Posts Tagged ‘Gratitude’

Gratitude Check Mamas How Do You Feel?


We feel good!  Oh We Feel So Good!  UH!

Remember that cheer from high school?  Or am I the only dork that still has that and others running through my head on occasion?

A few weeks back when I was feeling like Queen Grumperella, I opted to create a little Mama Bonding here around pet peeves that come with early parenting.  And I have to admit, I truly enjoyed it and loved all the comments from you all.

I think it’s important for everyone, but particularly for women, to talk about and purge what’s not working in our lives to clear it out and make space for peace and creating the life we do want. Talk it out. Exercise it out. Meditate it out during the daily poo. Whatever mode of excretion works best for ya.

A few years ago before I had my girls, I participated in this yummy Goddess circle one evening in which we all took paper and scribbled down everything about our lives that we couldn’t stand, mostly lies about ourselves that we no longer wanted to buy into.

We debated whether to burn them or transform them — and opted for the latter. I shredded my paper into 100 pieces and made the art you see here.

I tend to learn lessons over and over again. Like learning that running significantly alters my state of mind — in a good way.  It’s ridiculous how many times over the last 20+ years that I’ve said, “Oh yeah! I forgot about this!” And the lesson that I re-learned when going down the pet-peeve path recently is that when I focus on what’s wrong, my inner complaints tend to feed off of each other and pretty quickly all I see is what’s not working, what’s not not fun, what’s annoying, etc.  No bueno!

Thankfully I’ve gotten much better at cracking this little pattern in recent years with more self-awareness and a few tricks up my sleeve for redirecting thought patterns.

It’s all about finding the balance between the healthy expression of anger, sadness and disappointment and setting yourself up to move quickly from the purge into a new set of questions. Sound familiar? I know I’ve mentioned the idea of “Changing the Question” as an emotional coping mechanism several times here before.

What would make running this errand fun? What can I do to have my children and husband consistently experience my Love? How could I change my daily schedule to incorporate the me-time I need for my well-being?   What is perfect about my life right now?  What am I learning?  What am I grateful for?

And this brings me to the topic du jour.  Gratitude.

Please join me in making a list of everything you feel grateful for in your life.  This is an insightful part of the Power of Intention guided journaling exercise that I’ve come to love in recent months.  I haven’t committed time to it in the last few weeks and am inspired to kick start it again knowing how much more powerful focusing on what you want can be versus what you don’t.  Have any of you given the Power of Intention journaling a try? Curious to hear if it has impacted others in any way.

I’ll start the Gratitude list and welcome everyone to add their blessings through the comment section.

I am so grateful for:

  • My family — every member.  My husband, my sweet girls, my parents, my brother, my sister-in-law and niece and nephew and everyone on my husband’s side. I am so lucky to have this family.
  • My friends — near and far, old and new, I love each one dearly.
  • My home.
  • Our sweet housemate who is helping us so much with dinners and breakfasts and cleaning our kitchen and sitting with our girls one evening a week so we can go on dates. What a gift.
  • Our amazing nanny. We are so lucky to have someone so grounded, gentle, smart, creative and conscious about what children need emotionally to step in for us in caring for our angels while we work.
  • The project work that I received last month and all future work that will come my way in perfect time
  • Sweet Songs coming to life. My next post will give you all an update.


Posted in AP & Self Care | 4 Comments

Ode to Bread


I haven’t been able to get Pablo Neruda’s poetry out of my mind for several weeks now since rehearsing and performing Cary Ratcliff’s, “Ode to Common Things” with Conspirare.  What an amazing, magical experience.  And now to have his poetry float through my head melodically every day. I love it  We sang the poetry in Spanish and one of the sections that keeps coming into my head over and over again is a soprano part:  “…pan, pan, no rezaremos, pan, pan, no mendigaremos….”

Bread. We will not pray; we will not beg for you.

Whenever we sang the “Oda al Pan” movement, I felt a surge of awe and appreciation for Neruda’s brilliance.  His buttery words reflect life, fertility, femininity, love, and humanitarianism all with the simple metaphor of bread.

Here’s a stretch of the English translation:

“O bread familiar to every mouth,
we will not kneel before you:
men
do not
implore
unclear gods
or obscure angels:
we will make our own bread
out of sea and soil,
we will plant wheat
on our earth and the planets,
bread for every mouth,
for every person,
our daily bread.
Because we plant its seed
and grow it
not for one man
but for all,
there will be enough:
there will be bread
for all the peoples of the earth.
And we will also share with one another
whatever has
the shape and the flavor of bread:
the earth itself,
beauty
and love–
all
taste like bread
and have its shape,
the germination of wheat.
Everything
exists to be shared,
to be freely given,
to multiply.”

This poem strikes so many chords right now for me.  I love every word.

Over the last year, our family has felt increasing stress from the recession as we worry about making bread to care for our family. Ultimately, we have a lovely, solid roof over our heads and full bellies every day and countless other blessings that most of the world lacks.  I am confident that my husband and I will both be gainfully employed very soon so that we can get out from under our definition of “under.”  It is all so very relative.

Before I was a mother, I hated to see the suffering of any child.  Now, my heart aches on a deeper level to even hear about it. Neruda’s words serve as a reminder to me to Love, Love, Love and to Cherish and to Give as much as I can to those in need.

Let there be bread for all the peoples of the earth.  Indeed.

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Posted in Poetry | 2 Comments

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Art by Erika Hastings at http://mudspice.wordpress.com/

 

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