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Welcome to this new Gratitude Friday! Feel free to share with me your (partial or full) gratitude moments in the comments; that way I can hold joy for you ✿ (you know that makes me happy to make you happy).

I feel like this week kind of flew by… I know this is a cliché, but where exactly did September go? It’s Pumpkin Spice everything season again. The weather is gloomy and colder, wetter as well. I prefer snow to rain, but not everything that goes with it.

I am doing my best to use this push from Effy to blog every day this month.
September is my birthday month and for once, I am tackling it differently.
I really hope you’ll find nuggets of interesting things in my words and in what I share. I love reading your comments.
Thank you for being here.

TRIGGER WARNING: Abuse. Systemic Racism. Death.

Today marks our country’s first national Truth & Reconciliation Day. Of course, Québec is the only Province refusing to make it a holiday. You know, they “already have enough statutory holidays, we need the productivity,” says Legault. Another reason not to like these assholes… I highly encourage you to click the link to the official page explaining what this is about. In 2013, the Government introduced Orange Shirt Day. But since the gruesome discoveries made earlier this year, we now have a better name for it.
I noticed that if you do not live in Canada, you might not be aware of one of the darkest parts of its history: the Residence Schools for Indigenous children.

I was so mad when my daughters actually talked to us about it the first time after discussing it at school. My husband and I did our education in France. Our history classes never mentioned it. Ever. This is an essential subject to talk about. But this is not an easy one, even when you are not directly concerned…

The day honours the lost children and Survivors of residential schools, their families and communities. Public commemoration of the tragic and painful history and ongoing impacts of residential schools is a vital component of the reconciliation process.

Source: canada.ca

A little bit of history

More than 630 First Nation communities compose Canada and are still present. We do live on stolen land.

In 1894, Canada’s Government and the Catholic Church created a boarding school system all over our country. Its goal? To transform Indigenous children into “civilized” people. Over 150,000 children were forced to leave their families to attend these schools, against their will. It was mandatory to them until 1947. The last residential school actually officially closed in 1997 (!!!). These schools were purposefully built far from where the First Nations were living. With the intention to avoid contact between the children and their families.

If only it was just that… Especially during the 1950s, children were dying. Officially because of tuberculosis. However, we now know that it’s worst than that. Way too many of them died and were secretly buried. As of today, more than 6,000 unmarked bodies were found all around Canada. Recent awareness started with the recovery of 215 children in Kamloops, BC, in May 2021. It used to be the largest Residential institution in the country.

The Premier apologized publicly to the First Nations for what happened. On the other hand, the Catholic Church refuses to acknowledge its role in all of this, even though it operated the majority of the schools.

What now?

A question I asked myself very often. What now? How can I help?

LEARN & Get EDUCATED
First, we need to educate ourselves on what truly happened. Our children are taught about the First Nations and about the Residential School System at school, from a pretty young age. It’s never too late to learn and teach yourself about the history of where you live. How can we not repeat the past’s mistakes if we are not aware of them?
If you have any resources to share on the subject, feel free to do so in the comments.

LISTEN
Survivors and their families are opening up about what it was like and all the consequences it still has today. Sometimes (often), we should simply shut up and listen to others. Podcasts, books, radio talks… there are a lot of ways we can hear what they have to say.

Welcome to this new Gratitude Friday! Feel free to share with me your (partial or full) gratitude moments in the comments; that way I can hold joy for you ✿ (you know that makes me happy to make you happy).

This week has been good. And to me, it says a lot. I want to remember all the things, small and big, that create these feelings of being content. Content with myself. Content with my life. I use to see contentment as a negative feeling. Why? Probably because I associated this with giving up.

I am doing my best to use this push from Effy to blog every day this month.
September is my birthday month and for once, I am tackling it differently.
I really hope you’ll find nuggets of interesting things in my words and in what I share. I love reading your comments.
Thank you for being here.

Yesterday (the 20th) was my birthday (even though I was born in a different timezone, which gives me two birthdays).
Pierre, my brother-in-law, is here for one more week. My husband, Anthony, took this week off from work so we could spend it together.

My type of celebration

For my birthday, I wanted to be close to the ocean and in nature so we drove to Vancouver to have a long nice walk along the Sea Wall. If you are not familiar with Vancouver, the Sea Wall is a road where bikes/rollers/pedestrians can be. It is around Stanley Park and the total loop is about 8.5 km. We did not do it all because it was started to be late for lunch (the girls are out of school at 2:55 pm, and it’s about an hour drive from the city to home) but we walked a good 6km.

You might already know that my favourite food is Japanese cuisine in general. After fighting and arguing, my husband and I settled down on having lunch at Gojiro Ramen, in downtown Vancouver (a full article is coming to my other website, Nova’s Kitchen).
I have been craving tsukemen for a while now. Tsukemen are the same chewy noodles as used for ramen. However, the broth is on the side and you dip them in it. I ordered the tori karaage tsukemen, so it came with fried chicken. Everything was so tasty! It satisfied my craving. Now, I need to find a recipe for the broth so I can make it at home.

Once home, I baked myself my favourite brownies. I am VERY picky when it comes to brownies, so now that I have found a recipe I love, I just use this one and made some variations now and then.

My husband made is cocktails, so delicious! And to close the day, we watched Birds Of Prey. I really love this movie…

Understand me better

This is something that I deeply believe is one of my life mission in this incarnation: figuring out who I am at my core. Not just the surface.
I have a weird passion for personality types… Even though these are general character traits, there is always something I can grab to understand myself better. In the MBTI (aka Myers Briggs Type Indicator), I am an INFJ-T. It stands for Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling and Judging; the T stands for Turbulent). It is said to be the rarest personality trait but I come across so many other INFJ women, it’s a little creepy 😉

I love this Youtube channel above and this specific video could help you understand me a little better.