DISQUS

Thank you. Just THANK YOU. This is such an affirmation , since I have just recently put myself on a personal 12-step program for procrastination. ("We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction...") This is a helpful way of looking at working with time--especially for someone who works in deadline oriented environments, but is also influenced by the Native American tradition of moving in Spirit. Trying to deal with time in the "real" world and the Spirit world can seem like such a conflict. But your words give new meaning to Divine Order.

P.S. I recently went out and bought a BIGGER Day Timer. Stopped even trying to hide the fact that I'm still a paper girl. And it really works so much better than the smaller one--for me and my life and my way of processing. Proof that living by your own design just makes things easier.

I have committed to ripping every frumpy thing from my closet. If I can't put it on and think I look pretty great, it's gotta go. (I can't bear to trash perfectly wearable clothes, so I've got a perpetual bag for my local charity.) And, yep, if you've done the style statement, that helps a bunch. Is it Sacred Tradition? No? Nix it.

As for shoes, if they're great, comfortable and you love them, you'll walk with all the confidence in the world.

I've done this and it really does work. Your reaction to how that coin lands speaks volumes

Thank you, Dena! I was reading the long list of wonderful responses feeling envious of all these people who have an answer. I don't know when a decision is right until after I've made it and it turns out okay. Sometimes it seems to turn out "wrong" but then shows itself to be positive in some way. But I know my answer today is colored by the fact that I am struggling with the aftermath of a decision that seemed so right at the time, but now has taken a turn for the maybe-I-shouldn't-have. The thing I have to hold on to is faith that, whatever the decision, something good will come out of it. I don't decide based on intuition (wish I did). I make my choices in faith.

Oh, Jennifer, you have it exactly right! I love Danielle's metaphor, but you have hit it exactly on the head about how it works for us Librans. So many lovely things to choose from. So many good choices that THE good choice seems terribly elusive.

Ditto, Danielle. I really need to let go of the need to "help" people be more like... me.

And I'm all for purging. Truly, I am. But some things become artifacts, art pieces, part of our personal material culture. Those things, I keep. White cowboy boots aren't what you'd wear, but wonder how they'd look on a bookshelf?

Hmmm. Look at me. Encouraging Danielle to be more like...me. Gotta let go of that.

Talk about revolutionizing religion!

Will check my goddess books for images. Yoruba (which evolved into Santeria and Voudoun when it moved from Africa to the Americas and blended with Catholicism) is full of goddesses. I have picture in my mind of a Haitian flag/tapestry, sequined and seed-beaded with the image and symbols of the goddess Erzulie. And there are powerful "Great Spirit" woman images in Native culture, too. Last I read some of that was in Paula Gunn Allen's brilliant bio of...believe it or not...Pocahontas.

The thing that's interesting about these religions is that they don't have one person--God or Goddess--hold all the power. The idea of Pantheon is interesting, isn't it? Rather more democratic. Definitely more dramatic, since these Powers are interacting with one another and with us.

Good food for thought. Thanks.

The middle. There's just too much of it. It gets in the way of yoga and, depending on what I'm wearing, puts me at risk of having people ask me when I'm due. I took a "Sample" belly dancing class, though, and I'm convinced that if I kept that up my belly would decrease some and my love of it would increase a lot. Do you know of a show called "Shimmy?" It's on the FIT-TV channel in the States. Curvy (relatively) women belly dancing as exercise. Sexiest thing in the world.

Wow. Wow. If I were enough, I probably would allow myself time to really play with my daughter--instead of letting her play near me while I "try to get something done"--wash dishes, clean closets, sweep the floor. I would give myself evenings and weekends to read, make art, garden, play badminton, watch a classic black & white movie, hang out with friends or curl up with my man--instead of feeling that I'd better work (trying to get something done). I would only read e-mail once a week. I wouldn't feel pressured to have a website, a blog, a Facebook page, a database. If I felt like I was enough, I'd "retire" right now from my originally chosen profession because, honestly, I've long since reached the goals I originally set for myself. I'm done with it. Now it is time to do my dream work.

Consider publishing those recipes through a publishing-on- demand company like Lulu.com. (There are many such companies.) Then you'll have a beautiful book that you can give to family members whenever you like. It's surprisingly affordable since you don't have to order a bunch of copies at once.

I admire Afi, who has a PhD in Slavic languages, plays bluegrass music (banjo, hammer dulcimer, mandoline), does African dance and story telling, teaches journalism, freelance writes, and has set about to learn html and all kinds of tech stuff that I can't fathom. And she incorporates all of that into her being without the slightest thought to being confounded by the apparent paradoxes. "I am multitudes" indeed.

I admire my friend K, who was let go from her job and, instead of wallowing in pity and fear, set about to start her own business as a meeting and wedding planner. The speed and elegance with which she got this venture off the ground was mind-blowing. It looks like she just skipped right over the mom-and-pop part of launching a solo venture and went straight to pro. And she's managing to do it while playing Wii and going to ball games with her son.

I watched Valerie with awe feeding "two birds with one piece of bread" as she says. More than two birds. She got a major book deal. Then she got into grad school. The book manuscript became her thesis. The chapters were her course work. She sold some of the chapters to individual publications along the way. She had the school hire her a personal manuscript advisor that was an expert in her genre. In the end she had a book that had been thoroughly vetted and an MFA and pre-buzz for the book. She's a laser.

(Sigh.) So what I've suspected--feared, dreaded--is true: In order to work with a tot around, it must be done in fits and starts, between "petey-budder" sandwiches and potty runs, at the crack of dawn or deep in the night. But this I know: Working, even piecemeal, on your own time (well, time you share with a child, rather than time you owe to an employer) is rich with possibility. My own daughter is four and, because I work for myself, I have been present for every critical moment in her life **AND** I have contributed equally with my husband to our household. My daughter sees that I work and that I'm there for her. (I don't think she's picked up on quite how hellish it sometimes feels to juggle both. My goal is to find some balance to model for her.)

As an editor, I disagree with you on one point: Everybody cannot write well--even people who manage to make a living writing. (Trust me.) But everybody does have a story--life experience that is rich and critical. If that story needs to be told in writing (which is not necessarily the case, as any artist, crafter, musician, griot will affirm) then my joy is in creating a partnership between the person who writes beautifully with the person who has a life story that begs telling. I am honored when I get to be that person. (Either person.)

Ruth and Ngonzi, did you hear NPR's "All Things Considered" piece about research from an organization called Social Compact about the economic development potential of under-served urban areas? Fascinating and very positive. Check it out at npr.org. Look up Thursday's show, the piece called "Study: Poor neighborhoods not necessarily poor"

Body Literacy! I love that. It feels like what I felt when I first began to practice yoga and started to really **feel** the rhythms of my body.

I love coining terms--in part because it reminds me that everything hasn't been thought of yet. My two latest from the various parts of my work-life: "Spiritual Aesthetic" to describe what your soul finds beautiful. And "service memoir" for a new genre of writing.

To develop beautiful, peaceful, inspiring spaces where people (including me!) can be infinitely creative and do their life-purpose work. And to help people (including me!) do that for themselves on the scale of their own home or even their own room.

As I'm manifesting those dreams, clicking on all cylinders, I want to remain in total of my own time--with space in my life to spend with my daughter, to paint and draw, to read and just be.

My biggest indulgence is the time and money I spend on shelter magazines. In them is beauty and creativity and inspiration and guidance. Sounds biblical, doesn't it? I guess, for me they are. Beautiful and peaceful space is, I believe, essential to the soul.

I have a friend who says a similar thing, a little more in the vernacular:

"Don't pray for a lighter load; pray for a stronger back."

"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens." -- Carl Jung

And then I saw the following one the other day, not quite sure it fits the category of inspirational, but it moved me:

"Underneath and to the left is the heart."

Keep a toiletry kit packed at all times--and restock it as soon as you get home. You'll always be ready to go at a moment's notice. And you'll always have the things you need.

And I read a travel memoir or novel set in the place I'm traveling--just for inspiration.

Ah, well. I would be less judgmental; bolder and more assertive. I'd assume people thought I was as fabulous as I think I am and--knowing that I'd still have a humble spirit and a generous heart--I'd assume they'd think my fabulousness was... fabulous. I'd be an architect, a folklorist, an artist, an author. I'd now how to say "no" with grace and compassion, but with strength. I'd speak truth to power. Cocktail parties wouldn't make me feel shy, though I'd probably avoid them anyway.

But...

As desirable as all that is, who would I be if I hadn't grown up in the softness of the South, running in the back yard in bare feet? Who would I be if I hadn't sat on the porch swing beside my little fat Memama, drinking Co'cola, watching the evening trains and the lightening bugs? Who, if my mama and daddy hadn't taken me to Sunday School every week--and if I had not had that seminal conversation with Philip about the Upanishads? If I hadn't gone to a small, Black college instead of Harvard? If I'd chosen a job in New York first, instead of last--and missed Miami, Tennessee, Atlanta and Philadelphia in between? How would I know the meaning of forgiveness and the importance of grieving, if I had not made so many wildly naive mistakes? Who would I be without my sistergirlfriends who have been beside me (and thought me fabulous, as I thought them) all these years?

And it's not just my own past that is my past. It's the past of my parents and their parents. Granddaddy who sent 5 daughters to college on a hospital orderly's salary (selling hams and fruitcakes and newspapers on the side to supplement). The people who sailed from Wales, and blended with the Occaneechi, then disappeared into the "colored" folk somewhere along the redclay roads and tobacco fields. That's all part of me.

So let that hip and glowing angel stay away from my past. But she can sprinkle me with a little of whatever it takes to grow from that into the bold and fabulous truth speaker.

Trust. I'm seeing that trusting people (or anything) is about knowing and accepting the truth about them. The deep-down core reality. It's not about hoping or wishing or assuming or expecting or demanding. It is about KNOWING in your heart, following your intuition. Trust is when you can simply say, "This IS."

"Either you are or you are not.... There is nothing between doing and not doing that can be trusted." Iyanla Vanzant

Choice. That's the thing. And it's so hard to trust yourself to make right choices--personally right choices--when you are bombarded on all sides with opinions about what you "should" do. Bombarded most heavily by the medical view that safe birth happens in a hospital, directed by a doctor, often with drugs, sometimes with surgery. But there can be pressure on the other side, too, if you travel among the "health conscious" folks, as I do. Then you're looked at askance if you choose a path that includes a doctor or a drug. No matter the source of the pressure, it serves to undermine a woman's faith in her own spirit and wisdom. And that is something that she has to have in abundance to raise the child that's born to her. And it doesn't end at birth.

My sister had intended on home birth, but ended up having an emergency c-section with her first child. Fortunately, she has a brilliant midwife. (A woman who was herself Harvard educated, but the daughter of a traditional midwife from India. So she embodied ALL the information about birth--Western, Eastern and otherwise.) She stood up for my sister when the neonatalogist accused my sister of "trying to play God" when she chose not to allow him to induce labor. (The irony.) She stood by her when her daughter was born prematurely and spent a month in a neonatal unit--and helped her learn to nurse, to kangaroo her baby to help her keep her body temp up, to stand up for the tiny girl in the face of all that life saving technology.

That, I imagine, could have been the very best of both worlds: brilliant technology that clearly helps save babies in crisis, married with the brilliance of simple, ancient wisdom that says holding a tiny child next to her mother's naked skin will help her stay warm, will help her learn the rhythms of breathing, will help her know the nourishing smell of her mother's milk, will help to save her life.

The thing is that the two sides don't trust each other. The NICU nurses want you to keep the baby in the isolette. They want to give them enriched formula. But the goal is for the baby to be warm and nourished. And why can't that happen at the mother's breast?
Unless we are strong, we can be forced into an either/or.

My own daughter was also born early. Like my sister's, my water broke too soon. Like my sister (because of my sister's experience), I refused to let them induce labor. I waited, leaking. But I reluctantly took steroids because they promised it would strengthen her lungs. I was monitored. And when the baby stopped moving and the heartbeat became more and more faint, they rushed in (at a change of shift) and whisked me to OR for a c-section. (I remember the phone cord trailing behind me as I tried to call my mother, but they rushed me away.)

My daughter was born at 9:16 in the morning. Three pounds, seven ounces. Lots and lots of black hair, and an expression as if to say she resented the intrusion and why in the world were we all so frantic, anyway? Then it was her turn to be whisked away. (I didn't see her again until the next day. Agonizing. Excruciating. But I was too drugged to argue and I didn't have a determined Indian midwife to advocate for me. A nurse was merciful: It must have been 5 in the morning when she woke me and helped me dress so i could go and see my girl. (They've got to do something about that--keeping a mother from her child that long.)

Because of my sister, I knew to insist that my daughter only get breast milk. I knew to kangaroo--hold her skin-to-skin--though the nurses seemed reluctant to take her out. I knew she needed to be touched, sung to, talked to. And I watched with sadness other babies in their plastic boxes, their parents too...what? frightened? overwhelmed? intimidated?...to advocate for them or even to touch them.

As I write this, from the perspective that comes over time, I wish I had said something to those other young parents. But I was frightened, overwhelmed and intimidated, too. Every thought I had was was for my baby to grow and be healthy so I could take her home.

My sister's daughter is 11 now. Her son, born at home, "caught" by that brilliant midwife, is 9. My own girl just turned 4. They are all beautiful, healthy, strong and smart. One thing I know is this: It's not just women who have wise bodies. These babies know how to get here and stay here, too.

I'm good at translating people's ideas into words on paper. And at connecting people to other people for their mutual benefit. Bridging.

Honey pats! Smooth a bit of honey all over your face. Let it sit for a while and get really sticky. Then pat, pat, pat your face all over. It exfoliates and leaves your face super smooth.

And check The World Beauty Book by Jessica Harris for all kinds of beauty recipes from all over the world.

Burt's Bees lip gloss is the greatest thing EVER! (I don't mean the balms, though those are nice. I mean the "Super Shiny Lip Gloss" in a squeezable tube.) All natural, very shiny, not too much color, smells great, tastes great! And it costs, maybe $4 or $6. I just read a piece online about all the lead in lipstick (especially red) and felt that much better having the gloss in my purse. (But, I'll tell ya, sometimes there's nothing more vamp than a vivid red mouth. And the Burt's doesn't do that.)