a pathway to joy – body, mind, money, love, life
Continue reading “Better When I’m Dancing – Let’s Kick Off Feeling Good, Right Now!”
Ever been frowned upon, dismissed or accused of being an angry ‘b*tch’ because you’ve EXPRESSED your anger or, worse, just been yourself? Well, what’s a woman supposed to think and do about this? Anger is an emotion that, in fact, advocates for us when we need it and gets us out of trouble when we’re in it. Anger pushes us forward when we’re stuck.
So, my dear, find your fight song, take back your life and prove that you’re alright. Turn on your power! Blow past the injustices, the disappointments, the sense you have that you are not worthy…because you ARE. You have a right to take your place in life. Use that energy, and if it’s anger then that, too, to fuel your dreams!!! The world needs you.
What to do when the world is on fire and so are you? How service, citizenship and volunteerism can help both heal the planet and your heart and mind.
Hey heyyy! Summer is winding down and I’m back to my laptop typing away, ramping up for the new academic year and some new and exciting things here at How Women Heal. Amazing things coming soon!
Just returned from a quick trip to Cairo, Egypt following a sojourn in Jubail, Saudi Arabia (my present home) for the first half of the summer…and a spa town in Germany called Bad Nauheim for the second half of my holiday…I find myself returned to Saudi feeling both refreshed and tired from the travel.
I’m not complaining in the least. Mentally, it was great to switch off. I needed it. I highly recommend that we all take advantage of the time off. It’s called ‘rest and recovery’. Teaching professionals and many of us facing the demands of work and life need the down time. I hope you had a good rest even for a couple of weeks this summer. We need it!
I came back, mindful of the images I had seen of both progress in Cairo and poverty that I remember seeing 20 years ago when I visited that city (we drove through the city slums, which looked not that different from the poorest district of Frankfurt, which I saw from the train). It made me realize we are a hardy planet with a complex set of circumstances. I always return from any trip cognizant of my privileges as a Canadian expat working in Saudi Arabia.
And anyone who knows me knows…I consume the least amount of news that I can in order to stay globally informed, but at present a lot is happening. So, I’ve had the news on since returning home and the stories have been rolling in.
My book editor’s home in Texas flooded, and a few of my other Facebook friends’ homes, too, were affected by Hurricane Harvey in Houston. Watching everyone nobly handle that while, too, I sense their pain triggered my desire to help. I did what I could. I offered to donate to a crowdfunding campaign if needed and donated to a fund which purchases and provides new and clean underwear for disaster survivors.
The same hurricane nearly leveled everything in Barbuda, which reminds me of the Asian tsunami I found myself uncomfortably near, too…I felt the earthquake in Penang, Malaysia. The Caribbean island that bore the brunt of this natural force, Barbuda, reminds me of the haunting devastation of Banda Aceh in Indonesia – which made me look up how Aceh is doing today – much better, of course.
Hurricane Irma is headed for Florida, where former students of mine are anxiously waiting at the airport for a flight out while another Facebook friend worries about family who are sitting out the storm.
Meanwhile, yet another Hurricane Jose is headed straight for Barbuda again in another natural assault against man. We humans are small in the face of real nature. Mother Earth is perhaps telling us something, no?
We’ve got the planet warming up, and now I’ll fast track this conversation just to say: we all know there are a number of big and very real concerns on the planet. What on earth is one to do about the effects of the economy, the effects of politics, the effects of war crimes against people in many hotspots on this planet (Burma currently in the news…but there are so many others)? What? What do we do?
I was introduced to Kirsty Almeida‘s music in 2011 after what I’ll call…a string of personal disasters in my life – what I’ll call one giant clusterf*ck – most of which was the result of actions I had taken in some senseless attempt to figure myself out after the stock markets crashed down on my life savings in 2008. I’d lost my fortune (almost $100k), made some bad decisions in love and was utterly bereft, regretful, self flagellating and brokenhearted, though good things were happening, too. Yet that just somehow was not enough to make up for what I’d been through. Continue reading “Cool Down Rewind – Forgive Yourself and Heal That Longterm Agony”
I have written about grief in these posts a few times already. Dig and you’ll uncover the layers of my pain.
It hides in accidents and breakups, deaths and departures, disappointments and unanswered questions, the selfish stony silence of betrayal by those who never were deserving of my love, and the trappings of my own human imperfections…jealousy, hurt and confusion, which do strange things to a person.
The older you get, the more you realize you’re incapable of escaping the planet without a ‘collision’. Continue reading “Keep Breathing – Sometimes It’s All You Can Do”
This week’s Friday song is the ‘dance’ version of Lee Ann Womack‘s ‘I Hope You Dance’ – the best remix of the song, in my opinion, by highly understated and mega-talented British music producer Brian Rawling of Metrophonic. Google the man and only this wee snippet on Wikipedia comes up. This version of the song is so typical of the quality of talent that exists in the UK when it comes to music (discovered by me only, really, since living in England from 2007 for six years).
This past week I tried to write a post on suicide after learning of my business manager’s American military friend who killed himself (the sixth of her military friends) and the next day learning of a married couple jumping to their deaths in a double suicide from the ninth floor of their Manhattan office building…due to the stress of finding themselves in such dire financial debt they could not cope. They left behind two young adult children just beginning their adult lives. I felt such a sadness about these stories, as I always do, and the length of that post got so long because I have so much to say about the matter, I had to stop and park it for the time being – I’ll return with Continue reading “Dance – Keep the Faith”
On self nurturing, binge eating, thyroid recovery and Type II Diabetes reversal through kicking the addiction to sugar…it’s all about learning how to love yourself differently. Consider this Part I of many…
So, I vowed to ‘give’ myself a summer retreat. I’m going nowhere for holiday. Okay, that’s a lie. I got creative and booked in to a friend’s beautiful flat in the town centre of this beautiful little German town called Bad Nauheim. I’m escaping the Saudi desert heat for almost four of my nine weeks off this summer. I made this decision also so that I could get some rest and get this bod in shape.
It’s been a busy Year Two on the new job. And I am absolutely mercenary about saving for my first home. It’s time, baby. Keeping that goal close to the chest. Very close. But weight loss is up front and centre and this is about that. I’m getting away to vary the surroundings, but my goal is the same: shedding the heaviness of life. Continue reading “On Top of the World – Kicking the Sugar Habit”
I discovered this song like all of the music I now find today in this tempestuous sea of digital music that swirls all around – via my favourite streaming service Spotify, in a playlist called UK Hits found on the Spotify UK site (which is what I subscribe to – the music is better – I never thought I would ever say that – but I have become European – the pop music is better – but music is universal, of course).
It suited my mood perfectly yesterday as I was feeling like a complete anomaly staying put in Saudi Arabia for the better part of my summer while expats hi-tail it out of here to be with family and friends in their home countries. I’ve chosen to stay here, save money to fulfill a mission: to buy my first home at 50. How crazy is that? Well, just call me ‘crazy lady’. Because I have lived my life…as I see fit.
What I love about this song is everything said in this Times article about it – it’s about living your life despite how others see it, being yourself no matter how weird it gets and no matter what others think of you. But this feel-good number also gets at all sorts of themes like surviving a relationship ending, which we all have, because you wouldn’t be alive if something didn’t die somewhere along the way. This song reminds me that when life is off kilter and out of whack “I’m actually good” and – guess what – I can’t help it if I have done and do things a little differently from the rest. Continue reading “Tilted – Be Your Beautiful Self and Do What You Want”
