Tag Archives: self-care

'Tis the season, Stillness, wellness

‘Tis

‘Tis the season to do a lot of things well or wrong, too fast or too slow.

For me I do all these things mostly at once. There is baking and hosting and cleaning and family I want to see and then there is knitting and writing and not enough time for either because something is in the oven or needs to be or has burned in the oven or someone is coming over and napkins need to be ironed and lets not forget decorating and all of a sudden it is midnight or 4AM and neither time is my best time and the list is still long.

It is like I conflate an entire year of want-to-do or need-to-do into six weeks.

Stop.

I posted a list I found about Nine Types of Rest here is one: Stillness to decompress.

At the end of this week I plan to practice some stillness. And go to a new bookstore, find a chair, and kill time looking at something for a while. Then I am going to drink a hot, big, over-the-top coffee drink. And walk in a park. Or, stay in bed all day with a book. We shall see. Hold me to it?

What will you do to find rest in this season of joy and heartbreak?

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Cake, Coping, Courage, Holidays, Memoir

November goals.

Leaves. Frost. Owl calls. Vests. November in the Pacific Northwest; squeezing a little time with my writer support group, the island, cousins and friends before the holidays. I am reading a piece on a virtual site tonight about cake, coping and courage. My mother loved that word ‘cope’and overused it, especially with a child who didn’t actually know what it meant but I knew — from the force of her voice — that this was an important action to take.

It has taken me so far a lifetime to accumulate and practice the nuances of coping. They include blind faith, closed eyes, simple pleasures, complicated relationships and love. How did you cope during 2020, 2021 and now 2022 when we still mask, worry and take great risks in the most mundane places — movie theaters, the grocery store, weddings? Coping or crap shoot? I carry N95’s and wear in groups situations. I fly masked and without drinking/eating/snacking. I still have a sneaky cold today, picked up despite five vaccine jabs and the flu shot. Crap shoot week.

There is an endangered squirrel that found it’s way into the walls of Wren Cottage, and chirps in distress all night. Today we cannot hear it, and hope — with crossed fingers — that it found a way out. A few days ago we watched a little family of them play tag on a tree, little black creatures full of bounce. How sweet, small and vulnerable it is; “cope” I whispered to it before I went to bed last night. Why not.

The holidays speed towards me and I love them, lugging home gifted cookbooks and full of ideas. I simply do not know how to slow down about now, but maybe, after I make David Lebovitz’s Pistachio Rolande, I will sit in front of the fire, fork in the deliciousness and cope with that affliction.

Kick up some leaves. Remember down time. Thinking of you.

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Choices, Diet, Dieting, fat girl, Women

Taking Steps.

It takes me exactly 3,500 steps, according to my FitBit, to walk over and down the hill to the french bakery, Rosallini’s, that in my opinion pulls the best coffee between Ballard and Green Lake. The walk puts a hefty dent in my hard-won 10,000 daily steps. However, I only indulge in a pastry there about once a week. When I order my lattes I breathe in the butter-filled air, gaze into the pastry cases, and plot out the next treat. This appreciation-not-deprivation makes the equation of exercise and calories work for me.

This morning, as I tried to make my hot coffee match the length of the New York Times, two women sidled up to the bar next to me, deeply engaged in conversation. I began to hear “ten pounds” and “diet” and “no carbs.” They were talking over each other, competing pounds lost and gained. Do women really talk like this anymore to each other?

I had just finished reading my health writer idol Jane Brody’s article, For Real Weight Control, published January 28th, that addressed just this issue of extreme dieting.  She supported the idea — with data and fact and personal experience — that we have to change habits to control our weight, not take away eating. The deprivation vs. moderation argument that has become personal to me.

When you have lost as many bits and pieces as I have including a length of colon, time is precious and so is my food. It matters what I eat and how I eat and silver lining time; this has become a lesson for me. I feel better if I eat thoughtfully and every four hours. Generally, my portions are small plate. I still have two pieces or more of chocolate at tea time. There is no food martyrdom, just a consideration that what goes in has to be good for this battered flesh and bone, aging despite all the diets in the universe. Once a fat girl who hated her body, I now am grateful it is carrying me into the next decade.

It was a close call at the bakery this morning — whether I was going to lean over and let fly some unfiltered and unsolicited opinions and offer this link — or whether I was going to sit this one out. Super close when I swiveled, put down my paper and saw two beautiful, thin women were having this conversation. And it is January, ladies — not the month to punish ourselves.

I won’t pounce on you at the bakery; I hope you will click on and read the article linked above. But I will send you healing vibes as I eat my vanilla bean eclair in a few days with a creamy, steaming 12 oz latte.

Get informed. Love the body you live in. Take a walk with that friend who is obsessed with dieting. Hug them.

Then enjoy yourself.img_4917

Painting by Todd Young, owned by Beth Slattery

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