Live life with innocence

Today I’m sharing some simple and wonderful life lessons that I aspire to follow this year, thanks to PIXAR

Love can be as simple as holding hands

Take a minute to reminisce about childhood friendships


Add a few spices to your life. Literally and figuratively

Be open to unlikely friendships

Never discount the small guys

Take a chance on the adventure (and friendship) of a lifetime

Hold on to your family

Embrace your own strengths

Laughter > Fear

Take a break and drive in the slow lane sometimes

True love never gets old

Zen moments

Today  is the first year anniversary of writing my blog, Jenna Dee. I’m proud to say this is my 62nd post.

After a series of monumental events in 2012 something erupted within and propelled me toward a year of soul-searching that I tentatively started sharing on my blog.

Writing takes me to a place of clarity where I can translate my thoughts into words. Traveling this path challenges me to accept rather than suppress my emotions, which is both exhausting and exhilarating.

Blogging forces me to talk about things out loud. Knowing that someone somewhere may be reading my words makes me feel accountable. My life began to change when I let hundreds of strangers in to my once very private world.

My online friends encourage, advise and share experiences. We laugh and we cry together. There is always someone there giving me strength to challenge myself to keep moving forward.

This year I woke from years of hibernation; I started to see, feel and listen more.

I learned to be kinder to myself.
I learned to embrace my individuality.
I learned that it’s okay to change my mind and old ways.
I learned to be still.
I learned to stop trying to figure it all out.
I learned to let go.
I learned to be me.

Every day I discovered something new and I’ve collected stories, images and words that made a difference to me at the time I saw them.

My fascination with Asian culture led me to Lao Tzu and the Tao Te Ching. I learned that life is a beautiful mystery that cannot be explained nor understood and that to be Tao is to be unlimited, undefined or unformed.

Writing Peace be with me was difficult.  I bared my soul and shared my pain about  the death of my mother seven years ago. The resulting wave of support that came from bloggers made me understand that my emotions were unfounded. Finally I was able to resolve these feelings. Now I remember the wonderful times we shared rather than thinking about the day she died.

My most popular blog post  Listen to your heart expresses my anguish about painful memories of  nine lost years in my relationship with my son. I once thought he had fallen so far down a deep dark hole that he could never be freed.  This year I saw his head appearing out of that hole and he has emerged back into my life. Words can’t express how grateful I am for this second chance.

I appreciate every comment bloggers make on my posts but this comment on Listen to your heart I treasure dearly.

This reminds me of how much beauty there is this world however painfully wrapped, thank you for writing so deeply from the heart. Sophie

When writing Love is all you need based on an email exchange with my dad I realised my relationship with him has deepened and flourished to one of love and friendship. I have learned from his wisdom and I treasure this extra time we’ve had together.

It has been a year of creating possibilities, of confronting demons and making peace with regrets. I have fallen and regressed many times but each time I got up stronger and more eager to keep trying.

This is not the end of my journey; it is only the first few baby steps.  I have at least thirty more years of my life to fully emerge. I hope I will still be writing my blog then so I can look back and relive the journey of the person I will grow to be.

A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.
Lao Tzu

Mirror image

My heart is aching knowing that my best friend Vee is struggling to cope with the terrible news that her cherished mother has an aggressive cancer invading her brain.

Life is unfair. My friend has suffered more than her share of tragedy during her life. This should be Vee’s time to live her dream of spending time with her mother in her golden years. She of all the people I know deserves joy and happiness.

The relationship between mothers and daughters is a compelling conundrum that spans all cultures and all eras.  It is the most powerful bond in the world, for better or for worse.

Every mother daughter bond is unique and may be anything from blissful to dreadful during various stages of a woman’s life, regardless of whether she is the mother or the daughter.

I feel blessed to have enjoyed a wonderful relationship with my mother for the 46 years we shared together before she died six years ago.

My mother cherished and loved me unconditionally and I reciprocated her love. We shared so much of ourselves between us that it felt like we were an extension of each other.

Losing my mum suddenly as a result of an accident felt like a physical assault to my body and left me floundering to accept the truth.

In the space of a few hours I felt all my inner strength drain from my body leaving me feeling helpless like a child lost in a crowd desperately calling out for my mother to find me.

Facing the reality of her death was the hardest challenge I’ve encountered during my life. The subsequent stages of grief I went through were unspeakable.

I love my best friend Vee and will do anything to comfort and help her during this terrible time.

The thing that I am finding most difficult is being hopeful because I foresee  her world will rock violently when her mother passes away, and I would do anything to save Vee from this fate.

My best friend

Apart from finding one’s true love and soul mate there is nothing more rewarding than having a lifelong friendship with a best friend.

True friendship withstands the tests of time and distance, and my friendship with Genevieve is proof of that.

We met as eleven year olds in our first year of  high school in 1972 and aside from the customary teenage spats we have been best friends ever since.

Like most ordinary middle-aged women we have endured our fair share of turbulence during our lives but we’ve always had each other to help us through rocky times.

Our monthly visits used to be chaotic when we were young women with six children under five years old between us. We often spent more time trying to keep the kids entertained than talking to each other. But we persisted because we knew our friendship was something special and neither of us was prepared to let it go.

Over the years our friendship has endured coping with the pain of divorce,  illness, tragedies, loss, death, turmoil and family breakdown. We’ve also shared in the joys of marriage, births, building homes and all the other triumphs in our lives so far.

These days our children are adults so it’s just the two of us when we visit now, just like it was when Gen visited me every week after work when I was desperately lonely living in a flat as an 18-year-old newlywed. She brightened my life back then and still never fails to brighten my life today.

The distance between where we live is about to increase but that won’t bother us, we will still find each other and continue to enrich our friendship until the day we die.

Other people have crowds of friends in their lives. Not me, I only have one close friend and I wouldn’t trade her for anything in the world.