jo burgess hannon

fit for today, fit for life

How can I be of service?

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Yesterday we closed our doors at the Coal Creek YMCA, directed by our WA state governor, as a health and fitness club. Today a crew signed health forms at the door and got busy cleaning every single surface in the building with disinfectant. It felt like a cleaning bootcamp fitness class as we emptied racks of weights: I walked 5 miles back and forth and moved hundreds of pounds of barbell plates today.

One of the last items on our lengthy checklist was to pick up trash in the parking lot. I thought I was going home; with no else volunteering I found my hand in the air. What a humble experience to pick up everything from cigarette butts, bottles, cans, smashed LEGO’s, wrappers and gum. (Seriously people use the garbage cans! ) I worked through the lot with our Senior Healthy Living Director who’s amazing work ethic and can-do attitude sets an example for us all. 

I am proud to be associated with an organization that cares so much for our community. Tomorrow we open our doors, following state government directives, as a critical response center. We will be providing childcare for first responders and critical workers all across the King County at our YMCA branches. If you are a Y member and can, please continue to pay your dues as we are doing everything to put your $’s to good use.

There’s an Elephant in the Room: The collecting of things

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Over the years I have amassed items gathered from the people around me. I have an elephant cigarette box that belonged to my mom. The day she died was a complete shock, sudden and final and unexpected. And, it was a relief, with the anxiety of her unknown aging future no longer looming.

Anyway, that brown pottery elephant: I drove down to her house by myself the next day and just wandered through her rooms. I’m not even sure why I did it. I guess I just wanted one last private moment to feel her presence before we packed it all up.

Have you ever done that? Looked around, seeing how a person might have left their home to run up to the grocery store or walk to the mailbox? There were piles of mail on the counter, a message on her answering machine blinking and this elephant on the table next to her recliner chair. I sat down in that chair and it was so personally hers it felt all kinds of wrong and invasive and so very quiet. As I faced the TV and observed the surroundings, her surroundings, I took in the box of tissues, the TV remote, a little notepad and pen and the elephant.

I have mentioned here on the blog before, that while my relationship with my mom wasn’t broken, it was never really whole. And every time we took strides forward to ‘getting’ each other, accepting one another, we’d fall back almost to the beginning of exhausting (for me and most likely both of us) turmoil.

Someday I’ll write about how my mom put me on vacation (or was that she took a vacation from me?)…but not today. Today is for elephant boxes, crib boards and leather backpacks.

I lifted the lid where cigarettes were to be stored and it was full of little notes folded half and then half again. The notes were numbered. I opened them in random order, each one carefully placed in my lap as I extracted and read paper after paper.

It was the story of me; carefully written in my mom’s distinct, neat, cursive handwriting on 10 pieces of paper. The story of finding out she was pregnant, even on birth control. Her happy emotions of learning I was a girl when I was born.

I’ll never really know exactly what kept us continually strained and now that she’s gone does it really matter? What I know for sure is my mom loved me, fiercely.

When the day is long and my life is short

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I hope I have lived a life of influence. We all influence. Good. Bad.

I understand hope is not a strategy. I have worked hard to support, love and accept those I surround myself with, because in the end, who I am to decide any one person’s way to live life? And I can hope I did it right. However, I can choose to reflect on my actions and make every.effort.to.do.it.right.

I am sometimes judgmental. I can make snap opinions. I can be harsh in assessing someone. I can speak too quickly. Is this true of most people? But in the end, I try to assess my play and walk back my actions that came away contentious. Because, I can’t sleep at night if I think I could do better, be better.

Oh, and I just figured out I am a delayed processor. Yah, you know, where I think an hour later, ‘why didn’t I say this.’ Or, ‘I should have said that.’ Or, ‘Why did I say that?’ Do you do that too?

Sleep. Ah, I am sleeping better with my Bose noise cancelling sleep buds. Yep, they cost a fortune, and once I got over them being in my trying to sleep ears, they are worth every dollar spent. However, I can still spend hours awake re-playing every word of a conversation even with the new ear buds drowning out the snoring next to me.

How about you: how do you influence those around you?

Peer Pressure

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Every penny has the same value regardless of age, tarnish, color or shine.

So This happened: I had a girlfriend, 6 or 12 months past adding airbags to the front of her body, ask me when I was going to get a boob job. Seriously, they are airbags. I know it may sound judgmental and I should use the term breast augmentation, but she told me more air could be added if they weren’t big enough.

Let’s get back to her question. Well, first I need to state I thought she looked great and had a rocking hard body before she ever had the surgery. At some stage in the conversation I must have expressed my wonder at her decision. The answer was kind of surprising. She said her husband was a boob guy.

Okaaaaaay, lots of questions here. Didn’t her guy accept the woman he had married 10 years earlier? Why would you marry a guy who didn’t accept you for who you are? Did he tell you this before you walked down the aisle? Why does Adam Levine get to strip down to his hip bones for a Super Bowl show and not get pulled off stage? Oh, oops. That’s a question for another day.

I digress: her question: ‘When was I going to add a set of fun bags to my body?’ Uh, never. No, no, never ever.

My family might agree my motto should be “I may not always be right, but I’m never in doubt.” I guess that has to do with self-confidence and an outgoing personality. Or maybe what number I am on the Ennegram scale? However, being confident doesn’t mean I don’t second guess my opinions and self beliefs.

My response to her question was this, “I’m pretty happy with the body God gave me.” Mike drop. It shut the conversation down. I am not necessarily proud of that. And, I’m not sure at the time if I truly meant it. However, I did know my 5 foot almost 2 inch frame needs vertical help way more than my frontal plane needs enhancing. And isn’t help from Victoria’s Secret WAY better than a knife?

So here is the real question: In an American world of women where things are airbrushed and filtered, everything can be fixed or altered and we aren’t allowed to age or look pregnant even if we aren’t, isn’t hard to accept we are OK just they way we are?

You are OK just the way you are.

I am OK just the way I am. Even if I still wear my platforms from the 70’s.

I want to be me when I walk in the room and I don’t want to feel bad about it.” Havilah Cunningham, author, pastor, podcaster