Getting out of your comfort zone

Out of Time.

by Jenn & Chris on September 8, 2017

When All Your Reasons Have Run Out.

I have no more excuses. None.

The summer treated us with divine gifts. A series of golden moments with family, friends, as a couple, and on our own.

We embraced new interests and reconnected with old passions.

We sat silently on the dock, and took time to find a deeper gratitude and appreciation for the country we live in.

We even found a place to live and a place to work. Well, Chris did.

Now it’s my turn.

Big Girl Underpants

When we decided to come home, we made a conscious choice to give ourselves peace, time, and space in the summer. We talked a lot about what we wanted to be when we grow up and the parts I loved (and hated) about working in social media, marketing, and events.

It was important to us to figure out ways to continue on our path of living big. To live life fully and make it a priority to follow hearts and follow dreams.

My dream, simply put, is to create and be creative. To get my hands dirty and have tactile, tangible pieces developing in my hands. I have never had such a deep urge to design beautiful things, fun videos, and write words. Many of them.

And if I am truly living big, this is where my next adventure begins.
I have said repeatedly that I want to write a book and write consistently on the blog. I really do. Yet I always seem to find ways to be too busy or overwhelmed by other “stuff” that needs to be done first.

At least that is where I put the blame.

Getting out of your own way

I love taking on challenges. I can and have done uncomfortable time and again. I have climbed mountains, ridden motorcycles, scuba dived, sky dived, zip-lined, and so many more adventurous, physical, and out-of-my comfort zone type of activities.

This challenge feels much different. It is far more getting-out-of-my-own-head kind of game instead of a physical one.

My success is no longer a concrete goal that I can simply accomplish by crossing the finish line. My success is determined now on my skill in telling a story.

I need to create an exciting enough experience for you, the audience, to keep coming along for the ride. And frankly, I’m not quite sure I have that capability.

Putting it out there always makes (some part of it) come true

I have a book (or two) in my head along with a couple of screenplays and dozens and dozens of blog posts of the trip.

And I want to write them all.

I am saying this now on the internet so that it might come true. (While gagging in the process).

Now my husband, friends and family are all holding me accountable. They are asking me how my writing is going and all I want to say is “Sod off, I’m not ready and Thank you”. My discipline and focus not yet refined enough to keep me in my seat. Social media still grabs hold of me too often.

I love them all dearly and can’t tell them enough how much I appreciate the nudge to start this ambition.

So now I must write. I no longer have a reason or excuse not to do this.

It’s time to start pursuing another dream with reckless abandon.

What do you dream of doing? Sometimes just putting it out into the world is the best way to get it started. Drop us a line and we can hold EACH OTHER to living as big as we can.

Family Matters Real Life Travel

How Will You Tell This Story?

by Jenn & Chris on January 10, 2017

Our WHY Behind Travelling the World

Every story has a back story and it’s not always pretty.

I never really considered ourselves storytellers until this trip.

Sure, Chris and I like to talk in stories. It’s fun and entertaining and most importantly gets people laughing by the end. Something for us that is ultimately the end goal.

Now my grandmother. She’s a storyteller.

In fact, she was the best storyteller of us all.

My grandmother was most indeed the matriarch of our family. The older sister and the “second mom” to a large family growing up in the prairies. She was given the job early in life to care for her 6 younger siblings, becoming a provider for the family at a time when she should have been playing instead of working. She was sweet, stubborn and with an incredibly strong work ethic. Her get-it-done-and-do-it-well ethic was one she imprinted on our entire family. But she loved to have fun. Her laugh was so big and contagious, it either had you in tears or one of you saying “I’m going to pee my pants!” or both.

Her life was her family and the art of storytelling was something she shared with her siblings, her children and her grandchildren. Trust me, you end up at one of our family reunions and nobody ever just recounts a moment. Vast, broad strokes of details are painted along the way. The story weaving back far enough to set the stage: providing minutiae like smells, clothes or even weather to give you the background you needed to see the whole picture and to feel like you were there.

It was an important part of my grandmother’s stories.

But Why?

So you could understand her WHY to every story she told.

As a kid, I would get frustrated. I was impatient, too young to understand the time it took to create that background, instead feeling she was going on and on. Ugh! Grandma! Always feeling she went much farther than necessary for the story’s conclusion.

As I got older, and she came close to the end of her years, I wanted to sit for hours to listen to those stories. I understood the foundation she was laying. I wanted more time to gobble up every morsel of a story she was willing to give. To hear them often, so I could remember them when she was gone. So she would stay close in my memory through all of her beautiful stories.

Our WHY

A few years ago, we adopted a mantra to Come Before Winter. The concept simple. Do whatever it is you have been thinking or dreaming about now because you never know what tomorrow brings. At that point we had known too many people affected with disease and too many passing before they had a chance to live a full life.

It changed us as a couple and as a family.

We took trips. A lot of them.

We created memories. A lot of them.

Travel became a priority.

Taking our kids to Scotland to visit many relatives on my Uncle’s 92nd birthday was so special.

Multi-generational trips to Disney World with Grandma. A trip to Scotland & Ireland with my parents. Seeing Carmen (an opera very special to my family) at Lincoln Center in New York, a 40th birthday in NYC, Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. Doing a Yoga Retreat with dear friends in Nicaragua. Meeting up with childhood pals in Quebec City.

Climbing Kilimanjaro to celebrate our 10th anniversary was a milestone we both loved achieving

We pushed far out of our comfort zone and it felt really really good.

The decision to do these was very intentional. We are blessed for the rest of our years with all the special moments we created with people we love.

Watching my Dad’s joy over showing his grandkids his home was an important part of our family story.

But these last few years have not been without struggle.

In 2014, on the day we were leaving for Mount Kilimanjaro, my Grandma passed.

When she left, I felt like I had lost one of my “persons”. Those people in your life who love you unconditionally. Your biggest cheerleaders. Ones where the connection to them feels deeper. The love pure.

But 2014 was full of life. We lived and loved big. We took on challenges and celebrated milestones. We conquered, we achieved, I turned 40 and we celebrated our 10 year anniversary. The time we spent with family and friends was time we will never regret.

When one of my best girls asked if I would meet her in NYC for her 40th, of course I said yes. How often do you celebrate a milestone like that?

Then 2015 made way to become a very difficult year. Like every other family we were running like mad chickens, over-committed, and busy. Just so busy.

I challenged myself in business. To build, to create more, do more, get bigger and in doing so, created an absolute wreck of a human being. I made decisions that went against my intuition and EVERY time got myself kicked in the ass. I took on some big financial risk during this growth and didn’t sleep for months.

Then in May of 2015, I lost another one of my persons. One of my dearest friends passed away suddenly of a brain aneurysm. Always one of my biggest cheerleaders, she was a wise old owl who was able to look (& talk through) all sides of the story when considering options. Yet she pushed me to be fearless and bold. Forever answering “yes!” before I even finished with “Do you think we should..?”

I always felt lucky to have had her as a friend but I wish I had told her more how much I valued her friendship, love and encouragement. Her loss made a deep cut to many who loved her. To this day, there is still a huge gaping hole that sits open in so many of us.

Beautiful memories like this make me happy

The grief of losing her mixed with massive business ups and downs created a level of anxiety and depression that I didn’t even know I was going through until much later. Most days, I felt like I was suffocating. When I think of those times, I often picture the Sea Witch from the Little Mermaid darkening the waters, growing bigger and bigger until she took over the whole screen. An ominous black liquid cloaking over me to the point of being unable to breath.

Outwardly, I was functioning because I felt I had to. Because it was expected of me to just “get over it” and to “relax” over the money invested in the business. Privately, I was having severe anxiety attacks that would scare both myself and my husband. They would happen as the kids slept or were gone for the day because somehow one of my ill-placed measures of success was not breaking down, truly breaking down, in front of them. On the other side of an attack I would end up feeling so exhausted that even sleep (& the desperate need for it) became part of the vicious cycle.

In September of 2015, We (ok I, with reluctant family members joining in) decided to do the Kon Mari purge. It’s a process I can’t recommend enough. Not necessarily because of the “Sparking Joy” piece but because getting rid of stuff clears your mind. Downsizing and letting go of so much of our crap helped immensely in releasing associated feelings connected to the past and got us moving to the future.

To start your way through a Kon Mari purge, here’s our start.

But something was still not right.

The purge helped collectively reduce my claustrophobic feelings, the big business decisions were done for the year but we felt like we weren’t living big anymore. Just going through the routine. Just busy people.

We had always talked of a dream of traveling the world. There were HUGE signs being sent our way that kept saying Do It Now! Come Before Winter! but that notion, that idea of making the leap felt SO big.

Too Big.

Yes, it can be Scary as F*ck. It can also be the most invigorating, exhilarating decision of your life. It is hard to believe that a year ago (at the start of 2016) we made the concrete decision to travel the world with our kids.

I am telling you this story not for sympathy or empathy but for you to see you are not alone. Everyone has a back story.

It’s for you to see our WHY behind the decisions we made to get here.

We want to tell you stories through our travels so that you can come along with us. We want to paint the picture so that you might be inspired enough to head down a similar path or travel somewhere you had never even thought about.

We all create imaginary barriers about why we can’t go somewhere. For us, we thought The Galapagos was too expensive. We are here to tell you it is entirely possible and one of the places we would recommend you to consider.

We want to tell you stories that are raw, real and honest. Ones that help you feel safe in taking that leap. Ones that makes you laugh. Taking chances to live the life you want. The one you deserve.

100% it can be scary as shit. But it means you are LIVING it.

And that’s all that counts.

So tell us, what is your WHY?

Family Matters Real Life Travel

Finding the Edge of Comfortable

by Jenn & Chris on July 19, 2016

When everything feels icky & squirmy & totally uncertain

Mom Says:

I was a bulging, sweating, 8 months pregnant hot mess in the middle of one of the hottest heat waves we have ever experienced. My husband will recount to you tales of woe and suffering as he endured the words “I’M UNCOMFORTABLE!!” more times than I care to remember. It has become a standing joke between us, one that is typically accompanied with boohoos and mockery to indicate said Uncomfortablist is being entirely unreasonable.

On a happier pregnant days — On a happier pregnant day at the cottage

The word comfort has been an enemy in so many ways throughout my life. At the start of our marriage, I would share with my husband (often) my thoughts that the minute we were comfortable, we were done for. Comfortable meant being normal, stagnant, conforming and lacking passion. I didn’t want us to ever get there. I wanted us to strive for date nights and spicy moments so that the notion of comfort would never take hold.

I am often found pushing myself past my comfort zone. Whether it’s skydiving, scuba diving, motorcycling, bungee jumping, or climbing mountains, I have done it all. At the start of every one of these adventures, I am scared poopless. Every. Single. Time. Until I do it & then realize that that wasn’t so bad after all.

The whole fam came out to support me when I jumped out of a plane. I hope we are teaching our kids to be fearless. — The whole fam came out to support me when I jumped out of a plane. My only hope is that we are teaching our kids to be fearless.

I like it & I don’t like it. It feels icky and squirmy and often disagreeable. Yet something about pushing through the hard parts, to conquer and achieve a challenge on the other side makes it so worth the initial grossness of it all.

The thing is, I have started to think of my comfort zone as exactly that. It’s just a zone. It’s not your prison cell. Your zone can take on different shapes or sizes. The more we push, the bigger our space of allowable adventure becomes. We just have to keep pushing out the walls.

As we hit our 3 month window before we leave on our #CuppaRTW Round The World trip, I have recognized I have that uncomfortable feeling once again. This feels new for me because this time it’s not just me getting out of the zone. We as a family are taking this on, all parts of it feel foreign and unsettled.

I have been trying to explore what is actually causing these whirl-a-gig butterflies inside me and I think for the most part I have figured it out.

We are planning to not plan which for a planner makes things all kinds of up in the air. I feel like I’m on a roller coaster that’s pulled out of the station and already on the ride but need to get past the urge to hold my breath through the whole thing because its a long time before its over.
I am curious how we are going to manage surviving as a family 24/7 over the next many months. We are a strong team and we all love each other dearly but we already know we are going to plan for breaks or we will end up killing each other before we get out of South America. We have even invented a safe word to roll out on the days for the kids (or each other) are driving us so batty that we might say something we regret. We are also planning on taking days in which one of us takes the kids and in which we each take one kid to keep things different and exciting.
Very soon, we will no longer have a home. We are letting go & rid of most of our stuff. The grounding stuff. As we start packing up, we are starting to work on how to create a new version of “Home” for us & the kids. We will have no place to come back to and the concept of coming home will now have to truly live in “home is where the heart is”. So how do we teach that to our kids?

I know these are all just growing pains as we start this new chapter in our life. I just can’t wait till my brain is settled on the other side and starts feeling more comfortable (baahaaahaa) with it all.

Climbing Kili was something I thought impossible. Until we did it.

Dad says:

oh, the pain of comfort…

I am, unlike above, comfortable with comfort to a point. The balance I constantly try to strike is to look around and appreciate accomplishments before running off to literally jump of a cliff. There is little joy in a life so hectic that you forget to breathe, look around, smell the roses, you know, LIVE…

Part of joy is enjoy, which is a poorly spelt word that should be in-joy. Get in the moment, relish it, then set you sights on the next adventure.

Real Life Travel

How Did We Get Here?

by Jenn & Chris on April 28, 2016

How we made the choice to travel the world with our kids.

Mom Says:

We have a kind of quirky approach to getting shit done.

For days/weeks/months we noodle. We say things like “yeahhhhh, we should do that” or ” we are going to have to get that done soon”. We discuss, we let it roll around our tongues, we check out how it feels.

Then one day, without any prompts we JUST DO IT. Not in an organized, excel spreadsheet, plan of action kind of way (wouldn’t that be amazing). No, we just go and let the day takes us where it may.

In the history of our relationship this has included buying a condo, buying cars, furniture, booking trips, selling our house and and now we can include travelling the globe.

Without a real plan, we just decide that today is the day we go for it. In that moment, we take the step in a new direction to our next part of this journey.

As we start socializing this plan of ours, we are experiencing polar opposite reactions depending on the person we are sharing the information with. Amidst the “That’s so awesome”, “You will never regret this” and “This is the best gift you can give your children”, we have discovered a collection of people who’s own anxieties and fears give them cause to say things like “Well, we would never do this” , “Aren’t you worried about the safety of your kids/missing school/getting out of real estate/living with your spouse 24/7 and so on” and the best one “That is the stupidest idea I have ever heard”.

For a tiny while, when those fear mongers set their panic light to on, I let it become my panic. For a second it threw me & I got caught up in feeling negligent on not having a plan. But I took a step back and looked again at our resolve: the universe will give you what you need.

For us, our fear of NOT actually taking this opportunity is far GREATER than what might happen on the trip.

Part of this adventure is that it will get messy. We will likely miss flights, end up in a crappy hotel rooms, go over budget or even get so frustrated with each other we walk out for a “break”. But its the messy we are most looking forward to. To teaching the kids how to bounce back when shit hits the fan and how to adapt when things don’t go anywhere near as planned. We believe THAT is the greatest thing we can teach our kids. And we believe that the connection this will bring us as a family is probably the best part of why we’re heading out.

Dad says:

The devil is in the details, or so they say. And who wants to live with the devils of this world anyhow? You can overthink anything to the point of paralysis, and then nothing gets done. Ever. I have sat in meetings where the only thing that was accomplished was to set the timing for the next meeting, and even that was hotly debated. If all you do is wait, looking before you leap, you don’t go anywhere. ever. And who wants that? Why, not me, I say!

With that in mind, I seem to react badly to the naysayers of the world. We haven’t made this decision without any study, or consideration of what might be the effect on our family. And in the end, the decision is ours. I find it odd that the unsolicited comments seem to stream forward without any thought as to whether they were wanted, or if they might have an unintended effect. Maybe this is one of those times where I would love to hear “that is super incredible!”, whether you think it is incredibly stupid or wow adventurous. Just sit back, let me fill in the blanks thus far, and then try and fall asleep figuring out if we are crazy after all…

So. Go forth, be bold, live with the consequences occasionally. But sometimes, you won’t have to, because it all works out in the end. And even if it doesn’t, well, oh the stories we will tell. N’est pas?