Month: May 2025

Posted in Catholic, Coaching, Health, Mental Health, Prayer, Reflections, Sam's adventures, Stress Management, Trauma

Why Everything at Once?

Posted on by Snowrose

I was having a conversation with a friend recently, who has been going through many many trials, all converging at once. She was feeling distressed, with good reason, but also found deep confusion over why God was allowing this timing.

In these circumstances it may seem like God is leaving you standing with no direction, or that you are being left to solve everything on your own. In my experience, counterintuitively, these circumstances are actually always an invitation.

An invitation? To chaos and pain? Well, no, an invitation to go deeper. Deeper into your relationship with Him, your relationship with yourself, and your relationship with others.

Diving Deep

Going through life, there are always situations that are difficult and distressing, but they don’t necessarily mean you will experience an overwhelming level of emotions. When life events stir up a huge cascade of emotions inside, there are generally 2 main causes.

  1. You do not have a FELT sense of having enough support from your internal resources or social support network.
  2. The big emotions were already there inside, and you are in a situation that is poking at the places you did not receive love, support, and safety throughout your life.

An invitation

This is where the invitation comes in. In the first example, if you are in a difficult situation without feeling supported- it’s time to reach out and get help. That is no easy task, because it may not feel safe to do so, but you would be surprised how many people have lived through similar situations and who may have an attentive ear. You are not alone in the journey, others are traveling through the storms like you.

If your heart is being flooded by the intensity of your past experiences, that’s where you are being invited deeper into a relationship with God and yourself. Those places that you have lived through hardships that were held onto are usually there because the original experience was like scenario 1. You didn’t have the external connections necessary for post-traumatic growth. These are the places that we protect ourselves from the most inside, the places of trauma–big “T” and little “t” alike. Truly, these are the places that God wants to come into for healing and communion. These are the places we shut everyone out from, ourselves, others, and God alike.

But why?

Can’t he just take it all away? Make it better? Of course, but only with an invitation in, entering into the worst of it freely. God allows the circumstances of our lives to be invitations to self-reflection and awareness of the pains that we hold inside our hearts so that we can invite Him in on our own time to finally meet those unmet needs. We are made with such dignity that God will not tread freely through our hearts but will wait patiently until we are ready to say yes.

If life is getting too much, will you open the door?

Posted in celiac disease, Recipes, Sam's adventures

Belated Christmas Food Adventure: Pepperpot

Posted on by Snowrose

I have wanted to write up this post for months, but, as I mentioned in my last blog post: my great ideas were derailed. Well, now is better than never!

A grand adventure in search of nostalgia!

I grew up in Ontario and had the opportunity to visit my grandparents out in Alberta every few years for Christmas. Those years, Christmas was filled with delightful memories of family, fun, and food! We would spend part of the visit with my maternal grandpa, enjoying delicious European foods, and part of the visit at my paternal grandparents’ house enjoying family recipes from their homeland of Guayana, South America. My grandparents came to Canada when my father was 10, and brought with them long-held family traditions, including our very own pepperpot recipe. This year, I finally asked my grandparents for the recipe to make it over Christmas! Now, I am not actually giving you guys the recipe, but sharing the absolute adventure I had… of making pepperpot with celiac disease.

Pepperpot, a dish for special occasions!

For those who aren’t familiar with it, pepperpot is actually the national dish of Guayana and is commonly served for breakfast at special occasions like Christmas. While you can now buy “pepperpot” sauce from President’s Choice Brand, my grandparents heavily stressed: … that… is…. not… pepperpot. Why? Because every true pepperpot recipe contains one special ingredient: Cassareep. Cassareep is a delicious extract sourced from cassava, used in Guayanese and other South American cooking. Herein lies the heart of this food adventure. I learned the hard way that Cassareep, at least all the ones imported to Canada…. ALWAYS HAS WHEAT!

What to do?

I… doing the very best research I could, through the help of one of my best friends… erroneously attempted to MAKE my own Cassareep. Now, I learned AFTER making the sauce, that Cassareep needs to be made with bitter cassava… which… is not imported in Canada due to the high arsenic levels (which… in part are what give Cassareep the distinct flavor as the arsenic is cooked off). Did I know this? No… of course not. Thankfully, I researched this before cooking the meats, because they are stewed over the course of 3 days.

Cooking process:

Instead of leaving the stew on the stovetop like you can with real cassareep (it has preservative qualities from the cassareep), I stewed it over many hours, let it cool, and stored it in the fridge overnight. This process was repeated over 3 days leading up to Christmas.

How it turned out?

While it was not exactly true to our family’s recipe because of my own dietary restrictions, my goodness was this ever a delicious meal to have for breakfast on Christmas morning! The flavors were nostalgic despite the missing Cassareep and were honestly fairly close because of my attempt that turned into a kind of cassava sauce. The meal was shared with my in-laws and I was so happy to share such an important part of my childhood with them, but more importantly: with my son. It filled me with joy that he enjoyed the meal. It meant so much that I was able to share this special tradition with another generation!

All in all, I would say that the recipe failed successfully! It may not be the family recipe to the T, but it was the closest I could do, and look forward to making it again next year.

Posted in ADHD, Coaching, Goal Setting, Sam's adventures

Captured busy!

Posted on by Snowrose

My goodness! My well-intentioned goal of writing and contributing to this blog weekly has most certainly fallen through! This is a great place for my own self-reflection on the past season and look ahead to how I can do things differently next time.

First things first: why am I sharing my own pitfalls with you, dear reader? Well, to show that even if you look put-together, life is a process of learning and growing… for EVERYONE! I think what caught me off guard with this particular goal was a divide in my focus. In establishing this business, I’ve been working at the turtle’s pace, bit by bit. It started as homework for my Master’s degree in my “flourishing and development plan”, as a simple portfolio of my art, and has slowly blossomed into something bigger– and a little more immediate than my eventual goal of becoming a fully licensed psychologist. In the last few months though, I’ve had a lot of clarity for the direction I want to take this up-and-coming business to really hit the ground running. That’s where I stumbled: too many ideas at once.

Maintaining Balance

It’s always tricky with ADHD to see where the balance in that divided attention can be maintained. I’ve personally found my many interests and ability to hyper-focus to outweigh the impact of diminished executive function, especially when I take the steps needed for the support I require. In this case, I definitely bit off more than I could chew. So what now? Well, I’ll use a very helpful tool that DMU (Divine Mercy University) introduced me to in that same “flourishing and development plan” homework. WOOP!

No, no, I don’t mean to just exclaim exuberantly, though really it is a sound I make when I’m excited. WOOP is a really helpful system designed to take goal setting to the next level. It stands for:

So let’s WOOP my goal together:

Your WOOP Summary
Your Wish: Have an active blog
Your best Outcome: I’d write posts at least once a week
Your inner Obstacle: Getting distracted by other priorities
Your Plan: If “Getting distracted by other priorities” then I will “Choose a day to write and that be the business task”

Want to WOOP your goals too? Here is the practice space!

Posted in Sam's adventures

What a HAPPY Mother’s Day!

Posted on by Snowrose

This weekend was an exceptional Mother’s Day!

Happy Belated Mother’s Day to all you moms out there!

I think we had an extra special day this year because unlike in previous years, there was some intentionality in planning to actually do something special. In previous years the hectic chaos of life got a bit in the way and in many ways, BOTH of our ADHD brains drop the ball HARD when chaos enters the scene. So what did we do? The day started with a relaxed morning, before heading to the bus to church for mass. Going to mass as a family is genuinely a highlight of my weekends.

After mass, we took a surprisingly gorgeous family photo by a beautiful blossoming tree, before heading for the walk home. We stopped at Timmy’s, where we grabbed some cool refreshing drinks and enjoyed the walk home… up-hill, and down-hill, as our street crests directly between our house and the church. When we got home we had a relaxed lunch before… BAKING CUPCAKES! I think decorating the cupcakes together as a family was a really fun time, and definitely something we will be doing more often. We used the Betty Crocker gluten free devil’s food cake mix, and I am happy to report that the quality on these box mixes continues to impress. The cupcakes had a good crumb, and were delicious!

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!