- Awareness, Creativity, Laugh, Love, Parenting, Play, Reflections, Relationships, Slideshow, Wellness
Reflections :: Mommy Me-Time
Here comes an important self-admission: I have no kids. I am not a Dandelion Mom. I am a single woman in the second half of my thirties who has devoted the better part of two decades to the work of women. Specifically, how we relate to ourselves, our identity, our experiences of self and the roles we play, and our experiences of our spirits, our spiritualities, our personal growths and beliefs. I am not a mom, no, not at all. You’re right, I don’t get it. Yes, the difference between us is that for me, taking time for me, honoring something as decadent as me-time and personal growth…
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Reflections :: A Healthy Creative Life
A Reiki client I see is struggling with her creativity. She does not value it enough, and reports that she doesn’t have enough time to “do creative things.” To me, this is not an issue to be approached from the classic viewpoint of scheduling. Creativity is not something you pencil in for an hour at 3pm. Creativity is a function of soul. And the soul life is a life based on experience. It is cliché, sure, but soul is about being, not doing. It is an approach to life. Practicing discipline by creating a routine around nurturing creativity is extremely important, indeed if one is trying to approach…
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Reflections :: Honoring Life’s Passings
In a few weeks it will be the anniversary of the death of my aunt Mary. I have written here about her before; she helped raise me in that my parents shared a house with her and her husband. Her daughter is the closest I will ever have to a sister. The kind that I talk to almost every day, stay up late waiting for, eat unhealthy food with, and sing songs badly and too loud for no reason other than because the car windows are down. We both just went through chaotic, emotional weeks of great change. While processing on the phone, we only barely touched at…
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Reflections :: The Need To Be Social
The Importance of Friendships: I was thinking some more about needs recently, as result of studying for an upcoming class at school on group counseling. A man named Irvin D. Yalom is considered among modern psychologists to be instrumental for his work on social needs because of his vast experience leading groups and studying group dynamics. In one of his books he speaks very practically about how putting people in a group for counseling purposes is proven to instill hope in them, to provide education through modelling of leadership, to correct early examples of bad relationships, and to instill trust and correct and allow interpersonal development. These…
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Reflections :: Family Reunion Week
It was my 78th family reunion this past weekend. My father’s dad, one of eleven children, and my Grammy the saint, would pack my dad and his six brothers and sisters up and haul them into the mountains in Pennsylvania to be with their aunts and uncles. I’ve never been there, but grew up on fed stories of Lonely Acres much as I did on food. The dirty swimming hole, the cabin for all the kids, games that included a supposed rolling pin toss between couples, that left the men running towards the pond and the women falling over one another with a body laughter so specific only women know it’s true. When I…
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Reflections :: To be alive with what is alive
Here is a thought worth contemplating. It comes from a man named James Hollis in his book The Archetypal Imagination. Hollis reminds us that the Greek word psyche, which is the root of words like psychology, means soul. Today the word psyche is associated with our mental life, as in our thoughts and emotions–what’s going on in our head. Meaning psyche as soul could be showing itself in whats running across our mind. Soul is a funny thing to talk about. It’s not something that can be counted or added up. It has much more to do with quality. So let’s call it quality of life. Starting with the idea of…
