Do you ever read something and think, Wow, I wish I wrote that? I know I have so, I've decided that's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to write that. Well, not their that, but my own that! :)
Hi and welcome to my blog, Konnect with Kiki. If you read my ABOUT page on my website I gave you a bit of a rundown on who I am so you have a little bit of my background. As we get to know each other you'll come to learn a lot more about me and I know I want to learn about you as well. When we can tell our stories we can learn, grow, debate, ponder, muse, and connect.
So let's talk CONNECTION. I grew up in a family of five siblings, including myself, a proud Scottish Father who chased dreams, was mensa brilliant and never lost his love for his homeland. My Mother is first generation Canadian, the daughter of Hungarian immigrants who provided a beautiful life for their family. Mom and Dad had four children in five years, with a break of almost four and a half years before the last of us came along. Mom worked full-time and our floors were clean enough to eat off of. It was a home of loud, passionate, emotional humans who never talked about emotions. Some of us had a lot to say and some of us pretty much quietly did their own thing until they exploded with something that was brewing in the depths of their silence. There was no balance, rarely peace and quiet, it was all go all the time.
The crazy thing was, even in the melee of seven different personalities, two parents whose last nerves we used to stand on, and five kids, all of whom have very different takes on just what our household looked like growing up, we did connect. Now, it may not be connection in the sense that we all got along all the time, nor did we speak about our deepest thoughts and feelings. Oh geez, palease, that would have been healthy and well, rather icky, at least in my family. No, no, we were like My Big Fat Scottish-Hungarian Goulash with a side of Catholic dogma thrown in. We mucked about together over Sunday meals, family picnics, baseball games, Walt Disney World and celebrated important holidays like Christmas and Easter with our big extended family but, we never spoke words like "I love you" or "are you ok? ‘ or anything to do with actual feelings. We were just supposed to know I suppose.
My older brothers spent a lot of their time together, they were only eleven months apart, and my sister and I were very close and close in age as well, one year and three months difference with her being the older one. Of course, I remind her every year on our birthdays of that. LOL! My youngest brother was born four years and three months after me so he was almost nine years younger than the oldest. He literally just had to find his way amongst the cacophony and often just bumbled about on his own with his blankie and bottle. Clearly our connection was simply that we were a family, functional or dysfunctional, we didn't know any different, we just were.
Today, the discussion on connection or rather DISCONNECTION is a concerning topic and one that has our mental health experts struggling to keep up with. The last three years had us standing by as we navigated the global pandemic and it has created an uptick in the discussions being held on how detrimental disconnection has been for all of us, especially for those who already suffer with anxiety, depression, loneliness and addiction. The quarantining of both adults and children has amplified the seriousness and growth of those issues considerably. National Geographic released a magazine in 2022 with its main topic being The Science of Touch. It is fascinating and it is undeniable that our health, mind, body and soul suffers without it. Human touch literally affects us in profound ways and the growing body of evidence is compelling. Sentient beings fundamentally require feel, touch and physically being with other sentient beings.
Not only are we better off with touching each other and the astounding benefits of having animals in our lives, we also are becoming more educated on the the known positive effects of spending time in nature. Connecting with natural elements is essential to our well-being and today millions of people are finding their way back to a symbiotic relationship with Mother Nature. Forest Bathing or Shinrin-Yoku is a perfect example of how we can get back to finding our roots, literally, and the profound effects it has on us physiologically, physically and spiritually.
With social media and the technology of today we have lost the simpler ways to stay connected. Most of us don't pick up the phone and chat for hours with our friends and family. We text and ask if it's ok to call? We voice text which is only slightly better. My Mom lives with me and I text her when dinner is ready for crying out loud. We don't even spell out words to express ourselves now. We push a button and an emoticon explains our feelings for us. With text there is also the possibility for misinterpretation. The connection we get from hearing someone's voice, whether it is their grief or joy, angst or excitement, longing or listlessness is lost in cyber-translation.
Over the course of the pandemic we turned to Zoom or Facetime as a way to see each other in real time and yes, it is an amazing and welcome technology that I fully embraced and was grateful to have when we had no other way of seeing each other. It is still a wonderful tool and for those of us far from our loved ones it is priceless, but, it's just not the same as being together physically.
As we move out of those lost pandemic years and back into a more familiar and open way of living I believe most of us have a much better understanding of how important connection is. Prior to a phone in everyone's hand and a computer on every desk we called people and before that we wrote letters and sent cards. If we lived close by we knocked on our neighbour's door. We sat on front porches. We played chess in the parks. We connected, live and in colour.
I'll be sixty one years old in a month and as I move forward it is becoming more and more front of mind that I have far more time behind me than I have ahead of me. I'm finding that what I thought was important is not so much these days. I have a clearer picture of what it means to be present and together. It's about experiencing life, as much as possible, as I've said already, live and in colour. I am so excited to delve into all the things. What we don't know and what we do know, together, right here, every week on my blog. My Dad always said, "it's I would like, not I want.“ Sorry Dad but, I really want us to check into ourselves and each other. I want us to ask why, how, who, what and where. I want us to talk health and wellness, writing, art, music, golf, travel, women's rights, men's rights. Let's talk salads and habits and menopause and babies. Let's talk pets and programs, books and botox.
Today I am a Blogger. I have a voice, my voice, my thoughts, my feelings, that are all valid and worth connecting over and so are yours. So please, speak up and speak out. I truly want you to enjoy this space. Connection is fundamental to us all and my hope is that together, we will be able to form healthy, friendly, inspiring and thoughtful Konnections that will last a lifetime.
Love, Kiki
xoxo
“EVERY DAY I DISCOVER MORE AND MORE BEAUTIFUL THINGS. IT’S ENOUGH TO DRIVE ONE MAD. I HAVE SUCH A DESIRE TO DO EVERYTHING, MY HEAD IS BURSTING WITH IT.” —— Claude Monet
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