A Reminder to Live Life Fully
Hello Grow Adventures Community! If you want to skip right to grabbing the free Valentine’s day Polaroid Digital Photo cards, click here. Otherwise, enjoy a story of our recent adventures in the snow and a near death experience that reminds us that life is indeed finite.
How has winter been treating you?!
It’s been quite a cold winter for us (especially for southeast coast Spain!) and our little town was quarantined due to COVID for several weeks – no one was able to enter or leave. During that time, we had a dump of snow and we took the kids out three days in a row for sledding, snowmen, snowangels and even snowboarding!
Although most of the snow melted in the following weeks, we continued to go for hikes and picnic lunches. There was still plenty of snow covering the trails and roads, which the kids were, of course, excited about.
One of the last hikes we did up, we had quite a scare because some (irresponsible) youngsters decided to ignore the warning signs and drive up the snow / ice covered roads. As they were coming over the top of the hill, they spotted us hiking up and couldn’t stop their car from sliding out of control in our direction.
I froze, not knowing where to go. I tried to cross the slippery road with my 4 year old in tow, but the car kept sliding from side to side and I could not for the life of me, figure out where it was headed and where I needed to go to get out of its trajectory.
I checked to see what my husband was doing as he was further up the road with my 6 year old daughter. Do I pick up my son and try to balance him while walking quickly, hoping I don’t slip?!
My husband and I have alpine mountaineered plenty of times to know that it would have been impossible to run on the slippery icy, snowy road without a high probability of hurting ourselves and/or our children. I don’t know how we stayed calm (or maybe it was more that we were scared to death!) and those seconds felt like eons!
Just before the car finally stopped wheeling out of control, one of the passengers of the car opened the door to jump out (she told us afterwards it was because she thought the car was going to fall off the edge of the mountain)!
When the car some how miracusouly slowed to a stop right on the cliff of the mountain, I remember finally breathing in, sighing in relief and bending down to hug my son so tightly. My body was shaking, although I tried so hard to keep myself in control.
I told my husband that we weren’t going to try to make it to the top in case other crazy drivers decided to ignore the signs. It was too dangerous and that we should go back down to one of the lower trails.
I have no idea why I actually said that. It was obvious we weren’t going to continue up the road. I think I said it to just hear my own voice saying something sane, and to pass on some sense of safety to the children.
As we walked down, my nerves calmed. I was still shaky but as I was talking to my husband about what happened, I realized that my children were surprisingly calm. My son even told me that he wished that the car hadn’t slid out of control so that I wouldn’t have been so scared.
When I talk to people about funerals, I tell them that it’s a sad reason to bring people together, but it reunites and connects people who may not otherwise on their own. There’s mourning, but it also serves as a reminder that our lives are indeed finite. We get lost in the chaos of our day-to-day lives and forget that we do not live forever.
So although no one was hurt (or worse, killed) in our recent experience, these kinds of moments fortunately create a similiar effect, giving us the opportunity to reflect on our lives and what we are going to do with it moving forward. This effect is, unfortunately, short-lived, but I hope to ride this wave a little while longer.
Many exercises ask us to imagine what we would like others to say about us when we’re gone. Though I’m certainly not immune to external validation and people pleasing, I believe it’s more true to ask myself if I died today, would I be proud of the life I lived? Had I enjoyed myself? Had I helped and loved others enough? (Check out our blog post on giving back for ideas!) Had I helped and loved myself enough? It wouldn’t matter all the ‘nice’ things people said about me if I hadn’t lived the life I wanted.
Ok, that’s enough deep ‘food for thought’ for now! We will definitely continue to go on as many adventures as we can, but will be more careful in these types of conditions.
Have you had any similiar experiences? What were your thoughts coming out of it? As I get older, and as a parent, my perspective has changed so much, and it continues to evolve. Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!
Free Valentine’s Day Polaroid Digital Photo Cards
We haven’t updated anything here on the blog for the past month since we’ve been busy working on a number of exciting creative projects behind the scenes.
We will reveal those with you in the coming weeks but in the meantime, enter in your email address below so we can send you the free Valentine’s Day Polaroid Digital Photo Cards. You’ll also get access to our free member resource library! (If you’re already a subscriber, you should have received them in your email already).
Tag us on Instagram #hellogrowadventures and show us your completed photo cards!
Need instructions on how to customize and send these cool Polaroid Digital Photo Cards in two minutes? We walk you through it below using Canva (free account works perfectly fine!)
Instructions on How to Make your Valentine’s Day Portrait Photo Card in TWO minutes!
- Download the Canva mobile app on your phone (sign up for a free account if you don’t have one already)
- Open the app and click the + sign in the bottom right hand corner.
- When prompted, type in Letter and select US Letter Document 8.5 x 11in.
- On the top menu, pick UPLOADS then click on the purple button UPLOAD MEDIA.
- Select the photo card file you downloaded from Grow Adventures. When it loads, select it. It will automatically open a new document with the image for you.
- Using only the corner white dots, pull them towards the corners to resize the photo to fit the white document. Avoid touching the rotating tool at the center bottom. That is for rotating the image. We won’t use that until we add your photo.
- When you’re done, click on the + again in the bottom right hand corner and click Uploads or Photos, depending on whether or not you’ve already uploaded the photo you want to use.
- Same as you did before with the photo card, now you need to use the four white dots on the corner to resize the photo. Use the rotating tool on the bottom corner to put the photo at a slight angle to fit the slot. Use the bottom white line tool to shorten your photo (likely the photo is a little long as most photos are in mobile format).
- And click on the plus in the right bottom hand corner again and choose TEXT this time. Choose subheading. Make sure to choose Black for the color font (or whatever color you want to use – just don’t use white! I’m not sure why it defaults to white. Make sure the font selected is Aloja. Type in the name and voila – you made your Polaroid Digital Photo card!
We’re constantly working on building out our resource library, feel free to reach out if there are things you’re looking for. We’re happy to see if we can make it happen!
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Wow Leeann! What an intense story, I’m so glad you’re all safe! It so serendipitous to read this story and your reflections. I was just thinking about today, if I knew I was going to die how would I live my life. Would I try to make everyone else happy to remember me or would I make the most of the time for myself. Still not sure! Thanks for your great post! xx
Hi Anja. Thanks so much for your sweet note. Sometimes it seems that this internal battle is never-ending! We just have to remind ourselves that it’s an intensely satisfying journey of learning and growth to become the person we want to be – often in the face of deeply seated self- and social pressures, barriers and obligations.
Great post, Leeann! First and foremost, I’m SO relieved you and your family are OK, even the irresponsible teenagers (hopefully a lesson for them as well). These scary or life-threatening moments serve as good reminders for how short life really is and often gives us the opportunity to shift our perspective on how we choose to live and what truly matters to us! COVID impacted the world in a similar way as well — it forced everyone to stop and reflect.
I read The Daily Stoic every morning as a part of my routine (along with meditating and journaling) and I highly recommend it! It’s just one page or less of reading each day and each month has a different focus area. These readings always remind me to go back to the basics — to focus on what I have control of (emotions — how I react, how I let things bother/affect us) and let things go that don’t serve us and don’t have control of.
Thanks for sharing, Jenny. COVID has definitely changed our world and forced us to reflect on what’s important in our lives. I remember seeing this lovely video when this all started and hope that when this is all over, we will have learned something and changed for the better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw5KQMXDiM4&feature=youtu.be It’s interesting that he mentions that “since then, there have been many”. I think this captures what I was explaining in the above. We will go back to our lives and now and then, these things happen and shake up our reality, reminding us of what’s important.
Your meditation and journaling routine sounds awesome! I’m working on something along those lines and will share with the community soon 🙂