Mandyland

Well, that's a wrap. It's been a year of this project and it's time to end one season and start anew. There are lots of ideas brewing so I can't wait to start. Therefore, it won't be that long before it starts again.

Background

I hadn’t met Terrence in person before this conversation but Jenn Chan (another regular guest on Mandyland) mentioned him when I was talking about death one day. She told me that Terrence has a brother with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and that his brother was considering Medical Assistant in Dying (MAID). I provoked Terrence with a little facebook comment about having him on my podcast and he took the bait. We chatted a few times on facebook just to organize timing and then here we get right into it about death and dying. It was such a pleasure to talk to him and I look forward to doing it again.

Terrence is a huge advocate and consultant for accessibility and (I think) slowly becoming a Death and Dying Doula. He’s available to consult on ageing, accessibility, disability, death, and dying. You can find his info in the resources section below.

Resources

Enlightenment in Death with Mike: http://www.mandyland.ca/the-podcast/2018/3/30/discussing-death-with-mike

Dying Well Collection (Death Cafe): http://www.dyingwellcollective.com/

MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying): https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/medical-assistance-dying.html

Death Doulas Transforming How We Die in Canada: https://globalnews.ca/news/2754795/death-doulas-transforming-how-we-die-in-canada/

Hospice Toronto: https://hospicetoronto.ca/

End of Life Planning: https://elplanning.ca/

About Terrence: https://enables.me/author/terrence-ho/ Contact Terrence if you or your organization want to talk about inclusion associated with accessibility: https://about.me/terrenceho

Terrence’s Talk at Speaker Slam in Toronto: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgSc8ZutXPE

Reflective Questions

What’s your relationship with dying?

Do you talk about death and dying?

Do you to have more open conversations about it?

What was your experience with death and dying growing up?

How has your experience with death and dying growing up influenced your current relationship with it?

Dawn, who shared what it’s like to have depression and anxiety earlier this year, now shares her experience with her gradual return to work and ultimately her having to stop working. She describes her very visceral experiences as she attempts to go back and subsequently the failure she feels not being able to. Like before, this is a great window into the what it’s like to struggle with anxiety and depression. At one point I even admit that I want to help her and fix her and how hard it is for me not to. I’m sure I’m not the only one listening who will feel that same desire to “fix”. My hope is that listening and providing space to share these experiences is helpful in and of itself. We also get into what I think is an interesting topic, of documenting the highs and lows. 

Dawn’s previous episode is available here: 

http://www.mandyland.ca/the-podcast/2017/12/9/depression-and-anxiety-with-dawn

I was walking with my dog Jett one spring day and noticed the beautiful sounds of the birds chirping. So I decided to record them as a 5-minute mindfulness meditation. 

Background:

Mindfulness is paying attention to and sensing the present moment. Every moment is an opportunity to practice this simple act of paying attention and just noticing sights, smells, tastes, sounds, feelings, and even thoughts as they come up inside of us. So just pausing for 5 minutes to hear the sounds of birds chirping is an excellent mindfulness practice that's also easy to fit into busy schedules.

Instructions: 

Just listen. Hear the sounds of the birds and any other sounds that come up. If you get distracted by thoughts, that's ok. Notice that too and then come back to just listening to the sounds in your ears. Try to be kind to yourself if and when you do get distracted, recognizing that mindfulness is more of the practice than a goal, even though the practice of paying attention often leads to a goal of being more mindful in daily life. But for now, just listen. Just practice. Just provide this opportunity to help train your brain to focus on this present moment.

Resources:

Mindfulness Quotes by John Lovas: http://www.johnlovas.com/

Mindfulness Yoga with Me (Mandy Wintink): https://youtu.be/qjOaj5dTp14

More Yoga with Me: http://www.mandywintink.com/yoga/

Self Science - A Guide to the Mind and Your Brain’s Potential, Chapter on Mindfulness: http://www.mandywintink.com/book/

Mindful Way Through Depression (Book): https://www.amazon.ca/Mindful-Way-through-Depression-Unhappiness/dp/1593851286/ref=as_sl_pc_tf_til?tag=knoyoubra02-20&linkCode=w00&linkId=&creativeASIN=1593851286

Power of Now (Book): https://www.amazon.ca/Practicing-Power-Now-Essential-Meditations/dp/1577311957/ref=as_sl_pc_tf_til?tag=knoyoubra02-20&linkCode=w00&linkId=&creativeASIN=1577311957

Talking with Emily made my friggen week! I didn’t know her before this first encounter except through email briefly. A few weeks before this, I put out a call for training proposals for a retreat that I’m running for my coaching/teaching staff at the Centre for Applied Neuroscience. Emily replied offering a workshop on intuition based on her PhD work in education philosophy. I was OVER THE MOON with her email and before even meeting her I booked her to train us! This conversation was our first official in-person meeting and I have to say that she is so absolutely wonderful in so many ways. I love her ideas, her ability to articulate her ideas, the sound of her voice, her knowledge, her curiosity, her story, her perspectives, and her wisdom. I hope that this is one of many times I get to talk/work with Emily. 

In the process of talking about intuition we cover what it is, how it works, how to experience it, the effect of believing in it, resistance to it as a way of knowing, feminism and oppression by the patriarchy, and spirituality. There is so much more I want to know from her so I’m going to read her thesis, which is linked to below. She’s also working on a more general public book that I am equally excited to read!

We meet on the balcony of the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto so you can hear the birds chirping around us, along with the construction and cars. But the birds are the nicest sound. 

Resources:

Emily’s dissertation: http://summit.sfu.ca/item/17780

Follow Emily on Twitter: https://twitter.com/emilyrsadowski

Reflective Questions:

Do you believe in intuition?

Do you need evidence that your intuition is present?

Do you think your intuition has been suppressed and oppressed?

How do you connect with your intuition?

Do you define it? Can you define it?

When are you most aligned with your intuition?

Background 

Greer (another neuroscientist) and I began talking after I posted something on facebook about how I wanted to honour the female brain. She replied to my post with something like “YES!” and so we planned a conversation without any idea of where it would actually go. We went around and around and covered much ground including: 1) what does a woman leader looks like?, 2) valuing women in the workplace, 3) the female stress response of “tend and defend”and the maternal brain, 4) the difference between rearing boys' and girls’ brains and emotional brain development, 6) women’s intuition, and 7) the validation of #MeToo and #TimesUp. We wrap up with asking what are the characteristics of a female brain? We probably should have started with that, but we didn’t. We even tie in cryptocurrency. It ends a bit abruptly mostly because I deleted about 12 more minutes where we come up with a women's circle plan, which was interesting but a bit TOO much of a tangent. ;) 

Resources

Women more efficient after coming back after mat leave: https://www.bustle.com/articles/48477-working-moms-are-more-productive-at-work-than-all-of-their-colleagues-so-there

The Invisible Labour Still Asked of Women at Work: http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/18/pf/women-emotional-labor/index.html

The Emotional Labour of Women in the Workplace: https://theoutline.com/post/2514/the-emotional-labor-of-women-in-the-workplace?zd=2&zi=7gtn3mnv

Parenthood and Productivity of Highly Skilled Labor: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/93460/1/cesifo_wp4641.pdf

SHE venture capital: https://sheeo.world/

Reflective Questions

What is YOUR female brain doing in the workplace undercover?

Are female-led start-ups now different than men-lead start-ups?

Do you support other women in a meeting, by acknowledging their points?

Has the #MeToo or #TimesUp help validate any experiences you had? 

I recently started reading about giftedness in children. I came upon it somewhat by accident, more out of a curiosity prompted by many people commenting on Ashar’s unusual alertness since he was a baby, his incredible comprehension even before he was verbal, and always seems to be thinking. A few of these people suggested he might be gifted. So one day I googled it and became almost immediately captivated by what I was reading, mostly about the special needs of gifted children. 

It’s been almost 3 years of me feeling like very few typical resources have helped our family with our “issues", whether they were sleep challenges or emotional needs or boredom/stimulation needs or me feeling more inadequate than I could handle. When I happened upon the giftedness literature, I finally felt like the solutions offered for those special needs made sense for our situation and, actually, many were what I had already started to identify as being helpful for us. I felt like I found a home and people who could relate to what I had long felt — but unable to articulate — were unique challenges with our child. I finally found hope. But as quickly as I found hope, I felt more alienated from many people around me because I felt unable to share this new direction without the worry of me or my child being judged. I was even hesitant to tell Mike at first. I haven’t felt confident speaking about this to anyone short of my mom and Mike. And then… I took a leap of faith. A friend of mine who has children older than I, made a comment on a facebook post that lead me to believe that she might have a gifted child of her own. So I very hesitantly reached out and asked, point blank, if she had a gifted child. Turns out she does… and this is a conversation that followed. 

Resources:

Is my child gifted? Use the check list at the National Association for Gifted Children: https://www.nagc.org/resources-publications/resources-parents/my-child-gifted

Giftedness Resource: http://www.davidsongifted.org/

Supporting Emotional Needs of Gifted Children: http://sengifted.org/

Multiple Intelligences: http://www.mandyland.ca/blog/2018/2/26/rethinking-intelligence-its-not-all-or-none

Me! Please reach out if you feel that anything here struck a cord with you and you want to talk. I hate feeling alone in this and would love some mutual support!

We’re on a date night… and this is what we end up doing: talking about death! We talk about it from the perspective of my fear of dying and also from Mike’s perspective of not being afraid and then with respect to (assisted) suicide and enlightenment. 

Reflective Questions

What happens when we don’t take care of our needs or don’t advocate for what we need? Gabor Mate thinks our body will say “no”. 

How does taking 

your own life (either by assisted suicide or other) affect our ability to transcend suffering?

Can you take your own life from an enlightened perspective? And by extension… mindfully? 

What happens if we "exert control" at that last moment? Is that the opposite of “letting go”? 

Is taking your own life controlling death in a way that is not consistent with enlightenment/mindfulness?

Can you embrace death and control it at the same time?

I have always enjoyed consulting the cosmos for support. Actually, if I trace my psychology interests back, I can see it within my interests in the paranormal, for example, dreams, ghosts, telekinesis, superpowers, unsolved mysteries, and oracles. 

Something about these unknowns deeply resonates with me and they bring me great comfort especially when I feel lost in other ways. To me, a session like this IS therapy, a therapy that feels a million times better than any other therapy I have ever tried. Often times, what I feel that I need is a perspective that I couldn't possibly come up on my own. Maybe that's why I have never really done any training in any of these metaphysical disciplines... I wanted them to remain a mystery. 

In any case, I got HUGE benefit from this session, not too surprising for me.  I came away with a new and refreshing perspective on my struggles as a mom, some affirmation having quit frisbee, and an unexpected new direction with my career. 

I share this, despite that it is clearly very irrelevant to anyone other than me, except that this podcast is about the interesting conversations that I have with others, and this is definitely one of them. I share this because I know there are people out there who are curious about what it would be like to have an astrological or tarot card reading and just need a little glimpse into it before they can truly make that decision. So here is that glimpse.

A few days before this conversation Jenn and I (along with our partners and kids and friends) attended an open house for an alternative school in our neighbourhood that we both want our kids to get into. The conversation natural meanders through a variety of topics including school ratings, learning styles, starting a new school, starting a summer school, tracking how kids learn, neuropsychoidiology, strength-based approach to learning... 

Resources 

Equinox: https://equinoxschool.ca/

Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) scores: http://www.eqao.com/en

EQOA results for Toronto District School Board (TDSB): http://www.eqao.com/en/assessments/results

The value of diversity in schools

Paper: Diversity in Public Education: Acknowledging Immigrant Parent Knowledge: http://journals.sfu.ca/cje/index.php/cje-rce/article/viewFile/560/1265

Kids Celebrating Diversity in Our Schools: http://www.cnmag.ca/kids-celebrating-diversity-in-our-schools/

Immigrants associated with lower bully rates: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/where-to-find-school-bullies-not-where-you-might-expect/article31930773/

Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences: http://multipleintelligencesoasis.org/ 

Index of Learning Styles: http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/ILSpage.html

Strength-Based approach to education: http://www.wellingtoncdsb.ca/school/stjohnbosco/publications/strength-based%20classroom%20strategies.pdf

Kids from lower SES and adversity given same opportunities are more innovative - Having trouble find this one that Jenn referred to.

Self-Reflecting Questions

do you need to see failure?

How do you learn?

Have you considered a strength-based approach to learning in your home or life, whether for you or your child? 

Post-Show Reflections:

I realized after that the “Why” that I mentioned I need to learn is because I tend to be a Global thinker, according to the Index of Learning Styles listed above.