Episode #008 The year after her retirement from a management position, Janet was diagnosed with a terminal condition: brain cancer. Janet wants to share  her story, "not because I want sympathy, because I feel well supported, but because sharing my journey I might help someone else." As Janet says, "there is not a family that is not touched by cancer so she  hopes that by sharing her story of feeling better by spending time outside will help others." 

Right now Janet's time spent outdoors walking is much more limited. She "is weaker as a result of her chemotherapy treatments, and can't walk nearly as far."

So she now spends her time in her "large yard, smelling the flowers and watching the second round of robin's eggs hatching on a tree right beside my deck. I love to watch the robins come and go. " 

When she looks out at the world, Janet has this kind of clarity and space – this open feeling of honesty that trees, shrubs, birds, little animals and plants provide. 

Janet is curious and engaged in her outdoor world – now her back yard. She has mature trees: spruce, crabapple, weeping caragana, and lilacs  - and birds who love her trees.

This year alone Janet's backyard bird list includes:  rose breasted grosbeak, gold finches, orioles, cedar waxwings, nut hatches, pileated woodpeckers, robins, downy woodpeckers, wrens, blue jays, chickadees, mourning doves, wrens, and a wild turkey or two.

When Janet is outside on her deck she is not ruminating on wanting to be somewhere else or someone else. She knows that there are some things that are out of her control and there are many more that  she can control. Here Janet follows the lives of new robins in a nest and shares on our Ditch Inside For Outside facebook group. 

 Janet knows that everything she does matters. Looking or going outside helps her to relate to herself, to her mind, and she knows she can influence and create goodness everywhere.  Janet  is smart, and she knows she has agency over moving her circumstances in a better direction. 

Janet’s sharing is a kind of grace that only comes with being in harmony with the way things are – something very powerful to be around. 

Through her story Janet is showing us the way to live and enjoy our minds in the deepest kind of way – to trust  and have confidence in ourselves and our worlds around us. 

For me, she has given so much. She was the first person to buy my book Take Back Your Outside Mindset. Janet says that all along she knew she better outside,

For peer reviewed research on how your time spent in green space can change your mindset, balance your nervous system and your heart rate please go to verlafortier.substack.com and check out my books Take Back Your Outside Mindset: Live Longer, Stress Less, and Control Your Chronic Illness and Optimize Your Heart Rate: Balance Your Mind and Body With Green Space