Story to tell....Veronique

 There are moments in life, that will define you for the rest of your life. Moments you've been preparing for without event knowing about it. My first moment, was when I was 3 years of age, a beautiful little blond brunette, with hazenut eyes, my hair about shoulder lenght and a nice square bang like it was proper in the day. I remember a picture of me, when I was about 3.5 years old, with my orange headphones on my ears and my yellow-orange walkman in my hands, in my I believe if I remember correctly, by brown jump suit. I was smiling so much, because I think it was the first time I was listening to my own choice of music. Since that day, music has become my refuge. From my first guitar, given to me by my aunt when I was 13 years old, to the jazz ensemble I was part of in highschool. Music was were I felt I belond, and where I had a place. I was rejected in junior high by my friends, when other kids from another school merged with us. I was the black swan, the A+ grade...

 If you are living in a field of dreams, you are not yet living it. To live your dream, you need to get out of the field. If you stay in the field, you'll have the realization one day, you will have spent too many days laying on your back, hoping to fin the answers in the sky. The sky will only reflect back to you, your desires, your needs, your dreams, in a much dreamier form. In order for you to reach for the sky, you need to stand, walk and start the climb! Live on! Dream On! 

 C'était à la fin d'une longue journée de travail. La chatte bottée, sortant de la maison avec sa compagne la labrador aux cheveux bruns dorées. Lorsqu'elle sortie de la maison, elles croisaient une souris très grande. Tellement grande qu'elles se demandèrent si c'était vraiment une souris.  Lorsque la souris parte à courir vers la direction opposée, la chatte remarqua alors la grande queue qui pendait derrière le pantalon de la souris. La chatte bottée souris car elle se souvient que Louis la souris, étant d'un âge plus avancé que la sienne, et portait parfois ses pantalons à l'envers. La chatte bottée décida de ne pas rien dire à Louis la souris, car celui-ci retourna sur ses pas et rentra aussitôt à la maison. Suite à ce moment impromptu, la chatte et la labrador dorée, continuèrent vers le paradis des chiens.  La chatte bottée n'avait pas peur des chiens, malgré ses airs de félin, son agilité et son intelligence, elle recherchait la compagnie de créa...

Les plus grands fans, ce ne sont pas ceux qui t’attendent pour célébrer seulement les bons moments.  Les plus grands fans, ce sont les personnes qui sont dans ton coin, peut importe les circonstances, peut importe les défaites ou les obstacles. Les plus grands fans, ce sont ceux qui, même lorsqu’on ne croit plus en notre propre magie, sont la pour pour rappeler que même si on a du mettre un genou à terre, qu’un jour la vie sera à nouveau merveilleuse.  Les plus grand fans, ce sont les personnes qui t’aime, et qui te le dise avec leur façon d’être là toujours, sans compromit, sans artéfices.  Les plus grands fans, ils te voient, avec toute ton âme et ta bienveillance.  —— Souhait de fête 2023 à ma plus grande fan! Véro xox 

If you’ve been through life, even for a short period of time, you’ve experienced. You’ve experienced life, through some ups and downs, through some loses and wins, through sunny days and cloudy ones, and certainly some « fuck’d’ » up shit.  If’ve you’ve been lucky enough to get through your childhood, and experience life without the rose coloured glasses of your youthfully eyes, you know that life comes in different shades, as different time of your life. Today, I’d like to talk to you about the different shades of glasses I’ve been through. First, however, let’s start by putting on our youthfully rose coloured glasses. — Imagine yourself. Close your eyes, and get back to you foundness childhood memories. For me, it takes me back to the Christmas parties at my maternal grand mother’s house. The smell of meat pies, mashed potatoes, Ma tante Mariette’s spray net, Mon oncle Claude’s huge and warm laugh, my mom’s uncontrollable and loud laughter, Mèmère’s chirps at every body, especial...

 So much love to give,      Heatt is so big, it’s over flowing. Attraction is strong,      Towards the vibration,          Towards the energy. The womb is wanting more,     The womb is pulling,          Pulling towards the way,               The way to more love, To more compassion,     Towards more unconditionnal love. I see it now, where it comes from,     It’s not coming from me, it’s coing to  me. I am done running away,     It will run towards me,          This little bundle of joy. 

 I went to my hot yoga classe last night, knowing I was going to shed and cry.  I think I sat for 40 minutes of the class. I had so many visions; I said goodbye to the young version of me, thanking her but knowing I didn’t need her any more. My deceased godfather came to see me and gave me a thumb’s up with a huge smile. I felt my armour come down and felt wings in my back spreading themselves so wide! I forgave my young self for having been so hard on me but thanked her for having built in me so much strength and force. As I opened my eyes and gazed towards the window outside, this little girl was peaking inside, trailing her family. She stopped and gave me a huge smile before she ran away towards them!

 « There is no need to be scared little one. » she said.  « How can you know? » the little girl asked.  « Because you are stronger than you think, not as lonely as you think, and definetely have the spirit and wisdom of an old soul. » she said. « But I am scared that I won’t be able to do it on my own. That I won’t know what the right path is and get lost along the way. » the little girl said. «  You might get lost along the way but who says it’s going to be a bad thing. Perhaps it will be the greatest journey of your life! » she said, «  Facing your greatest fears will bring you freedom and love beyond measure. » « I really don’t know how to do it and I don’t want to get hurt. » said the little girl.  « I understand, more than you can ever imagine. I’ve been there before, and I really thought I was not going to find a way out. I was looking for a solution that was external to me, a miracle. A miracle did appear, but it wasn’t in the way I thought it was go...

If you like me, you dread the arrival of the fall, the darknest, the lack of sun and warmt, the shorter days, the wind, the rain and the feeling that you are going into hibernation, your whole body wanting to shut down from the world. The motivation eludes you and you have a hard time adjusting to it. For me, it’s feels like heaviness! Maybe it’s because I enjoy the summer so much, with all it’s possibilities and sense of freedom. This time last year was perticulary tough, for all of us. Most of our countries government sent us in the hardest winter most of us will have gone through in our life time.  As I am going into this fall and winter, I feel an extra heaviness. Perhaps it’s related to the residus effects of the pandemic, of all we had to endure since last fall, even though the mesures have relaxed quite a bit. I feel the world is tired and it holding on for dear life, that this winter will not be the same as the previous one. I’ve been thinking the last few days, that I have...

It had not always been this way.  Sitting on the sidewalk, broken and frail, the skin of his face aged by the weather and cold from all those nights spent outside in the later part of his life.  Life had been so full of possibilities, yet, it was now reduced to the judgement of those passerby, who barely gave him a look, far from the connection he used to share with them in his early life. --- Jean was young, living with his parents and 3 siblings in Montréal, in the borough of Hochelaga. The house they were living in wasn't the biggest on Pie-IX boulevard, but it was confortable.  Jean's dad was a doctor, and worked very hard to provide a full life to his family. Getting a formal education was very important to him, and Jean, the oldest, was a few years prior enrolled in a private school were he could perfect his knowledge under the tutelage of the best teachers of the city.  A well rounded education was a priority for Jean's father.  In school Jean's became on...

Armand l'a trouvé longue la criss d'hiver. Assis sur son perron, dans sa chaise berçante qu'il avait déménagé depuis le salon, Armand réfléchissait.  De l'autre côté de la rue, les enfants du voisin s’amusaient a sauter dans des flaques d'eau. La mère, avec son bébé dans les bras, surveille les enfants en berçant son bébé d'environ 6 mois dans ses bras. Elle avait l'air fatiguée. Armand ne les avait pas vu souvent de sa fenêtre cet hiver. Habituellement ils étaient toujours dehors, hiver comme été, mais c’était différent depuis Octobre dernier.  Armand pensa a sa propre famille, qui était loin et qu'il n'avait pas vu depuis plus d'un an. Maudit virus se disait-il. Pas qu'il les voyait si souvent auparavant, mais maintenant que c'était presque impossible, ça lui apportait une lourdeur au coeur. Armand n'était plus jeune, il ne se faisait plus d'histoires ça fait longtemps. Sauf peut-être cet hiver! Olive, sa femme, était entrée l...

The journey to inner peace is not an easy one, but certainly one that is possible. I’ve experienced inner peace, at multiple moments in my life. My latest inner peace moment filled me with a wave of happiness, hope and relief.  I have been working for years on myself, going through ups and downs. I had periods of great clarities, and others where I’ve felt lost and disconnected.  I always knew that inner peace was attainable. I could witness it in some people that surrounded me, close or afar, that truly exuded this magical aura. I was attracted to that inner beauty, and every time I would witness it, it reminded me that this is what I was working for. Yes I got lost on the track a few times, but now I know that getting lost was my soul telling, with a figurative baseball bat to the forehead, ‘Hey girl, time for you to stop ignoring all the signs I’ve been sending you, and put in the work to solve those inner conflicts! » It’s amazing how much I would be fighting it, and hopin...

International Women’s Day has always been very meaningful to me. It’s a cause for celebration, for all the progress that we have made as a society towards gender equality, diversity and inclusions. We’ve seen in the past year, that this progression is at risk and being put into question! As a country, Canada has made great progress, towards equality.  In 1918,  all white caucasian women get the right to vote to the federal elections. Only in1960, 42 years later, do all minority groups are finally allowed to vote, including aboriginal men and women. Quebec, in 1940 and the Northwestern Territories, 1951, were the last to grant women the right to vote in provincial elections. Before 1928, the Supreme Court of Canada, decided that women, could not be considered a « person ». However, in an appel to the Privy Council, women were finally considered as a « person » under the law, starting in 1929, giving them the right to hold political offices and have the right to possessions....

The first snow flakes are falling from the sky.  For some folks, it’s the first time of a long winter ahead. For others, it’s a sign of nature. A reminder that everything in life needs to slow down at some point, to regenerate itself.  We’ve all had to slow down to some degree in this past year. Slow down from this rat race that can sometimes become life. Normally we need to schedule time in our life to slow down. We plan this grand vacation, to go lay down on a beach, or to travel to a country that we’ve never been. We set our sights on this reward, and it encourages us to keep going and keep pushing in the day to day, thinking that « yes! Only a few weeks lefts before.... » to motivate ourselves that we will finally be able to get a breather. To breathe, to slow down, to enjoy the moment and admire all that surrounds us. We were scheduling that time. This year, we didn’t need to schedule. The ability to slow down was given to us, on a not so pretty platter, but it was. It ha...

Clarity. The clarity that came to me from self work, is like having a high definition TV to the world and your surrounding. —— I had been looking for this clarity for a long time. I knew it existed, I knew I had experienced it before but it was never lasting. It was like I was at the optometrist getting my view tested and going from lenses to lenses, trying to figure out what was the right prescription. I could find one that would make sense, but after a short period of time, it was like the glasses were being removed. Why had it gone away? Why couldn’t I not maintain the vision? When it happened, it was so beautiful, like the feeling one would get by being able to walk on water or be able to fly. I would feel so free of any judgements. Judgement from myself, and judgement from others. I had tasted it, and man did I want it to stay forever. It just wouldn’t. —— The thing is, when you experience something that is so magical, but you’ve yet been able to understand how i...

I do suffer from it. I was born in a small community in New Brunswick. All of my classmates were white. All of my teachers were white. All the folks in my community were white. Oh yeah, expect that one girl. We didn’t know any better. I didn’t know any better. We were all alone. We didn’t get exposed to it. When we saw a person of colour or of other ethnicity, it caught out attention. We all looked towards that person’s direction. We all made assumption. I then went on to University. The diversity on campus was present and for me, coming from a white DOMINATED community, it was a big change. Diversity was composed from all genders, all ethnicity, from all Colors, from all différents countries against the world. It took me a while, so it did I would say for my white caucasian colleague to adapt. I am now wondering, how did our colleagues from another ethnicity fell joining our ranks, coming to a portion of our country that is dominated by white people. I mean, I have to admi...

Create! Imagine! Dream! All words of actions that we are thought from the moment we are born, throughout our childhood, all the way to adulthood. Then, for some imaginary reason, it often disappears. In a North American culture where success if defined by degrees, tittles, and pay checks, we loose sight of our inner creative self. The same creative self that as a young child, would spend hours drawing, building lego houses or snow forts. The same imaginative mind that would make up fictions friend, that would sit at the dinner table on a empty chair, with it’s own plate. The same dreaming young soul that would think they could conquer the world, save the planet by collecting water bottles. We often loose it, and I am for sure guilty of it in some way or another. We talk the talk, but we forget to walk the walk. It’s been over three weeks since this situation started to become real for most of us in Canada. It’s been since in 2019 that the planet started feeling it’s impact. ...

Oh Puerto Vallarta, you’ve stolen my heart and you’ve conquered my soul. From the first looks out the windows of our taxi, your ocean view with mountains as your back ground, the clouds dancing through your peaks, playing hide and seek with the sun. Your citizen, so ever welcoming, helpful and so pretty. You can see in their eyes that they are living in paradise. When you look into them you just want to get a hold of their essence, their spirit and their joie de vivre. Visiting your beaches, where the sand looks like it’s sparkled with gold, makes me understand why Don Perdro de Alvarado  thought it was a great place to establish himself with it’s first colony Sitting with your sand in sparkles of gold, the great white wales wave at you from a distance where you can actually see them smiles. If you find that little corner restaurant, you can indulge yourself in some of the best traditional Mexican food I’ve had. Fresh, spicy, tangy, you inspire me to keep cooking with loc...

What happened to our sense of logic? What happened with our desire to understand where information comes from? It’s sad when you think about it, that greed has taken the world over and we are in a middle of a crisis and that instead of acting out of compassion, some of our political leaders have decided that for the better man of their own personal agenda, that it is much better to spin fear and participate in the creation of a miss information crisis. I do not disagree, we are in a situation that has to be taken seriously and where we need to be considerate of each other’s and make our best efforts not to affect people that could possibly be at risk of this health crisis. I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday, who had just came back from Paris last week, with her little nice. They weren’t sick but the little girl was being bullied in school because she has just came back from vacation. I mean, WTF! Children are children and they will take information we gave them ...

Some people will say that I was lucky. That I had all the opportunities in my life to become a strong and powerful woman. Some will say that society was already at a place where I could grow and prosper as a woman in a male dominated field and industry. Some will say that the obstacles that I have faced were not at all related to me being a female. Some will say that the door was wide open and all I had to do was to go through it. Maybe they are not totally wrong, perhaps they are a bit right. My life journey is certainly a great one, and I certainly had to work through it. I was faced with situations where I was certainly at a disadvantage because I was a woman.  My journey was however made a lot easier because of all the great woman leaders that came before me. Only to name a few, I am thinking of Harriet Tubman I recently discovered. I think of Oprah Winfrey, Marie Curie, Queen Elizabeth, Amelia Earhart, only to name a few. I owe it also to the great women that s...