiet thread of what if. I didn’t go to the Y this week. I needed the time to sit with it, to be quiet, to not have to be anywhere or do anything for anyone else.

Instead, I worked on my poems. I didn’t think of it that way at the time, but looking back, that’s how I was handling it. Sitting with words that didn’t quite fit, turning them over, letting them be messy, staying with something until it felt a little more true. It was something I could hold onto while everything else felt uncertain.

Yesterday was the ultrasound. When the doctor told me it was only a swollen sebaceous gland, the relief was immediate—physical. I remember making prayer hands on the bed without even thinking about it. Just… thank you. I don’t know much about sebaceous glands, but I do know they are not cancer, and right now, that’s enough. I’m nine months away from being five years cancer free.

 This week didn’t look like much from the outside, but it was. It was a week of waiting, of quiet fear, of trying not to get ahead of myself, of finding small ways to stay steady while I didn’t know. The poems, the pauses, even the decision not to go to the Y—those weren’t just small choices. They were how I got through it. I think this is what a small adventure looks like sometimes—not going somewhere new, just staying with yourself while you wait to find out.

I’m still here.
Still paying attention.
Still finding my way through, one small thing at a time.