Book Review: Almost English

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

almostenglish“Almost English is about the ugly years and a startlingly plain adolescent.”

While Author Charlotte Mendelson’s description is definitely apt, the novel is actually held together by two protagonists—mother and daughter—facing their own crises in West London during the 1980s.

Sixteen-year-old Marina is being raised by her emotionally fragile mother Laura and three elderly Hungarian relatives in a cramped basement flat filled with strange traditions and even stranger foods.

Longing to escape this tiny Hungarian enclave, Marina goes off to Combe Abbey, a posh, traditional English boarding school, hoping to reinvent herself and “set off towards the glorious adulthood which awaits her.”

Desperately homesick, Marina feels more of a misfit than ever as she tries to conform to English ways and customs. Several comedic episodes follow when she is invited to a classmate’s country home.

Struggling to deal with her own painful secrets and dilemmas, Laura wonders if she is on the brink of a nervous breakdown or simply having “a disappointing life.” Abandoned by a handsome and spoiled husband, Laura moves in with her mother-in-law where she lives uncomfortably for over a decade.  The insecure and often distracted forty-two-year-old fails to notice that Marina is desperately in need of an intervention.

The scenes involving the endearing trio of aged Hungarian women provide much of the domestic humor. Their conversations are sprinkled with “darlinks” and “von-darefuls” and their extravagant gestures create constant drama, much to Marina’s chagrin.

A delightful read, Almost English is worthy of its Man Booker Prize nomination.

Thanks to Harper Collins Canada for my review copy.



Book Review: Awaken

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

awaken“A masterless student, learning from all but attached to none.”

I couldn’t help but smile at this description of author Patsie Smith. From the start, it is clear the book does not espouse any one school of thought. Instead, using clear and practical language, Smith shares lessons she has learned along her own twenty-seven-year journey.

Divided into two sections—“Before Awakening” and “After Awakening”—each chapter begins with stick artwork and ends with a short reflection.

While the book could be easily read in one sitting, it is better to take time with each chapter, absorbing the succinct and powerful messages. Only then, will you experience the many “Aha!” moments inherent in this book.

Some of my favorite “Aha!” moments…

“The biggest cause of the blindness and shriveling of our spirit is our analytical mind.”

“The words of the Buddha are like a raft built to cross the river. When the purpose is completed, the raft must be left behind if we are to travel further.”

“Sometimes life has its own way of working things out through the power of doing less or doing nothing at all.”

I enjoyed this book thoroughly and will return to it often, keeping in mind Patsie Smith’s advice: “Growing your spirit requires feeding it every day with wisdom, teachings and direct learning experience.”

I received this book as a Goodreads giveaway.

A Journey of Self-Awareness

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

Welcome to my Second Acts Series!

Today, we have Certified Life Coach Sandra Dawes talking about the experiences that have shaped her amazing life journey.

 Here’s Sandra!

Sandra Dawes 21897In my mid to late twenties I lived a very passive life. I lived to make others happy, often to the detriment of my own happiness. I was a constant people pleaser, a consequence of low self-esteem and self-confidence. In my heart, I didn’t feel like I was worthy of love, so I did whatever I thought I had to do to prove to the people in my life that I was worth the love I so badly needed from them. In doing this, I put my own dreams and desires on the backburner.

When my father died, my world shifted in ways I didn’t think were possible. While he had been diagnosed with cancer 6 years earlier, I thought he had beaten it. It came back with a vengeance in 2004 and he died on the operating table during hip replacement surgery. I wasn’t prepared for the consequences of my father’s passing. I was in denial that it was even a possibility! With all that happened after his death, I was left hopeless, believing that all that I had done for others was a complete waste of time and unsure if I was ever going to experience joy in my life again, or if I really ever knew what it meant!

It took years of self-help books and a journey of self-awareness to understand that I am the creator of the reality that I experience and that if I wanted different experiences, I needed to make changes in the way I lived my life. I now understand I am worthy of love and don’t need anyone to prove that to me. I just need to believe it in my own heart and love myself the way I wanted others to love me. Instead of allowing life to happen to me, I’m doing what I need to do to make things happen in my life. My self-esteem and self-confidence are stronger than they have ever been and I’m no longer afraid to step outside my comfort zone and try new things and put myself out there in ways that would have made my knees weak just a few years ago!

No matter how bad things may seem right now, or how impossible your dreams might look, the belief that anything is possible is a necessary requirement if you want to live a better life than the one you’re currently experiencing. Belief in your dreams, a plan to make them a reality and taking action each and every day towards making those dreams real, are important steps in living the life that you’ve dreamed about. You have to believe without a shadow of a doubt that you are worth all of the amazing things that you want for your life. Yes, there will be obstacles and challenges along the way, but when you want something bad enough; you can’t let anything deter you from your goals!

Wayne Dyer says “when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” How do you want to experience life? Do you want to live your life believing that you have no control over your circumstances and live a mediocre, unfulfilling life, or do you want to experience life where anything is possible and you can achieve your heart’s desires as long as you are committed to do whatever it takes to make it happen? I’ve chosen to live my life without regret and pursue my passions to the fullest. It’s scary at times, but every milestone I encounter reminds me that it’s all worth it, and so am I!

Where to find Sandra…

Website | Twitter | Facebook

Joanne here!

Sandra, your clients are truly blessed to have such a caring and insightful coach in their lives. Thank you for sharing your triumphant story.

Book Review: The Paris Winter

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

pariswinterThe young women in The Paris Winter are battling against poverty, overbearing relatives and other constraints that existed in early twentieth century Paris.

The protagonist, Maud Heighton, is a middle-class Englishwoman, determined to continue with her study of art, even if she has to go hungry during another Paris winter.

We are given glimpses of the desperation she must have endured the previous winter when “she had been feeding herself too little, been too wary of lighting the fire when the damp crawled off the river” and her illness “had swallowed francs by the fistful.”

When Tanya (Tatiana Sergeyevna Koltsova), a rich and beautiful Russian classmate, invites her to take a stroll, Maud feels the first “curl of hope in her belly under the hunger.”

Tanya and Yvette, one of the life models, introduce Maud to a part-time position as a live-in lady’s companion. Maud’s health improves and she becomes a better artist—her lines are more confident and her use of color grows bolder. Maud is finally able to hold her head up high as she walks from the Rue de Seine to her classes.

This honeymoon period abruptly ends as the narrative takes a dark turn and meanders through an underworld filled with opium, diamonds, murder and revenge.

Different aspects of the three young women emerge as they experience the salons, slums, and sewers of the city during the Great Paris Flood of 1910.

Maud can no longer hide a strong fighting spirit behind her English manners. As artist Suzanne Valadon points out: “I’ve seen you sleeping with your jaw clenched so tight the muscles on your neck stand out and your fists pulling the sheets apart.”

Beautiful and spoiled Tania finally stands up to her chaperones, firmly stating her intention to modernize and carve a different path.

And most surprising of all, Yvette, a child of the streets, redefines what it means to be a guardian angel: “The whole point of a guardian angel was that they were with you whether you deserved it or not, that they stayed with you, that even if they could not save you, they were there.”

Imogen Robertson has written a dark and intriguing historical novel about a different Paris, one not so romantic or enchanting.

When the Universe Responds

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

Welcome to my Second Acts Series!

Today, we have Christy Johnson talking about the desperate request that led to the emergence of unexpected healing abilities.

Here’s Christy!

christyjohnsonI loved languages and writing but my parents’ unwillingness to fund such studies combined with my aptitude in math and science led me to major in chemical engineering at Purdue University.  I hated chemical engineering but I persisted through the program. Despite my reluctance, I went on to receive my chemical engineering doctorate at University of Michigan in 1990, returning to IBM where I’d worked seven semesters as a co-op student. I later declined the executive fast track when it was offered.

In my final position in an analytical lab doing microscopy, the closest match to my interests and aptitude I’d found during my tenure at IBM, I felt increasingly under-challenged and underemployed over the years. My job content felt empty and meaningless and so my substantial salary felt like blood money. I knew the corporation well by then and no other position tempted me yet I could not give myself permission to quit.

In 2007, I desperately “asked the universe for a change” which caused unexpected and stunning intuitive healing abilities to surface. A couple years later, I learned about Jin Shin Jyutsu®, a healing art combining intellect and intuition. Within a year, I completed the practitioner certification requirements and quit IBM two weeks later, seven years short of retirement. Next I discovered an unexpected aptitude for reading the Akashic Records, a way of viewing your life from your soul’s point of view. I now offer clients healing world-wide with these three modalities, inviting harmony and wholeness on all levels.

I wouldn’t have consciously chosen any of this, especially considering I’d never heard of any of the pieces before they presented themselves, but I love my work, my clients, as well as my return to writing via my blog. My work reflects my authentic self and is meaningful in a way IBM never could be.

If you’re considering a second act, I suggest you view each act as a separate lifetime. My grandfather was a grocer all his life, my father a professor for his, but many people today deviate wildly from their original trajectory. What you’ve done, no matter how tangentially related to where you want to go, built a foundation of life experience supporting your evolution into who, what, and where you are today. Leave the past behind but don’t discard its substantial gifts.

Also remember, you can’t cherry-pick the positive parts of your prior act. Retaining my desirable IBM salary, benefits, and relative job security would mean continued unabated misery for me. Trust your own knowing around what does and doesn’t satisfy you and remember the dissatisfying aspects were part of the package.

Finally, if you start feeling stuck, return to “How can I serve today?” In serving, we can find ourselves and get centered. Honoring who you are is the greatest gift you can give and receive.

Where to find Christy…

Website:  http://www.intuitiveheal.com

Blog:  http://www.intuitiveheal.com/blog/

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/intuitiveheal

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/IntuitiveHeal

Joanne here!

Thank you for sharing your extraordinary journey, Christy. I would encourage everyone to visit Christy online for more of her amazing advice and insights.

Growing Your Life Garden

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

Welcome to my Second Acts series!

Today, we have Jackie Yun talking about her extraordinary shift from the corporate world to her “next big thing.”

Here’s Jackie!

jackieyun“Fantastic Journey” was the subject line on my good-bye email and indeed, it had been.  As Senior Vice President of one of our Information Technology divisions, I tackled things like turning a tech center scheduled for shut-down into a revenue generating center, beating out external consulting firms for a rewrite of one of our systems, merging organizations that weren’t on the same path into a cohesive purposeful whole.  By any corporate yardstick, these were significant and had positive impact.

So, what would be my next big thing?  I could re-live all that I had lived on a bigger scale (CIO, COO, CEO, anyone?).  But, what is the point in a “repeat” when time is precious?  And time is precious when you’re at the doorstep of retirement, even if it is early retirement as it was for me.

In my “Fantastic Journey” email, I did not write about the corporate accomplishments.  I wrote to the people who made those milestones possible and recounted the extraordinary feeling of community, the can-do attitude, the camaraderie, and the caring support.

Jackie Yun's Garden

Jackie Yun’s Garden

I realized a bountiful garden had rooted in my life (this is my hat tip to Louise L Hay: “You’ve been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens”).  I wanted to tend this garden and grow it into a vibrant, lush, uplifting ecosystem.   

My tools in the past had included the corporate mantra of “it’s not enough, do it and prove it again”.  As part of my next big thing, I’m replacing those tools with the perspective of abundance and paraphrasing William Wordsworth, hoping to “fill my life with the breathings of my heart”.

To help these seedlings of breathings, I’ve tilled the soil with yearly #threewords to live by, augmenting my usual annual goal-setting passed on from my corporate life.  These #threewords help me to “do” in a more heart-spacious way.  For 2013, I am living by these words: 

  • Awesomeness > Owning it within, appreciating it in others and in the world
  • Art > making a point to look at things differently, be creative, curate a bit of beauty into everyday life
  • Jump > be bold, enjoy the feeling of flight, and a much needed reminder to exercise

Professionally, my next big thing meant becoming an Integral Coach ®.  Here I help people tend to their life gardens with coaching and advice on Executive Leadership, Career Direction, Life Challenges.  Like gardeners who share their harvests, I blog and enjoy sharing via Twitter and LinkedIn.  As the fantastic journey continues, I’m hoping to grow into a wise-old gardener, a caretaker of the ecosystem.  As Reginald Farrer wrote back in 1909:

“I think the true gardener is a lover of his flowers, not a critic of them. I think the true gardener is the reverent servant of Nature, not her truculent, wife-beating master. I think the true gardener, the older he grows, should more and more develop a humble, grateful and uncertain spirit.”

So, tell me, what is the next big thing for you?  What are your #threewords to live by?  And as the time approaches for your next big thing, please …

#TakeThisMoment to uncover that which will nourish and make your life garden bloom! ~ Jackie Yun

Where to find Jackie…

Website:  www.jackieyun.com
Twitter:  https://twitter.com/JackieYunTweets

LinkedIn:  http://www.linkedin.com/in/jackieyun

Joanne here!

Thank you Jackie for sharing your “Fantastic Journey.” As Integral Coach, you are well suited to the role of wise gardener and in an excellent position to help your clients grow their life gardens.

A Millennial’s Second Act

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

When I started the Second Acts series, I didn’t think that millennials would be part of it.  Having taught many of these children, born between the early 1980s and early 2000s, I assumed they would be in school, looking for a job or in the early years of a first career.

leannepix

But  after meeting with fellow GWIN member Leanne Ballard, I changed my mind and decided to feature her in this series.

Passionate and organized—not the usual combination of adjectives, but they certainly fit this busy mom of three who is running a local franchise.

Trained as a veterinary technician, Leanne secured employment at a small vet clinic in Mississauga where she was later promoted to office manager. While she enjoyed working with the animals, she found the job physically demanding and realized it would conflict with motherhood.

After her son was born, Leanne became a member of momstown, an organization focused on connecting neighborhood moms. She enjoyed the experience so much that she decided to buy the Guelph franchise.

That was three years ago.

Since then, the local group has grown and provides over twenty local events for moms with tots aged 0-6 years old.

As momstown mama, Leanne’s schedule is jam packed, but she still manages to exude a calm and competent air. Her eyes, however, sparkle when describing the different activities and benefits of momstown.  It is not surprising that the organization has flourished under her tender loving care.

momstownguelph

A Bit of History…

Momstown began as a small mothers’ group in Burlington, Ontario. Three moms (Christi, Ann-Marie and Shannon) wanted to provide events and encouragement for all moms–working moms, expectant moms, mat leave moms and stay-at-home moms.

There are weekday, evening and weekend programs that can fit in even the most hectic of schedules. While Momstown uses the Internet to connect, the primary goal is to get moms off the computer and out of the house.

To date, there are twenty franchises across Canada.

Where to find Leanne…

Blog: http://momstown-guelph.blogspot.ca

Twitter: https://twitter.com/momstownguelph

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/momstownguelph

Book Review: Freud’s Mistress

Posted on by Joanne Guidoccio

freudVery little is known about Minna Bernays, the other woman in Sigmund Freud’s household.

While she was speculated to have been his mistress, this controversial claim was dismissed by Freudian scholars.

All that changed during the summer of 2006.

A German sociologist discovered proof that Sigmund Freud and Minna Bernays had spent two weeks in August 1898 at a fashionable resort in Switzerland. An old ledger clearly showed that they occupied Room 11 on the third floor.

In Freud’s Mistress, authors Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman present a fictionalized account of that affair. Using Freud’s biographies, letters and scholarly texts as source material, the authors succeed in creating a corset-ripper set in Victoria-era Vienna.  

Overeducated and often underemployed, Minna is abruptly fired and finds herself practically destitute and out of options. In desperation, she writes her sister Martha and asks for help.

Determined to stay only for a short while, Minna looks forward to the “uncomplicated and intellectual” relationship she had previously enjoyed with her brother-in-law. But she quickly discovers that “the Freud she had known for years had transformed into someone else.”

As their lively late-night chats become more intimate, Minna finds herself torn between an explosive love affair and loyalty to Martha. She also has to deal with Sigmund’s mercurial moods. It was shocking to read just how aloof and dismissive he could be.

More devastating was the effect on Minna: “The distress of his cold shoulder was constant. It took away her appetite and her ability to appreciate anything. Sometimes she would feel it throbbing in her neck and traveling down her arm. Other times, she clenched her teeth so hard she gave herself a migraine. Even reading was no respite. It could be her imagination, but more often than not, she worried that perhaps he was tiring of her.”

Eventually, the sexual side of the relationship wanes, but Minna, Martha and Sigmund continue to share a household.

An excellent read for anyone who enjoys historical fiction.