Wednesday, October 26, 2016

RLS

To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer is to have kept your soul alive - Robert Louis Stevenson

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Friday, October 14, 2016

What you're doing

Your favorite place is the farm.  Although you like to do nearly anything - being outside, driving your cars, playing at Grammy's....    You love to SING!   You sing all the time, you wake up singing and you don't stop.  Your teacher told me today that you sing the loudest in the class :)   She also told me that your gentle and very empathetic.  If anyone is having a bad day you like to cheer them up.  In fact, this has been a trait of yours since your earliest music classes.  My big-hearted boy.  One day when I was sad you told me "deep breath mama."   My hurt nearly burst.  

I tell you that your mama's angel, sent straight from heaven.   I have no doubt that is true.  
   

Thursday, October 13, 2016

36 Questions

Have you listened to this TED talk.  It's not new but it's new to me.  I enjoyed it.  

https://www.ted.com/talks/mandy_len_catron_falling_in_love_is_the_easy_part/transcript?language=en

Also, here are the 36 questions the speaker refers to...  interesting.

Here they are, in order:
1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?
3. Before making a phone call, do you ever rehearse what you're going to say? Why?
4. What would constitute a perfect day for you?
5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you choose?
7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
8. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.
9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
11. Take four minutes and tell you partner your life story in as much detail as possible.
12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained one quality or ability, what would it be?
13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?
14. Is there something that you've dreamt of doing for a long time? Why haven't you done it?
15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
16. What do you value most in a friendship?
17. What is your most treasured memory?
18. What is your most terrible memory?
19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?
20. What does friendship mean to you?
21. What roles do love and affection play in your life?
22. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.
23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people's?
24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?
25. Make three true "we" statements each. For instance, "we are both in this room feeling..."
26. Complete this sentence "I wish I had someone with whom I could share..."
27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.
28. Tell your partner what you like about them: be honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you've just met.
29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.
30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?
31. Tell your partner something that you like about them already.
32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?
33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven't you told them yet?
34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?
35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?
36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner's advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.


Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Divine Dance

"Did you ever imagine that what we call "vulnerability" might just be the key to ongoing growth?  In my experience, healthily vulnerable people use every occasion to expand, change and grow.   Yet it is a risky position to live undefended, in a kind of constant openess to the other - because it means others could sometimes actually wound us.   Indeed, vulnera comes from the Latin word for "to wound".  But only we take this risk do we also allow the opposite possibility: the other might also gift us, free us, and even love us."    "....This then, seems to be the work of the Spirit: to keep you vulnerable to life and love itself and to resist all that destroy the Life Flow" - Fr. Richard Rohr & Mike Morrell, Divine Dance. 

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

The Storm

"Fate whispers to the warrior, you cannot withstand the storm.  The warrior whispers back, "I am the storm""   via Glennon.

Back from a perfect long weekend.  

Friday, October 7, 2016

Still here

Just been in a busy season.  Like any part of nature, I need some time to rest so I can come back stronger than before.  I miss this space.  It's truly a friend.   And though I haven't written much, I have been reading it.  Going back, remembering how certain things made me feel.  Where I was.  What was happening.  I'm glad I have it documented.  It all goes so fast and so slow.  Days, weeks, years....  Life. 

Via Glennon Doyle Melton

Friday, June 17, 2016

Summer to-do

Putting some action into goals for the summer:

1. See a concert - tickets bought.  Lawn seats are the best seats.
2. New places - Minneapolis, Edmonton WA - check.
3. Visit old friends - one visit confirmed for Sept.  Finding a day for a roadtrip to CT.
4. Read 2 books
5. Explore at least 5 new places in New England - Franklin Park Zoo, check.  Orion State Park, check.  3 more...
6. Grow something edible
7. Visit the farmstand and make dinner
8.  Night swimming
9.  Family hike
10. Pack a picnic lunch 

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Tiger in Captivity

I heard this story on an old Tim Ferriss podcast this morning.   Simple, but a lot to think about:

A tiger was rescued from captivity.  He had been confined to a 12x12 concrete area for more than 5 years.   When the animal activists reached him they brought him to a beautiful sanctuary.  Within days, the tiger had carved out a 12x12 corner for himself and didn't move beyond it.

Are we taking advantage of the full sanctuary or have we found a 12x12 corner.  

 
 

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Outside

We stayed outside later than usual last night.  But you were playing so well and the night was so pleasant, I couldn't resist. What a gift that we call this place home.

Little one, you have always taught us so much.  It is my greatest gift to watch you uncover the world. 

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Amor Fati

From Elizabeth Lesser's Facebook page.   Gosh, she's good. 
“AMOR FATI means love of fate. The philosopher ...Friedrich Nietzsche described amor fati as the ability not to merely bear our fate but to love it. That’s a tall order. To be human is to have the kind of fate that doles out all sorts of wondrous and horrible things. No one gets through life without big doses of confusion and angst, pain and loss. What’s to love about that? And yet if you say yes to amor fati, if you practice loving the fullness of your fate, you will thread ribbons of faith and gratitude and meaning through your life. Some will reject the idea of loving your fate as capitulation or naïveté; I say it’s the way to wisdom and the key to love.”
Remembering those two words this morning had the effect of lifting me out of negativity, fear, and resistance. I took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. AHHHH. That’s right. I remember. I don’t have to fight with fate. I can stand in the storms of life—whether it’s my daughter-in-law’s breast cancer treatments, or the hatred being whipped in this year’s presidential campaign, or the fact that I am standing as I type this because my back has gone out again…I can embrace all of this with an open heart. I can feel the tenderness of the human condition, shower love on myself and on the people in my life, and relax into my fate and the fate of our shared world. Meeting life with loving acceptance does not condemn me to inactivity. In fact it energizes me, gives me hope, and reveals better next steps.
Nietzsche wrote this: “I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! . . . And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.”

                                             Elizabeth Lesser's photo.

Monday, June 6, 2016

Summer to-do

Via this Huffington Post Article:

1. Sometimes, in the morning, go take a walk along the seashore completely alone: look at the way sunlight is reflected on the water and think about the things you love the most in your life; be happy.
2. Try to use some of the new words we learned together this year: the more things you manage to say, the more things you’ll manage to think; and the more things you think, the freer you’ll be.
3. Read as much as you possibly can. But not because you have to. Read because summers inspire adventures and dreams, and when you read you’ll feel like swallows in flight. Read because it’s the best form of rebellion you have (for advice on what to read, come see me).
4. Avoid things, situations and people who make you feel negative or empty: seek out stimulating situations and the companionship of friends who enrich you, who understand you and appreciate you for who you are.
5. If you feel sad or afraid, don’t worry: summer, like every marvelous thing in life, can throw the soul into confusion. Try keeping a diary as a way to talk about how you feel (in September, if you’d like, we’ll read it together).
6. Dance, shamelessly. On a dance floor near your house, or alone in your room. Summer is dance, and it’s foolish not to take part.
7. At least once, watch the sunrise. Stay silent and breathe. Close your eyes, be thankful.
8. Play a lot of sports.
9. If you meet someone you find enchanting, tell him or her as sincerely and gracefully as you can. It doesn’t matter if she or he doesn’t understand. If they don’t, she or he wasn’t meant to be; otherwise, summer 2015 will be a golden time together (if this doesn’t work out, go back to point number 8).
10. Review your notes from our class: Compare the things we read and learned to the things that happen to you.
11. Be as happy as sunlight, as untamable as the sea.
12. Don’t swear. Always be well-mannered and kind.
13. Watch films with heartbreaking dialogue (in English if you can), in order to improve your language skills and your ability to dream. Don’t let the movie end with the final credits: live it again while you’re living and experiencing your summer.
14. In sparkling sunlight or hot summer nights, dream about how your life could and should be. During the summer, always do everything you can to avoid giving up, and everything you can to pursue your dream.
15. Be good.

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

A post on change...

A great post on change via Design for Mankind.  I highly recommend reading it all but here's an excerpt:

Changing your life isn’t about having faith in your ability to fly, to rise above, to conquer your dreams.
It’s about having faith that the fall won’t kill you.
It’s realizing that a failure elsewhere is better than a success here.
 
 
When it comes to career change, one of the most important metrics for me was imagining someone else in the shoes that I was about to leave.  How did it make me feel?  I knew it was time to go when I really, truly, felt no pangs of jealousy about the person who would ultimately replace me.  It was hers now.  Pass the torch without remorse, regret, stones left unturned. 
 
The path that followed that initial change wasn't simple.  I'm not here to report it was.  It was quite tumultous.  But it was worth it.  and the bumpy ride that took place post-change was, in fact, easier than the inertia.

Friday, May 27, 2016

What I've been doing

the days fly by.  the weeks fly by.  I have intentions to make it to this space but inevitably something distracts me. 

Here are some things I've read, thought about, collected and some happenings from our life.  Have a great long weekend ~*

: Our garden produced it's first red strawberry. 
: Does J have acting in his future?  He recites line by line the words to little cartoons he watches and   books he loves.  Melts my heart!
: Today he packed his backpack and put on his froggy boots all by himself.  Turning into a little boy right before our eyes. 
: Entertaining and family time for the next three days. 

"Love lets go. Need hold on. This is the way you can tell the difference.   Let go of expectation, let go of requirements and rules and regulations that you would impose on your loved ones." - Neale Donald Walsch

"Here is the importance of bearing witness.  We do not grow alone. Talents do not prosper in a hothouse of ambition and neglect and hungry anger; love does not arrive by horseback or prayer or good intentions.  We need the eyes, the arms, and the witness of others to grow, to know that we have existed, that we have mattered, that we have made our mark.  And each of us has a distinct mark that colors our surroundings, that flavors the recipe of 'experience' in which we find ourselves; but we remain blind, without identity, until someone witnesses us."  Tennessee Williams

And Alec Baldwin's podcast episode "Here's the Thing".   Love it.  The one with Jerry Seinfeld was perfection. 

Monday, May 23, 2016

Our weekend

The pure joy of a 3 year old at Clown Town, a tradition older than his mama.   This little guy fills our lives and especially our weekends with so much elation.  He is so enthusiastic about it all. All weekend long I hear, "come on Mama, let's..... <dig, run, chase, hide things, play with cars, play in the dirt, sing songs, dance, see friends, take a walk>...."  It really doesn't matter what he's doing, he loves it all.  My boy.  So content. So loved.  



Wednesday, May 18, 2016

More good stuff from Seth G.

The short run and the long run
It's about scale. Pick a long enough one (or a short enough one) and you can see the edges.
In the short run, there's never enough time.
In the long run, constrained resources become available.
In the short run, you can fool anyone.
In the long run, trust wins.
In the short run, we've got a vacancy, hire the next person you find.
In the long run, we spend most of our time with the people we've chosen in the short run.
In the short run, decisions feel more urgent and less important at the same time.
In the long run, most decisions are obvious and easy to make.
In the short run, it's better to panic and obsess on emergencies and urgencies.
In the long run, spending time with people you love, doing work that matters, is all that counts.
In the short run, trade it all for attention.
In the long run, it's good to own it (the means of production, the copyrights, the process).
In the short run, burn it down, someone else will clean up the problem.
In the long run, the environment in which we live is what we need to live.
In the short run, better to cut class.
In the long run, education pays off.
In the short run, tearing people down is a great way to get ahead.
In the long run, building things of value makes sense.
Add up the short runs, though, and you're left with the long run. It's going to be the long run a lot longer than the short run will last.
Act accordingly.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

Monday, May 16, 2016

Thursday, May 12, 2016

On Mother's Day

We had a great day.  It wasn't fancy - I slept in on Sunday, went on a solo Starbucks run for my favorite coffee, hit the garden store.   Spent the afternoon playing with my guy and making a special card for Grammy - he LOVES to make cards, ever since Valentine's Day - it's been one of his favorite activities.  Clearly he gets a lot of postive affirmation because when you ask, "What will Grammy say when you give her this card" His response: "I looove it!"   Sure enough, when he handed over his proud artwork, full of construction paper grass he cut himself, a cloud made with cotton balls and some farm animals, Grammy responded "I Loooove it".     We are lucky.  It was a very nice day.

I like reading all the Mother's Day reflections around the internet, too.  This one in particular - yes. 

Being a mother has forever been an identity, a status, a relationship, an intuition. Today it has turned into a quest for perfection, an unreachable Olympus. This new ideal fills women with anxiety, peddling the joys out of Motherhood. Ironically when women in the West free themselves of patriarchy, they replace it with a new master in the home. The mandate of motherhood as full time and all embracing, which graces babies with organic baby food and diaper clothes, is a return of regressive burdens and makes mothers feel "not good enough” in the grip of constant guilt and self doubt. The current child centeredness has reached an apex of folly and as we know, when mom is unhappy, society suffers. Giving her a break once a year on Mother's Day is not enough, no matter how big the bouquet and how effusive the cards.  Esther Perel. 

Friday, May 6, 2016

Mother's Day

My reflections after 3.5 years:

What is your favorite part of being a mom:   I created this little boy.  He grew in my belly and now grows in my home and in our love.  He has taught me so much about strength, capacity, true love. My life did not feel complete before he was born and now it does.  He had been waiting for us, and us for him.

What is the most difficult part of being a mom:  Loss of independence.  It's not just my life anymore.  I have to always consider how our behavior and choices affects this young person.  Working full time and raising a toddler doesn't allow for much alone time, which I crave and need.

What is your proudest moment since being a mom:  J is a kind, patient, funny, content boy.  He always has been.  We were blessed but I like to think that he is being raised by parents who love him unconditionally and he reflects the happiness and peace we strive for oursleves.  Watching him be kind, empathetic, and curious - no matter the setting - makes me feel sucessful in my intentions as his mother.

What do I wish for him:   I wish him good health - mind, spirit and body.  With that he will be able to accomplish whatever he seeks.  I hope we can help him to recognize his strengths and his passions and encourage him to fearlessly pursue his dreams.  

My favorite words on parenting, by Brene Brown:
The Wholehearted Parenting Manifesto
Above all else, I want you to know that you are loved and lovable. You will learn this from my words and actions—the lessons on love are in how I treat you and how I treat myself.
I want you to engage with the world from a place of worthiness. You will learn that you are worthy of love, belonging, and joy every time you see me practice self-compassion and embrace my own imperfections.
We will practice courage in our family by showing up, letting ourselves be seen, and honoring vulnerability. We will share our stories of struggle and strength. There will always be room in our home for both.
We will teach you compassion by practicing compassion with ourselves first; then with each other. We will set and respect boundaries; we will honor hard work, hope, and perseverance. Rest and play will be family values, as well as family practices.
You will learn accountability and respect by watching me make mistakes and make amends, and by watching how I ask for what I need and talk about how I feel.
I want you to know joy, so together we will practice gratitude.
I want you to feel joy, so together we will learn how to be vulnerable.
When uncertainty and scarcity visit, you will be able to draw from the spirit that is a part of our everyday life.
Together we will cry and face fear and grief. I will want to take away your pain, but instead I will sit with you and teach you how to feel it.
We will laugh and sing and dance and create. We will always have permission to be ourselves with each other. No matter what, you will always belong here.
As you begin your Wholehearted journey, the greatest gift that I can give to you is to live and love with my whole heart and to dare greatly.
I will not teach or love or show you anything perfectly, but I will let you see me, and I will always hold sacred the gift of seeing you. Truly, deeply, seeing you.

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Creativity

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have. - Steve Jobs

Thursday, April 28, 2016

Words

"Be teachable to the end" - Rod Stryker. 

grateful today for all that we're learning, for all that I'm learning... 

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Future Self

This post from Cheryl Strayed is making it's way around the internet.  Summary - if you're having a hard time finding motivation think about how your future self might feel...   Would my future self enjoy having a dedicated yoga practice, a blog full of good ideas, a fulfilled relationship.  Keep pushing.  It's worth it. 

Monday, April 25, 2016

It's what we do....

Mama, want to do COLLECTING?!!!!     Collecting is our word for finding rocks, pebbles, big ones, flat ones, and putting them in our buckets.  After they're filled we walk in the woods "all the way to the bridge" and throw them into the stream.  Some make big splashes, some are small enough to fit through the cracks.

It's our little tradition. What we do.  It makes me happy that he's so content.  The farm, the circus, the playground or the woods.  He loves it all.  My busy little bee.  So happy collecting....

 
                                                             
                                                          


Friday, April 22, 2016

Purple

Yesterday we lost the icon, Prince.  I enjoyed listening to all of his classics on the radio while I drove home last night - how many times have we sung along to "maybe I'm just like my mother.... <when doves cry>, or danced away our senior year of highschool to Party Likes it's 1999.

Every legend will go eventually.  And I believe we must not mourn death, especially when someone has had so much influence and achieved such a lasting legacy.  Music heals.  Art heals.  When a 5'2 androgenous guy from Minnesota can become one of our greatest artists ever, we should all be reminded that the magic lies in being authentically ourselves.  Rest in Peace.

Thursday, April 21, 2016

To learn

Cheers to my teachers - can't imagine life without them. 

To learn is to broaden, to experience more, to snatch new aspects of life for yourself. To refuse to learn or to be relieved at not having to learn is to commit a form of suicide; in the long run, a more meaningful type of suicide than the mere ending of physical life. 
Knowledge is not only power; it is happiness, and being taught is the intellectual analog of being loved. - Isaac Asimov

Monday, April 18, 2016

Drumlin Farm

Without much forethought, J and I hit up Drumlin Farm in Lincoln, MA yesterday.  It was one of those "lucky" days - the weather was beautiful, the farm was bustling and J loved every single second of it.  Mama liked it quite a bit, too!

Welcome, spring!! 
 
 




Friday, April 15, 2016

Apocalypse soon

Saw this post on Seth Godin's blog.  Always grateful when people can capture my thoughts:

Apocalypse soon - via http://sethgodin.typepad.com/  
It's a bug in our operating system, and one that's amplified by the media.
I'm listening to a speech from ten years ago, twenty years ago, forty years ago... "During these tough times... these tenuous times... these uncertain times..." And we hear about the urgency of the day, the bomb shelters, the preppers with their water tanks, the hand wringing about the next threat to civilization.
At the same time that we live in the safest world that mankind has ever experienced. Fewer deaths per capita from all the things that we worry about.
Risky? Sure it is. Every moment for the last million years has been risky. The risk has moved from Og with a rock to the chronic degeneration of our climate, but it's clear that rehearsing and fretting and worrying about the issue of the day hasn't done a thing to actually make it go away. Instead, we amplify the fear, market the fear and spread the fear as a form of solace, of hiding from taking action, of sharing our fear in a vain attempt to ameliorate it.
When we get nostalgic for past eras, for their culture or economy or resources, it's interesting that we never seem to get nostalgic for their fears.

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Mark Bittman: A Bone to Pick

Recently finished A Bone to Pick by Mark Bittman.  It was more brief and less insightful than Omnivore's Dilemma but a worthwhile read that danced the line of informative without being priveledged.  By the end, I felt it a bit redundant - eat more plants, eat less processed stuff - and can't say that I walked away truly feeling enlightened.   That said, a few new things I learned:
 
GMOs aren't "unhealthy".  The problem with GMOs lies more in their lack of crop diversification and not contributing towards sustainable agriculture.

Local is best - support your local farmer's markets, CSA initiatives etc.

Bittman makes many comparison's to junk food and tobacco.  Just as the progress we've made there at once seemed impossible, it can be done with patience, commitment and personal change.

Choose better quality meat.  Meat is a huge water and energy consumer, by eating less, and lowering demand, we improve our health and environmental friendliness.


Monday, April 4, 2016

On Parenting

"Parenting is a clumsy yet majestic dance in the flames.  When you parent you fall in love with a person who is always changing into someon else, and whom you know will leave you.  Yet most parents will say that they have never given themselves to anyone as fully as they have to their children.  Parenting is a career with the crazy-making job requirement of simultaneously surrendering to and letting go of someone you love, over and over and over again." - Elizabeth Lesser.

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Measurement

"What gets measured, gets improved" - Peter Drucker.

Whether talking about budgets, diets, or time planning - the most effective way to bring about change and improvement is writing it down.  It leads to improved accountability and easier analysis. 

Monday, March 28, 2016

Spring

If you need a wake-up, motivational podcast, I highly recommend Seth Godin's interview on the Tim Ferris Podcast.  It was just what I needed to shake off a difficult few months and a lot of transition.


I will try to do a proper recap at some point, in the meantime, an obvious take-away was Seth's insistance that every person should keep a daily blog.  Without further ado, I passage about spring.  Because there's nothing like a new season to reinvigorate me.


As long as the Earth can make a spring every year, I can. I won't give up until the Earth gives up. - Alice Walker.


(source)

A 3 year old's Easter

What a fun holiday!  We had been battling some stomach viruses for the past few weekends which meant we'd missed a town egg hunt and some other festivities.  But it was all good, as we crammed everything into this one!  We visited the bunny --- J was so excited when it was his turn he gave him hugs and high fives.  Lucky him, the bunny must've thought he was a good boy and he left a trail of eggs down the stairs and to his basket.  Mini M&M's for breakfast - an Easter miracle!  We spent the rest of the day at Grammy's where there were more eggs to be found and a special note...  he left J a bike!   And off he goes.  My baby rode the bike around Grammy's house and then ours for the rest of the day/night.  Such a big boy.  Impossible to put into words what it's like to watch your kind, beautiful boy grow right before your eyes.   It was a special weekend.

Saturday, March 5, 2016

Thank you, Jeff Brown

This guy writes the most beautiful stuff:

"It's so interesting - when we are young, it's the illusion of perfection that we fall in love with.  But as we age, its the humanness that we fall in love with: the poignant story of overcoming, the depthful vulnerability of aging, the struggles that grew us in karmic stature, the way a soul shaped itself to accomodate its cicurmstances.   With less energy to hold up our armor, we are revealed and, in the revealing, call out to each other's hearts.  Where before wounds turned us off, the are now revealed as proof that God exists.  Where we once saw imperfect scars, we now see evidence of a life fully lived."

"If you emerge from the ending of any relationship <situation> feeling more positive about yourself, more aware of your rights, needs and entitlements, more attuned to your own value, more celabratory of your own magnificance, and with better boundaries and a more finely attuned authenticity-mometer, than you have had a blessed relationship journey, even if the ending was toxic.  The School of Hard Knocks yields all manner of fruit" 

Jeff Brown.

Monday, February 8, 2016

What I'm Reading: End of the Affair - Graham Greene

I used to do a lot of audiobooks.  Once, when looking for a new recommendation - I saw that Colin Firth had just finished reading for "End of the Affair" because he found the book so poignant.  My library didn't have it and my commute has since changed (most days I take the train and don't drive) so I'm back to print reading.  Anyways, I was in the mood for a compelling fiction read and this one did not disappoint.   I read it in record time and thought it was both high in drama and a page-turner and very smart with some excellent lines.  Definitely one I recommend.

"The desire to possess in some, like avarice: in others the desire to surrender, to lose the sense of responsibility, the wish to be admired.  Sometimes just the wish to be able to talk, to unburden yourself to someone who won't be bored.  The desire to find again a father or a mother.  And of course under it all the biological motive."

"When I began to write our story down, I thought I was writing a record of hate, but somehow the hate has got mislaid and all I know is that in spite of her mistakes and her unreliability, she was better than most.  It's just as well that one of us should believe in her: she never did in herself."

"If I were writing a novel I would end here: a novel, I used to think, has to end somewhere, but I'm beginning to believe my realism has been at fault all these years, for nothing in life now ever seems to end.  Chemists tell you matter is never completely destroyed, and mathematicians tell you that if you halve each pace in crossing a room, you will never reach the opposite wall, so what an optimist I would be if I thought that this story ended here."

""I'm sorry," she said, and I had the impression that she meant it.  She had a lot to learn, in the way of books and music and how to dress and talk, but she would never have to learn humanity"

Sunday, January 31, 2016

Little Blue Truck

My boy reciting (practically verbatim) the entire Little Blue Truck story to himself - with perfect inflection, animal sounds etc - while I enjoy my coffee and quiet morning --- hard to be better than this.   Happy Sunday.

Saturday, January 30, 2016

Happiness

"I measure happiness in moments, " writes Elizabeth Lesser.  I surrender to her great words over and over again.   I used to strive to be "happy".  When, inevitably I wasn't - whether for a day, a week, an hour - I desperately tried to remedy it.  What's wrong?!!  My marriage, my house, my job, my family, my LIFE.   I panicked and tried to solve the equation.  Looking for the concrete x.  The missing link. The puzzle piece in the wrong place.  Upturning everything....

There is no answer.  There is no holy grail.  It is only waves.  Waves of happy, waves of sad.  Waves of frustration.  Waves of elation.  You ride them while you have them.  You release them when they break.  You keep going forward.   You never stop learning.  And never stop trying.   You never give up on yourself, on your path toward deeper consciousness, on your path toward peace - with it all.


Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Bowie

The internet is filled with stories of David Bowie after his passing yesterday.  A friend of mine posted "Dad, we didn't always see eye to eye but we always had Bowie...."   We also grew up with Bowie blaring through the speakers.  My dad's taste in music was eclectic and wonderful - on a given Saturday we might wake up to him blaring Bowie, or dancing to Billy Idol, contemplating with Pink Floyd, rocking with the Rolling Stones or just "groovin'" (his word) to  Sinead O'Connor! :)

Parents are funny.  The process of both becoming an adult and a parent myself has made it so much easier to see them for what they were/are.  Just two flawed humans doing the very best they could - especially for their kids.   Mistakes were a plenty and so was the love and good intention.

As we say goodbye to a rock legend, I thank him for his bravery, vision, and genius.  He will never die because the music that brought fathers and daughters together, or helped someone truly dance (!), or just make their own experience as a human a little easier will live forever.   Thank you, David Bowie.  You were a gift.


Friday, January 1, 2016

welcome, 2016

Another year here.  One of my favorite parts of this blog is flipping back and seeing what was on my mind, what were my goals, what was I working through....  I've been posting here for 5 years (!) so some good work has been done.

Ever the reflective person, I love taking this moment in time to think a bit about what was accomplished last year and look forward to what I'd like to do in the new year.

2015:
I set the word action as my mantra for the year.  and I did it....  leaving the security of a job I'd had for 8 years.   My new work experience was wonderful.  It gave me more time with my family, reminded me of my strengths, and met some inspiring new people.  What I hadn't really expected, was what it would teach me about myself.  Changing my environment, meant seeing patterns as my own - not the result of a job, or a person, or anything external.  Learning that ---- processing it deep in my bones --- was a gift given to me by 2015.

2016:
This year my word is strength.  Strength over self doubt.  Strength over fear.  Strength over the external.  To be a pillar of my own.  No matter the wind, no matter the circumstance to stand tall in what I know is true and believe in myself and my ability,   "Anyone to whom you've given responsibility for your experience, please take it back...." will be a daily meditation.

It's a happy day.  A fresh start.  I have a beautiful son, a marriage grounded in love, friends who are honest and also trying their best, and all the strength I need.

Happy New Year ~~~***