For my first attempt at making pants for myself, I made Arenite Pants from Meg of Sew Liberated. The pants have a ton of ease and lots of options in terms of style and fabric choice, so the five pairs I made from the same pattern and size feel very different from each other.
Does this post look familiar? I scheduled two posts for the same date last month, and didn’t realize till they’d already gone live. I pulled this one down and rescheduled it. If you’ve already read this post but didn’t request the book from your library yet, consider this your friendly reminder.
Are you intentional about modeling how to deal with negative emotions to your kids?
Society, and our nuclear families growing up, have a big impact on how we process our emotions. Some families have certain acceptable emotions. Maybe it was OK to be angry, but sadness was mocked. Or only certain responses to negative emotions were encouraged. Snarky wit in response to feeling hurt? Cool. Crying? Not cool. Society also teaches us no one wants to see you when you’re angry or sad.
How do we teach our kids to function in a healthy way in a world full of broken people?
After I finished The Hidden Life of Trees, by Peter Wohlleben, I was glad to learn that the author had written two other books. The first one I got my hands on was The Inner Life of Animals: Love, Grief, and Compassion; Surprising Observations of a Hidden World.
By chapter three, I knew I wanted to read it to my kids, so I started it over as a read-aloud for them for school. I figured it would count both for Literature and Science, and I love extra credit.
800+
That is the number of photos I have that haven’t been edited from the period leading up to our vacation and the vacation itself.
3 miles.
That’s how far I walked yesterday evening on a snowy bike trail by the Mohawk River, listening to contemplative music and hoping for answers.
2 weeks.
That’s how long we were in Tobago, having a time that was truly transcendent.
1 simple command.
That’s what I heard from God yesterday. The words provided me with my intention for Lent.
Zero.
That’s the number of words I have ready to publish about our trip.
The trip feels like a fantastic dream. The longer I wait to document it, the more it fades from memory. I glance back at the magic, then turn forward to Lent, a period of repentance and waiting.
Life feels like the bare branches of the landscape, occasionally catching the sunlight in a way that shows the ugliness to be beautiful. Summer is a quiet, hopeful memory.
Here’s my Pandora playlist for Lent. My intention is to let women speak wisdom into my life during this wait for Easter. The above photo is one I took on my walk. And appropriately, I realized after I clicked publish that this “numbers edition” is the 200th post on the blog.
It’s December 6. While I was traveling a couple of weeks ago, I found out that’s the day the Dutch celebrate Christmas. The day I arrived was the day they turned on the Christmas lights. It felt meant to be.
Today, I got updated Ancestry DNA results – that put the Netherlands smack in the center of two overlapping circles, my own Venn Diagram of genealogy. So, I’m celebrating some Dutch heritage, and feeling festive.
This week, I’ve been watching cheesy Christmas movies, eating chocolate-covered raisins, and meditating for 40-50 minutes a day. Last year, I was doing two of those things. I’ll let you guess which ones.
Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be putting up a series of posts about my trip. I’m feeling an apprehension that I haven’t felt before about posting. Sure, I felt a twinge about the sex books, but this trip feels bigger than that.
I could whitewash it. But as they say, if you’re going to lie, you’d better hope you have a good memory. I don’t, which is why I write everything down. So I’d rather tell the truth than try to keep my story straight.
I went to the Netherlands because what I wanted to do is illegal in the U.S. That makes some people uncomfortable.
I don’t want to put a disclaimer up about my content, but I do want to invite you, if you choose to keep scrolling when those posts start coming, to keep an open heart and to stay curious. It’s been a phrase that has been coming up in my life for 3/4 of a year now – that invitation to stay curious.
It’s a lot easier said than done. I often get judgemental, indignant, and hurt before I remember the part about curiosity. So go ahead and feel those other things, too. But remember the curiosity.
