So this year I was thinking about a new approach to goal-setting. Especially as it relates to self-responsibility, something folks in any recovery program are familiar with as an important topic. I thought about the 12 Days of Christmas tradition, which means a loved one receives one gift a day for the 12 days preceding Christmas. If I was to turn the idea of that from a gift into a goal, and the 12 days into 12 months, I could come up with looking at 2018 as a year to bring myself into further alignment by taking responsibility for things I wouldn’t want others to have to deal with if something happened to me.
Seeking Your New Story: Facing Your Inner Narrator
I always know there’s a post formulating when I have multiple conversations in a short period of time on the same subject. This week, it was three conversations in less than 24 hours, and they were all about the stories we tell ourselves.
Are You Ready?
So, Suzanne, what are you ready for?
The woman I’d just met on Skype blinked and waited for my response. I blinked back at her, and frowned. Then I suddenly felt a wave of something…relief, or freedom…? Or…? I don’t know, but it was big. She was asking me a legitimate question, and perhaps the most critical question I could ask myself, not just at this moment, but every day.
Mind Your Own Business…No, Really
The other dayI had a flashback to when I was about 13, all full of teen-girl hormones and unpredictable rages. I was on about some girl at school and her attitude and how she was mean to other girls and I really…My mom, making beef stew at the stove and a little hot and grumpy herself turned to me and said, “Really! Why don’t you just mind your own business?”
A New Year, A New Way
In 2002 or so, I wasn’t in the best place…physically, mentally, or spiritually. I was struggling with my life and music was my savior. I was actively writing songs for myself and for a friend’s band I played in called Jo’s Diner. One day, for whatever reason, I decided to make an EP (a short version of what used to be called an “LP”…a long-playing record, or album.) The EP was called Fragile Heart and it contained six songs, five of which were mine. A colleague I performed with graciously agreed to play sax on the little project, and we recorded it in another friend’s studio in Saskatoon…
Pink Notebook Christmas 2016 Gifts of Wisdom
I’ve been blessed to attend various support groups over the past two years, and have recorded many of the more meaningful comments and quotes that have been made by others in my pink notebook, along with my own thoughts, many of which have been shared (respecting anonymity, of course) with TPN readers over the past year. Read More
Beauty is in the Eye…
Cybill was THE model of teenage perfection in the 1970s, as visualized in Cover Girl ads in many issues of influential magazines, like this one.
I’m a pretty typical late Baby Boomer woman, I think. I grew up in an era (a really long one) where women were objectified constantly in the media (not that we’re entirely finished doing that) and where certain cultural definitions of beauty were foisted on young women at a most vulnerable time in life–high school.
The Gift of the Other
Today is my birth year birthday. I was born in 1958, and today I turn 58 years old. I was only recently acquainted with this special birthday and decided it was a random reason to do a little thinking. (Apparently there’s also a “golden” birthday, which happens when your birthday falls on the day of your birth [i.e. if you were born on a Thursday, every birthday that falls on Thursday is golden.] I think. If you know it’s different, please comment!) But only the birth year birthday happens once in a lifetime.
The Perfect Pity Party: So much pity; so little time
Why me, Lord? Maybe you just received divorce papers. Or you broke your favorite cut glass serving bowl from your grandmother (not that I just did that), or were rejected when you asked for something. Whatever the disappointment, sometimes you just need to throw yourself a feelings feté.
Just Because…
So two weekends ago I had a rare gift: I got to spend two days in New York City, where I lived for a few years more than three decades ago. I had only gone back a couple of times after I moved away, and even that was still 20 years ago. A lot of living was packed into that short time.