What About The Women?

When we look back at the people who shaped history it’s noticeable that they were mostly men. Where were the women? We’re they all just home, tending the children and the hearth? This was the question posed by my author friend, Nancy Rubin Stuart. She had the feeling women weren’t just content keeping the home fires burning while the men were out running the country, starting businesses, and writing books and poetry. And she was right.

Nancy is an award winning author and journalist who specializes in women, biographies, and social history. Her books include Anerican Empress: The Life and Times of Marjorie Merriweather Post, Isabella Castile: The First Renaissance Queen, The Reluctant Spiritualist: The Life if Maggie Fox, and Defiant Brides, coming out this spring.

Tonight Nancy was the guest speaker at the Cape Cod Writers Center Writers Night Out in honor of Women’s History Month. She gave a wonderful presentation on the amazing things women did throughout the years. Did you know 15 year old Maggie Fox and her sister Katy started the whole spiritualism movement back in the 1800’s by playing jokes on their parents until they finally convinced them there really was a ghost in their house? Nancy’s books are filled with amazing things women, who were basically behind the scenes, did throughout the history of our country.

Nancy is also the Artistic Director of our writers organization and has done an amazing job putting us on the map with one of the best writers conferences in the country. We are very lucky to have such a renowned and talented author at the helm. To find out more about Nancy and her books go to:

Nancy Rubin Stuart

And so, as another day goes by, it was another great night out with all my writer friends, and…I have written.

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Don’t Interrupt

I admit it. I’m an “interrupter”. I just get so excited in a conversation that someone actually understands or shares the same thought, that I just can’t keep quiet about it. It doesn’t come from a place of rudeness, but nevertheless it’s annoying and something I’m consciously working on.

That’s one kind of interrupting. Last night in yoga Meg said something about interrupting that that stuck in my brain and caused me to think further. We had just finished our second camel – Bikram people know how that feels – and we were lying in savasana. Meg was cautioning us on not moving, fussing with our clothes, etc. She said, ” Lie very still. Don’t interrupt the healing.” I had a “wow” moment. Just as you have to stand or lie very still after each posture so you don’t disturb the healing taking place when the pose is over, so it is with people, too.

Sometimes you have a difficult situation with someone – one where where deep hurt occurred and trusts were broken. Those times where an “I’m sorry” or words of any kind aren’t going to matter. Healing has to take place, and it has to take place without you. If you keep trying to apologize and repair the relationship you’re constantly disturbing that healing process, just as moving in savasana impedes the blood flow to the organs or joints and that healing time is lost. In both cases, you have to begin again and the whole healing process takes longer – both for the body and the relationship.

As I lay there in that savasana the image of still water came to mind. Don’t touch it – don’t dip a finger or toe in it. Don’t disturb it. Deep healing is taking place beneath the still surface. Let it be. Let it happen. To disturb it would mean you have to wait for the water to become still again – for the ripples you caused to cease, and the healing would have to start again. This is just another example where the body works with the mind in Bikram yoga to change you as a person, as well as make you healthier.

And so, as another day goes by, through Bikram yoga I continue to grow and change in body, mind, and spirit, and….I have written.

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Plastic Wrap

For the past week I’ve done a little yoga experiment. I suspected my hypothesis was true last Thursday, but I wanted one more class to check it.

In the summer there were days I had to go to afternoon yoga in ninety degree weather. One time I took an outside shower before class because I had just gotten back from the beach. I felt so good during that class, I started always taking showers before afternoon and night yoga. Since fall, other than muscle problems due to fit club, I haven’t had a class where I was extremely hot and had to sit out. Last Tuesday I had the worst class since fall. I wondered what was wrong. I was so hot and fell to my knees almost every other pose. I thought back to what I did differently that day. Ah..ha. I took my shower at noon and put face cream and body lotion on, thinking it’d be fine since night yoga was hours away. When I shower for night yoga I do it ten minutes before leaving and don’t cover my skin with any lotions or creams. During last Tuesday’s class it was like I was wrapped in plastic wrap. My skin couldn’t sweat and breathe and do it’s job keeping me cool in the hot room.

Thursday and tonight I showered as usual just before leaving and didn’t use any lotions or creams. Both classes were great. I wonder if anyone else who does Bikram discovered this? If so, I wish someone would’ve told me this when I started because I went to class for the first year and half with all that lotion on and had a lot of horrible, hot, classes where I thought my body was going to burst. I can only attribute it to all the lotion.

And so, as another day goes by, I’ll remember the old saying – “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it – especially with body lotion, I learn something new everyday, and …I have written.

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St. Patty’s Day Enlightenment

St. Patrick was a courageous kind of guy. He was captured and taken hostage at a young age. His captors took him from his homeland in Britain to Ireland and kept him in prison for years. During his imprisonment, he claims to have had a dream in which God spoke to him and told him to escape. He did so and returned to Britain and became a priest. He then returned to Ireland and became the championship of Irish Christianity.

In most of our lives that is not the kind of courage we are called upon to deliver. To me, personally, courage means being brave enough to expose my vulnerability and risk rejection and judgement and not being loved. I do this with every blog I write, every piece of art I share, and….in every relationship I take part in. Courage is being authentically who I am, risking acceptance.

I had to learn this. I used to spend a lot of time trying to be everything everyone thought I should be. And what was that? Perfect. I thought if I could be the perfect wife, mom, teacher, friend, etc. then I would never get hurt. I found out there’s no such thing as perfect anything. My five year old students would come to school already wanting to be perfect – so afraid of failure, afraid of not measuring up. I remember telling them that I expected them to make mistakes. That’s how we go about this business of learning to read, write, and count. We make mistakes. I told them that if they already knew all there was to know, there’d be no reason for school. I’d encourage them everyday to become vulnerable. Little did I know I was showing them the path to courage.

Now, almost four years out of the classroom, it’s about time I start educating myself. Using my writing and art as a segway to relationships, I lay my vulnerability out there. I’m finally learning what I taught my students so long ago: it’s so much easier to be who you are, than it is covering it up by trying to be perfect. I’m working on voicing what is really going on inside me instead of covering it up by trying to blame someone or pick a fight just so I don’t have to reveal my heart. This takes courage. This builds courage.

And so, as another St. Patty’s Day goes by, I believe I’m a better person than I was one year ago, vulnerability leads to growth, growth is life being lived at its fullest, and…I have written.
Photo: mine Quote: Brene Brown, author of “Daring Greatly”

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Yoga Doesn’t Grab You…

…until your body is face down flat on the ground, fists pounding and legs kicking. Your mind has run off over the horizon and your spirit has vacated to hover just below the clouds. Yoga means the union of the body, mind and spirit. When the mind and spirit have vacated the premises and left the body in a heap on the ground, yoga grabs you. These were my thoughts before class, as I lay in the hot room yesterday. There was a newbie out in the lobby talking to the teacher and I heard her say, “I tried other kinds of yoga but none of them grabbed me like Bikram”.

I have been in self-control, stillness and patience training for two and a half years now. My Bikram yoga practice has settled to three days a week and six months ago I added Koko Fit Club for the other three days a week, with one day off. In yoga the mat grounds the body, the instructor engages the mind, and the spirit tenuously hovers on the ceiling above, waiting for just the right moment to enter the body and complete the unity. The standing motionless between postures, the performing of each posture with intention, and lying in complete stillness during each savasana, not only unites the body, mind and spirit, but also teaches extreme self-control. Not raising a towel to wipe the sweat or a finger to scratch an itch, or a hand to sip water – even if you do believe your dying or can’t take this heat for another minute- teaches a certain kind of active self-restraint that can’t be learned elsewhere. It’s taken almost three years, but self-control has become an automatic response and the big three stay together when trouble strikes. If your body, mind and spirit are intact and working together, it’s amazing what you can tolerate and how you react to adversity.

Today in Koko Fit Club the message that greeted me when I put in my flash drive was:

“Welcome Linda! Today I am going to slow the pace of your exercises.”

Uh..oh. That means today I will have to practice extreme self-control to keep that green line in that blue square, especially on the downside of the exercise. No more letting momentum carry the weight back down. That blue square is going to make sure I gently replace that weight. Yet another place I’m getting the message that self-control and extreme patience are being required of me.

And so, as another day goes by, I give gratitude for yoga and fit club and how they work together to keep me connected and sane in a time when I must be extremely still and in control of my total self, and…I have written.

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Three Ways To Deal

What is cracking your life into pieces lately? An illness? A lost job? The last dollar? A broken relationship? Yesterday I learned there are three ways God deals with us when “fiery trials” enter our lives. First and foremost we must remember that “before a heartache can ever touch our lives, it has to go through His hands”*. Then He deals with us in one of three ways:

1. We pray and he removes the difficulty.
2. He leads us through the difficulty and brings us out the other side, wiser and stronger.
3. He takes us home.

Number one is my clear favorite and I’ve had many of those times to give gratitude for. Number two is where I am now, just poking one skinny weak leg outside the furnace, ready to take the first step out the other side. And number three, when I feel the peace of that final journey, I’m ready.

When Beth Moore presented these three ways God deals with our difficulties in life, she said, “As my mama says, we’re going to set a spell here”. And she was right. Although the concepts are succinct enough to carry around in our brains without needing constant reminding, I still had to “set a spell” and let yet another simplicity about God sink in.

Now for the reasons God does what He does when we face a fiery trial:

1. When He delivers us FROM the fire like we asked Him to, our faith is built.

2. When He delivers us by allowing us to go THROUGH the fire, our faith is refined so we can be better than who we were before the fire.

3. When He delivers us BY taking us home….our faith is perfected.

I know you agree with me that number two is by far the hardest way to deal with the trials in our life. The three men in the book of Daniel were put in the fiery furnace with their hands tied. They walked around in there and finally emerged with no ropes binding their hands or smell of smoke clinging to their clothes. The ropes were the only thing flammable. Sometimes we, too, have to walk around in that fiery furnace to burn off those ropes that God is using to free us from a long standing area of bondage. If we emerge “not smelling like smoke”, another words, not running around being the victim, poor me, see how hurt I am – then we have learned to handle our trial with faith, worship and praise. We have learned to emerge from the fire with true grace.

I go to this bible study every week and cannot get over what Moore pulls out of a measly few verses and shows how God is speaking to us, still today, through these ancient words. This story started out with Daniel as the leader of this little group of three men, but when it came time to face the furnace, Daniel was busy elsewhere. They had to step up when their leader was missing. Beth asked the question: If your strong one is missing, will you step up?

Years ago when I was a counselor at the young age of 19 at a Christian girls camp, my little 5 year olds used to sing a bible song about these three men – Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendigo. Little did I know that biblical story, told in song, had so much insight to offer for help in the way I face the fiery trials in my life.

And so, as another day goes by, I will step-up and do whatever it is God needs me to do, knowing I’ll be wiser and stronger and a better me when I step out of the furnace (and hopefully will not smell like smoke, either) and…I have written.

*An unforgettable line in the song “No Matter What” by Kerrie Roberts that I heard over two years ago.

To read the story for yourself go to:

Shadrach, Meshach, & Abendigo

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All Things Papal & Religious

It’s been a papal day. I left the house as the first wave of black smoke appeared this morning. I returned home as the white smoke began to unfurl. After fit club I got the new pope’s name as a news alert on my phone. I sat with my coffee and soup at Panera Bread after fit club and read my friend’s blog (she was quite mad at the Catholic Church and she hopes for better days).

On my drive home I just thought, how God must look down on all of us down here running around trying to get it right. The Jewish people go to synagogue and do what they do. The Catholics are electing a new pope. The Protestants are hell-bent on making everyone accept their ways. Each sect does whatever it thinks it should do to make the world a better place, a holier place. Then there are those who insist God doesn’t exist, along with those that think He exists and are running to and fro from churches to Bible studies to groups and books and the Internet in search of Him.

It’s so simple. As simple as me just boiling another egg yesterday. Lay down in your bed at night, close your eyes and just ask God to show himself to you. That’s it. Then go to slept and get up the next day and resume your life. God will take you into His fold and change your life. You don’t have to do a thing. Once you ask, it’s done and He will lead you from there. Maybe it’s to a Bible study. Maybe it’s to a church. Maybe it’s to the Bible or a book where He Himself is going to teach you. The best part is, you don’t have to decide or have a plan or go on an all out search. The best thing about God is He meets us where we are, with no rules or conditions.

Just ask. Simple.

And so, as another day goes by, we humans complicate finding God and He’s standing right behind us, just waiting for us to turn around, and….I have written.

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Spinach & Smoke

Most of us reading this post remember Popeye’s torrid food affair with spinach. Lately I’m having my own food fascination with the green leaves, except mine is in the form of Panera Bread’s new spinach power salad. It is made with baby spinach leaves, hard boiled eggs, mushrooms, bacon bits, and crunchy onions and served with a vidalia onion dressing. I was so in love with it, that I re-created this culinary masterpiece at home.

On weekends my husband cooks. He uses everything that’s in the fridge and he usually doesn’t bother asking me about anything in there because he knows I don’t cook. Last week he used my mushrooms. It took me two days to find my way back to the store to replace them. This week he used my last hard boiled egg (although he did ask if I was in love with that last egg before he used it) I told him to go ahead, making a mental note that again I’d be one ingredient short come weekday lunchtime.

I spent the morning agonizing (in the back of my mind) over how I was missing that egg and I really don’t want to leave the house until night yoga. Then…..while brushing my teeth…my head snaps up and my brain bursts forth with Linda, just boil another egg.

How extraordinarily simple. Boil another egg. The egg is boiling and I’m watching the first Papal vote on TV. In this day and age of iThings and Tweets, I’m watching for a smoke signal. Sometimes in our complicated chaotic lives, we lose sight of the simplicity hovering right in front of us. Boil another egg and watch for a smoke signal.

I wonder what else in my day is really much more simple than I’m making it out to be? What about you? Look around at the things impeding your progress today. Is it really much simpler than it seems?

And so, as another day goes by, some things really are just black and white, and ….I have written.

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Speaking Of Joy….

My writer friend Diane published a new blog on Saturday entitled “Feed the Soul”. It was just a short little post, but it made me stop, and for the last three days, ponder the question she posed. Her question was:

“What makes you joyful? What gets you out of your entanglement?”

I walked away from the reading thinking joy…hmmm….joy. What exactly does cause me to feel joy? I commented on her blog saying, “Right now it’s my chair in my family room!” Then I laughed. I guess if I laughed, I was feeling joy. The weekend progressed and I pursued my answer further. Joy…watching a movie with my husband? A simple drive to Falmouth where we walked Main St and rode home along 28A and ended with dinner, opening the season, at Seafood Sam’s? These were fun. So fun. We laughed and talked all day. Was this “joy”? Yes, it was – a lighthearted, carefree fun feeling. Just like the little girl Diane cites in her blog post.

As the weekend wore on and blended into today, I thought more about that word “joy”. To me joy goes one level deeper than a fun filled day. Joy erupts in me when I’m quiet and engaged in either writing or creating something. My joyful moment today was my own little “sketch crawl” on the beach. I’ve been following Lynne Chapman’s blog, An Illustrators Life. She carries water color pencils everywhere she goes and blogs her sketches while traveling. She advised new artists to do their own mini sketch crawls to gain experience and extinguish fear. You only get 15 minutes to stop and sketch something – and color it – and no erasing. You must fix your work with the pencil or color or water over the pencil.

This afternoon I packed my tools and a small sketch book and walked to the beach in search of that deeper seeded “joy”. I was scared. Drawing for only fifteen minutes, with no erasing, was causing me a little angst, but I never went to the beach to draw before and it was a little exciting, too. On my way down the road I could see in my mind the exposed jetty that we haven’t seen in over fifteen years. I knew I wanted to draw that. It was at that moment the joy started seeping through me. I arrived at the beach and sat on the boardwalk that was also buried for the last fifteen years. Fifteen minutes. I better get going. I quickly sketched the rock and beach scene with a pencil and added color. I was done in less that twenty minutes. I packed up my tools, slung my bag over my back and continued walking down the beach. Yes, there it was – the true joy of creating something on a blank page. I put on my music and carried my “deeper joy” in my heart all the way home.

Thank you, Diane. If not for your inspiration I probably would’ve watched Dr. Phil instead of going in search of what makes me joyful and releases me from my entanglements.

What about you? Click on over to Diane’s blog at:

Write It Express

…and go on a quest for your own source of joy.

And so, as another day goes by, I now understand God – there is joy in creation, and…I have written.

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Widget Wizard

The widget wizard strikes again. Managing my blog in its new home on WordPress has been a challenge. Ever since I learned to build widgets on Typepad I felt a sense of overwhelming control. Someone else built my WordPress site and I felt like I gave up a little bit of control on the design of the page. Could I live with this? No. I had to go into my dashboard and regain that control, no matter how long I had to sit here and figure it out. I know. I’m slightly on the nutty side because I like to sit here and fiddle with the tech stuff until I can make it work.

This all started this morning when through my Root Notes Sunday newsletter I was directed to a wonderful site for writers. I visit a lot of writing sites, but subscribe to very few. This one was called “I Practice” and I learned so much from just the few posts I read, I decided to subscribe. On the page there was a logo and it suggested putting it on my blog page as a link to show I’m serious about educating myself as a writer and to help other new writers that visit my blog. A lot of my writer friends read this blog and I thought this would be a great way to share the wealth of such good content.

Now I had to build the widget. This is not what I had in mind for a quiet, relaxing Sunday morning, but when I want something bad enough I dig in. I went to my dashboard and hit “8 widgets” and found my eight widgets used to design my page. It took an hour or so, but in the end I built the widget, got it working properly, and was feeling smugly pleased with myself.

Bopping on over to my page, pressing the icon and having it zoom to the “I Practice” sight gave me a marked sense of accomplishment. It gave me something else too. It gave me my sense of control back. In this instance regaining control is a positive thing. It fosters independence and I had to work to gain it. I certainly didn’t want to own a site where I had to run to someone else every time I wanted to manage the content.

Controlling my technology is a good thing. Controlling things like how clean my house is, my clothes and hairstyle, when I work and when I don’t, where I go and who I spend my time with are all forms of control contributing to a healthy lifestyle. When it comes to controlling what other people do is where control becomes a bad thing, bringing anxiety to my heart and destroying my peace. Since I have taken a hands-off approach to what others do and say, my life has relaxed. Loosening the reigns and losing the fear of worrying about those close to me and focusing on only those things I can control caused situations in my life to flip around in record time. Letting go and letting God has been the story of my week. God can handle what others do and say, but I’m still the queen of widgets.

And so, as another day goes by, it’s good to know I can do what needs to be done, and….I have written.
PS – I almost forgot – if you want some great writing pointers, click on the pen in the upper right – see how well it works?

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