Gathering My Lessons
I am constantly learning from my life. Someone special to me said that I could glean a lesson even from a recipe.
Which is what I did in my post, When The Recipes Must Go.
I call them Ahas. I can also stand on a Soapbox every once in a while.
And I learn some pretty big stuff from some little people in my life. The good and the bad and
the happy and the sad. My friendships are very important to me. The past holds some wisdom yet to be learned.
And my husband’s lessons are occasionally shared by his voice here. I may repeat myself, but guaranteed,
I’ll get you to think about life just a little differently.
Our Ability to Change is Not about Willpower
(This is a repost from a year and a half ago. I forget myself, my writing, and my truth until I read my pieces and say “Heck Ya!”. Enjoy.) If it were a matter of willpower, we’d all be willing ourselves into success and abundance and skinniness. Yes your ability to change starts with your intent and your why but after that there’s a trick to do what you want. Your belief in your worthiness and your self-trust are what’s standing between you and what you want. And your fear is what’s in charge until they...
read moreTesting, Testing, is this Parent On ?
This first week of school is notoriously rough for our youngest. There are new teachers, new routines, and new buses to acquaint themselves with. And I fully expect our train to derail somewhere in the middle of back to school week. I was slightly mistaken in that there weren’t as many neurotic breakdowns and a crying fits. But the weekend brought me the brunt of the week with not so fab behavioral choices. The tall one was seemingly good until we found he’d smuggled his phone up to his room for late night phone poking and gaming...
read moreOh Universe, What Would You Have Me Do?
We mistrust ourselves so much, we have to hand much of our decision making over to another power. We create elaborate ways to make decisions. Drop a divining line down and see which way it swings to decide (dowsing pendulum). Pick your arm up and drop it to see if you should eat it (applied kinesiology). Because it’s awfully hard admitting that you have no faith in your own decisions and easier to give it over to something else. The exception being God. But most of us are faithless and frenetic. The Drowning man story is the best story...
read moreTaking off From the Runway
Seems recently, my brain has made enough room to allow for some actions in directions that I had “always meant” to go, but hadn’t gone yet. Begin the unstuck here. I had purchased a series of talks on fear which have wallowed in my email box until suddenly recently, I dialed it up and listened. And then today, I was driving in the car and I remembered I had a link in my browser tabs to Elizabeth Gilbert’s Magic Lessons podcast. And I dialed that up and began to listen to the first episode of season one from 2015. The Universe...
read moreThe World Pushes
The world is full of people who are all fulfilling their destinies. Their GASes are theirs. They believe that they need to make these GASes (give a shoots) happen in order for their lives to be “Happy”. And then you have yours. And sometimes, their goals encroach, overlap, and eek into your life. Boundaries are an important part of life. And are something that most of our parents did not teach us. Because they wanted their way too. Why give us veto power on their edicts? But, boy howdy, we need them when the world pushes. Because it will. And...
read moreListening to My Inner Truth
Our family just went to see Toy Story 4 recently in which Buzz Lightyear learns from Woody that listening to his inner voice will help him make the best life choices. And so throughout the rest of the movie, he’d yank on his pull string and interpret his “inner voice” to guide him. It was brilliant. Call it inner voice or intuition, people tend to get their Intuition mixed up with their Should Managers. I’ve done this repeatedly and it always gets me in trouble. Instead of listening to what will nourish my heart and soul, I make a...
read moreA Throwback to Summer Two Years Ago
I came across this, my last newsletter from two years ago. So much has happened since then. If you are a regular reader, you’ll already know that I finally gave myself permission to ask for anxiety medication last November, 2018. So this newsletter is a snapshot of who I used to be. My hope is to begin these again sooner than later! As the Summer gains speed, I’d like to start the practice of being in touch with my readership. You’ll still find three new posts weekly sent out at 6:30 am on Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays. Our seasonal...
read moreWow, It’s My 8th Year Blogaversary
Hard to believe I’ve been writing this blog for 8 years. I didn’t really read blogs or know what they were in 2011. But there was this woman I was trying to befriend and she insisted that, as a writer, I needed to start one. My blog should have a theme and I would gain an audience, a readership. So I went ahead and set up my free WordPress blog in August of 2011. I wanted to call it Chez La Vie, The Home of My Life in French. (Chez La is pronounced just like my name, Shalagh). But that domain was taken by a French restaurant in an...
read moreStarting Over
Children are going away to college at this time of the year. I ponder how they’re being gifted a chance for starting over. They can be whomever they want to be in a whole new clean slated world at their new schools. Whereas everyone knows you in grade school and high school, you can recreate yourself in the new college setting. It’s hard to see our opportunity to start over on a daily basis. We may have the feeling that we must concede to the choices we’ve already made. Ride out the stuck. But this is just our fear selling...
read more“Do You Work?”, He Asked
I finally scheduled the procedure to have a fatty lump taken off my belly this week. I’ll spare you the gory details. But while the surgeons had the scalpel poised over my belly, he asks me, “Do you work?”. I said not in a traditional job but I do work. “Are you a housewife?”, he asks. I respond that this phrase is outdated. “Well what do you call it then? “ he says. Homemaker? Domestic Engineer? I found myself explaining that I work very hard to maintain our life and our home plus am a writer, but that old nagging self-worth question...
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