jo burgess hannon

fit for today, fit for life

Jody, time for dinner!

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1974 Spokane Expo–taken with a Brownie camera

 

When I was little, my mom used to open the living room window of our split level house and yell for us to come home.  With few fences on ‘The Loop’ my boundary was set by how far my mom’s voice carried through our neighborhood. Her voice can still be prominent in my head:  ‘I love you’, ‘lock your car doors’,  ‘you are smart’,  ‘don’t get your hopes up’, ‘a job not done well is a job not done’.  I could write an essay on just these last two sentences she spoke many times. Not giving myself room to fail has really stopped me to just.get.started.

Over the years, many influences have been added to my thoughts.  My father-in-law left behind a legacy of empowering words both written and spoken.  You can read more about that here. Some of his directives included these: ‘you can do anything you set your mind to’, ‘knock and the door will be answered’, ‘integrity matters’.

Sometimes when I didn’t hear the dinner call, another neighborhood kid would ride by me on their bike: ‘your mom is yelling for you to come home!’ Oops, apparently I had wandered out of bounds. I might still do that…

A recent situation reminded me that sometimes you have to move past your internal boundaries.  Getting advice from a single person too close to the situation can lead to a discussion slanted by their personal, emotional experience. Stepping beyond a myopic opinion to include other counselors can help you make a more informed, less emotional decision and discover a better path.

Who are the voices leading you?  The story in your head directs your moves; make sure you have many trusted people who encourage you to move forward and live your best life.

 

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Was that a bear in my neighborhood?

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My neighbor woke up at 2 am a few days ago to a crashing sound.  In the morning an inspection of their yard showed broken fence rails.  A sighting confirmed a full grown black bear was wandering along fence lines presumably looking for a late night snack. I think it had come out of hibernation only find the surrounding woods had been turned into houses, streets and sidewalks. There is a lot of new construction in our area.

Like the bear looking for a meal, I found this harder than I thought it would be. To write this blog. I haven’t gone quiet on purpose.  It just sort of happened. I wrote several draft posts that I never finished.  I was struggling with the crack that occurred in our nation with the 2016 Presidential election and the widening divide with the Presidential inauguration. I live in a liberal area of the US and political unhappiness poured into my life.

And then, the rain. Well, that poured into my life as well.  We had so much rain this last winter in the Pacific Northwest that I started asking if anyone had spotted Noah loading his boat.  We got a year’s worth of rain in 5.5 months.  I think I kind of went into a writing hibernation. It was easier to say nothing in this space than to write a post that might be ill received by my few (try few) readers. I took a lot of naps.

What I have wanted to say is this: “Show some tolerance people,the same tolerance you are preaching,  for those who vote differently than you.  Respect an individual’s personal choice.”  Only every time I wrote it, everything came out loud and harsh and might have included all caps and several exclamation points. From my view, the liberal stance is ‘you are welcome to your own opinion IF it matches mine’.  The idea of spreading love, acceptance seems only to embrace like minded.   The venomous labels being pasted on non-Hilary voters are, well,  surprising.   I had to look up the definition of misogyny. I had to learn how to pronounce it.  I also had to look up the spelling…guess I missed that topic in my college courses.

You know, when that bear woke up and discovered his world had changed he had to adapt.

And then the sun, the glorious sun came out.  My garden started blooming, gray skies turned to blue for a few days. I felt like I was coming out of hibernation.  And I felt like it was time to say my piece and move on.

Yes, President Trump is the head guy for 4 years. No, you don’t have to like it. Even if you don’t respect the man, please respect the office. (Talking to you Kathy Griffith.)

We make America great by living our best lives, today.

 

I’m leaning in and enjoying every bite

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Pizza by the slice on The Campo, Sienna, Italy May 2016

 

As our extra-large Pride and Joy meat & veggie lovers pizza arrived, the man sitting next to me at The Rock bar says he never eats pizza because it is all carbs, all carbs are bad and he doesn’t eat carbs.  The health coach in me rose to my lips and I said right back, ‘who says carbs are bad?’ As he went on about how he eats a healthy, all organic diet, he proclaimed again how bad carbs were.  I swallowed my bite of pizza, which was delicious by the way, and I fired off something along the lines of ‘what makes YOU the expert?  Are you a doctor, a nutritionist or other trained specialist?’ I need to mention that he was chugging a 16 ounce carb rich, non-organic, maybe GMO loaded, breweski.

Have I ever written on this blog that I might be a little outspoken? OK, Honey might raise one eyebrow (if he could) at the word little. You know why I was rankled?  I didn’t even know this guy and he was pizza shamming me.  Maybe this isn’t as bad as what Gaga endured after her Super Bowl performance, but really?  Dude, we are in a pizza restaurant.  People are EXPECTED to order pizza.

I turned my body slightly toward Honey to finish my slice and raised an eyebrow. He nudged my knee under the table, his way of saying leave it alone. It’s the silent language of couples and most seem to have their own dialect.  My one sided eyebrow raising skill was learned back in Mr. Luft’s high school social studies class.  It was probably one of the most boring classes I ever took, so I usually sat in the back of the room and silently made faces at other back rowers.  One guy, and I don’t even remember who, could raise a single eyebrow at a time.

Usually it’s not the guy next to us that tries to ruin the perfect slice of cheesy goodness, it’s the voice in our head.  Like him, we have these stories we tell ourselves on a wide range of topics. When it comes to food we tend to repeat restrictive words over and over resulting in a whole lot guilt around our food choices.  All foods fit: some more abundantly on a daily basis, some more moderately and less frequently.

And that eyebrow raising skill? Its harder than it looks.

By the end of the semester I was a master.

 

 

The stuff of champions

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I got to give it to Lady Gaga.  After performing in Super Bowl 51 she got a lot of shade thrown her way: for having a muffin top.  Really?  Anyone else out there experience a little extra pinch worthy skin at the top of your fitness pants?  (Or in Gaga’s case, her fitness panties)  Her reaction is really the lesson to take away from a lot of unnecessary body shaming:

“I heard my body is a topic of conversation so I wanted to say, I’m proud of my body and you should be proud of yours too,” she wrote on Instagram in the caption of a photo of her performing. “No matter who you are or what you do.”

Be you, relentlessly you.