3P Services (2026)

22/06/2026

LISTENING TO THE CITY

It’s spring-summer right now in Winnipeg. I get to enjoy this weather via the little postage stamp garden in our back yard that’s bordered with a mix of tall white fencing, offering an extension to our home… an outdoor room where we get to breathe in fresher air, feel the sun and wind on our skin, smell the grass, flowers, and garden spices (and the occasional sweet-skunky notes of ma*****na wafting in from nearby), watch and listen to the chirpy squawky birds that flit about, and enjoy the other creatures that occasionally grace us with their short, cautious visits… a mouse, a bunny, a squirrel, a skunk, Simba (one of the neighbourhood cats), and a generous mix of bugs including a few moths and butterflies.

Being outside in our garden room, I’m much more aware of all the city and neighbourhood sounds that occur just beyond the fence walls, offering their own unique sounds to blend in with the abundance of bird expressions… the steady background hums of distant car, bus, truck, and motorcycle traffic that momentarily gets punctuated by one of them beeping their horn, or screeching to a halt, or quickly accelerating, or gruffly rumbling as their engine starts, or even offering a sudden silence as their engine turns off, the click open or slam close of vehicle doors, the rubber-on-road rising sound as any vehicle gradually comes closer and the falling away sound as it gradually passes by, the eclectic mix of music either flowing or blasting from a nearby yard or open window, the distant roar of planes from the nearby airport, the rhythmic flapping-blade of a helicopter overhead, the piercing squeal of sirens, the steady clicking and screeching of train wheels scraping against the metal tracks sometimes accompanied by the trumpeting blare of its horn, the ubiquitous construction cacophony of hammering, power-hammering, sawing, power-sawing, screwing, power-screwing, chainsawing, truck back up beeping, and random banging, the sudden dull ka-chunk and hum of starting air conditioners, the uneven rumble of lawn mowers, the up and down whirring of edge trimmers and leaf blowers, the swishing rush of water from a hose, the clunky garbage bins making their way to and from the curb, the sci-fi laser sound of a neighbour’s house alarm that appears to go on and off with any movement outside their house, the tinkling tones of wind chimes, the thud of a soccer ball being kicked, a few barks and meows, and all the varied human voices… a mix of English, Arabic, Filipino, Portuguese, French, Ukrainian, German, Mandarin, Anishinaabemowin, (and whatever else might be out there on any given day), kids chatting, laughing, and screaming, and adults chatting, laughing… and screaming. And there’s even me… my breaths, and sniffles, and sips, and sighs, and scratches.

Often I’m not aware of most of the noises… I’m so busily focused on some story in a book or in my mind. It tends to be the louder, unusual, or less frequent sounds that will interrupt whatever singular track is grasping my attention in any particular moment. Sometimes I’m genuinely irritated by sounds that I may deem as “interrupting my peace”… I may even direct my silent derision toward the perceived offender, or lament my city dwelling and pine for the sounds of the lapping waves and the rustling leaves of a lakeside cottage surrounded by forest. Sometimes I’ll find myself tuning in to the lovely chimes and bird sounds that I appreciate the most. And at other times, when I just listen for listening’s sake, I’ll be quite amazed at how many different sounds and variations of sounds I can hear over just a few minutes, like when consciously trying to parse out all the layered instruments and harmonic mixes appearing in a piece of music.

This continual harmony and disharmony of city clicks and clangs and bangs and hums and whirs and squeals and tweets is always there to be heard. When I happen to intentionally tune in as if I’m listening to my neighbourhood as an orchestra, the experience can be delightfully surprising, and unexpectedly pleasing. What at times is perceived as an irritant, can morph into something quirky or interesting or rich and symphonic.

That being said, this particular abundance of city sounds would probably not be the station I would wish to listen to all the time while ensconced in my garden room, but without any conscious effort, my mind regularly executes the strange human habit of somehow tuning it all out… seamlessly turning away from the garden room city sounds, and back into the room of my mind and body, and wherever their attention takes me next.

With Love and Laughter,
Jonelle

(Video: A few seconds in our back yard today… The bangs of a power-nailer, an Arabic neighbour’s voice, a child’s whine, wind chimes, an electric saw, a car passing nearby, and plenty of chirpy birds.)

13/05/2025

LIFE AS RELATIONSHIP AND MOVEMENT

She said, “You could make this place beautiful”.

Without context, that could be either a compliment or an insult.

That’s one of the profound secrets of life that I often forget… that nothing is ever simple, or just black and white, or just “is” as it appears to be said or viewed or experienced or described in any moment.

Everything is always in relationship to multiple something elses… heck, even the colours of black and white aren’t just black and white… since neither can exist without something else to be in relationship to, in comparison to, in separation from. Whatever black or white may truly be, what they are, shifts when experienced from every different relational perspective and with every inevitable change in every next moment.

It brings to mind the way in which I’ve heard Iain McGilchrist describing the world… that everything… the very nature of life itself… every person, every creature, every rock, every event, every situation, every word, every thought, every sound, every moment, every singular speck of light… all of it is always in relationship to something else, and is always moving.

Nothing is ever unto itself only and alone. Nothing is ever solid and static and separate and permanent in its existence. Life is an infinite and unceasingly fluid and complex web of relationships.

If I didn’t have the limitations of a very short-in-universal-terms life, I’d be much more aware that the appearing-as-solid, never-changing mountain is just a very slow wave… rising and falling, mounding and merging, in continual relationship with the earth that forms and holds it, the rains and winds that shape it, the plants that cling to it, the animals that fly over it or scamper around it, the adventurers that explore it… each intertwined in their own very UNIQUE relationship with the ever moving mountain wave... what is the mountain to me, is certainly not at all what is the mountain to the lichen or the fungus. In relationship, all those make the mountain, as much as the mountain makes them.

And what is the mountain to me, is certainly not what is me to the mountain. Although I do sometimes wonder if the mountain delights in my joyful meanderings around it, as much as I delight in its infinite wonders? A sort of mutual admiration society.

Remembering this fundamental truth of life… of the two infinitely appearing dynamic forces of 1) everything in infinite relationships and 2) everything in continuous movement, as much within everything as without everything, always invites me to be much more curious instead of much more certain, and often offers me a sigh of relief from all the stuck, concrete forms that can often weigh heavy in my mind.

So, when she says, “You could make this place beautiful”, instead of my ego making assumptions and reacting with either anger or pride, I could just delight in what all that statement could or may mean, and in discovering what her observation meant to her. What are her relationships… to me, to this place, even to the idea of beautiful. What are her eyes seeing in this singular moment of time and space… what is she capturing in her experience of life before the next relationship and movement are brought to her attention? What’s it like to see this temporary moment of life, this relationship, through her eyes, her heart, her mind?

Upon reflection, it occurs to me that yes, I could make this place beautiful… or this event, or this moment, or this circumstance, or this thought, or this person, or this thing… beauty simply happens all on its own, in any moment I realize again, the infinitely relational, ever-shifting, miraculous nature of life.

With Love and Laughter,
Jonelle

(Photo by Krivec Ales)

09/04/2025

FINDING LOVE IN FEAR

It has felt challenging to have my attention on social media and the news these days.

In our current political climate and media landscape, so much is being brought to my attention via stories rooted in fear, anger, hate, division, and judgment, creating illusory disconnects between me and the vilified others.

In the onslaught, my attention gets coaxed away from my indestructible heart, and into my head, where the intellect is easily swayed by the insecurities of its destructible ego.

Oddly though, it is this same fear addled climate and landscape that has increasingly become the primary catalyst in my growing practise to keep falling back into my heart… to keep finding the love within me whenever I’m being closed in by fear.

It occurs to me that if the current level of fear wasn’t so prevalent and so divisive, I wouldn’t be as frequently prompted into this practice as much as I have been.

Over the last few years, I’ve noticed that my mind and body have become increasingly sensitive to the aching separateness of fear, anger, hate, division, and judgment that can arise within me, and I’m finding the internal pain of it just too great to bare. It hurts too much to hate.

And so the pain now finds its home, nestled in the growing practice of unconditional loving… the awareness and act of feeling awe for, or seeing the beauty in, each human being that comes into my awareness.

This practice doesn’t have anything to do with “who” anyone appears to be on the outside… including all those with actions that are continually being highlighted in all the fear-fomenting, us-and-them stories.

Instead, this practice simply asks my intellect to rest in the quiet corner of my mind, so that I can be held in the space of my embracing heart. From there, I can find and feel into the common humanity and the incomprehensible interconnectedness between every single one of them and you and me.

These days, I’m certainly being gifted with an abundance of opportunity to practise it. What better time could there be to practice the grounded state of genuine heartfelt connection and goodwill, than in the midst of a cacophony of human disconnect?

The beauty in this practice, is that it doesn’t ask me to ignore the cacophony, nor does it stop me from participating in the slow, quiet work of “righting wrongs” or offering shelter to the storm-weakened.

Just the opposite… it keeps bringing me back to the state of grounded clarity and resilience from which I can navigate the cacophony without adding to it.

I am far from perfect in this, perhaps even very far from adequate in it, and hence why it remains a practice. But every attempt holds significance, in that it offers one more momentary space for healing to happen at the very roots of disconnection from which all of the fear, anger, hate, division, and judgment grows.

In the space and light of our intrinsic human connection, the heavy layers of disconnection are invited to dissipate… within me and within others… love is found under the fear.

With Love and Laughter,
Jonelle

Photo by brotiN biswaS

15/03/2025

AN INVITATION TO PLAY

I made uitsmijters the other day… pronounced kind of like ‘out-shmeiter’. They’re a Dutch dish, a sort of open-faced egg and meat sandwich. I think the classic one is layered with toast, ham, eggs, and likely Gouda. I started eating them when I was a little girl.

I was introduced to them by my older sister Gillian who was a flight attendant for CP Air. She had picked up her appreciation for the dish from her frequent flights to Amsterdam, which was CP’s primary European hub for connecting flights at the time.

When she shared the uitsmijter with us on her occasional visits home, her recipe was a layer of toast, fried ham, cheese, fresh tomato, and fried egg, topped with fried mushrooms and onions. Once the layers were all completed, she put it in the oven for a couple of minutes to melt the cheese. Delicious!

I hadn’t had one in years, but for some reason they came to mind when I had a lot of a leftover mix of fried mushrooms and onions from the previous evening’s dinner. I couldn’t exactly remember all the layers of the uitsmijter, so I reached out to my sister for the recipe... “Oh, the tomatoes! I forgot that! I knew I was missing something. Thank you!”

On the day that I made the uitsmijters, it occurred to me to proudly send my sister a picture of my final creation, but unfortunately, I had already eaten it. LOL! So, I texted her the picture of my empty plate instead!

It didn’t occur to me at the time that this was an invitation to play. It just appeared in my mind and amused me, and so I thought I’d share my amusement. I’m so glad that my sister surprisingly joined into the game a week or so later… sending me the picture of her own empty plate. I laughed out loud. “Oh, how much fun when someone else loves to play!”

I often knowingly (and unknowingly) send out invitations to play all the time… doing or sharing something amusing, cheeky, funny, or creative, and then… sometimes… if I’m additionally lucky… the universe responds in kind.

Over time, I’ve come to see these invitations as gifts that I am somehow frequently given… nothing big, nothing serious, nothing groundbreaking, nothing revenue-producing, nothing for any specific purpose at all, and yet… something fundamentally essential… in the form of little, amusing ideas that arrive unbidden into my mind from the ether… little specks of delight asking to be birthed into form.

In a way, it occurs to me now that these are actually invitations from the universe to me, asking me to play with it, and inevitably guiding me to hold out my hand so that others can join in… offering the potential for little domino-ing cascades of delight… the universe simply wishing to share its unbounded joy.

I can’t count the number of times that an amusement has come to my mind, inviting me to enjoy and then share it. It’s sort of “my thing”. And in many ways, it has been what has sustained me throughout all of my life, including all of the darkest moments.

Even while in horrified grief after learning of a roadside accident, standing beside my father’s hospital bed with the decision now made to unplug all the machines and pull him off life support, an amusing-to-me thought arrived that had me laughing out loud, mixed in with all my sobbing tears… “You can’t go yet Dad, I haven’t paid off my loan from you yet!”

I can never know what the universe is ultimately up to, nor how it does what it does, but I do know myself (and everyone and everything else) to be an intrinsic part of it, and I do so appreciate every time it uniquely speaks to me in the offer of every… single… invitation to play.

May I always be listening.

With Love and Laughter,
Jonelle

13/03/2025

A MODERN MYSTIC

I suspect that they are rare, but every once in a while I run into one… a modern mystic…

Someone who has lost most of the heavy, protective, insecure layers of ego, and who now rests very closely to the very core of being, exuding delight, and looking in wonder through eyes of pure, impersonal, unconditional love… radiating out what they have realized within.

I came across one yesterday at a funeral.

I was reluctantly expecting a French high Catholic funeral with strict formality, richly brocaded vestments, rote prayers and hymns, reminders of evil and hell, and the requisite admonishments of my sinful nature... more the type of meticulously ordered “hellish” ceremony that you just find a way to get through, rather than anything that invites you in and wraps you up in its sheer delight of you.

This funeral surprisingly turned out to be the latter, officiated by a modern day Yoda, likely well into his 80s, dressed in plain robes, slightly hunched over, with a slow but mischievously tottering gait, and perfectly topped with a bald head and big curled ears…

A body that showed his age, but a huge, unrelenting smile, a set of brightly beaming eyes, and a complete absence of any artifice… a modern mystic disguised as a retired priest who “works the funeral circuit”. LOL!

Oh my goodness!

I’ve never been to any funeral like this before. He didn’t put on any appropriately-expected somber or sorrowful demeanour with lowered heads, hushed tones, tightly organized schedule, and dutifully researched and practiced speeches. There was a schedule, but with his head up and his heart open, he just sort of winged and weaved his part throughout it, and generously invited everyone to join in with him.

He started with his advice that he was going to be switching back and forth between English and French, and that hopefully everyone will just get whatever they can.

Instead of having the silent and professional “knowing nods” toward whoever was going to speak next, he casually called up the various speakers like he was having a direct conversation with them, sometimes with questions for clarification, and oblivious to the rest of the audience listening in.

When he did his sermon, he included things like, “Well, this isn’t exactly the right words for what this apostle said, but I think this is what it’s about”.

Oh, my dear heart!

At one point he walked through the congregation, asking everyone to share what they remembered of the deceased, and when someone mentioned remembering him as ‘forever young’, the priest then asked the pianist-singer, “Janet, do you have ‘Forever Young’ in your catalog? We’ve got time for it.” Janet scrambled through her playbook, found the song, and then played and sung it.

During another song, instead of standing still, the priest wandered along the pews and throughout the church, as if he couldn’t get himself close enough to everyone there. Finding himself in the very back of the church at the end of the song, we then patiently waited as he slowly but joyfully made his way back up to the front to continue the service.

He also frequently added his own ad libbed comments to whatever was shared throughout the service, sometimes inviting us into beautiful reflections and sometimes inviting us into laughter. For one of the songs, he even took up a guitar and sang a duet along with Janet.

At the reception after the service, I saw him sitting by himself at a corner table, smiling broadly, looking out at everyone communing and chatting, as if he was trying to soak it all in… and just deeply appreciating every single one… resting there as he was and is, a quiet, shining, bundle of radiating love.

I suspect that modern mystics are rare, but maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps this is just one of those lovely reminders to make sure to keep my eyes open, so that I never accidentally miss the delight of encountering the next loving mystic who crosses my path.

With Love and Laughter,
Jonelle

(Photo from the lovely church where the service was held)

11/03/2025

REDISCOVERING TRUST

In a recent conversation with an acquaintance, we both shared a bit about our own chronic health struggles… our many years-long search for answers, and how that led both of us (in our own ways) to learning about all the un-health in our society’s systems… ie, the extractive-and-detrimental-to-people-and-planet systems that have been driven more and more for growth, power, and profit, and less and less for equilibrium and health (physical, mental, spiritual)… whether that’s in our systems of medicine, food, economics, industry, politics, religion, education, or the environment.

During the chat, we both mentioned how difficult it has been to figure out what’s wrong and what to do about it, and the incredible frustration of being surrounded by experts who usually don’t help, and who often end up harming in various ways. At some point, I said,

“This has just been forcing me to re-learn how to listen to and trust what my own body has been trying to tell me.”

Later, I started reflecting on that.

My reality growing up was that there were experts and authorities who knew the truth of things, and who knew more than me, specifically because of their extensive education, or their work and life experience, or their social hierarchy/position. I looked up to them, and to them, for the “right” answers.

My belief was that they knew, and I didn’t.

All of these “knowing” people included my parents, my elders, my doctor, my dentist, my teachers and coaches, my managers and leaders, my accomplished colleagues, my financial consultants, my news broadcasters, and all of the many experts whose advice I took, whose books I read, and whose learning programs I completed.

I believed much of what I was told. There was an ingrained assumption and understanding that those in charge, knowing all they know, must be saying and doing what is right and best. I innocently and unknowingly left all of my care in their hands, even in light of the fact that their solutions weren’t helping me. In the belief of their inherent “rightness”, my assumption was that they were still right, and that it was something about me that was the problem.

It wasn’t really until after college and joining the full time workforce that I started getting a much greater sense of how people can have education, experience, or social status, and often be gravely wrong.

It both confused me and frustrated me… “How could THEY be so wrong?” and “How is it that they can have and stay in the position they’re in, or get the salary and recognition that they do, in light of being so wrong?” and “How could so many of these experts have such contradicting views and advice within the same field of expertise?” and eventually, “How can I ever know what is true?”

Oddly, even though the trend and my awareness of it increased throughout the rest of my life (and my confusion and frustration along with it), I still continued to hold the belief deeply inside me that there were “those who knew” or perhaps at least that there were “those who were supposed to know”.

In fact even today, I still find myself regularly, habitually, looking for and toward “experts”.

Accordingly, in greater awareness of the non-expertness of experts, it’s been incredibly challenging to re-learn how to listen to and trust my own body, including the fact that I just haven’t wanted to. Perhaps it’s because it’s so much easier to follow others’ subscriptions, than to even consider that I could tap into and trust my own access to wisdom, let alone know where to begin in how the heck to do that. Any concept of an accessible inner wisdom was a complete stranger to me.

I suspect I am not an exception to this experience, since pretty well everyone and everything around me my entire life has taught me nothing about accessing an inner wisdom, and everything about wholly relying on experts, including becoming one of them. The concept of actually being able to make valid observations and wise decisions, without having all the intellectual knowledge, was completely foreign and unfathomable to me. It was much more the stuff of fairytales, than of any reality I personally experienced.

But that’s no longer true for me today. I’m much more aware of the limitations of perceived experts, the cavernous and inherent fallibility of the human intellect, and the monumental difference between intelligence and wisdom.

And it’s not that I no longer listen to experts or others. It’s that I am now, very slowly learning to allow my whole body and the quieter part of my mind take in what any expert is saying, in a way that lets me better discern if their advice is a ‘yes’, or a ‘no’, for me. I’m re-learning my body’s infinitely wise cues and language.

I have no idea when exactly I lost my ability to know of, hear, and trust my own access to wisdom. I suspect it was quite early in life. But how grateful I am to be rediscovering it now.

With Love and Laughter,
Jonelle

(Photo by Matheus Bertelli)

02/03/2025

THE WRITING CIRCLE

In my daily interactions, most conversations (even with those I know reasonably well), tend to start in, and sit on, the surface of things… the weather, the latest “car crash” item in the news, the cost of gas or groceries, the never ending road construction, the latest discontent in something or someone, the birth, graduation, wedding, death, or other news about mutually-known people, or perhaps even a recent amusing event.

The discussions mostly hover around immediate observation and opinion… streaming directly from mind to mouth, without much space or allowance for quiet, heart-centred reflection, openness, vulnerability, and response.

And I often include myself in those rituals of polite, surface conversation.

Mostly I do it out of habit, but sometimes I do it out of personal disconnection and disinterest (just not feeling curious enough in the moment to ask for more). Sometimes I do ask for more but receive only surface responses, and sometimes I would like to ask for more, but just get the sense that it’s not the right time, or conversation, or relationship. And sometimes I’m too busy needing to share whatever’s streaming from my own mind to mouth in that moment.

Queue, the writing circle...

In contrast, it’s not often that you get to immediately dive deeply into another person’s authentic expression of their experiences or their wildly creative imaginations, and all that their heart and mind makes of those things...

To be invited beyond polite banter and banal opinions and first thoughts...
To discover what has shaped lives and what that all means…
To be touched, and surprised, and delighted, and maybe even to be shocked…

And so to be reminded how amazingly rich and valuable and profound are the depths of each… single… human being’s… life… and so to better know again, and so to think, “I wonder what treasures there would be to uncover and learn from, in each next person I meet?”

Ultimately, to be given the most precious gift of deepening human connection and understanding… being welcomed into, feeling into, connecting with, our common humanity.

From Day 1, the writing circle that I joined in January has been all of that… touching, surprising, delighting, shocking… and also, so often riveting and compelling… wanting to know what’s next in someone’s story, or imagining myself walking in their unfamiliar-to-me shoes, or finding myself relating in some way, or sometimes not relating at all, but so appreciating a different window into all the worlds that I’d never realized or considered before.

What a profound privilege.

In a group of 7 relative strangers, from completely different backgrounds and cities, this all seems to have been such a simple thing. Just individuals willing to show up and deeply share, and, to deeply listen.

Nothing complicated, but oh, so rare.

I am grateful for this space that the group facilitator conjured, created, and held, and to each of the participants, for their authenticity, their vulnerability, their courage, their presence, and their amazing writings. They remind me of, and give me great hope for, the many gifts and truths of everyone simply being equally human… equally stumbling through and figuring out this one wild and messy and incomprehensible life… and equally, in our mutual togetherness, “just walking each other home”.

When I next come upon a stranger or friend or even someone I dislike or am afraid of, I hope to remember to keep my eyes and heart open for all the hidden stories that there may be to uncover together, so that we can each be more truly seen, and more deeply reminded of our common, miraculous, intrinsic beauty and humanity.

With Love and Laughter,
Jonelle

(Photo by mozlase_)

23/02/2025

LIVING IN FEAR

Living in fear doesn’t really make sense to me anymore.

In all of its many forms and appearances throughout my life, it has degraded my health, sapped my energy, subsumed my joy, suppressed my laughter, constricted my creativity, dulled my wits, curtailed my resilience, blinded me from potential and possibility, and completely blocked my access to clarity, common sense, and wisdom. It has turned me in and closed me up. It has disconnected me… from myself, from others, and from life.

In every moment of fear, I lost my connection to all that is treasured, valued, vital, and true in life… the beauty of it, the awe of it, the curiosity of it, the humour of it, the abundance of it, the generosity of it, the pure, still, miraculous presence of it, the actual reality of it, and of course, the love of it… all messy bits included.

The only use I can see now for fear, is simply in letting me know when I’m in it, and therefore when I’m NOT in life. Fear is the completely reliable compass marker that I’m “heading south”, instead of due north.

And it’s not that I have to consciously react to it… to reason, to justify, to defend, to accept, to deny, to ignore, to overcome, to override, or to push through any arising fear (or any of its cozy cousins such as anger, righteousness, vengefulness, othering, lesser-ing, dehumanizing, enemy-labeling, overwhelm, hopelessness, etc.). All of that just adds credence and validity and volume to fear’s existence, and leaves me stumbling in the dark.

Instead, it’s just enough to be aware, to notice fear arising WITHIN ME, and perhaps ponder… “Hmmmm, what’s up with that?”… a question for the universe to answer when I’m eventually ready to hear it. And then, leave it at that, and continue on with my day, however it unfolds… in fear, or not.

Eventually, an awareness can arise where the energy of fear doesn’t get pushed out or pushed down, but gets translated into an internal strength that can hold clarity, connection, and understanding, so that I can act however needed, without losing my humanity.

I don’t know if the appearances of fear will ever go away. There’s so many in the world around me who keep sending me tickets for their fear train… you know, the one that’s heading downhill, out of control, and about to careen around a sharp curve. And heck, it’s not just them. I’ve been printing up my own tickets for those trains throughout my whole life! LOL!

But not today.

Today, this moment, I breathe. I look clearly. I stand softly grounded, rooted, connected, and still. And I follow wherever the deeply known, wise connection to life and humanity guides me next… perhaps in this moment, offering a steady hand for a friend or stranger.

And so, if you are struggling, and would appreciate a grounded and compassionate ear, I’m happy to listen… assuming, of course, it’s not one of those moments when I’m temporarily on some train careening somewhere. LOL!

With Love and Laughter,
Jonelle

(Photo by Johannes Plenio)

3P Services

22/06/2026

13/05/2025

09/04/2025

15/03/2025

13/03/2025

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