Author Archives: jillsalahub

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About jillsalahub

Writer & Contemplative Practice Guide holding space for people cultivating a foundation of a stable mind, embodied compassion and wisdom. CYT 500

Something Good

Pasque flowers

1. Rewilding A Forest | Artist and Poet Maria “Vildhjärta” Westerberg“Maria was a romantic, animal-loving, dreamy child who, growing up, had a hard time conforming to the demands associated with the trajectory towards ‘a normal life’. As a young adult she became depressed, and was encouraged by her therapist to go for walks in the forest. The myriad of funny-looking twigs and sticks she found along the way immediately put her on a path to recovery. Now, 25 years later, she’s a celebrated ‘twig poet’ whose art is shown in galleries throughout Sweden. When a climate related crisis strikes the forest where she lives and works, she’s forced into a new type of creativity in order to save the place that once upon a time saved her.” This film is part of a series called “Something Beautiful for the World”, which is a collaboration between Reflections of Life, Campfire Stories and Happen Films.”

2. Are You a ‘Floor Person’? Why Lying on the Ground Feels So Good on The New York Times. (gift link) “For some, just a few minutes can quiet the mind.”

3. how to connect with your intuition from A Soul Called Joel. (video) “In this episode, I’ll guide you through a mindfulness practice and meditation to help you detach from your thoughts and access your inner wisdom. Key Points: Our intuition is always speaking to us, but we often miss its messages because we are not present or available. We can cultivate our intuition by being mindful and aware of our thoughts and feelings. A helpful practice is to ask yourself the question, ‘What do I need to know today?'”

4. My Anxiety: Is what’s wrong with me what’s wrong with everyone else? on The New Yorker.

5. 5 Daily Habits That Are Causing 90% Of Your Pain from Courtney Carver on Be More With Less.

6. What Happened Here? “It was just ice cream” on Short Reads.

7. What I Don’t Want To Write, on Behind the Book by Ijeoma Oluo.

8. The Shortest Path to Creativity from Jami Attenberg.

9. Welcome To Your Colonoscopy…..AGAIN.

10. Good stuff from Seth Godin: In search of incompetence and Willfully uninformed and Later or now?

11. Ansel Adams’s Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar“In 1943, Ansel Adams (1902-1984), America’s most well-known photographer, documented the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California and the Japanese-Americans interned there during World War II. For the first time, digital scans of both Adams’s original negatives and his photographic prints appear side by side allowing viewers to see Adams’s darkroom technique, in particular, how he cropped his prints. Adams’s Manzanar work is a departure from his signature style landscape photography. Although a majority of the more than 200 photographs are portraits, the images also include views of daily life, agricultural scenes, and sports and leisure activities (see Collection Highlights). When offering the collection to the Library in 1965, Adams said in a letter, ‘The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment….All in all, I think this Manzanar Collection is an important historical document, and I trust it can be put to good use.'”

12. Craft Tip from Maggie Smith: Finding the Sequence.

13. Keep making art.

14. Chip’s Wrirting lessons: Interview | Four Questions with Tom Romano.

15. My self-retrieval operation has become a self-becoming operation from Patti Digh, “And becoming never ends.”

16. Give up on happiness. Go hard at wonder“Pathologically busy people clamoring for happiness. Founder of HATCH Monica Parker explains how we can do so much better than that.”

17. The surprising benefits of ‘awe walks’ for your health and well-being.

18. Year-Round Produce: Wyoming Gardener Outsmarts Winter With Underground Greenhouse.

19. ‘American Fiction’ And The Wet Eyes Of The Sentimentalist.

20. The 2024 Election is About the Rich Stealing From the Public.

21. Lit Hub Asks: 5 Authors, 7 Questions, No Wrong Answers.

22. Wild Failure, Wild Writing, and Wild Business with Laurie Wagner on the For The People podcast on Spotify. “I have the pleasure of interviewing Laurie Wagner who’s an incredible author and writer who influences so many people in the United States to tap into their intuition and subconscious through wild writing. In this Episode we explore the journey of creative business development and success.”

23. “Hannah Gadsby’s Gender Agenda” Brings Brilliant Trans Comics to the Famously Transphobic Netflix.

24. Joe Camp, Filmmaker Behind ‘Benji’ Franchise, Dies at 84 on The New York Times.

25. The Free Soloist Who Fell to Earth“Austin Howell soloed harder and more often than almost anyone else in the country, documenting his exploits on Instagram and a podcast. But behind the scenes his mental health was faltering.”

26. A Maui chef’s lifeline: his restaurant as the island recovers from Lahaina wildfires.

27. One of the Best Things We Can Do for Ourselves as We Age“This will help feed your soul and boost your overall health.”

28. My 15-Year-Old Daughter Died. I Recently Found A Box Of Hers — And What Was Inside Left Me Shaken.

29. Why People in Sweden Do Nature Right“During a monthlong stay in Sweden, I realized that my Americanized relationship with the outdoors was off track. Here’s what I learned.”

30. Animals have overtaken our lives, and we’re having a wonderful time.

31. Faces in Stone: Japan’s Chinsekikan Museum Showcases Over 1700 Natural Rock Formations Resembling Human Faces.

32. 64 Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me About Grief.

33. How one dog and her new owner brought kindness into the lives of many.

34. Christina Applegate and Jamie-Lynn Sigler speak out about battle with MS(video)

35. Ava DuVernay: ‘I’ve got real big-sister energy’“The film maker, 51, on her early love of film, why she’s not on social media and the importance of silence.”

36. Recipe I want to try/eat: Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies.

37. Sculpt The World short film(Instagram reel). “It features many works from over the years in various environments, including never before seen work.”

38. Lessons from Dog School.

39. Oprah Is Harming Black Women by Pushing Weight Loss Drugs and Diet Culture.

40. a remembering: who were we before social media? from Karen Walrond.

41. Wind, Blue Skya new poem from Susan Aizenberg.

42. The Unfolding is What is Beautiful from Gretchen Schmelzer. “Unfolding is a tender-hearted process. But the final blossom, while an impressive end goal, is not what holds the radiance. The true wonder –which is hard to stop watching when you watch the film of the sunflower—is in the process of becoming. It isn’t the flower, but the unfolding, that is beautiful.”

Gratitude

1. Snow. Same day, three years ago, we got about 16 inches, and about ten years ago at the very end of Spring Break, we had close to three feet, so it’s absolutely normal to get some bigger snows this time of year, and they usually are just like this: wet and heavy. I was in bed recovering and Eric was a able to do a remote version of his big presentation at a meeting happening in Denver, where they got about double the amount of snow we had here. Of course, later in the week, it’s supposed to be back up into the low 60s.

2. Recovery from surgery. I am grateful it is going so well, but it’s also been rough. The first day, I developed a reaction to either meds I was giving with anesthesia or the mega doses of acetaminophen and ibuprofen I was taking to avoid having to take the more powerful pain meds (flushed, hot, itchy face and chest), so I had to stop those, which made the pain harder to manage. Then the few doses of opioids I needed to take backed me up and I was miserable for another 24 hours, and so dependent on ice packs to help with the pain that I got ice burns on my belly and had to back off on that relief. THEN, because I had to stop my HRT for a few days because where my estrogen patch has to attach is right where my incision and stiches sit, I started something called a “withdrawal bleed.” But today, I’m feeling better and am going to remove some of the bandages, take a shower, and restart my HRT — fingers crossed it all goes much easier from here on out. I have had good company while I rest and recover. The best company, my favorite.

3. Good books. Many people I know on social media brag about how they no longer read self-help books, like they’ve somehow evolved past them. There are a lot of bad ones, and it can be problematic to read a bunch but not manifest any sort of change, or conversely to always be bullying yourself into being a “better version” of you, whatever that means, but when you find a good one at the right moment, just when you need and are ready for it, it can actually really help. I just finished Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, Or Self-Involved Parents, and wow… I feel like all of us from a certain generation raised in a culture of people from another particular generation (or just about any that came before ours, I suppose) should read this book. It seems like a pretty universal experience. I’ve also been reading everything Brianna Wiest has ever written. I also just finished The Book of Longings (a novel, not self-help) and wow, I did not expect that.

4. Our body’s capacity to heal, to keep going. It’s pretty amazing.

5. My tiny family, small house, little life. This is the only place I can truly rest and recover. They take such good care of me here.

Bonus joy: texting with Chloe’ and Chris, sharing reels and memes with Kari and Shellie and Carrie, being able to take time off when I need it, bird song in the mornings, ice packs, flannel sheets, all five pillows, streaming content I can access on my phone, all the naps, blackout curtains and white noise machines, mashed potatoes, baby carrots, a hot mug of green tea, my care team at Harmony Surgery Center and my surgeon, health insurance, reading in bed at night while Eric and Ringo sleep.