Monthly Archives: September 2012

An Open Love Letter to Judy Clement Wall

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This is my adorable and amazing friend Judy Clement Wall. I have never met her in person, face-to-face, but I get to enjoy her writing, her art, her big heart, loving and kind, from a not so far afar. In both moments of celebration and grief, Judy has offered her encouragement, inspiration, and support. I am so lucky, so grateful.

I can’t remember how I first encountered Judy’s work, but I do know the first community project I took part in was her collaborative project with Julia Fehrenbacher, 41 6-word Days. I don’t know anymore which of their blogs I encountered first, but remember seeing Judy’s “Choose Love” icon and feeling compelled to click on it. I immediately adored her gentle, kind, brave and funny spirit, and her ability to connect people.

Everything she writes, (she has two blogs, A Human Thing and Zebra Sounds, because one is not enough to contain her, as well as various other essays and books), invites readers into a conversation, into connection, to community. It might be her superpower, that and love, which is also her religion.

Judy always challenges me to open up a little more, to contemplate, to feel and to think. We have a lot in common: writing, dogs, hiking, and yoga. We also both apparently tend to be a little Lucille Ball-ish, slightly clumsy and adorably goofy from time to time. We both are in love with love. I think it’s the answer to every question, and she wrote a manifesto about it.

a doodle by judy

I admire Judy for many reasons. She’s a mom, (dogs and kids), a wife, a yogini, a warrior of love. She’s a shared project instigator, a master doodler, a practitioner of hiking, a seer of beauty. But most of all, I admire and aspire to her writing success. She’s both self and other published, (I’ve heard a rumor she’s working on a novel, among other things), committed to her work, to engaging with the world and her experience, and sharing that with her readers, inviting them to do the same.

I will be tender with other people’s hearts.
I will be fearless with my own.
~Judy Clement Wall

I wrote and am mailing her a long, loopy love letter today. You should check her out, keep an eye on her, connect with her amazingness, and if you feel so moved, write your own love letter to someone in your life, formalize and verbalize, embody the love you feel for them. You can never go wrong with a thank you, with a love letter.

P.S. Further proof that Judy has the biggest heart, that love is one of her superpowers: Just hours after I hit “publish,” she’s already thanked me in three different ways for this one, single post.

The Very Inspiring Blogger Award

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Almost a month ago now, one of my kind and gentle readers gifted me with the Very Inspiring Blogger Award. Life got in the way, and I am only now getting around to my formal acceptance and thank you to Naomi Wittlin, herself a very inspiring blogger. She has a big, wide open heart full of kindness, and an eye for beauty, a capacity for joy and love, and a desire to share it. She is exactly that–inspiring. I feel so grateful, so lucky to have her as one of my readers, and to have been one of the 15 bloggers she chose to put on her list.

The rules: 

  1. Display the award logo on your blog.
  2. Link back to the person who nominated you.
  3. State 7 things about yourself.
  4. Nominate 15 other bloggers for this award and link to them.
  5. Notify those bloggers of the nomination and the award’s requirements.

i’m still standing

Seven Things about Me:

  1. I am a highly sensitive person, an introvert, an INFJ personality type, a Four on the Enneagram, and a Scorpio. In other words, I’m a passionate mess.
  2. I am an open-hearted warrior practitioner of love, hiking/walking, reading, writing, yoga, meditation, and dog.
  3. I grew up in the Willamette Valley of Oregon in a little town named Sublimity. I am a small town girl from the Pacific Northwest, and that will never change.
  4. My favorite place in the whole world is on the beach in Waldport, Oregon during the summer–walking and walking, looking for shells and agates, gazing at the sky and listening to the waves.
  5. Two of my favorite movies are Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Groundhog Day–I value beauty and humor.
  6. My favorite author is Margaret Atwood and my favorite poet is Mary Oliver, but as a bibliophile, I have too many favorite books to even attempt a list.
  7. When I first started, and for years after, I hated teaching, but now I secretly love it.

I am a total sucker for this sort of gratitude practice, kindness chain, love meme. I adore getting the opportunity to answer the prompts, to have been inspiring to someone and to share who inspires me. However, I realize that many of the bloggers on my list won’t have time or the interest for continuing this meme, for completing the required tasks and passing it along to 15 more bloggers, but again–that’s not really the point. I am simply so grateful to Naomi for nominating me, am so happy to be on her list of 15, and for the chance to once again tell you about these other inspiring, amazing women, to connect you to their work. I suspect if you’ve been reading my blog for very long, you won’t be surprised at all by who I’ve selected.

Inspirational Bloggers getting this award:

  1. Erica Staab, “Seeing beauty in all things, living life as a prayer, creating a meaningful life.”
  2. Christa Gallopoulos of Carry It Forward, “finding your way back to you.”
  3. Julia Fehrenbacher of Painted Path. I’ve written before about how much I love Julia and her work.
  4. Judy Clement Wall of both A Human Thing and Zebra Sounds.
  5. Andrea Scher of Superhero Journal. I have written before about how much I adore her.
  6. Christina Rosalie, “perpetually exploring what it means to live intentionally.”
  7. Sas Patherick of Sas’ Magical Mystery Tour, “Like you, I am love, light, life.”
  8. Amanda Blake Soule of SouleMama, “mama, writer, crafter.”
  9. Courtney Carver of Be More With Less, “a blog about simplifying your life and really living.”
  10. Sandi Amorim of Deva Coaching, “An instigator. The spark to your flame. Ruthlessly compassionate. I’ll do whatever it takes to have you shine.”
  11. Susan Tierney Cockburn of My Mother’s Apron Strings. Warning: this blog will make you hungry, your eyes and your stomach.
  12. Justine Musk, “Because you’re a creative badass.”
  13. Jennifer Louden, “Savor & Serve the World.”
  14. Susan Piver, “interested in extreme self-knowledge, the Buddhadharma, relationships of all kinds, creativity, the Enneagram, and using every single day to become a more truthful version of who I already am.”
  15. Susannah Conway, “I try to be as honest as I can, revealing the light and dark of my life in the hope that it will inspire others to do the same. It’s by sharing our stories that we feel less alone.” I have also written before about how much I love Susannah and her work.

I’m a little sad, because as I put together this list, I thought of at least 10 more amazing, inspiring bloggers I could add to the list–so much good stuff, but a limited amount of space and time.