As we enter the last full month of summer, I hope you have found some time to step away from the day-to-day, spend time with family and friends, take a holiday, or simply do whatever helps you recharge under the sun.
Before I share this month’s reflection, I want to say thank you.
Thank you to everyone who supported the launch of my book, I Just Got Fired, and to those who continue to buy it, share it, recommend it and send me messages about what it has meant to you. This experience has been exhilarating, emotional and deeply humbling. I truly cannot say thank you enough.
A very special thank you to our Pink Shoe Sponsors: Genesis Niagara, The Burke Group and Gordon Wright Limited; and our Yellow Shoe Sponsors: DDL, Women Get On Board, North Group Realty and Brock University’s Goodman School of Business.
Thank you as well to our incredible in-kind partners: Working Writer’s Co., Fiero Financial Solutions, Bella Terra Vineyards, BCT Events, Fusion Mortgage Group, Kara’s Cookies, Blu Hair Studio, The Belle Suite, Wildchild Group, Jim Hooper Desjardins, Dynamic Occasions, Niagara Travel Agent, Patience Bitondo Atelier, Sadie’s Florals, Cheekbone Beauty, Provisions Food Company, Happy Sasquatch and Kim Rossi’s Obstacles to Opportunities.
And to Adrianne Feteke for coming out as the rockstar she is, to introduce the book.
So many people contributed their time, talents, resources and love to make the launch what it was. I will never forget walking into Bella Terra Vineyards and seeing a room filled with people who had shown up to celebrate this story and this chapter with me.
But what I really want to talk about is this:
What is something you dreamed of doing as a child that you still think about today?
I do not know why this particular memory is so deeply imprinted on me, but I can still picture myself sitting in the car with my dad. He asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.
It is funny because now I often tell people not to ask children that question. It can pigeonhole them into choosing a title before they have had the chance to understand who they are, what they love or all the possibilities available to them.
But I remember my answer.
“An author.”
I wanted to be a storyteller.
Why storytelling? Why did I want to do that? Maybe I already understood something about the power of passing knowledge through the written word. Maybe my vivid imagination and ideation made me think about all the worlds I could create. Maybe I simply loved how stories could make people feel seen.
I do not know exactly what planted that dream in me, but I still believe that if I could make a living simply writing, it would be my dream.
Launching this book was not only about finally holding something tangible in my hands. It was about realizing a dream I had carried, talked about and returned to for years.
When I first went to university for my BA, I planned to become a journalist. Life took me in another direction, and I chose history instead. But history is, at its heart, story. It is how we learn what happened, why it happened and how the experiences of the past continue to shape us.
The work itself breaks the word into “his story,” but our stories have never belonged to only one person or one perspective. They are his story, her story, their story and our story. They are the stories we inherit, the stories we learn from and the stories we choose to tell next. (Maybe the word should be “ourstory” or “thestory” – but I’m sure I will be pinned as “woke”, trying to change yet another thing with strong patriarchal roots that don’t actually tell the whole story. But I digress.)
When I applied for my master’s degree in 2021, I wrote in my admissions essay that I still wanted to become an author, but I wanted to be an author with credentials. I wanted, no, I needed, the validation that I could write.
The funny thing is that, during my MA, a teaching assistant once told me that my writing was so beautiful and engaging that he got lost in the story and could not find my point.
I laughed.
He told me it was not academic enough, so I learned to drop some of the flowery language and get to the point. My MA turned me into a more efficient writer. It taught me that you cannot put every single thing you know, love or want to say into one paper.
I started calling it “putting my jewels away.”
You cannot wear every jewel you own at once. Sometimes you have to take one off and place it back in the jewellery box to be worn another day. My version of the Coco Chanel rule became this: before submitting a paper, take something off. Too much of a good thing can still be too much. But the thing is, I liked how I wrote. I liked telling the story. I liked it more than talking about the evidence, the research. The story gave context.
And then I got fired.
When I stared down at the text that I sent to Matt, I looked at it and thought, “Well, that would be a good title for a book.”
I Just Got Fired.
Never in my life did I imagine that I would write a book about the most shameful moment of my career. But I did.
You often hear that everyone has at least one good book in them. I certainly hope I have more than one. But for now, this author is feeling on top of the world.
I can look back at that little white-blonde-haired, big brown-eyed girl sitting in the front seat of her dad’s work truck who put her dream out into the universe and say, “It was a long and twisty road, but we did it.”
So, I will ask you again: What did you dream of doing when you were a child?
Where are you on that path today?
Dig deep and ask yourself whether that dream is still something your inner child wants you to pursue. Maybe the dream has changed. Maybe it has been waiting quietly while life took you in other directions. Or maybe you have been moving toward it all along without even realizing it.
What would it look like to take one step closer?
Sometimes the road is much longer and twistier than we imagined. That does not mean the dream is gone. It may simply mean the story is still being written.
Cara
Order a signed copy through us for pick-up at The Apiary CoWork
