I am going to be grateful today for a new day

I am going to cease from self-hatred for the things I don’t know how to do or the things I don’t want to do because I want to do other things and I am going to be grateful to the universe that allows me to make the choices I can make.

There are many areas of my life that I can not choose so I am going to embrace the areas where I have the freedom to choose.

I am going to try my hardest to be kind and considerate today if something happens wherein someone or something tempts me to lash out at other human beings who struggle through life as I do.

Peace, Joy, Love ♥


Photo source: Starry Night Photography - Astrophotography of the Southern Night Sky (click on photo to be directed to photo source).

An Unedited Rant:

This morning I finally relocted the URL link to one of my all-time favorite pictures (see profile pic in aWomansBlog's upper right-hand corner), taken by my oldest daughter, which she gave to me for a birthday present a few years ago.

The picture of a journal at a little desk expresses a very real part of who I am: peaceful, meditative, reflective and philosophically minded. But this morning while looking for the link I found this other picture, which more accurately expresses how I feel these days:




Click on the pic to locate the flickr pic source

Time is Powerful

Why is writing becoming so difficult. Being a blogger has scared me a lot because I’ve run into a few sketchy situations but truth is, now that former blogs are deleted or passwords forgotten, the sketchy scenes don’t seem so bad.

I just get scared saying too much about me and it’s also probably about school and stuff like that—always having to give professors what they want. Something is stuck right now but I’m just going to ride this wave like I always do and plan on the day when the love of my life returns to me.

Speaking of loves in our lives, last night I dreamt Jack had a notebook like the sketchbook/notebooks I use to keep 24/7. He was flipping through it and using it the exact same way that I use to keep it and use it. I felt a bit jealous in the dream but I didn’t get crazy on him or anything. Just a bit envious that he is now enjoying and benefiting from what I use to love so much.

I wish I knew what was happening with all this but I am determined to overcome this issue in the same way I have others in my life. I am going to keep working and knowing that in the meantime, Time will happen. Time is powerful.

Being in school for English and Journalism

is taking all the joy out of writing. I am so sad about it though I know it will make me a better writer in the end. I just hate this time when writing feels analogous to cleaning toilet bowls and sorting through the decomposed food plants in the vegetable crisper.

I'm going to post the beginning of a blog entry

that I found today...just because it feels like the right thing to do and when I happened upon the blog, it felt like I knew someone (even though I am not a teacher as she is). The other reason is that I love the picture that goes with the blog entry because right now, as Thich Nhat Hahn writes in Peace is Every Step, our smile is in the dandelion. I need dandelions. And, as a little girl I use to make dandelion crowns so I offer you another woman's thoughts:

Sometimes, blowing on a dandelion gone to seed, I wish for superhuman capabilities. Then I count my wishes as the tiny seed umbrellas lift on the wind and scatter, and my popsicle juice-faced boy laughs wildly in delight.

I wish I could be okay with just four hours of sleep, instead of the seven I must have to function. I wish I could whirl through household tasks, setting things right, watering plants, doing laundry, and still have time to sink into a corner and read chapter after chapter in a good book.

I wish I could come home after a day of teaching, when I’ve felt every fiber in my being be endlessly tugged and frayed, as though my heart were a rope toy and the children a pack of eager pups, and still have something rich to give. I wish, after a day of reading, reacting, redirecting, reconciling, and reconstructing all the little important fragments that are meaningful to the children I teach, I could regularly have energy left for here: in my studio, after daylight has ebbed away from the walls, and lamplight pools at my desk. Energy to write two thousand words instead of two hundred.

I wish I could feel patience overflowing the bowl of my soul every night when I’m snuggling in the dark with my boy. Patience, as he reaches out his thin soft arms in the dark and wraps them around my neck, fiercely, in a lock hold. Patience as he begs again for one more snuggle, one more hug, one more kiss. Patience as time slips by and I become languorous, my eyes aching, my body sinking into the spinning dark as I sing tuneless melodies into the curve of his small ear. Patience, as I want to be right there and anywhere except there in the same breath.

....continued

Do I really think mothers should be honored one day a year?

I guess I will post this--as the reasons for the beginnings of honoring mothers one day of the year seems to have some relevancy. I found it at my favorite women's issues site, which I have linked here numerous times.

Anyway, I will take some time and think about what *Mother's Day* really means to me, as a mother. (For the most part, I could give two shits.) But, because I am a mother I do have some concerns and my hope is that my daughters never do that to themselves, because I love them so much.

There's some background at Wikipedia and The Seattle Times. Off the top of my head though I would say don't bother with the card and just work towards making this a better world for women. Period. Simple.

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!


Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."


From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.


Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.


In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

A woman on a women’s issues forum asked

“What do you do when life just doesn’t work out the way you want it to?"

She said she is 30 years old and still doesn’t have her shit together.

She said she has applied to med school three times and has been rejected each time. But she said that this is her dream.

She also said that none of her personal relationships have worked out and she is upset that she is still single.

She has worked hard and prayed harder “yet nothing has come through for me. Why?”

My answer is:


Try again and again and again. And if you don’t want to do that, then dream up something new.

None of us really have our shit together; it’s just that some of us eventually realize we never really get it together but keep going anyway.

As for relationships, failure is the way to success. You will see.

The reason that nothing has come through for you, dear sister, is that you’re just like the rest of us.

Try to dispel your anxiety over not looking like what the media et al portrays as the “typical American” because it’s just an illusion, a dream.

You are fine, really. Just don’t give up. But change if you feel a need to change, dream up something new if you want to dream up something new.

This is a crazy life.

Although I feel a certain restrained empathy for Tammy Faye Bakker,

I don’t believe she is innocent as some argue at a women’s forum I frequent.

I feel a certain restrained empathy for anyone suffering as she is and this story about another heartfelt but deathbed plea by Tammy Faye Bakker, is a reminder of the effects of the media on Americans.

The story notes that her and her husband’s religious evangelical empire brought in about $130 million annually and Tammy’s tearful requisitions in the name of Jesus Christ was an inspiring factor on American’s emotions and their need to “believe.”

In the 1980s the Bakker’s bullshit reached 13 million homes daily, according to this story at msnbc.msn.com. And so many people bought it, opening their wallets to her tearful pleas and for the love of Christ based in religious trust.

But what’s even more amazing to me, really, and the sadder truth is that not only are religious empires continuing to bullshit American viewers but so many other empirical institutions—with a list too long to even begin to cite—are making bank.

Some are religious but there are so many more and this is a topic I, as a woman and a blogger, think I should look into.

Here are some reactions by people who seem like they still want to believe: (here, here, and here and here but this one may be being facetious)

At Last! All the Secrets of Happiness Explained! - MSN Lifestyle - Mind, Body & Soul

I found this article at a women's forum that I sometimes enjoy and so I am passing it along. I already knew all these things but some days, it is difficult to remember. Thus, for myself I am posting it here because I keep this blog as my browser opener and each morning when I slug back to my computer, I will be reminded--in case I forget again.

At Last! All the Secrets of Happiness Explained! - MSN Lifestyle - Mind, Body & Soul