Finding Joy in Challenging Times

Hi, you're listening to Find Your Joy. If you're looking for ways to thrive rather than survive in a world that can seem rather chaotic, you're in the right place, we will be sharing stories of our own, as well as those from guests who have found ways to bring hope, healing and freedom into places where trauma has impacted them. I'm Ali, author of the art of healing trauma, and I'm here to remind you that life is sweet. Now, let's dive in and find ways to create our joy.

Hi, Hi, I'm Ali, and this is Find Your Joy. And thank you so much for joining me today. Today, I just want to talk about a few things, I guess their experiences in my life. And as usual, they'll either be about my dogs, my husband or my grandbabies, my kids all of it. It's just life experiences and some ways that we found some joy in the midst of some hard times what came to me today was a few things about my grandkids, Hannah and caches who are now 14 and 18, they were much younger, when this story happened that I'm thinking about about eight months after my car accident, or when I sustained my brain injury. So let me backtrack a little bit. That's been about seven and a half years now. And when I first had my accident, it was you know, I came through sometimes there were a little difficult to deal with, I'd say it was I couldn't drive talking was a bit of a challenge. It's still as you can tell, I have my pauses and my stutters here. But I've come a long way. And I'm really grateful for that. And there was a lot of people that helped me along the way. Now, right after my accident when I couldn't drive walking and talking was difficult, it was really hard to get to see my mom, now my mom had lived with us. And then when she required some more complex care, she was in a complex care unit. People were wonderful with her there and I would go every day. But unfortunately, after my accident, that wasn't something that could happen very often. I couldn't cope. I wasn't doing well. Even when I could get a ride there, there was a lot of sounds and lights and just everything that was there was very, very challenging.

Anyways, so my first eight months of living with a brain injury were my mums last eight months of her life as it turned out. So everybody a big silent pause there for a moment while I can just sort of regain my composure so Anyways, that was that was hard. My mom would always wanted to have to have her ashes put out on she swapped, like where she was raised in that area. And she loved it very much there. And actually mom used to say, she'd like a Viking funeral, you know, where they put you out on the raft, and they laid it on fire. And I used to tell her well, if you start if you, if you quit bugging me, I might even wait till you're dead until I do that. But it could happen any day now. We used to tease a lot. Anyway. So we were going to do her ashes, I wouldn't show up. And then unfortunately, the time that we were going to do that my brother suddenly died, Bruce. And that was a hard time. And we weren't really into doing somebody else's ashes that year. So then we waited till the next year. And so we took mom's ashes we were gonna get one of those little Viking ships are are actually this is a great idea. It's a floating, a little floating ship that you put the ashes in, and you can light it on fire. And it's like your own little Viking funeral. We didn't do that. Because of course, we live in BC. And at the time of the year that we were going there was a lot of fires and even though it wouldn't probably not even one little thing would go off into the into the sky and catch on fire. If you're from here, and you know how tragic it can all be. You're not going to take the chance. So we didn't do that. So we put mom's ashes in in a floating urn, and then they it disintegrates and it goes into the earth. It's all quite natural and fine for the environment.

But here's where it comes. here's the here's here's the part that is when we were doing that Hannah and Kashish were really close to my mom, like really, really close. And so it was that was their great grandma. They called her Nana G and it was it was a hard time and so, Hannah, we had planned another in the next week. David and Hannah and cashes tonight we're going to Ontario to visit David's side of the family and we were going to go to a Blue Jays game and check out Niagara Falls Davis from St. Catherine's and we were going to do all that. And Hannah through tears said to me, Nana, could we take some of Nana G's ashes to a tee On a Blue Jays game, because my mom was a huge Jays fan. And it was she's really the one that started everybody, I guess loving baseball so much her and Ryan used to watch every Jays game. They would watch them together and talk about how he was going to be in the Jays and she was going to travel with him. And it was just a big deal in our family to watch a Jays game. And so the kids knew they were going to go to a Jays game live. And so I said, Yeah, of course. That's a great idea. So now Dave, in the meantime had registered them in this thing for it was I can't remember what it was called. Kid's day or something like that at the at the Jays right at the at the J stadium there. And where the kids get to go and run the bases and do all that stuff. So he'd set that up. Okay, now fast forward, we've got some of mom's ashes. Hannah says, Are we allowed to do this? Who do we ask? And I said, Honey, I think it's going to be easier to get forgiveness than permission on this one. She was like, Oh, I'm gonna remember that one. Nana. Okay, so we go in, we're parking in the underground parking at at? Oh my gosh, isn't that funny? I can't. Here's one of those little bleeps when he can't remember something. So this used to be the Sky Dome, but I forget what it's actually called now. But where the Jays home games are. So we park underneath. So this is kind of funny, a bit of a little sidebar to this whole story is that we park underneath and where we're going to park we see all these cars with blacked out windows, you know, very tinted really dark. And Dave says, I bet you that some of the players and we're like, Oh, that's interesting. Now, I'm not really a baseball fan. I will watch this for my family. But I couldn't tell you who's who or what's going on. I just don't say my thing. But my family's my thing. So I'll go to games and things like that for them and be quite excited when they're playing. So anyway, so we we get and Hannah and caches and Dave are walking up ahead and we're trying to find it from the underground parking lot. How to find the elevator. So they're up ahead a little bit. And I see these guys these young guys are walking by and and this one young guys, handsome young man has a beard. And I think well I probably maybe he works here. So I say hey, excuse me. Do you work here? And he just looks at me kind of funny. He says, Yeah, kinda. And I said, could you tell me how to get to the the elevator because I don't know how to get to it. And he says, Yeah, three year follow me. So he opens the door for me to go. And it's at that moment I turn and i i Look, and there's Dave, Hannah and caches and their malls are just dropped open. And I'm thinking, Oh, this guy's got any somebody. So anyways, it was Josh Donaldson. So I'm sitting there talking to Josh Donaldson asking him if he works there. I don't know. I thought maybe he worked in the concession stand like I didn't know honestly. Anyway, so they're all like, Oh, my God, Ned, I can you believe you're just talking to Josh Donaldson. I had to get them to tell me who Josh Donaldson was. All I know is a very polite guy. And he didn't know the way to the elevators. So on with the story. So we go and we get to the elevators and we go down we go to the we go to the game and the Kid David, we had just we broke the bank on this right. We got an excellent seats. And Dave had this thing for them to do after the game. And we're, we're sitting in these great seats. But before we got there, the kids are just looking and you can just imagine now at that time Anna was 14, and cashless was 10 No, no, wait a second that she must have been to quote you, I don't know she was 12 or 14. And he was between eight and 10. But they were they were much younger. Anyways, they're 18 and 40. Now, anyways, they're just sat there and their mouths or just hanging open. They're so excited. Now they've just met, there was I can't read. I can't remember the name of the other two guys that went on ahead. But Josh Donaldson, they're standing right in the Skydome. What they're looking at it all, they're so excited. So we go down, we watch the game, it was a great game, the Jays won, yay, there's lots of excitement in the air.

And now the kids get to go down and run the bases. And sowhile they're going to run the bases, I have a little bit of my mom's ashes. And they each take just a little handful. And they're going to release them as they go around the bases at the Skydome. So we're videoing this now everybody's really excited and it's a happy time and it's really awesome. But just remember, my kids are really, my grandbabies are really close to their analogy. And so it's also kind of a very sacred and a little bit of a sad time for them happy and sad one of those things. So Dave says to them, when you run the beat When you let go of Nana G's ashes, put your hand in the air. And then we'll know that that's the spot. And we'll we'll, we'll be videoing it. So we've, you know, Dave's got his phone out, it's on Zoom, he's watching the kids go around the bases and caches puts his hand up, and Hannah puts her hand up, when that happens, and they come back, and we're laughing and crying. And we're it, we're just really excited about it. Then when we when we left there, we just we go, and we walk outside, and the kids are telling us how it felt for them. And oh, my gosh, analogies is always going to be in a blue jays game now forever, for all eternity. And energy is going to be at Blue Jays games. And it was so awesome that I'm seeing you know what, she's not going to just be here, she's going to be everywhere, because every player that runs those bases, he's going to get a little bit of her on his on his cleats, then he's going to take them to his home field. And we have such a great time talking about all the different places that she was going to see shows or she was going to see the games, and she was going to be front seat for it all and how glorious that was going to be for her. And we laughed and laughed. And anyways, and as we're just leaving the, the grounds, we come outside and I want to tell you first that my mum had always my mum loved chicken easy. And she always said whenever you see a chickadee you'll know that it's me. And I cannot get over this. But we walk out of the we walk out of the Skydome into the courtyard that was there. There was literally, I don't know, two or 300 chickadees just bopping around. Now I don't know how common that is for that area. Or for that little spot or anything like that. I can just tell you that on that day. When the kids let go of those ashes, left some analogies asked us at the stadium there when we walked out and the first thing caches said was he looked at me and he said, Nana, look, Nana G's here, she saw what we did look at all look at all the chickadees That must be why at what happened. And that's what we think. And we found some joy in that day. I don't know what ways you find joy. But that was a pretty big deal for us. And we had a fun time and the kids loved it. And we made something beautiful out of something that was hard. I'm Ally This is find your joy. Thanks for listening to one of my little stories. And I hope to see you again soon. Take good care