small gift

Happy October 1st, you gems!  I'm in Miami for work this week (tough, huh?), so it doesn't feel much like autumn here.  In fact, right now I'm poolside sipping a lime mint coconut sparkling probiotic drink, but that doesn't make it any less awesome autumn.

Ya, it's 31c here (that's 88f for you United States of Americans), but after spending a gorgeous weekend at Heartroot farm in Southeast Quebec, meditating and slowing down to be present to the passing of the equinox,  I'm feeling the buzz of autumn in my body.  There are so many incredible moments to enjoy.  The crunch of leaves under new boots.  The smell of fallen leaves and chimney smoke. Cozy throws and warm chamomile lavender tea.

Add to that healthy comfort foods (think lentil chili, roasted butternut squash soup, sauteed swiss chard....) and a new husband and life seems nothing but perfect.

ok, ok not all is scented candles and pumpkin pie, but I feel so content just enjoying today, that that  alone feels worthy of a celebration.  If I could do one thing right now (besides being poolside sipping a lime mint coconut sparkling probiotic drink) I'd be down here in this photo below, with Erik, my husband. "Shall we call up Dane and Lola?" " Why, what a rockin' idea, Let's make smores."

Ever need to unwind at night? Oh my dears, put down that jameson and pick up this tea!  (or just alternate, if that's your pleasure, I won't tell).  If you like lavender as much as I do, you will buy as many boxes of this as I have! It is my go-to end of the evening winddown, and while i wish Traditional Medicines sponsored this post, they have not. It's just so yum, y'all.

I've been getting into a serious nesting mode too. Maybe it's because once the snow and winds rush in, us Montrealers spend a lot more time inside, hibernating.  We hole up, scribbling lyrics into notebooks, or listen to new (Basia Bulat & Arcade Fire) or old (Beach Boys & Velvet Underground) albums on Vinyl. We watch back to back episodes of walking dead, or make cute crafts to sell at puces pop, or we sit and read. talk.  watch hockey. meditate. Take 2-5 hot baths a day. 

With autumn arriving, I also find myself wanting to get busy and productive. Create things! Move forward in life! Make more money! Take classes! Get smarter and better.

but instead, I remind myself to take a deep breath in and look around at where I am.  This is a perfect moment. And I hope you'll look around you and see that your moment is perfect too.  Whether life is so very easy or so very hard for you right now.    

I've been through some pretty painful things in the past.  Things I wasn't sure I would ever heal from. but I am.  and this is one of the reasons for this blog.  To help anyone who is out there wondering if there is just one real person who could possibly understand what they are going through, and will it ever change? I have no doubt that no matter what stage in your life you are at, you can heal.  Maybe you just had your first or 100th panic attack (been there!), lost someone to cancer you never thought you could withstand to lose, (felt that!) or just feel dark and empty. There is no way out, only a way through and it begins with this second.   Even now, you can enjoy, or at the very least accept, and be in This moment right now. You can open your heart and your mind and let all that bad just be there without judgement.

So right now, just stop what you're doing, straighten your spine, take 5 deep breaths in and out, relax your shoulders, jaw and especially (as my favourite acting teacher John Schmor used to say)  relax your sphincter (I KNOW, it's gross, just do it anyway), and think of just one small thing you love.  Then, thank the universe for that one gift.  

I'm still new to this blogging world so I am an official work-in-progress. I don't mind.  Hopefully you don't mind either. I will leave you with my favourite recipe for Lentil Chili. It's. the. best. top it with a little grated cheese and sour cream? Heaaaaven.

Imagine the best picture you ever saw of lentil chili here

(Isn't it beautiful?!)

Spicy Lentil Chili (Recipe from Crazy Plates, by Janet & Greta Podleski, Granet Publishing, 1999)

1 tsp. olive oil

1 cup each of diced onions, celery, green pepper, and carrots

1 clove garlic

1 tbsp. chili powder

2 tsp ground cumin

1 - 1 ½ tsp dried oregano

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1 19 oz can diced tomatoes, undrained

1 19 oz can cooked lentils, drained and rinsed

1 cup tomato sauce

½ cup unsweetened pineapple juice

1/4 cup chili sauce

1 tbsp brown sugar

1/4 cup chopped, fresh cilantro

For garnish: low fat sour cream 

Heat olive oil in large pot over medium heat. Add onions, celery, green pepper, carrots, and garlic. 

Cook and stir for 5 minutes, until vegetables begin to soften.

Add chili powder, cumin, oregano. and cinnamon, Cook and stir for 1 more minute. Add all remaining 

ingredients except cilantro and sour cream. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium low. Cover and 

simmer for 15 minutes, stirring once in a while.

Stir in cilantro. Remove from heat, ladle into serving bowls and top with sour cream, if desired.

Laugh at Life

You know how sometimes something just makes you so ridiculously happy that even if you're in a room by yourself or walking down the street and you think of this thing, you burst out laughing?

Well, here's my something:

Out of the 42 million + hits - I'd be embarrassed for you to know how many are mine.  Let's just say, at pretty much every party I go to, this video makes its way to the party masses.

Also, if I'm being honest, this one too:

Don't get me wrong, I like wit and irony and a well-crafted joke, but most of all I just love Laugh-at Life humour.  Because laughter truly is the path to a happy life.

Songwriting + free album

It's a glorious Sunday fall morning here in Montreal and I just took my husband to the train station.  He's off to the Toronto International Film Festival for a few days to do the schmooze thing that is such a huge part of the Entertainment Industry.

We sure live in an "It's who you know" world now, don't we? So many talented people out there and nobody noticing.  Success is about one part talent, and 9 parts lucky.  My husband is one of the most talented songwriters I've ever met. In the almost 6 years that I've known him, he's recorded 5 records and produced my EP.  He's probably written about 100 songs. And I don't mean, throw together some lyrics on top of some chords. These are songs with layers and irony and so much authentic sweetness.    I don't know how he does it. I only ever know how to write songs about myself. I have asked him endlessly for advice and the one thing he always tells me is:  "You have to have something to say".
(sounds easy, right?)

He deserves so much more success than he's gotten so far and If by posting this I can get even one more person to fall in love with his music the way I have, then I've done my job.

It would be no different to me if he were a stranger whose album some friend passed to me.

Here is a link to our latest album. We recorded it live in front of an audience at the hotel2tango in Montreal with Howard Bilerman.  It's not perfect, polished, and our voices are pitchy sometimes, but the songs are there.  It's all in the words.

Please enjoy this album

Deciding to Heal: Mega Priority.

I am so new to this blog thing and I have so much to learn! I've been writing for years in various forms,  but aside from my songs, most of my writing has stayed very private. There's something so different about writing for people that I feel it's going to be quite a process for me to find my voice and style for Grace and Janiper. (So, I guess it's a good thing that no one actually knows this exists yet!)

I have been reading some amazing blogs and feeling so inspired by them.  I wonder if, through the numerous blogs I peruse a day, I will find myself?  I hope so. Does that seem silly? Have you seen how much beauty and truth there is blogging? I want to become a really great blogger, I'm not sure why, but more importantly, I want to become my very best self.  one day, one night and one blog post at a time.

A few weeks ago, my friend Nadyne excitedly told me that I should check out 'A Blog About Love' and I did.  And I instantly became a big ol' fan.  today I have a deep crush on this post.  

When I read that post from Mara on A Blog about Love, I experienced first-hand what a good blog does. Like that scene from When Harry Met Sally her post made me think: "I'll have what she's having."

With one tiny little blog post she made me realize something I've been putting off for 10 years.

That if I want to heal emotionally, I need to first allow myself to heal physically. I say allow because over the last 4 years I have struggled with health issues that I created myself and I am so tired of it.  The problem is that I know what I can do to fix it - once I make this one little change, my body will begin to heal.  But I keep choosing the thing that hurts me, because it brings me comfort, because it's what I'm used to, but mostly, because it's easy.

Right here, Right now, starting this very second, I am vowing to you all (well ok, nobody, yet, but let a girl manifest...) that I am going to do the one thing that I've put off far too long.  I am going to Heal. my. body.

This won't be a health blog, I'm pretty sure.  But there may be recipes.
This will be a blog about embarking on a new journey.
This will be a blog about pursuing what scares you most.
This will be a blog about spirituality and the search for understanding.
This will be a blog about love.

so much love,

Tasha

(the photo above was taking somewhere between Idaho and North Dakota on my husband and I's road trip this August. It's usually so hard to capture a sunset, but this one's quite accurate!)

The End of Summer

"summer is ending! summer is ending!"- I want to screech out to anyone and noone.  I don't think I'm alone in the fact that I feel desperately unprepared to say goodbye to summer and embrace autumn.  Maybe it's because it was such an amazing summer.   I got married to my soul love.  I drove across the country with my him in our new, first car.  I played game after game of tennis. (my backhand is downright fancy, yo!) But it just felt so short, didn't it?

There's a really great blog I follow called Conscious Transitions and this week's post started with this:

“The crickets sang in the grasses. They sang the song of summer’s ending, a sad, monotonous song. ‘Summer is over and gone,’ they sang. ‘Over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying.’

“The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into fall – the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.”

- Charlotte’s Web

Isn't that so beautiful? and so sadly true? (you can read the whole blog post here). The End of Summer for me is about preparing to go into the cave of self.  How clean can I make my cave before I spend the winter there?  The next few months are going to be spent trying to detox my body.  Fun, huh?  I'm going off of alcohol, and will attempt to cut out dairy and gluten as much as possible.  Trying to clean up your life can be really fun and exciting once you've begun.. but I'm only at the beginning and honestly, I feel a bit scared.  Lucky for me, I came across a very helpful quote yesterday.  

The air is getting much cooler outside and when my husband and I went on long walk the other day on the mountain, we noticed some of the maple trees were turning orange and red.  It was nice to see such a vibrant colour.  A final display of miraculousness before a long winter rest.

Maybe the best thing, as always, is to breathe into what is.  No need for resistance.  No need for struggle.  Just an awareness of what is true and present and an acceptance of how beautiful it all is.  Even the sadness.  Even the death of summer is something to be celebrated.

Summertime Sadness by Lana Del Rey

reflections on a Sunday morning about food + my aim for this blog

It's Sunday morning and I'm wildly excited to wake up my husband in 27 minutes.  I made us a reservation at one of my favourite local brunch spots, Le Chien Fumant, this morning.  It's a hop, skip and death-defying bike lane away from our little apartment in the Plateau, on a quiet, tree-lined street called Gilford.

I know most of you don't know me very well yet (who am I kidding? I have three readers so far, and two of those are my cats), but I am obbbbsessed with food.  I guess most of us are obsessed with food. When I was in high school, my best friend, whose mother was a hippie and only let her eat tofu and kale, came over the my house and went nuts over the Kraft singles slices in the fridge.  She couldn't believe we had Kraft singles slices.  She devoured at least 4 Kraft singles slices.  Didn't even want crackers.  Just tore off that plastic film like it was a christmas box filled with gold.  

Anyhoos, I love all types of food, and will admit, that If I make grilled cheese, Kraft is the way to go,  (I sense a sponsorship in my future, don't you???), but mostly, I love fresh, seasonal, local, organic treats that are grown with love.   Cooking is a huge passion of mine and I love putting ingredients together with a pair of loving hands, for food prepared with love is a must in cooking.  The amount of deliciousness in a meal is often directly related to how much love the chef handles the food with.  

It's officially September 1st today, which means Fall is right around the corner and I can feel the itch to cook - and eat and eat and eat -  creeping in.

What I love about Le Chien Fumant is that everything is local, fresh (they have a changing brunch menu to ensure that only the most seasonal foods be served), and did I mention delicious?  Every single time I've gone there, when I put the ingredients in my mouth, I put my fists to my head, contort my face and screech "this is the most amazing thing I've ever tasted!", so I'm hoping for one of those type of brunch experiences this morning.  Not too much to ask, right?

I just want to say I'm still getting a feel for this blog thing.  I'm not completely sure who I am as a blogger yet, and I realize things may feel a little disjointed thus far.  I'm aiming for an inspirational lifestyle blog, for sure, but not a fluffy, "isn't my life perfect????!" one.  One that can tackle the personal and often difficult realities of life, but in a positive, creative, and hopefully inspiring way.  This is a challenge for me, because as my father once told me I've never really been a "happy-prone" person.  In some ways, it's true, but in other ways not.  I've tended to be a "reality-prone" person who takes things a bit too seriously sometimes.  So, that being said, sometimes I will post recipes or pictures of the winter coat on my wish list, but sometimes I will talk about the death of my brother, or my struggles with anxiety. I'm going to stay open to what wants to be told. My goal is to face reality and the truth authentically, with love, compassion, honesty and, yes, the most difficult of all for me:  with happiness.  

We are alive, right? What better thing is there?  

30 August 1971

42 years ago today my older brother Michael was born.

He was 8 years older than me and a mischievous little thing. My sister, who is 2 years older than him, and considered the most good-mannered of us three kids, did the typical thing an older sibling does.  She blamed him when she'd done something wrong aaaand she was so good at this, that our parents' believed her.  But, like any younger sibling, he looked up to my sister and when she couldn't zip up her skin-tight jeans on her own, he was always there with the pliers, ready to lend a helping hand.

My brother and sister were so much older than me that I don't have a million memories of our childhood together.  My sister was kind of like a cooler, 2nd mom who taught me how to play 'Go Fish' and introduce me to the Cure and Duran Duran, while my brother was....let's say.....not so much like a 2nd mom.  He was more like a typical older brother, looking to have some control over his life, and so while I don't have many memories of us playing and laughing joyfully together, high-fiving and building igloo's, I do have numerous memories of him sitting on top of me and tickling me (which is just the worst feeling of powerlessness, amiright?), or spinning our poor poor puppy, Lucky, by the tail.  I was only 6, but the look of fear in poor (un)Lucky's eyes will eternally haunt me. Once Michael dared me to steal a $.05 candy from the grocery store one day.  I wasn't much for breaking rules, but I did Looooove candy, so I did it. And then he made me give it to him. :/  That was probably the first lesson of many in "what happens when you work for someone else".

Anyhow - these are the memories I have.  When he was in high school, I was in elementary school and I spent most of my afternoons and weekends at gymnastics.  I'm not sure what he was doing.  He kept to himself a lot.  He enjoyed painting car models.  He had 3 cars during his high school career and I think that he really enjoyed the sense of freedom that having access to a car brings.

My parents and I moved to Texas and my brother was 18, so he chose to stay behind. I'm not sure what he spent his free time doing, but he worked in an electronics shop and became really really great at installing equipment and speaking the tech-speak.

A couple years after that, My parents and I moved to Eugene, Oregon and my brother moved from Vancouver, Washington, down to Eugene, as well.  I was always a little bit scared of him, because I never knew what kind of mood he was going to be in, but at this point in our lives I was 17 and he was 25 and it seemed like there was the balance and kindness and respect in our relationship that I'd always dreamed of.

His sweet girlfriend got pregnant and they got married in a hurry and then my brother's little red-headed daughter was born.  What a gift, a joy, a blessing, a miracle this was for our family.  I had alwaaaaaays wanted a younger sibling, feeling extremely lonely in my childhood, but this was a million times better. I was on the verge of graduating high school when I met my niece and in all my years I had never loved anything more. Loving her was so easy.

Years went by, things were really good between my brother and I.  We started spending more time together (willingly!) and I loved babysitting my little niece.  My brother kept busy with work and seemed to enjoy,  and be very good at, what he did.

One christmas, he bought me a 6-disc cd player for my '95 Ford Explorer (music + teenager = Glory!) and he and my Dad spent about 6 hours trying to install it.  It's a little thing, but I was touched that my brother wanted to make it work for me. and it did. and it brought me so. much. joy.

A few years later I remember my boyfriend at the time and I driving up to Portland to see my brother, his wife, my niece and...my New little niece.  Now there were 2 sweet little freckled redheads.  We had a bbq and had beers and chatted and it felt so good to be friends with my brother, Michael.

Our mother died from a battle with cancer in 2003 and that's when things started to change for my brother. I moved to Canada and he stayed in the Pacific Northwest.  I started getting strange phone calls from him.  I heard weird stories from my sister and Dad about things my brother had told them, and he seemed to be losing balance.

In 2006, he took his own life.  The death of my mother and then my brother are the 2 worst things that have ever happened to me.  Things I would never wish anyone to have to feel.

I believe with all my heart that my brother did the very best he could with the circumstances he was given.  He was a young, fragile child and then a young, fragile man.

I'm celebrating his birthday today with flowers and a nice home-cooked meal, and probably a beer or two, to honor the many ways in which he is still here.  Through the family that loves him and always will.  Happy birthday, Michael!!  Say hi to everyone for me.  xo forever.