1. I already shared this yesterday, but it’s so good, I want to make sure you didn’t miss it, NPR First Listen: Tycho, “Awake,” a beautiful album.

2. Don’t Quit, from the Fearful Adventurer.

3. Sou Fujimoto’s Tree-Inspired Tower Sprouts Balconies Like Leaves.

4. finding yourself: a workbook from Positively Present.

5. 8 Lessons from Small Space Living from Be More With Less.

6. Interview with folk rock singer-songwriter Jonatha Brooke.

7. Unloved.

8. Wisdom from poet Andrea Gibson, “Everyone’s chest is a living room wall with awkwardly placed photographs hiding fist-shaped holes.” And because I love it and it’s been awhile since I shared it, more beautiful from Andrea, “A letter to my dog: exploring the human condition.”

9. Wisdom from Tulku Thondup,

Generally, we go through life with little awareness of what we are doing, let alone the peaceful and joyful nature of our lives. We mostly think about the past and dream about the future while missing what is happening right now, in this moment. If we are not aware, we are not fully living. We are like sleepwalkers or zombies. To be alive and healthy, we need to wake up. In Sanskrit, the root of the word Buddha is ‘‘to be awake.’’ That is what true healing is, an awakening. As with a flower growing up from the ground and opening its petals in the sunlight, the process is generally quite gradual. Sometimes our spiritual growth seems slow and uneven. We can take a step backward or be filled with all sorts of doubts. We need to remind ourselves that the healing path is the right one to take.

10. desiderata on Chookooloonks, Karen Walrond’s blog, sharing the poem of the same name, which reminded me of this line, “With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.” She also has a great list of links on her latest “This was a good week” post. My favorites were these wedding photos (this whole site, all his pictures are magic, the way they capture love and relationship, humanness and connection), and this is 50, (which is only four years away for me!).

11. Wife And Mother: “You’d Never Suspect My Junkie Past” from NPR. The last lines are amazing…

I feel no shame when I say I’m a recovering addict. The battle has made me a warrior. As someone lucky to survive, I want to tell others not to give up. Life can be pain and suffering, but numbing that pain also numbs the love that heals it.

12. Note from the Universe, “Jill, fear just means you’ve forgotten how deeply you’re loved, how safe you are, and that happiness will return, like you’ve never known it before.” Yes, please.

13. 4 Reasons to Love the Body You Have on the Yoga Journal blog.

14. Jen Lemen still posts on Hopeful World, but I miss her old blog. I ran across this part of a poem from her, saved as a note on my Facebook page.

Love Will Find You Out
At the end of your unraveling,
you will look down and see your own feet
that have carried you so, so far
and you will decide for once that it is okay
to sit down
to rest
to hold out your hands
to lift up your head
to open your heart
to the possibility that you were never alone after all
not for one minute

That Love was right there
in her terrible silence
not quite sure how to say it so you would believe her
that you were a thing of rare beauty on the earth
That She still has your macaroni necklace
That She’s been following you around,
making maps of all the places you’ve been lost,
so you’d know how to get back when the time came
to put it all to rest.

See what I mean?

15. Read this, next time you want to give up on making a difference from Marianne Elliott. This is an older post, but it’s worth rereading — again and again.

16. Wisdom from Kris Carr on Facebook,

It’s possible to seek from a place of fullness rather than lack, excitement rather than fear. To know that even though you may be confused about a particular topic, you’re not incapable.

You’re not a project to be checked off and accomplished. Your deep capacity to heal and grow is always present. Always. You don’t need a book or a doctor or a shaman to guide you. You just need to know how to go home to yourself on a daily basis.

17. How Many Of These Do We Get? by Justine on Allowing Myself.

18. Intimate portraits spotlight shelter animals and the humans who love them, an article about one of my favorite projects, Why We Rescue.

19. 32 Truths Every Adult Should Know on Elephant Journal. This list made me giggle.

20. Wisdom from Shanti Zimmermann, “I have yet to meet a body that doesn’t love its person.”

21. Less show. More soul. from Jonathan Fields.

22. Wisdom from Danielle LaPorte, “Art is about self expression. Sharing art is about being of service.”

23. Sometimes you don’t need a budget from Seth Godin.

24. From Brave Girls Club,

Your heart knows what step to take next. It may not know what step to take after that, but it does know exactly what to do next. Take it day by day. Take the step today that your gut is telling you to take. Tomorrow, take another step. Sometimes….all we can do is what we can do today. Sometimes all that we can do is what we can do in THIS MINUTE. Please don’t get caught up in the feeling of overwhelm that comes when we try to figure out what to do next month, next year, in 5 years. Sometimes all we know is where we are supposed to be moment by moment, and that is 100% ok.

25. These 16 Fluffy Animals Will Make You Say Awww on Bored Panda.

26. Newsletter from Mara Glatzel, “The Only Thing on My Bucket List this Year.”

27. Weightless Again: In her suicide note, my sister spoke of not wanting to be a burden on Purple Clover, which ends this way,

We play triage all the time, tending to the sickest one first and hoping that death doesn’t overtake the rest. We take each other at our word: I assume you’ll tell me if you’re so down you want to die, and I’ll try and convince you that the weather will change if you wait long enough. For her I think it never stopped raining.

28. It’s Too Much For Them: Grandmothers Reading Lyrics To Beyonce’s New Song. I am also confounded by these lyrics, so this made me laugh.

29. Wisdom from Vincent Van Gogh, “I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”

30. This poem by Kasey Jueds, first shared with me by Laurie Wagner and recently shared again by Sherry Richert Belul, reminding me of why I say my practices are writing, yoga, meditation, and DOG.

Claim

Once during that year
when all I wanted
was to be anything other
than what I was,
the dog took my wrist
in her jaws. Not to hurt
or startle, but the way
a wolf might, closing her mouth
over the leg of another
from her pack. Claiming me
like anything else: the round luck
of her supper dish or the bliss
of rabbits, their infinite
grassy cities. Her lips
and teeth circled
and pressed, tireless
pressure of the world
that pushes against you
to see if you’re there,
and I could feel myself
inside myself again, muscle
to bone to the slippery
core where I knew
next to nothing
about love. She wrapped
my arm as a woman might wrap
her hand through the loop
of a leash-as if she
were the one holding me
at the edge of a busy street,
instructing me to stay.

31. Wisdom from Cynthia Occelli,

For a seed to achieve it’s greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, it’s insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.

32. Sarah Kay & Phil Kaye “When Love Arrives.”

33. When the dog stays at home alone.