Healthy Transformations

Healthy living is about feeling love, happiness and belonging.  Ukrainian community celebrations in Calgary have traditionally been full of these!  And scientists know that these feelings are related to the good hormone levels, among them, the "mothering hormone" oxytocin.  Of course there are other hormones involved, things like dopamine and serotonin but the point is, these all enhance emotional bonding so necessary for a transformative experience in the world.  Transforming information received from social contact, and converting it into healthy, sustaining energy is that "interior decorating" plan we all undertake over time.

Ukrainian Calgary is more than just an idea for me.  It is a sense of place, of personal relationships, of friendship and family.  Participants in Ukrainian Calgary are processing information all the time. And because everything is new for newcomers, first impressions matter perhaps more than we think!  Aesthetics have a huge impact!  Familiar sights, sounds, smells all give an impression.  We know what we like, love and what attracts us.  We all recognize beauty, skill and craft.  Like connoiseurs, experience has taught us what is good and beneficial for our life journey.  Does Ukrainian Calgary exhude that sense of "home away from home" for newcomers?

Many of Calgary's Ukrainian newcomers and others are quietly visiting "Ukrainian Calgary".  Impressed,  many are taken aback at the organizational vision and personal leadership of the pioneer generations.   Most are astounded at the love, purpose and cultural bonds of Ukrainian Canadians of three and four generations, much less the unity of purpose!  Satisfied with visiting?  Perhaps.  

The linguistic, cultural traditions of the first Ukrainian Canadians has become a small part of the Western Canadian way of life.  "Ukraina" exists here in every pysanka, every "Carol of the Bells", in every braided bread and embroidered sorochka.  "Ukraina" exists here in the dancers, onion domed churches, and pyrohy available in every grocery store.  But newcomers can call home, go on the internet, purchase online - anything they "need" is available for purchase. But can you get "mothering hormones" via email?

What next? Well, relationships have a way of evolving. Transformation is the dance of life. Meditation and spiritual life is but a start; lifestyle changes that stimulate youthful thinking involves having fun together; leading to stress management and positivity, which helps to gain the skill to make new connections. Youthful new Ukrainian Calgarians are looking for these in their new life in the diaspora. 

Is Ukrainian Calgary welcoming new energies, new ideas and lifestyle changes that could transform our dance of life here on the Canadian prairies?  What would a huge embrace of newcomers do for Ukrainian Calgary's future? What are your "interior decorator" plans for Ukrainian Calgary?





  

 

Phantom Pain and Empathy

kalyna.ca

My grandmother experienced many changes in her life.  Baba's parents arrived in Canada at the turn of the last century, without the three sons who travelled with them.  The boys died on the ship.  Imagine the difficulty immigrating, decisions to leave home and family, the physical hardship on the ship, and the tragedy of loss, not just one son, but then a second, and then a third.  Arriving in port, disembarking without the children, questioning everything.  Imagine the misery, distress, torment, torture and wound of having lost all your little ones! Why? How could they go on?  How could they continue on their journey to a new life, without their beloved little boys?  With nothing but hope and faith, they did.

Pra-baba and Pra-dido ventured out from the train station in Strathcona, across the river from Edmonton by buggy, to the piece of land that would break their hearts even more.  But the two of them persevered, and over the course of time, a lovely little girl, my grandmother was born.   

Baba was an only child.  Well loved, and well educated by the day's standards, she married an adventurer, schooled, and enthusiastic for life. 

Confidently growing through the challenges of farming, they felt a sense of prosperity, at least until one day baba's arm reached into a piece of farm equipment.  She had been standing beside the "sichkarnia" (straw cutter), and called out to the men to come in for supper. Bending over the cutter she noticed some straw peeking out, and flicking the straw into the machine, a thread from the sweater got caught. Caught in the tines of the machine which kept twisting, in excruciating pain, the only way of saving Baba was to cut it off her arm.  It must have been devastating.  (The doctors tried to reattach the arm, but it was not possible.  The limb was lovingly cremated and the ashy remains were buried with her, when she died.)  But she persevered, they all did. 

It was simply a part of her, and as grandchildren we hardly noticed. The stump of her arm, cleverly disguised in the sleeve of her sweater, the other arm busily and dextrously kneading bread dough, milking the cow, picking eggs, caressing her grandchildren.  The conflict between signals from her limb, and the visual information created a mental confusion for her, I am sure.  Painkillers were ineffective, so she kept on living.

Today, when I think of her, deep inside me flinches with empathy and pain. I wonder whether my deep sense of empathy is something others feel, and whether it is pity or love.  Actually it feels deeper than that.  The loss of her limb involved a series of compensations, and compromises, unspoken but real.  There were times when the phantom pain in her fingers was something you could read in her eyes.  So Dido pinched pyrohy, rolled holubtsi, and made tea for Baba and me when I visited the farm. And the aunties washed and braided Baba's long hair, she couldn't do it alone. And in photographs of Baba, she always stood sideways so nobody would notice.

The need of that arm affected everything. Even the simple act of lovingly caressing her newborn grandchildren was disrupted.  I remember her fierce embrace. 

The Ukrainian heartland also experienced prosperity in the 1920's, but hopes for culture and nation were shortlived, disrupted by droughts, which affected the Soviet bottom line.  Couldn't have anticipated their vicious "masterplan" for the intentional, and genocidal restriction of food, and the subsequent Holodomor which destroyed millions of Ukrainians.  An entire limb was dismembered!

Can people fathom how many compensations, compromises, and clumbsy acts of self determination have been derailed by the phantom pain caused by loss of this essential limb?  Is soul jerking empathy enough?  How does one regain "whole-ness"?  How does Ukraine regain its "whole-ness"?  Just asking. 

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120606-neurons-that-shaped-civilization