When life gives you lemons
Squeeze all you can out of ‘em
Take that tart juice, add some water
Sweeten it with some self-love
Then pour that lemonade
Out into the world
And celebrate your alchemy!
#TheGetMyWorkOutThereChallenge #whenlifegivesyoulemons #DayTwentyOne
#TheGetMyWirkOutThereChallenge #DaySeventeen #wind #plantlife #artineverydaylife #extraordinaryordinary
Voltereta (aka Somersault) is an award-winning, wonderful short film I was cast in some years ago. The director was Alexis Morante, just out of film school. But it was clear to me from the audition that he had talent and would be going places.
At the time, I would not normally have agreed to a role that had no lines, but after meeting him and reading the terrific script, I knew I had to be a part of the film. (It was, after all, about an underdog. You know my fondness for underdogs!)
His attention to detail and passion for the script coupled with his respect for actors and crew had me at hello.
It was a great experience, and best of all was watching the seasoned Spanish film actress Maria Alfonsa Rosso at work. As well as Alexis and his cinematographer, Daniel Sosa Segura. The film was produced through 700G Films.
Lolo is an Andalusian 10-year-old kid who moves to New York City with all his family. The film is set in 1985, and Lolo only knows about America from the movies he watches in his neighborhood cinema: Back to the Future, The Goonies or Karate Kid. Lolo and his grandma decide to go down to their communal swimming pool in New York. But something unexpected will make Lolo, as young as 10 years old, to confront all his fears at a time. Because sometimes a simple decision can change the rest of your life.
I played mom to Mary, a little girl who Lolo finds pretty. I was one of a cast of characters who created the foreign world that Lolo found himself in.
The film won multitudes of awards on the film festival circuit. It really is very special. You can watch it here.
#TheGetMyWorkOutThereChallenge #DaySeventeen #shortfilm #independentfilm #filmdirector
Dear Body ‘o Mine:
Just a moment of giving thanks to you for housing my soul this go ‘round.
I haven’t always been kind to you. Let’s face it: I have been an abusive partner much of the time.
Somehow I allowed you to become my battlefield, my own social media platform decades before such a thing existed. I expressed my anger and sadness through you by starving or overfeeding you, turning you into a subliminal billboard for my feelings.
I took out my feelings towards myself on you, my friend. Worked out for hours each day, ignored your protests, your needs, your pain.
All you have ever offered me was an exquisitely designed home. A mode of transportation. A portal for expression. A set of systems that keep this spirit of mine, this mind, this heart – alive and upright and capable of using my breath and energy to love, learn, give, share and create.
I have been making a living amends. Since I knew better, I have done better.
Doing better every day.
I just wanted you to know, I love and appreciate you. For everything you are and do. All you have been and will be.
I promise to have more pleasure, more fun, with the time we have left together. I have lots to do yet! I need you by my side.
I will baby you, please you, nourish you, rest you. Move you in ways that feel healthy to keep your systems strong and vibrant.
You are my earth, and I will take good care to cherish you, as you cherish me.
Thank you for surviving my ignorance. Thank you for forgiving my aggressions.
I am listening, now. And sensing.
I get it now. We are in this together
Love,
Me
#bodylove #earth #selfcare #thegetmyworkouttherechallenge #daysixteen
I admit, I have an obsession with clouds. And skies.
I just cannot get enough.
#photography #clouds #sky #nature #TheGetMyWorkOutThereChallenge #Day15 #skyfetish #cloudporn
I stand here, on this rock,
Arms outstretched, ready,
Amidst tumultuous sea winds
Carrying voices from afar
I don’t feel safe I am too much I want to leave I call you out I am called out for calling you out
I am enraged I am ashamed
Don’t assign don’t degrade
I hear it all and my heart aches
I called it in to see and to hear
But there is something else
Yet to appear; it seeks an ear
It wants to be known
Will I hear it if I push away
The harsh voices that do harm
Where will they go if they aren’t heard
Crammed back into I am wrong This isn’t the place for this This isn’t the place for that
I called this into being
Can I now cherry-pick what comes my way
Or do I listen and guide
Find new ways of being with the parts that are the hardest to hear
I stand on this rock
My arms outstretched
And I listen again,
And I listen, I listen,
For all.
#evolution #healing
I share my posts here.
Last night, as I watched the amazing fireworks set off over the ocean in Panama City, I reflected back on one of the many gifts of 2018. I have begun to accept and value my self in a deeper way than ever before. This has been an elusive thing in my life.
It has taken a tremendous amount of courage, support and healing. Unraveling layer upon layer of wounding and false beliefs. Allowing myself to take the risk to believe new beliefs about my self.
Oddly, what may have seemed “selfish” to me before – this love of self – has actually been the opposite. It has begun to help me to be a better person in the world. I have so much more accessible to give to the world. Where there was fear and darkness, now I also find light and great courage. I intend to use it in service and in creation.
Wherever you are, however you believe, may your new year be filled with the power of self-love. Today, I borrow the words of a master of love.
PRAYER FOR SELF-LOVE
By Don Miguel Ruiz, taken from his book “The Mastery of Love”
Today, Creator of the Universe, we ask that you help us to accept ourselves just the way we are, without judgment. Help us to accept our mind the way it is, with all our emotions, our hopes and dreams, our personality, our unique way of being. Help us to accept our body just the way it is, with all its beauty and perfection. Let the love we have for ourselves be so strong that we never again reject ourselves or sabotage our happiness, freedom, and love.
From now on, let every action, every reaction, every thought, every emotion, be based on love. Help us, Creator, to increase our self-love until the entire dream of our life is transformed, from fear and drama to love and joy. Let the power of our self-love be strong enough to break all the lies we were programmed to believe – all the lies that tell us we are not good enough, or strong enough, or intelligent enough, that we cannot make it. Let the power of our self-love be so strong that we no longer need to live our life according to other people’s opinions. Let us trust ourselves completely to make the choices we must make. With our self-love, we are no longer afraid to face any responsibility in our life or face any problems and resolve them as they arise. Whatever we want to accomplish, let it be done with the power of our self-love.
Starting today, help us to love ourselves so much that we never set up any circumstances that go against us. We can live our life being ourselves and not pretending to be someone else just to be accepted by other people. We no longer need other people to accept us or tell us how good we are because we know what we are. With the power of our self-love, let us enjoy what we see every time we look in the mirror. Let there be a big smile on our face that enhances our inner and outer beauty. Help us to feel such intense self-love that we always enjoy our own presence.
Let us love ourselves without judgment, because when we judge, we carry blame and guilt, we have the need for punishment, and we lose the perspective of our love. Strengthen our will to forgive ourselves in this moment. Clean our minds of emotional poison and self-judgments so we can live in complete peace and love.
Let our self-love be the power that changes the dream of our life. With this new power in our hearts, the power of self-love, let us transform every relationship we have, beginning with the relationship we have with ourselves. Help us to be free of any conflict with others. Let us be happy to share our time with our loved ones and to forgive them for any injustice we feel in our mind. Help us to love ourselves so much that we forgive anyone who has ever hurt us in our life.
Give us the courage to love our family and friends unconditionally, and to change our relationships in the most positive way. Help us to create new channels of communication in our relationships so there is no war of control, there is no winner or loser. Together let us work as a team for love, for joy, for harmony.
Let our relationships with our family and friends be based on respect and joy so we no longer have the need to tell them how to think or how to be. Let our romantic relationship be the most wonderful relationship; let us feel joy every time we share ourselves with our partner. Help us to accept others just the way they are, without judgment, because when we reject them, we reject ourselves. When we reject ourselves, we reject you.
Today is a new beginning. Help us to start our life over beginning today with the power of self-love. Help us to enjoy our life, to enjoy our relationships, to explore life, to take risks, to be alive, and to no longer live in fear of love. Let us open our heart to the love that is our birthright. Help us to be come Masters of Gratitude, Generosity, and Love so that we can enjoy all of your creations forever and ever.
Amen.
I share my posts here.
My husband and I are driving a Penske truck filled with furniture from our last apartment In the Bronx, NY to Texas. We’ve made this trip before.
Last time, we drove the opposite way with the same furniture from my parents’ home just after we were married 8 years ago, just after my Dad died, a year after my brother died and two years after my mother did.
I was so grateful for that furniture at the time. Newly married, making a home with someone for the first time, I was thrilled to have really nice things to bring to our shared space, a new apartment we’d chosen together.
Having lived in a tiny studio apartment in the West Village of NYC for 18 years prior to this big change, I had no furniture to speak of. My husband had some nice things to bring from his place, but not enough. We were stretching our budgets to get our apartment. New furniture was not in the plan. So my parents was a blessing.
It was amazing how perfectly the furniture all worked together. We chose rich colors for the walls off of the colors in the rugs, and somehow, it all had an eclectic warmth that just felt right. So “us,” somehow. The us we were becoming.
For the first years of our marriage, in those years after those huge losses in which I grieved and lived as best I could, that furniture surrounded me and held me and filled the empty gaping hole their deaths left.
I cherished it all. I had my father’s bronzed baby cowboy boots as book ends. A china cabinet held bluebirds, brown ware and silver pieces from my mother’s collections. We ate off of plates and used pans brought up from their kitchen. Put drinks on coasters from their den.
Our bedroom furniture was from my parents first house. The first expensive rug they bought, a now-worn but still lovely Oriental, sat under their gorgeous dark wood dining table and chairs.
But somewhere along year 6, something began to shift in me, and now, 18 months later, after a Konmari wave that washed away my clutter, a new apartment search, offer, and purchase, a renovation, putting an apartment on the market, a sale, a closing, a move, and a settling in, here I am. Day two of a three day journey to take much of that furniture to a new home.
My cousin, who my parents loved, who has a lovely wife and two young kids and a house, is happily taking the furniture off my hands. Whatever he did not take, others in NY needed and wanted.
Tomorrow we reach Austin, where the pieces will be put in their new home.
And I will let go. Of the grieving time. Of the me that has lived these 8 years in the after-shock, doing my best.
I feel such a mix of sadness and relief and excitement. Sadness because I still wish they were here instead of their things. Relief because something is done that I seem to have needed to do. Some job I unconsciously took on will soon be complete. And excitement is for this next part, whatever it will be.
Today I crave space. I want to be surrounded by things that resonate the me I am today. Our new home in no way resembles our last. And I love it with its new colors and furniture, and kickass river views.
I kept one chair out of it all. And reupholstered it. It looks wonderful there, surrounded by our new pieces, our new rugs.
At the end of the first day’s drive, we were treated to a blazing orange sky. Since my mother passed, I am convinced that beautiful sunsets are her way of letting me know she is there, loving me. It was clear that she, my Dad and brother, approve of this trip.
My parents and brother are still with me. But now they fill my heart space. I carry them wherever I go.
I reach forward through time
Caress my own face
Trace the worn rivulets
Heart-lines that reveal
The worries, the laughter
The life that I have lived
I tuck the silver hair behind my ear
I run my finger down the
Cords and veins on my hand
Touch the wedding ring
My pride, my true love, my joy
I whisper, “Rest now, my friend.
You did it. You survived.
And then you thrived.
And now, you can let go.”
I feel such love for her
The me I came to be
I come back into my present
Filled with love-swell and peace
And deep knowing
Nothing to fear at the end
Nothing to fear
I know some incredible women.
It is one of those women’s birthday today.
Some people just blow you away. Laura inspires me daily. She is an artist, a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter, a friend. A leader. A teacher. An activist. A community contributor. An active citizen.
She lost her 20 year old brother to suicide in 2000. Rather than fall into despair, she has used her grief to create, educate, help and heal.
Read about one of her creations, Arts & Dreams, and the incredible work they do here.
Enjoy her art work here.
Laura reminds me to live creatively, lovingly, with ample doses of self-forgiveness.
I am so lucky she was born and that I know her.
Life On The Skinny Branches 