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Hello lovelies! Exciting book news coming next week! In the meantime - in my ever-present search to define self-care - I wanted to share my latest definition. Today, I’ve decided that self-care is a shift… ...from feeling like you’ll never get everything done to realizing you’re allowed to do just one thing at a time (and take breaks in the process). ...from the desire to go on restrictive diets (or other ways of clamping down on your compulsions) to the desire to eat in a normal, sane way while exploring the roots of your compulsions with tenderness and support. ...from feeling like practicing your self-care routines will make you a boring person to understanding that your routines are a gift you give to yourself. ...from saying that you’ll take care of yourself once your to-do list is done to caring for yourself whenever you feel sad, tired, lonely or otherwise depleted. (Read the rest in the comments 💜) Meet Reba and Elsa, my dear friends and brilliant coconspirators in self-care. This Saturday, they are leading a FREE virtual self-care roundtable workshop for women of color. During this 90 minute session, they’ll discuss specific self-care approaches for women of color and the ways women of color can support each other’s self-care. As a white women, it brings me great joy to support this workshop! I believe that when women of color are given the space they need to truly care for themselves, our world will find it’s balance again (which benefits us all). If you identify as a women of color, please sign up (link in my bio) and/or tag your women of color friends in support of their self-care.💜 Happy Thanksgiving! I’m grateful for so many things this year. I’m grateful for the amazing service day that just happened in the Beautiful Life Collective (those are all the sandwiches we made for @marthastable ) and the I get to do work that is so meaningful to me. Of course, I’m grateful for Micah and Jonah and that I really like parenting (which doesn’t mean I don’t have my bad days of course). Also, I’m super grateful to have spent this year working with a really wonderful therapist who does ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy). There’s a lot to ACT but one of the most helpful frameworks is to move from being aversive (usually coming from fear) to appetitive (coming from desire). Yesterday, I was able to shift from some very aversive fears about my business and considering a second child into an appetitive stance of really feeling my desire to have a thriving business while expanding our family (we’ll see how it all works!). Nothing changed but my attitude and yet I suddenly had access to so many creative ideas about how this next phase could work. I feel like so many of my appetitive feelings lead me back to creativity. I want to be making more things, creating more connections, witnessing Mother Nature more (the ultimate creatrix). My work is to slow down and make space for my best creative work to flow. In this spirit, I just recorded a podcast (link in my bio) with my dear friend @curiousground who just started a business making monthly creativity boxes for you and your loved ones. Have a listen, learn how creativity helps you solve problems and order a box to spark the creativity you’re craving (use the code: BeautifulLife to get a 25% discount at www.thecuriousground.com). Have a wonderful, appetitive Thanksgiving full of self-care and creativity! Learn how I lost all my baby weight, met my soulmate and moved into the home of my dreams (and how you can too!). Wait, a sec. Did that sentence just get your attention? If it were a link would you have clicked on it? I probably would have. Over the past few weeks I’ve been doing some challenging soul searching when it comes to the ways we market to each other, especially in the wellness/personal development industry. I feel like we are trying to sell each other a fantasy, one where we find the quick fix that solves all of our problems. My critique of this kind of self-improvement thinking is being inspired by the very-important podcast called “The Dream.” “The Dream” exposes the corruption of multi-level marketing and the many people, usually financially struggling, this business structure exploits. It’s made me think that we are all just trying to pass of a dream, the dream that we - as individuals and as a collective - are doing ok. It’s the dream that we could ever make the outside look perfect enough that we could end our inner loneliness. (Want to learn more? Listen to the podcast I recorded with the incredible @richael_faithful_folk_healer where we break it down further - link in bio). Truly, the secret that has helped me feel like myself these days is compassionately dealing with my own trauma. As I face my own trauma, I have more capacity to look at how we are suffering as a world. Particularly, I’ve begun to really understand my country’s practice white supremacy and systematic racism it brings. Learning the real history of whiteness and capitalism is disturbing to say the least. Examining the ways I participate in and benefit from these systems is even more disturbing. Luckily, I have control over the latter and I’m dedicated to using my time, energy and resources to bring care to all. This is the dream I believe in most and want to keep spreading for the rest of my days. There’s been such sweetness and such sadness over these last days. I’ve been holding space for Micah who is from Squirrel Hill and doing the ridiculously healthy act of allowing himself his feelings and really grieving this immense loss. I’m also holding space for this sweetheart of a Halloween frog and all the joy he brings (can you tell he loves his costume?). Further, I’ve been writing letters with @votefwd and about to start text banking for Amendment 4 in Florida (which would overturn a horribly racist and classist violation of voter rights), hoping these small acts might help turn the tide. Within all of this, I’ve been feeling pretty efficient, present, functional. Then on Monday, while I was rushing around to get ready for a workshop, I made a mistake while cooking (I won’t go into too much detail, but just make sure the cooking bowl is actually in your instant pot before you pour a blender full of mac ‘n cheese sauce in there 🤦🏻‍♀️). Suddenly, I went from super functional to a hot mess of emotions. The world felt like it was going to fall apart at any moment and I wanted to park myself on the couch and escape. It took lots of deep breaths and a therapy session before I could see this mishap as a powerful lesson. I could see that both things are true: I’m thriving and I’m struggling. I can use self-care to be ok and use self-care to not be ok. Embracing both gives me a much deeper sense of security than working overtime to get everything right (and losing it when I inevitably can’t). So, during these tender times can we help each other with that? Can we see thriving and falling apart as immense acts of strength? Can we embrace the Halloween frogs while crying for those who have been killed? Can we expand our vision of life to accept the present while working like hell to make positive change in our future? I think we can. I hope we can. So, I’ve written another book! It’s called “Selfcarefully” and it’s a collaboration between @thickpress and @maninoush. This limited-edition risograph-printed book holds all the self-care wisdom I’ve gained over the years. The first essay is called “Self-care and f*cking it all up” because we want this book to start where other self-improvement books leave off. What happens when life gets in the way? How can we turn these self-care missteps into generative experiences and a more compassionate understanding of ourselves? This book will teach you to use self-care as a lens to analyze all things, from setting boundaries to eating lunch to talking about racism. We are still putting the book together - the process has been slow and fruitful - but I wanted to keep you updated. I’ll hopefully have something for you to hold in your hands in early 2019, and I’ll be sharing bits and pieces along the way. (Some of you may be wondering about my first book. Yes, I finished it a while back and no, I still haven’t figured out how to publish it + promote it while raising a toddler and running my self-care coaching programs. I’d love to hear any advice on publishing! I think the book’s message on cultivating leadership through self-care is more important than ever.) photo by @maninoush Oh what a time we are in! I go in and out of the intensity of my feelings. I’ll listen to the radio and be seething, then hopeless, and after I’ll do some work with my clients and feel full of promise about the world. It’s important to remember that both are true. The world can be hopeless and full of promise at the same time. (I think because exposing one system for its corruption leaves space for another paradigm to be born.) Still, it’s so intense to hold both as true, mourning one while I get excited about the other. Within the intensity, I’m feeling the need for grounding. For me this means extra consistency in my daily routines. I’m being careful about when I go to bed (Jonah usually decides when I wake up), and making sure I eat three meals a day. Cooking is also incredibly grounding for me. Right now, as we creep closer to fall, I’m making one-pot meals like soups and stews. I use fewer dishes and it also feels more nourishing. And I need all the nourishment I can get these days! I try not to give too much advice, but I do hope you all thinking how you can take extra good care of yourself right now. Tensions are very high, traumas are being relived and the one thing we do have control over is how we care for ourselves (which affects are capacity to care for others). Then we can show up, the best we can, to enact change and stay steady as we see how this cycle plays itself out. I’m so thrilled to announce here - on today of all days - that I’ve created a new program for women who desire a more socially-conscious self-care! The Beautiful Life Collective is my response to the compassion fatigue of these times. I believe that when we are taking darn good care of ourselves, we naturally have the energy and stamina to show up for all people. Mostly, I think we need support. We need to remember that we don’t have to do this alone (nor could we). We can create a more beautiful life for all if we join our collective forces and remember our inherent power. Interested? I’d love for you to join the community and conversation. Link in my bio. Registration closes 9/30! I spent yesterday chasing Jonah around our house while listening to the hearing on NPR. I listened all day long and felt my complete range of feelings - both devastated for and so proud of Dr. Ford (and all those who are sharing their stories right now and all those who are not), and then so appalled by Kavanaugh’s righteous indignation and the way the politicians used this experience of sexual trauma to further their own aims. It was a lot on so many levels. In facilitation training, I’ve heard that the best way to work with complexity in a group is to just keep naming the complexity. So I just kept saying that to myself yesterday: this is a lot. Because to me, this isn’t just a story of he said, she said. Rather, it’s a story of he said/she said which is being appropriated by our two-party political system as a way to manipulate and increase the divisiveness of our country. And the outcome of this particular political fight is a seat on the Supreme Court which has the ability ban legal abortions which would be a devastating impact of women’s well-being,(which has a huge impact on our collective well-being). Adding another layer, it’s important to say that Dr. Ford is a white woman which means in our society she is seen as in need of protection - and I think why she was not directly questioned by the Republicans - which I don’t think would have been the case if she were black. Again, this is all complex. Part of me wants to stick my head in the sand, but most of me knows that this is not the society I want to pass along to Jonah. As I chased him around the house, giggling and squealing, I knew that what I was hearing on the radio wasn’t how it has to be as we move forward. Rather, we can make a new world out of who we chose to listen to, what we are brave enough to believe and how this informs our actions in this world.