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

Gratitude Friday

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1. My peonies are blooming. I love them so much. The two bushes with the least blooms are coming in first, and there’s at least 20 blooms each on the two bigger ones, so FYI: there are going to be lots of pictures until they are done.

The ants and ladybugs love them too

2. Morning walks. Because there are so many mosquitoes out by the river right now, we’ve been having to walk to City Park and the lake instead. It’s a nice walk, but I miss the river already.

3. Swimming lessons. I took my first one yesterday. I put my face in the water a bunch of times, and only panicked a little lot. I think once I can get past that part, the rest will be easier, more fun. I have a good teacher and the willingness to try, and that seems like a good place to start.

Me after my lesson and ten minutes in the sauna

4. Joyful movement. Aqua aerobics, Pilates, yoga, and walking with Eric and the dogs. For so many years, exercise was about what I should do, about punishment and discontent. I’m so grateful I found new things that I enjoy and feel good doing.

5. My tiny family. I really would rather be with them than anywhere else.

Bonus joy: strawberries from our garden that taste like sunshine, good books (I’m reading Lilith’s Brood by Octavia Butler right now – so good), good TV (I just watched the first two episodes of season three of Queen Sugar), sleeping in, napping, clean sheets, air conditioning, clean water, writing and hanging out with Mikalina, texting, not checking my work email.

Yum

Three Truths and One Wish

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Strawberries from our garden

1. Truth: I am in a strange fugue, a liminal state. This happens every summer vacation, for at least the first two weeks, but if the year was worse (like this one) it can linger. I’ve made the to-do list — things like painting the house and cleaning out the garage and buying new bras and getting a haircut — but only a few things have been done and crossed off. This summer it feels particularly strange because I know when I go back next year, it will be my last (had I told you that yet? It’s not official, but it is for sure), and I already am really clear about what I’m going to to next but can’t start yet. It’s a weird place to exist.

2. Truth: I’m not purposely trying to bum you out, it’s just that everywhere I look things are bad. I can see the good too — I mean just look at that bowl of juicy strawberries that came out of our garden — but I refuse to deny the bad just because it’s difficult or uncomfortable or fucking depressing. The reality is both — tender and terrible, brutal and beautiful. I feel myself tipping towards the dark, feeling the overwhelm of the awful, but I haven’t given up and it doesn’t keep me from seeing the good.

3. Truth: Tomorrow I’m taking my first swimming lesson. Not the first of my life. I took swimming lessons when I was younger, but was a scared, timid, nervous kid who was tormented by teenaged instructors who thought, for example, that it was funny to push a kid who was crying and afraid to jump in the deep end into the water from behind or to meet fear with anger and bullying. I sort of learned to be in the water, but more so learned to be terrified. I’d like to change that, and tomorrow I’m going to start trying.

One wish: That no matter where we find ourselves, we can keep our head above water, keep swimming, keep trying.