Newsletter Signup!
- What's On Your Mind?
I want to gather information to help me improve my services, write articles that are meeting your needs & help me know what is important to you at this stage in your life. Please take the survey at Survey Monkey!
Get Ellen's book on her Products page or see it now on Amazon!
Book a Session
Book your FREE 30 minute coaching
session today:
You have a choice of:
MidLife Caregiving
Manage Your MidLife Stress
MidLife Empowerment
You will receive Ellen's Midlife Balance Course with your free coaching session
Contact Ellen at:
1-800-961-1364 (Toll Free North America)
1-604-886-1916 (Gibson's BC)
ellen@ellenbesso.com
Ellen's World Category
In keeping with the theme of my Summer Newsletter, When the Living is Easy, I thought the idea of summer reading would be a good way to kick back and spend some enjoyable time.
A couple of weeks ago I read Fresh Air by Charlotte Vale-Allen, and found it upbeat and refreshing with well-developed characters. It’s the story of a reclusive woman who by chance meets a young inner city girl on a two-week home stay through the Fresh Air Fund.
Also on a light note, since I’m into mysteries, I just read Murder in Montmartre by Cara Black (Aimee Leduc Series #6). What I especially liked about this book was the rich and vivid descriptions of Paris and its famous focal points.
Part of my summer program is to touch nature – really touch it – by spending a few moments lying on the ground under a tree, walking on the sand and in the water. This was a suggestion by my friend Pema; I later found out that Ayurvedic doctors advise this. If you like this idea, you may find The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram right up your alley. The author speaks about his travels to cultures that are well connected with nature and of how we have lost that intimate connection in Western society. My daughter gave the book to us as a gift.
What are you reading this summer? If you have something that really speaks to you, please share in with all of us.
Thank you!
Monkey on our clothesline
Here is something different – it’s for the child in all of us. I wrote it shortly after returning from Thailand. Hope you enjoy it!
On the tiny island of Si-bo-yaa, in the Andaman Sea, there are hundreds of monkeys. They come in all sizes from small to large, and they’re young and old, male and female. They live in trees and are called arboreal monkeys. Mostly they like to eat coconuts, sometimes they catch a few small sand crabs to add to their diet.
When the monkeys get hungry, they climb up a palm tree and bite into a coconut, pulling a few strips off it and throwing them down to the ground. After they’ve opened the coconut enough, they drop it down and you’d better not be walking under that palm tree when the heavy coconut thuds down like a rock!!
The tribe of monkeys move around an area of a few acres so they always have fresh food available. There’s plenty for all and they have lots of time to do other things…like play together, fight with each other (that’s the male monkeys!) and to tease the humans living on the island.
They make nuisances of themselves by swinging onto the porches and into the empty houses of people who are away from home for a while. If you’re lucky, they don’t break too many things, they just make a mess, rip magazines, throw things onto the floor and leave a few tiny poohs behind on the steps.
When we washed our clothes we would hang them on our front porch or on a clothes line down on the front lawn. One day when we came home from breakfast down at the restaurant all our clean clothes were gone! We couldn’t believe it. We were quite annoyed that those mischievous monkeys had the nerve to steal the clothes we liked so much.
The next day, we were walking along the pathway by the water, and looked up into a palm tree. There on one of the branches sat a large male monkey, wearing Don’s yellow T-shirt! As we went farther along, we noticed one of the female monkeys hanging from a branch wearing Ellen’s beautiful white T-shirt with the bright coloured beads on it. All over the community there were monkeys wearing our clothes.
Soon word spread by the “monkey grapevine” and other monkeys heard about the fine new clothes the others had. They all liked the look of them, and decided that they wanted some for themselves.
Soon no house in the community was safe from the monkey thieves. There was a big, macho looking one in Johnny’s blue muscle shirt sitting up in a tree near Johnny’s house, one wearing Pa’s lovely long pink blouse, even a monkey with Mr. Chung’s beautiful scarf wound around his neck (the one Chung wears when he has a cold).
Soon Mom, Dad and baby monkeys could be seen all over the island wearing the latest in fashionable T-shirts. (They didn’t bother with the pants because they were too long, and the sarongs the Thai people wore were much too hard to tie on and tripped them up dragging on the ground).
The people of the holiday resort and the native Thai people of the island all began to say to each other, “We must do something about this or we won’t have any clothes left to wear”. So the Head Man called a meeting of everyone who lived on the island, and asked them what they thought should be done.
“Let’s get big water pistols and shoot water at them” said a teenage boy.
“We should lock our doors and never ever leave our laundry outside again” said another person.
“Let’s ask them nicely to leave our clothes alone” said someone.
But everyone wanted a solution to the problem that would last so they wouldn’t have to deal with it again. Finally, one of the elders, an older woman named Ma-ma said “Let’s make each monkey an outfit, one that fits them just right, with their name on it”.
Everyone liked this idea a lot, so they got to work designing, cutting, sewing and knitting little shirts for every monkey on the island. They became so enthusiastic about the project they even made little hats for them too.
The monkeys were so happy with their outfits that they gave us all back our clothes. They even brought coconuts and left them on everyone’s front porch as gifts. And the monkeys and the people of Si-bo-yaa lived in harmony from that day on.
Copyright Ellen Besso 2009
I’ve always wanted to live by the sea. I felt drawn to the ocean, I think it’s my Welsh roots. Although born in Toronto, I’m three-quarters Welsh, the product of a marriage between a Welsh immigrant girl and a Canadian born father of Welsh descent. My mother came to Canada from a tiny village by the sea in North Wales at the age of eight, speaking not one word of English. My paternal grandmother was also born in Wales, moved to Manchester, England at age twelve and came to Canada as a war bride after the Second World War.
In my twenties I thought living by the ocean was just an idle dream, a far cry from where I was in land-locked Toronto. Enormous Lake Ontario at the southern end of the city helped me feel less confined psychologically. Then in my early forties, after one aborted attempt to move to Vancouver over a decade earlier…(a long story)…I discovered the Sunshine Coast on a visit to my brother in Vancouver. A rural community just a forty minute ferry ride from Vancouver, it held a special draw for me. I liked the lifestyle of the people I met during our visit. Forteen months later, in the summer of 1990, we moved here.
I don’t go on the water much but I know it’s there, just a block or less away from my house in either direction. Going one way you climb down steep steps to a stoney beach where the tide changes the character of the beach each hour. In the other direction, at the end of our street, I can walk right onto the beach at the harbor.
These days all my walks end up taking me down to the seashore by the harbor where I take in the sights. I need to be around the vibrant, always changing energy of the water right now and fill myself up with the negative ions the sea gives off. There are sailboats and fishing boats, ducks and Canada geese there. Today a small truck was loaded onto a tiny barge and puttered slowly away from the marina, on its way I imagine, to Keats Island just across the bay. An unusual site.
The sea wall goes from the end of my street along the harbor and past ”downtown Gibsons’. There’s a drydock about a third of the way along, it interrupts the sea wall so we must walk up the hill to the main street, then down again to the water. There are three marinas between the bottom of my street and the government dock where the fishing boats are moored.
I make my way along the sea wall and the beach ending up at the foot of my street usually. There I gaze up and out, at the water of the harbor and at the enormous snow-tipped mountains of British Columbia’s Lower Mainland. We truly do live in paradise as my friend used to recite like a mantra each summer. I consider myself very fortunate to be here.
“Women are launching businesses at twice the rate of men, and doing it primarily for lifestyle reasons — they want more freedom, flexibility, and creativity in their lives.” Ladies Who Launch
Having decided I need to get out more, I’m beginning to network in a more structured way. Last night I went to my first meeting of a new women’s networking group in my community. The women gathered were of all ages and represented a wide variety of businesses, from retail fibre arts to home design.
It was a bit of a stretch for me to network formally for a couple of reasons. Our sleepy community has changed so much since we arrived here twenty years ago and I had a bodywork practice. Everyone knew everyone else within a particular interest group. Lately I’ve felt like I was really putting myself out there and exposing myself, because although I’m known and have had successful experiences in business, I’ve also had my failures – disappointing ventures and even downright insulting ones, like many of us.
Once a couple of years ago I set myself up to fail, promoting a workshop at a prominent destination resort up the Coast. The lefthand and the right hand of the organization were on entirely different pages, and upper management did not approve of the hands-on approach the spa manager wanted. I knew from the beginning it wasn’t right for me, but the idea of providing a service in that beautiful place excited me, so I over-road my reservations and gave my power away. It was a big learning opportunity for me, an AFG as a friend of mine calls them (another (fill in the blank) gift).
So I begin this new adventure cautiously, but hopefully. One of the great things about networking for me is, if you enjoy people it gives you an opportunity to spend time with like-minded others, and some of them may become friends.
Many studies have shown that most business comes through word of mouth, through clients or people who know us, so networking groups are an opportunity to test this. Women don’t network as much as men, although women are well equipped to do this because they’re good at relationship building.
Sometimes it’s hard for women to get out after hours because of family responsibilities. That’s why women-only groups can help, because meeting times are often planned around family activities. From my reading I’ve learned that it’s also good to attend mixed gender groups, as men could be a potential market for many women’s businesses. Take mine for example: even though I work with women mostly, men have wives, friends, sisters who could possibly benefit from my services.
Finally, networking is about getting to know others and finding out how you can help them in their business or in their life. If we keep this in mind and go out and be our authentic, friendly self, we’ll likely have a good time and ultimately help our own business prospects.
Here are some links about business networking I thought you’d like:
Article: Advantages of Networking for Women
Benefits of Business Networking Groups Exclusively for Women
“When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it’s a sure sign you’re getting old.”, Mark Twain.
I’ve always looked young for my age. It was so embarrassing when the janitor in my Junior Highschool stopped my friend and I in the corridor to ask us where we were going, also annoying when I wanted to drink before I turned 21 (that was the age then in Ontario) and it felt insulting being asked for ID years after I was finally of age.
Then, as I moved through midlife, it became quite enjoyable to look five to ten years younger than my chronological age. I guess my genes are good, I’ve got Welsh skin, and I’ve looked after myself fairly well re diet and sleep, and in the latter years with exercise, and have released lots of old emotions that show up on the face through acupuncture etc.
But as I grew older I became more and more aware that looking youthful was a good thing, the optimum goal, in my society, because aging just wasn’t okay. Being a product of my culture I’ve not liked the signs of aging I’ve noticed on my body, and preferred to pretend they weren’t happening (you know, the old, ‘everyone else is looking older but not me’ idea).
Talk about delusional…This sounds ridiculous even as I write it, but I have a preferred mirror in my house, in the bathroom, where I experience sort of a Through the Looking Glass kind of metamorphosis: In my own eyes I look younger in that mirror than I do in the mirrors in the house or elsewhere. Go figure!
My dislike of growing old was really brought home to me when I turned 60 last spring and I didn’t want to celebrate the event.(My friend hosted a nice, small dinner party for me in the end). When I was away recently in India, I caught myself saying negative things about my aging several times, as we often met younger travelers on our way. I was aware of my comments and also of their responses, which boiled down to ‘you’re as young as you feel; just keep fit”.
So I made up my mind to embrace the aging that is beginning to show more on my face – embrace and love it. Naming my bias and setting the intention to change makes a real difference for me.
I spoke about all of this to a woman I’ve known for many years just last week. She said that the ‘keep fit, young as you feel’ variety of comments were dissmissive of aging people. I had to agree with that.
We also both agreed that being told that you don’t look your age is implying that there’s something wrong with looking that age. That’s comes as no surprise at all in our youth driven society. I’ve written about that before, so I won’t belabor it now.
I invite you, as part of your Daily Coaching Practice to consider the following:
- What judgments did I make about myself or someone else today or this week because of their age?
- How do I beat myself up because of my internalized ageism?
- What new messages do I want to give myself about aging?
