by Connie Brisson

“You’re an old soul.”

A woman in Medicine Hat told me that when I was about 25 years old, after I tried on a pair of her shoes and they fit me perfectly.

Intrigued, I asked her why she said that. She told me that a guru told her that she was an old soul based on how she fit her shoes (soles), and seeing as I fit her shoes perfectly, I must be an old soul too.

I hadn’t thought of that woman or her shoes or the age of my soul in a long, long time. But I did one Saturday when out of the blue, I decided to go through my shoes in a cleaning spree.

I often clean and de-clutter when I’ve got something on my mind that I need to work out. I was trying to decide whether I should go to the blessing of the graves of my Mom, Dad and Gene the next day in Iron River (about 2½ hours away).

I’d missed the blessing the first year after Mom and Dad died, so I really wanted to go this year – not because I believed they needed any blessings from the priest or me for their souls – but because I wanted to honor my Mom and her respect to this tradition, as this was something she faithfully did for all family graves every year she was alive.

But my weekend was very busy and although I knew I could twist myself into a pretzel to drive out to Iron River on Sunday and participate, it felt overwhelming to me, considering all the other things I also needed to get done.

That night Gabbey had her year-end dance recital in St. Albert. While there, Jill Burt (one of Gabbey’s friend’s mother) asked if I could help the next day to pack up shoes for their charity called: The 10,000 Shoe Project. I thought it was synchronistic that Jill should ask me, considering my spontaneous shoe cleaning blitz earlier that day.

We got home late and the next morning I woke up tired, with no energy for a long trip. Feeling a little guilty, I mentally sent a little message to my Mom to tell her that, although I wanted to honor her, I was going to help with this shoe charity instead that day.

I arrived at Jill’s farm with a bag of my shoes and, as all of the helpers shared a lovely pot luck lunch, Jill told us about how this shoe charity began.

One of her dear friends, Carol Majeau died of cancer and a year later Jill had a gathering with all Carol’s friends to honor her. She was inspired to ask everyone to bring a pair of their favorite shoes to give away as Carol was well-known for her love of beautiful shoes. From that gathering The 10,000 Shoes Project was born. Shoes seemed like the perfect way to honor Carol, and in some small way, meet the needs of so many around the world. Jill then serendipitously found HART, a Calgary organization that collects and distributes shoes to the poorest women in the Ukraine. HART also funds many other endeavors that help people in the Ukraine (please go to www.HART.ca for more information).

This immediately touched me deeply. I’m Ukrainian, with both my Mom and Dad’s parents either born here or arriving from the Ukraine before age one.

Anne (with HART) was with us and when she talked about her experiences of helping women in the Ukraine, I had a memory as a young child of watching my Mom work with other women from her church to do the bookkeeping and other tasks involved in caring for the church, hall and grounds. I remember feeling very proud of her because this was one of the only times (at that age) I saw my Mom interacting with other women in this way. There was a lovely camaraderie about what they were doing to help others that a big impression on me.

At Jill’s, we all proceeded outside to a row of tables where we wiped, sorted and packed hundreds of pairs of shoes to ship to the Ukraine. It was simple work, but yet wonderfully rewarding.

Somewhere between wiping shoes and talking with my new soul/sole sisters there, I had this intensely emotional moment where I really felt I was honoring my Mom and her life so much more by being with this group of women on this day, to help other women in the Ukraine, than I would have by going to her grave.

I don’t know if I’m an old soul or not. In some ways I am old and wise, but in others ways, I’m just a young student. I wear different shoes in different situations.

But one thing is for sure. It isn’t just the shoes we wear, but the tracks we leave that mark our lives.

by Connie Brisson

Death has taught me more about love than I ever imagined.

I just turned 37 years old when my brother Gene died. He was my first ‘big’ death. I know a lot of people deal with a big death a lot sooner than that and I’m so very grateful to have been older when it came to me.

Gene was 46 years old when he died of cancer and I didn’t believe it could possibly ever happen (in a Pollyanna kind of way) until the absolute very end, maybe two months before he died. It was at Christmas at my Mom’s house, when he came around the corner into the kitchen and I looked at him… and I knew.

This year Gene’s been gone 10 years. People always say it gets better the more time that goes by and I do think that’s true in a way … but now another part of me knows that it’s not.

I feel his loss as much today as I did the day he died. I think logically that I should have gotten over this by now. It’s been a long time – yet my heart still grieves for him, still remembers his crisp humor and wit, still hears his voice and laughter in my head, still looks for him sitting in every backhoe I pass by. I just miss him.

My Mom and Dad have also been gone for almost two years. Although I had a good relationship with both of them, it wasn’t like we were exceptionally close. And as they were both in their 80’s and had lived full lives, I thought I would have an easier acceptance and peace once they were gone than I did with Gene.

But I was wrong. My Mom and I really didn’t have amazing, in-depth talks about things and only lightly glided over the surface of most matters – which always bothered me. Somehow I thought that losing her would not be as hard because I’d never really been able to share many of my deepest feelings, thoughts and experiences with her or found my emotional support there.

But time has taught me that that you don’t necessarily need to have a really ‘deep’ or ‘perfect’ relationship with someone to miss them dearly. Almost two years later, I don’t miss our conversations or our lack of them. I just miss her.

I miss just sitting at the kitchen table with her looking at the hummingbirds outside her patio window. I miss watching her in the kitchen making cabbage rolls or other traditional Ukrainian food. I miss seeing her in her garden, walking through it, watering it. I miss her laugh so much and the way she easily cried whenever she laughed. She’d whip off her glasses and wipe her flowing tears as her head would go backwards and her contagious laughter would fill the room.

As time goes by, I see that we did share a deep love even though I thought something was missing because our relationship wasn’t the exact way I thought it should be.

I’m not 100% sure what unconditional love is. I’m not sure I ever had it or that I’m giving it completely. I think I really started to understand it when I had my daughter Gabrielle. Once you have a baby you really see what it’s like to love someone, truly, no matter what.

And there’s nothing Gabrielle can do that could change my love for her or stop me from loving her. What she does or doesn’t do, becomes or doesn’t become in life, isn’t what matters. Just her being herself is what matters.

That’s a big ‘aha’ for me. Growing up, I never felt that. I was always the horse trying to get the carrot – always striving to do better or be more or be great in order to be accepted or loved. The simple idea that what really matters in the end is not what you do that makes you someone loveable or special, but just who you are inside, was a big one for me.

And I know it’s true because when I think about Gene, Mom or Dad now, I remember the essence of who they were. That’s what I miss. I don’t think about what they did or didn’t do, although those memories are also there. But that’s not what I miss. I miss the things that were unique to just them – their colorful quirks, defining characteristics and soft vulnerabilities that made them different and lovely.

Everyday I learn more about love – about loving what is, just the way it is… It’s a sweet and humbling journey.

Connie

by Connie Brisson

I’ve always loved fairy tales and myths.

As a kid, the fairy tale that captured my heart the most was The Princess and The Pea (by Hans Christian Andersen). While I wasn’t sure how that princess could feel that pea under all those mattresses, I instantly related to how sensitive she was, to her ability to feel and know things that other people just didn’t. And although someone else might think she was weird, I thought she was special.

While other princesses were singing with mice and birds, or cleaning up after dwarfs or step-sisters, here was a princess that could do what I could do and was even going to live ‘happily ever after’ for it. I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to be that princess – to be rewarded for what was different about me.

Growing up on a farm in a rural community in northeast Alberta in the 1960’s didn’t expose me to a very cosmopolitan life. No one was celebrating ‘different’ where I came from. Like a chameleon, I tried very hard to fit in so I wouldn’t be noticed for all the wrong reasons. Then as I got older, I just decided it wasn’t worth it to openly share the parts of me that were unique (and maybe a little weird J).

I was in my late 30’s when I came upon CranioSacral Therapy (CST) and found the kind of magic that existed in fairytales. Whether I was on the bed receiving a CST treatment or the practitioner giving one, this was as close to magic – to different, weird and enchanted – that I’d ever been. It was about being sensitive, feeling energy, listening to intuition and deep inner healing.

When Mosaic Magazine came to me, I was so excited to share these magical, transformational and life changing things with everyone else. And although it’s been six years since I took the magazine over, and there’s nothing that I believe in more than self awareness and personal growth/development, I have to confess there were still rare moments when I was visited by that little young farm girl in me who feared being seen as weird for the different things that I believed in.

This was surprising to me because I’m absolutely certain of this one thing: that it wasn’t until I started to accept, explore and embrace those unique parts of me (that others might label as weird) that my soul began to awaken and flourish. Whether it was through transformational bodywork like CST, taking other self awareness/energy courses, working with Feng Shui, falling in love with crystals and then creating my own line of transformational gemstone jewelry or writing for and publishing Mosaic, I felt like I had discovered a lost treasure – and that treasure was inside of me.

Whatever ‘normal’ was, I just didn’t want it anymore. I had died a little every day when I was normal. Over here… way over here in the land of weird… that’s where the real spice was. ☺

So when Liz Garratt recently asked me (in her Inspired Business Planning Circle) if there was anything holding me back from giving 100% in my business, I guardedly made my ‘weirdness’ confession. But then (as it always does when we share from these deep and vulnerable places) something wonderful happened; I discovered I’m not alone. Each person there had their own version/concern about being different. These were all successful business women who are doing their own thing, their own way, so it shocked, and then delighted me to learn of our kinship. I’d told this big secret and then I found out that EVERYONE has the same secret – the fear of being different, weird or not accepted.

In Norse mythology there are the Three Norns also known as the three Fates, The Three Wyrds or the Wyrd Sisters. They appeared just after a child’s birth to determine the course of its life, its destiny. Urd (or Wyrd) looked backwards to the past, Verdandi oversaw the present and Skuld determined the future.

I loved this play on words of weird and Wyrd. What if, at the time of our births, some wonderful force (whether it be God, our Higher Self or even the Wyrd Sisters) blesses and bestows upon us an unusual gift of ‘weirdness’ that enables us to heal our past, live with presence in our present and becomes one of our dearest treasures before we die? What if we carried this gift of weirdness throughout our lives, initially as a wound (of raw places not yet understood and accepted) and then later as a coveted trophy (of places conquered and admired)?

Yes… What if weird was good?

Connie

by Connie Brisson

It was tragically sad news.

When I recently heard that someone I knew from high school had committed suicide, it stunned me. I’m from a small town and while you don’t know everyone well, you do know them a little.

I couldn’t help but think of what he must have been going through inside. I thought about his family, his wife, his kids and the enormity of it all.

Then I humbly thought: “There but by the grace of God, go I.”

I had to look it up, but that phrase comes from John Bradford (in the 1500’s) who was imprisoned over something trivial, and after witnessing a group of prisoners being led to their execution, remarked: “There but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford.”

For me, that saying means that by the grace of God, I’m still here; that by the grace of God I came through some of the hardest times of my life, not due to cleverness or careful planning, but instead due to grace.

There have certainly been times in my life that were very difficult, when I wasn’t sure how it could ever possibly work out, but it always did. Thankfully, looking back on it all, my life has always had elements of grace.

I had a friend once who told me that she had a theory about life. Either the first half of your life was good and then the last half was challenging, or vice-versa. I told her, if her theory was right, the last half of my life would be endless days of bliss and joy. ☺

Certainly the second half of my life has been so much better, with Marcel and Gabrielle as the sparkling highlights. But the thing that has changed my life the most has not been my deep desire to fix everything including myself (because that has always been there), it has been finally finding a WAY to do it – a way to heal my inner wounds and find peace inside.

When I grew up I didn’t feel that the universe was so friendly and I felt I had to continually toughen up to cope with what life seemed to throw at me. So after each crisis, I just learned to build a stronger armor so I would be even more prepared for the next battle. But I never felt free. If there was a better way to live, I didn’t know it.

I was 37 years old when I finally came across CranioSacral Therapy and I instantly saw that this was a powerful way for me to release old memories, demons, patterns and I spent the next few years taking every course I could on it.

One of the things that I really liked about CranioSacral Therapy was that I didn’t need to know what was wrong with me to get results. I didn’t have to have it all figured out in my head. Just letting my body gently release its stored memories, traumas and tensions was enough. I could immediately see and feel my life changing from doing this. The more peaceful my body was, the more peaceful my mind was and … the more peaceful my life was becoming.

CranioSacral Therapy was just the beginning for me. Since then Mosaic Magazine has been my doorway into so many other wonderful therapies and healing moments. I’ve been in many sessions and workshops where I knew that the practitioner or facilitator had ‘saved my life.’ Not literally in that moment, but in a future moment.

When I get an awareness and clarity (that a certain thought, belief, memory is what was holding me back and attracting my crap), it ALWAYS feels like someone has given me my life back. It is life altering because we are creating from these unconscious places whether we realize it or not.

When you get it that the arrows your life is poking you with are only there to show you what you need to heal (and not just randomly falling from the heavens) the universe changes from being a battlefield where you need to protect yourself, to a friendly and supportive friend.

I’m so very thankful for all the therapies and methods we talk about in Mosaic, because these therapies do save people’s lives in big and small ways. When we have no hope, when we think things can never change, then we are lost. I’ve been there; we all have. But when we heal ourselves and our pasts, the future is full of hope.

“There but by the grace of God, go I” also means that I didn’t know what I was looking for to help me on my journey – it just found me. And by God’s grace, or the universe’s compassion, what we need DOES find us. Have faith.

I confess. Growing up, I didn’t have a lot of faith in God.

He was this scary, invisible guy in the sky who never answered any of my prayers. I felt forsaken.

Then, after my brother Gene died and my daughter Gabrielle was born, I awakened to a whole new realm of spirituality that primarily had to do with personal growth/awareness and inner healing. In this new world, my belief in God began to heal too.

I became aware of the vast and magical world of Spirit. I began to receive wonderful messages and signs in nature and other ‘coincidences’ that helped me to believe in a richer, unseen, spiritual dimension. It was from this place that I received many meaningful messages from Gene.

So when my Mom died last year, and I missed her passing, I found some peace in knowing that she could still reach me through mystical signs and serendipity.

My Mom wasn’t very articulate with her feelings or emotions. If I asked her: “Are you proud of me?” she’d broadly answer: “I’m proud of all my kids.”

Only weeks before she died I asked her a question that I hoped would heal my heart. I asked her what she thought was special about me, why she thought God had given me to her. She was very sick already and I could see that she was trying to come up with something for me, but in the end she said that she didn’t know what to tell me.

Honestly, a part of me was so devastated in that moment as I couldn’t imagine NOT being able to tell my daughter, Gabrielle, a million different amazing gifts and insights she’s brought to me, starting from the very first moment I held her in my arms. And yet my Mom could not come up with even one.

But I knew my Mom didn’t mean anything by it. This was just part of how she was. I told her it was okay and then I crawled into her hospital bed with her and we watched a cooking show as we talked about cooking Ukrainian food. And that was one of the VERY best memories I have about my Mom at the end. She loved to cook for us – that was how she showed us that she loved us.

So after she died, I purposely decided to ask her for answers she couldn’t easily give me when she was here. Now that she was part of the world of Spirit, I wanted her to answer me from her wholeness – I wanted to know what she thought was special about me and I wanted it in a concrete way.

Within two days of asking, I got my answer in the most incredible way. While we were waiting for everyone to get to my Dad’s hospital room for his 88th birthday, my older sister gave me an envelope with my name on it.

I opened it and saw my Mom’s handwriting – Dear Connie… In the letter my Mom wrote, in her own way, what she remembered about me growing up, what she saw as my special qualities and her wishes for my future.

As I read it, I couldn’t wipe the tears from my eyes fast enough to read the next line she wrote. Time stood still and I knew I was holding the MOST AMAZING LETTER that I would ever receive in my life.

But still, as I was reading it, my analytical mind was buzzing. WHAT made her write me this letter and WHEN had she written it (as it was not dated)? Then, at the end of the letter, it hit me…

My Mom had written this letter to me 14 YEARS EARLIER.

I was supposed to be going to an event through a church that my younger sister was organizing for me. All the important people in my life were asked to write a letter telling me why I was important to them. But, at the last minute, I didn’t end up going and I therefore never received any of the letters people wrote for me.

But for some reason, my Mom NEVER ended up passing her letter along. Instead she kept it for all those years and even when she moved to the old age home and only took a small box of personal belongings, she took that letter too. Even that told me that what she wrote in the letter was special to her – that I was special to her.

This was a miracle for me. It healed old shattered, fragile places in my heart regarding my Mom, and bigger yet, it healed a deep, festering wound in me surrounding God. I didn’t feel forsaken any more. I felt like someone up there literally moved time and space for me to get that letter, to answer my prayer and heal my heart. And if that was possible, anything IS possible.

We ONLY need to ask.

Connie