Podcast Episode #008 The year after her retirement from a regional management position, Janet was diagnosed with a terminal condition: brain cancer. Janet wants to share her story, “not because I want sympathy, because I feel well supported, but because sharing my journey I might help someone else.” As Janet says, “there is not a family that is not touched by cancer so she hopes that by sharing her story of feeling better by spending time outside will help others.”
Right now Janet’s time spent outdoors walking is much more limited. She “is weaker as a result of her chemotherapy treatments, and can’t walk nearly as far.”
So she now spends her time in her “large yard, smelling the flowers and watching the second round of robin’s eggs hatching on a tree right beside my deck. I love to watch the robins come and go. ”
When she looks out at the world, Janet has this kind of clarity and space – this open feeling of honesty that trees, shrubs, birds, little animals and plants provide.
Janet is curious and engaged in her outdoor world – now her back yard. She has mature trees: spruce, crabapple, weeping caragana, and lilacs – and birds who love her trees.
This year alone Janet’s backyard bird list includes: rose breasted grosbeak, gold finches, orioles, cedar waxwings, nut hatches, pileated woodpeckers, robins, downy woodpeckers, wrens, blue jays, chickadees, mourning doves, wrens, and a wild turkey or two.
When Janet is outside on her deck she is not ruminating on wanting to be somewhere else or someone else. She knows that there are some things that are out of her control and there are many more that she can control. Here Janet follows the lives of new robins in a nest and shares on our Ditch Inside For Outside facebook group.
From childhood Janet poised her mind – to be in sync with nature – changing and dynamic – just like the world. She still remembers the feel of deep moss, the wild of getting lost in another world, pink rose petals, swamp life, and the soothing sound of the pulp logs dropping on to the huge wood pile.
As Janet says she grew up in Pine Falls, on the edge of the boreal forest, and the beginning of the Canadian Shield – a small town basically carved out of the bush. One of Janet’s favourite childhood memories is of walking around in the bush around Pine Falls into what the kids called The Lost World. There the tall evergreen trees were so densely packed that sunlight could not penetrate the tree canopy. The forest floor was deep moss. There were swamps nearby.
Janet continues, “once in the Lost World, you could not tell which direction was out. You had to listen for distant outside sounds: cars on the highway or the paper mill sounds. Then we could make our way out to the train tracks. The scents of the pine needles, the moss, with the faint hint of sulphur” is a mix of memories that she still draws on more than forty years later.
During her career in management Janet went to the park every day, to “walk among the trees, alone, to take away the stress of the day.” Janet went to her urban park every day, no matter what the weather, to build up her resilience for that day and the next day. This action step “made me feel better and calmer every day.” Janet knew what to do – how to regulate her emotions, revive, and shift her mindset.
When during her career Janet was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, she doubled down on her outdoor walks in the park to help her manage her new chronic illness. She also found that walking in the parks, in the bush, and along the beach in the summertime helped her to lose weight, keep her blood sugar under control, and keep her diabetes medications at a minimum.
The year after her retirement from a regional management position, Janet was diagnosed with a terminal condition: brain cancer. Janet tells us she has “made a choice to be happy and grateful for things she can do” — upper most of these is drawing on the strength of her outside mindset.
Listening to Janet’s story maybe you were hit with the human condition and your own mortality.
You know that Janet is not trying to deny her brain cancer diagnosis, she has not tuned out, nor has she fallen into utter despair.
She understands the uncertainty of her situation, it all depends how the chips fall. We don’t know what is going to happen. It all depends.
Janet does know that everything she does matters. Looking or going outside helps her to relate to herself, to her mind, and she knows she can influence and create goodness everywhere. Janet is smart, and she knows she has agency over moving her circumstances in a better direction.
Janet’s sharing is a kind of grace that only comes with being in harmony with the way things are – something very powerful to be around.
Through her story Janet is showing us the way to live and enjoy our minds in the deepest kind of way – to trust and have confidence in ourselves and our worlds around us.
For me, she has given so much. She was the first person to buy my book Take Back Your Outside Mindset. Janet says that all along she knew she better outside, but once she read my book, the science and tips helped to confirm this for her.
Janet’s advice to us :
“Make the choice to be happy, to be grateful for that you can still do”
“Get out even if it is just in your yard or a small community park – even if you can’t get out into the bush or along the shoreline.
Breathe deep, just try to concentrate on what you are seeing and hearing at that moment – for me it is the different bird songs.
And breathe in those tree aerosols they really do make a difference.”
Janet, gracious as ever, thanks me at the end for writing my book and workbook Take Back Your Outside Mindset because she says she goes back to it to remember the science and the tips.
Thank you Janet for all that you do.
