Self-Care Days

Every day should be a self-care day.
We get so busy.
We forget that our hearts and souls need rest.
We forget to stop and breathe.
To delight in the little things.

Sunshine.
Friendship.
Nature.
Small, unexpected surprises.
Pets and people who love unconditionally.

We forget to hurt and to heal.
To let ourselves feel and process and think.
To allow ourselves to give up and to begin again.
To simply be okay with our existence in this universe,
With the chaotic craziness of it all.
With change, and loss, and new realities.

Always remembering grace.
Always reminding ourselves
That love is fuel,
And we burn brighter and stronger
When we pour into ourselves and in each other.

Birthday Revelations

None of our lives are perfect. None of us have arrived. What we don't often see in the day to day of cliché conversations and social media shares are the things we miss. The people we miss. The hard days. The broken days. The days where we wonder if any of this life stuff is worth it. The days where our dreams seem infinitely impossible.

But we hold onto the moments. The seconds. The brief breaths that sustain us until the next -- the next second of inspiration, of connection, of hope. We hold on, and we remind ourselves that beauty is often found in the seemingly insignificant snapshots of our lives. In the grit, and the grain, and the grace of it all.

Perspective

As I looked at a sunset panorama I captured tonight with my phone, I began to analyze how some of the lines were crooked --- how I didn’t hold the phone steady enough, how imperfect it was. But I’m reminded now that often times the world is full of beauty – astounding beauty; and yet, we can’t see it because our perspective is skewed. We focus on what is flawed, what we’re doing wrong, what we could be doing better. But in that tendency to overanalyze, to think purely with a critic’s mind, we miss it.

Life. Beauty. Stillness. Love.

Perfection is pointless. Love cannot exist without first knowing pain. Beauty and peace and hope cannot thrive without us first feeling broken and lost and despondent. So I’d rather capture something in all its imperfections – in all its raw authenticity. Because that is the definition of beauty – in nature, in life, and in ourselves. Nothing else compares. Nothing else is worth our time.

Virtual Reality

We send messages instead of letters. 
We comment instead of call. 
We have unlimited minutes and smartphone apps that allow us to connect for free from anywhere in the world, and yet we struggle to make dinner plans, to hear each other’s voices.
We type hundreds of one-liner birthday wishes instead of writing a heartfelt card. 
We document our moments through perfectly constructed photos. 
We craft our words carefully so our posts are clever, funny, literary snapshots of our inner monologue. 

Then we anxiously wonder – as each day, month, year passes – why we haven’t accomplished that goal, or bought that house, or gone on that vacation, or had that amazing thing happen to us. 
We barrage ourselves with self-doubt and self-loathing at our incompetence to succeed in these seemingly normal occurrences and occasions.
We resolve to the idea that we must not be good enough, pretty enough, skinny enough, funny enough, dedicated enough, rich enough, lucky enough.
We wrack our brains looking for the most logical reason to explain why our lives aren’t as interesting as everyone else’s.

But this world is convenient, we say.
We are busy. Rundown. Over-scheduled.
We may sacrifice authentic connection, but at least we’re still connected.
But are we really?
When we focus so much on the blanket promotion of our wins and our successes, on the curated snippets of our story but only the snippets worthy of our virtual walls, we've missed something.
We are missing something.
 
And I don’t want to miss it.
I don’t want to miss these moments.
I don’t want to miss you when you cross my path.
I want to share my story and share in yours.
I want to see your words.
I want to see them dance across my mind when I hear them in your voice or read them on the pages of an old fashioned, handwritten letter – the kind the mailman delivers to the mailbox at the end of the driveway.
I want to see your face, not in a recent profile photo, but at the opposite end of the table behind a cup of coffee or a glass of wine.

We can share with each other. We can be authentic.
But we have to truly reach out beyond our screens.
We have to connect – not in virtual reality, but in the real world.