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.
Screw the Results, Get Caught up in the creative Process
In the midst of this creativity Challenge , #OurCreativeJanuary , and I recognize what my purpose in life is. It’s to not only keep creating something, anything, but to insist that everyone else needs to too. Not for the credit or the compliments on how perfectly you’ve done it, but how lovely it feels to be in process in community. I say screw the results, get caught up in the process. We all need to create, even if we don’t call it that. And sharing what we create makes the process feel even better. I am convinced that in...
read moreOur Creative January Challenge for 2021
Announcing an Our Creative January Challenge to start off 2021 on the creative right foot . A creative community challenge I am hosting on Instagram. Since 2017, l’ve dared to host #ourcreativeselves community projects and #Soul_selfie challenges. As l continue to emerge from my creative and low self-esteem shells, these challenges have given voice to both my creative and soul searching selves and my communities. I forget this. I forget myself. Often. So this coming year, l want to remember myself and engage in more community...
read moreMood Clouds
More than a few people have spoken of feeling down recently. How quickly l went to questioning the weather or politics as the cause not even knowing their circumstances. Because, what if up and down is our natural rhythm? And we all have perpetual memory loss that this is our way? What if it’s as simple as perspective, a random change inside as if the sun is behind the clouds. And then it isn’t. What if we spend less time worrying the sun is gone and more time manifesting that sunlight within? How would you conjure your sun on a...
read moreWhat Low Self-Worth and Capitalism are Causing You to Do
We live in a society where lack of self-worth has become an epidemic. Low self-esteem is the new black. Most of us have come to believe in our inherent worthless and how we have to work hard, be successful, popular, attractive, healthy, wealthy, and be in control to earn worth. When we were babies, we knew our worth. All that adulation was as it should be. But as we grow up, we become unaware of our true, unlimited worth. We forgot? It was systematically drained from us as we grew. “The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and...
read moreI Will Not Ask Your Permission to Parent You
As you may know, we now have an official teenager in our home. Not the 13-year-old wanna be teen. Not the emerging effort teen. We have the full out hormones are making me weird and mindless teen. And no matter what you say, there are certain things I will not accept as normal for a teen. This is a kid who was so good I used to say he needed a day where he had permission to just be bad all day. He was polite if not thoughtful. Sure Dad, yes Mom. And then, girlfriend, lockdown, and his demands to make his own decisions about his use of “his”...
read moreHow Hard is it To Pay Yourself Some Respect?
I am suddenly at a place in my life where I realize that life is harder for all the respect I haven’t been asking for. I find myself irked because my kid doesn’t respect me. Or my husband takes me for granted. Or my Mother just expects I’ll do that thing for her. But I realize that it’s just me beginning to realize that up until now, that’s all been Okay. Respect starts with self-respect, a boundary on what you will permit others to ask of you and what you feel you are willing to do. And while some women can...
read moreWhat if You Did it All Right But You Were Looking at it All Wrong
It’s not as if I don’t try. As Sara Bareilles sings in her song Armor, “You make me try, try, try, try … it’s all I ever do.” But what if the efforts you make are good, it’s just your expectations of what you can humanly accomplish are off ? What if you’re so used to never getting it right and never doing enough that you can’t see how much you’ve accomplished. You can’t see the forest for all the trees. You know I’m talking about myself. When am I not? I have been told many times by many...
read moreDrops in the Bucket Fill the Bucket Up
I realize that I have been an all or nothing girl all my life. I want the pretty garden immediately. I want the pounds to come off overnight. I want world peace or else! And this thinking renders all of my efforts worthless. If I only get part of the project done, with this mindset, it wasn’t enough. And this is like trying to drive with the parking break on. When I truly started to believe that drops in the bucket fill the bucket up, then I started to enjoy and appreciate my own efforts. Even 15 minutes of concerted effort to clean a...
read moreReframe Your Slow: By Choice or By Force ?
Two women I know from my online community, and for whom I have great respect, both spoke in their newsletters about how they felt twitchy about feeling slowed down and awaiting things. The global trend to embrace the slow life as a way of living sounds so lovely but it’s a whole other thing to feel forced to slow down. Anna Lovind, the teacher of my Creative Doer course, said, “I find it incredibly frustrating to not be able to create swift change the way I’m used to. But maybe slow is what I can handle right now”. To have...
read moreI Carry the Shame
I carry the shame Of the impoverished upbringings of my parents. Abuse and neglect. I can’t wear stained or torn of illfitting clothes when I leave the house. We don’t do that. I carry the shame Of the unwanted weight on my body. Not maintaining my appeal for men and equally, for caring what anyone thinks of me, especially men. I carry the shame Of not fixing my anxiety Of passing it on to my child Of not being enough. I carry the shame Of staying stuck Of not rising, using my talents for more. Of not burning brightly like they...
read more
