Tag Archives: love

Are you willing?

Here’s to your full healing. Be courageous ! It’s time ❤️🙏 Would you be willing? 💕🙏

Healing broken relationships.

Right now we have time to process and learn emotional intelligence in a way we might never have had before.

For most of us having a broken relationship might mean we are having a difficult time knowing how to fix it, or find a way back, OR even worse, unwilling to find a way back.

We gamble living with regret when we had the power to do something about it. You owe it to yourself to do a deep dive, so you minimize the regret YOU will live with should the unthinkable happen. Until you choose to be courageous it’s going to keep being in your way and will impede you from fully moving forward.

Think about this. Your current relationships, no matter how good you think they are, are only as good as you are navigating them, emotionally speaking. Not dealing with the unfinished, demonstrates limits and a lack of willingness to grow through challenges with the unresolved party. This will stay in the back of your mind, whether you think so or not. If your current relationship should trigger you the way your unresolved one is doing, you will NOT have the skills to move through it as you have no knowledge of how to do so. You can’t take yourself past where you have drawn a line. Therefore, if anyone in your current life should trigger you the same way it’s “game over” so to speak. You will practise what you have learned or find yourself unable to resolve what you haven’t yet learned. Division and walls are NOT solutions, that is called “avoidance”.

The lack of resolution is like living with a broken leg that hasn’t healed. You refused the surgery because you were scared and the “temporary cast” isn’t doing its job. Of course it’s not good for your emotional, physical and mental health and certainly damaging to your current relationship.

You owe it to yourself to heal.

Like a broken arm or a broken leg that’s unhealed, a broken heart that is hurt because of a relationship and remains broken is unhealthy and will impair your ability to live your fullest life.

In fact, an unhealed heart can increase your anxiety, increase uncertainty, increase heartache and impair you emotionally, physically and spiritually in a way that nothing else can.

Think of it this way.

Adversity can come in relationships from the most benign challenges to the hardest. Kind of like lifting weights. If you continue with a commitment to deal with your problems, no matter how hard, it’s like lifting the small weight and continue to gradually add the ability to lift more as you encounter and resolve each trial. If you only manage the “small ones” and avoid the big ones, then you will be unable to “lift” when it’s needed. You don’t have the strength or experience of a resolved challenge to get you to the next one.

It’s unfinished business.

The truth is, the impact within you singularly, (that broken relationship) is impacting YOU internally. You are not being honest or realistic with yourself or others. It’s still broken inside of you and until you tackle it with courage and skill, you will remain unable think differently and resolve it. This “stuff” is coming from YOUR insides. I promise you, the underlying hurt invades every single way you approach people. It can’t be avoided, it spills out. You owe yourself more than this.❤️

We might be stuck, unable to see our way through and just afraid and unwilling to step into something that’s painful. But what happens if we would just be willing to consider another way? With courage, humility and a simple adjustment of thought, we can make all the difference to opening that door.

Practical help:

Here is an excellent podcast from two world renowned complex negotiators that understand the need for emotional intelligence in relationship and conflict resolution. It’s possible to grow and learn a better way. Take a listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNGSoMPfaGE&t=3s

A New Way to Think:

What happens if instead of believing the person that hurt you is bad, why not take a different approach? Develop compassionate curiosity learning emotional intelligence, which replaces revenge, walls or bitterness. Anyone can learn this and is a level of intelligence we can all achieve.

We all want the same thing: We all want to be loved and understood, so why don’t you shift your thoughts to a different view by considering, maybe the person, like you, isn’t all bad, is more than there mistakes and has good in them too?

What happens if you decide to see them as good and focus on that? What we focus on grows either good or bad. Are you the one who has made them so bad in your mind, that now you can’t reach out, or are too far gone?

It’s never too late. Love can heal anything, if you let it.

What story have you told yourself?

What if you become curious and vulnerable and soft hearted enough to want to know the others story, or perspective ALONG with yours?

Have you become the sole authority and knower of another persons heart? If you think so, that’s a pretty heavy place to have put yourself. Assuming you know what others are thinking or feeling or imagining you know where they are coming from is too big of a burden and frankly, isn’t even realistic, or sustainable.

Our inability to see someone as a complete human (good and not so good) often blocks our ability to find our way through to reconciliation and healing.

More practical help:

Here is another learning that might help you. This FBI negotiator has determined to let you see into his heart on how we can learn from failure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtNRfRCLWAc

If you focused on the wrong that someone has done and you are stuck there, why don’t you do yourself a favour and look at them differently? Why not allow some other perspective into your story to create a more balanced and holistic thinking?

Without all perspectives, you are flying with one wing my friend, and you may not see that you are spinning around in the same circle that started when you decided to cut someone out of your life.

I promise its what “you” have done to “you” that is at stake here.

As far as the person you have shut out, they have gifts and strengths that God has placed within them that you are no longer benefiting from. That’s just sad.

It doesn’t mean that what happened to you or how you experienced things wasn’t real. It means it’s not the whole story and that’s why you’re stuck.

Open your heart.

Just as we want others to see past our human mistakes and see the good in us, consider they have good in them too and start there. 🙏

You owe yourself the opportunity to be completely whole, dealing with any unhealed areas inside of you. If you won’t do it for you, do it for those around you that you love. Because truthfully, no matter what you think, they are not able to experience all of you, because all of you isn’t fully open. 🙏💕

If you still struggle with “how they hurt you” and can’t find a way to forgive, here’s a little episode from the movie The Shack f(ilmed right here in British Columbia) that might just help. Here’s to your full healing ! 🙏💕hCandy$$isaverygoodperson##toknowabout$$v=5caGyE8BoXs

“Trust Your Gut”?

TRUST YOUR GUT???

This article is my personal first hand experience watching the term “trusting your gut” be abused and misused.

This is a bit of a long read and learned lessons, based on the phrase ‘Don’t let your good be spoken evil of”.

If your decisions have left collateral damage, you might want to consider this thoughtful posting.


If you are operating in integrity, while trusting your gut, there will be full transparency, absolute integrity and “buy in” without manipulating at each step along the way.

Patiently willing to learn and understand the concerns of those who love and care for you while you wait for the witness of important pieces and people before “acting on things”, will assist you in purifying any intentions or possible future mishaps.


Think of it as a caution sign. ⚠️


Imagine if you were walking on a pathway you’ve never walked on before. You want take each step very carefully and ensure that everything is in agreement before you make the next step. This is important in unknown territory and especially when the collateral damage potential is high.


As with any “passion pursuits” the caution provides the much needed “ stop & pause” level of accountability that passion makes us blind to at the time of exciting opportunities.

“In the multitude of counsellors, there is safety”.


Consider: A full witness and agreement all around is prudent and if rejected, often exposes possibly, less than honourable motives.


Your “ gut “ will be just ONE of the “multiple, moral and integral” factors that assist in indicating you’re moving the right way, and the sign will be you have kept valuable relationships in tact.
In seeking the best outcomes you might think you are doing things the “right thing”, but get it the, “wrong way”, however you might not be operating in the highest outcome for everyone involved, including yourself.


I feel we should consider an added value to the statement “ trusting your gut”. We just can’t use this statement in an isolated vacuum. The term “trusting your gut“, has to have a measured approach and protected by a strong commitment to ethical outcomes for all concerned. “Trusting your gut”, cannot stand on its own without accountability and must be a complete and transparent process ending in “win-win”.

To reject the prudence test, exposes immaturity and self-centred needs that will show up over time. If it can’t pass the first test of prudence, it’s not going to pass any future test. Tests are an inevitable pressure on relationships to bring less than desirable qualities to the surface for healing or resolve.

The deeper the impact on outcomes towards others, the more time should be given in making decisions.

I have had to learn some tough lessons of late.

In my experience, seeing behaviours that were disappointing, I had to accept a lack of honour and integrity in some of the relationships in the past.

I’ve learned “loyalty” is an optional outcome in relationships if one interferes with the goals of another. I experienced outcomes that did not line up with integrity in my friendships. That was and is a big lesson to learn. I experienced, in certain cases, that I was a pitstop for individuals to pursue relationships that I had nurtured, so those same individuals could directly benefit. Sadly, some very important relationships have been ruined due to these type of selfish pursuits.


Boundaries are a must in business AND in personal relationships.

I am learning to be diligent in who has access to my friendships and why.

This was/ is hard for me as I naturally love to gather people together and really see others connect and grow.
I am learning, now more than ever, to pay close attention to the possibility of less than honourable motives with those who have access to the connections I have the honour to build. Trusted relationships have a very vulnerable side.

Hollywood is a tough town to find integrity.
When I started working in the entertainment industry in 2008, we were filming a celebrity biography TV show in Beverly Hills. I had come up with the idea to create a more profitable add on to the shows I was already producing in Vancouver, Canada.

I went to LA to meet significant Hollywood movers and shakers to start the development process. I cold called and built the trust necessary to start the conversation and development. 15 years later, I am grateful to have maintained these relationships in spite of significant obstacles by those with less than integrity. Out of that initial work a secondary opportunity had opened and I carefully and strategically facilitated a meeting with high profile people and very well known networks.

I further believed we all had the same shared values of integrity. I was wrong. Initially, I was included in conversations, emails and all seemed above board.

Out of know where was a slight “ tone change” took place and I later discovered that back door deals were made leaving me left out.

Money-(the love of money=greed) can bring that out in people – but I’ve learned that so can loneliness and desperation.

As with all things that are not built on integrity, the project eventually failed, unable to stand the test of integrity.


Hollywood can be a dirty business and the entertainment industry is full of it. What is hard, is this can also be a similar lack of integrity and in close relationships where you believed you had a degree of trust.

But again, human beings regardless of the context, don’t often choose to be the best version of themselves when they could. They often reach for the lowest and easiest common denominator.

This is exactly why good things are hard and have to pass the test of time.


I knew I had to be wiser in business and with my celebrity clients, but this has struck close to home several times now and I need to learn my lesson.

So this advice is for myself and if it benefits others as well, all the better.


Your “gut” might tell you all kinds of things that you believe are correct, but without the presence of a transparent process and ethical filter, for the greater good for everyone involved, you’re not trusting your gut. The danger of acting in selfishness with a personal agenda will cause failures.

I promise you.


Think twice about what it means to “trust your gut”. Allow the test of time and demonstrate your integrity. Don’t run from it, press into it. You will be better for it.


“ mans rejection is Gods protection “ 🙏❤️

Time for a change…..

D70_1732JUST LOVING EACH OTHER IS ENOUGH…………

Just over two years ago my husband and I celebrated our lives together. I have never known of a couple who has gone through so much and had so much love and family and friends supporting our lives together while having a few choice enemies to try and subvert us. They weren’t successful.  We have been through so much, in our 4 years together.  When I first met my husband, his father had just died only a few months prior and he was just finding his voice and inner strength.

The following year in spite of untold adversity from “those closest”,  and a very nasty divorce and vicious attacks, we then had to deal with  my mother who broke her hip twice in the same few months. The first one was once in later June 2011 and the other in Oct 2011.  She subsequently died in my arms Nov 11, 2011.

After all the hardship and stress, he was still my rock and my strength. While still grieving a few months later and having had the stress of another difficult situation, he was innocently obeying the law while waiting for a bus to pull out and a woman who didn’t see the bus  he was legally waiting to pull out from slammed into him.  The impact was so bad his frame crumbled on his car and he has permanent nerve damage and spasms.  After the accident it was debilitating for him and I had to take on a second job to pay his family obligations due to him not being able to work for over 7 months. My older sister needed to move from the cold in Edmonton to live with us  and not long after she came to live with us all kinds of strange symptoms eventually resulted in a tragic diagnosis of stage 4 lung cancer. Not long after,  she died this past January 11, 2014.  After her death and in the middle of so much grief,  we had a near fatal car accident May 4th….
In spite of all the challenges we have, we are strong and our love is stronger and our forgiveness for those who have hurt us continues to be our priority.  We just sold our house to release the hold that was on us and we are excited about our new journey and our future… stay tuned for more to come…… thank you for your love!

 

 

How to Make Your Grocery Shopping Go Further

Whether you are out of work, struggling to pay for the cost of childcare or wondering how you will finance Christmas, any areas in life where you can make monetary savings are welcome.

Saving money not only allows us to pay for the essentials in life – food, clothes for your children, your rent or mortgage, utility bills and the rest – it also allows us to put money aside for the future. It’s never too early to start saving; even if you can only put a small amount of money away each month into a savings account ,over time you will see your funds grow. You might even want to set up a savings account for your children; it is quite common for parents to start a college fund for their kids, as the years will soon pass by.

Thinking further down the line, the money you save can be put towards a pension scheme to help support you during your retirement. However you choose to save your money that’s up to you, but one useful way relates to the food we buy and cook; something applicable to us all.

Always make a shopping list
It’s surprising how many women don’t make a list of what they need before they head to the grocery store. You might have an amazing memory or feel that taking the five minutes to write the list is a waste of your already stretched time. However, research shows that having a shopping list is one of the best ways to avoid impulse buys at the grocery store; the very products that can add dollars to your food bill every week. Make a list and religiously stick to it; nothing goes in your grocery cart if it is not on the list. Also by making a list you avoid making extra trips to buy food – you never will just come out of the store with the milk you went into get – saving you money on fuel into the bargain.

Buy in bulk
On the majority of occasions it is cheaper to buy a large pack or a multipack of food items. If you have a big family, this represents no problem. However, if you live alone or there are only one or two others in your household, this should still not be a barrier to making more economical purchases; consider whether fresh items can be frozen, whether you might be able to share the purchase with someone else or whether non-perishable items would last anyway.

Make use of special offers
The grocery store always has a range of special offers designed to save their customers money. As long as you don’t fall into the trap of buying products that you don’t really need, they can indeed do so. Watch out for link saves on multiple perishable items though; if you aren’t able to use them all before they deteriorate, it wasn’t such a good deal after all. For this reason offers on cans, packets and jars of food can provide a better buy, as most of the time they can sit in the cupboard or freezer for months before they need to be used.

Don’t be a brand snob
Always buying the famous brands of food can bump up the cost of your food shop considerably; if you were to start adding some of the own brand goods from wherever you shopped to your grocery cart, you would soon see the savings mount up. The quality of many own brand products is surprisingly good and in taste tests only a small percentage of participants can often tell the difference.

Fresh is not always best
If you only ever buy fresh fruit and vegetables on the assumption that they are better for you, think again. Not only can the vitamin content be lower in fresh varieties – various vitamins deteriorate with time, whereas they are “locked in” on freezing – but they also cost more. Switching over to at least some frozen and even canned or dried fruit and vegetables will provide a healthy saving for your purse. If you must only buy fresh produce, choose those in season, as fruit and vegetables that have travelled half way across the world to the grocery store cost a lot more than those grown in your own state.

Cut back on meat
As meat is often the most expensive part of a meal, if you can eat less it’s a good way to save money. Reduce the meat component by half in meals such as casseroles, curries, chilli and pasta dishes and instead bulk them out with peas, beans or lentils, which are an excellent low fat and filling protein source and cost a fraction of the price of meat.  Eggs are also a cheap protein source; move on from egg on toast to more inventive dishes such as frittatas and Spanish omelettes.

Avoid processed foods
You are paying extra for the convenience that someone else has made the item when you buy processed foods. While making your own cakes and biscuits might seem a chore when you are busy, your kids will be eager to lend a hand, so it can be a good way to amuse them for an afternoon. Staple items such as sauces for pasta and curries, stock and dressings all tend to be cheaper if you make your own.

Cook in bulk
By preparing more for each meal than you need – say double quantities – this is a great way to save time and money. The extra portions can be frozen so that on the days when you are pushed for time, you can have a wholesome meal in minutes. Not only that, but you will also save on your gas or electricity bills, as the time that you will need to heat the second portion through will be much less than if you had made another meal from scratch. Even if you have made a standard portion of a dish and you have an extra serving left – perhaps if one of your kids is out for the evening – never throw that away; it will make the perfect meal for one person, so again pop it in the freezer.

Make use of leftovers
Throwing away a proportion of your weekly food shop wastes money and even if it were only 10%, if you worked out how much this was equivalent to over a year, you would be shocked. Besides only buying as much food as you need, there are other ways around this issue. If you misjudged the number of potatoes to boil or cooked too many green vegetables, these can still be used the following day. Extra vegetables can always be used to make soup, potatoes can be sliced and sautéed, fruit can be turned into a smoothie and meat can be used in a curry. The same principle can be applied to food in the fridge approaching its “use by” date. There are cook books and internet sites devoted to the topic of using up your leftovers, so if you are stuck for inspiration, these can provide you with additional ideas.

Use every last scrap
Even if you aren’t wasting any food, you will still be left with the likes of fruit and vegetable peelings, eggs shells and cardboard containers. Rather than add these remains to the garbage, these can be used to make compost, which you can then add to your garden instead of buying ready-bagged compost. Composter units can be bought relatively cheaply, but to be honest all you need is a wooden frame and something to act as a lid to get you started.

Hope this helps! Thanks Eve! 
L, J, K (Love, Joy, Kindness)

Candace