Category Archives: Laura Simms

Something Good

Leave a reply
Hewlett Gulch, image by Eric

Hewlett Gulch, image by Eric

1. What It Takes to Be a Writer, Courtesy of Elizabeth Berg on Medium.

2. Social Media blackout poem from Austin Kleon. Word.

3. The Realization on Zen Habits. The same question Buddhism has been asking for thousands of years.

4. 8 Things You Should Let Go Of Right Now from Be More With Less. And this one, which I can’t stop thinking about, Simple Moments Make a Simple Life.

5. Why I’m Moving Into Town for the Winter on Rowdy Kittens. I love how Tammy honors what is right for her, doesn’t let herself get locked into something or pressured but rather makes the best choice for herself, for her life. She doesn’t abandon herself.

6. Tortellini with Lemon and Brussels Sprouts Recipe. This is the season I get obsessed with brussel sprouts, so this looks yummy.

7. Desire to Fly: Samantha Bryan’s Hand-Crafted Sculptures of Whimsical Aviator Fairies Going about Their Daily Lives. Just another reminder to follow where your curiosity and delight lead.

8. The Child I Didn’t Adopt on Scary Mommy.

9. You are Accepted, wisdom from Elizabeth Gilbert on Facebook.

10. On Raising Hands from Dani Shapiro.

11. Why One Life Hack Can Change Everything on Elephant Journal.

12. He Sings A Song For His Dead Best Friend That Entrances The Entire Audience. Such a beautiful noise.

13. Turkey Pot Pie with Sweet Potato Biscuits Recipe. Sweet potatoes and pot pie, just two more fall food obsessions of mine.

14. Strange And Dangerous Neighborhoods Exist Around The World. Here Are The Weirdest. On Viral Nova.

15. How to Send Love and Light – A Practical Guide on Medium. (Feel free to practice by sending me some love and light.) ♥

16. Dallas Clayton: Dream Big! One of my very favorite do-gooders, artists, humans.

17. The Long Road Back: How to Keep Going After the Unimaginable Happens, “Two years after the tragic deaths of her children and her parents, Madonna Badger reflects on what happened—and what keeps her going.” She was also on Super Soul Sunday with Oprah yesterday, but I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet.

18. On Owning It: I Am An Artist from Lisa Congdon.

19. a letter to the other shoe always waiting to drop from lists and letters.

20. Wisdom from Ezra Bayda,

Our capacity to understand that life itself doesn’t have an agenda, particularly our agenda, seems to be very limited. We insist on our sense of entitlement that life give us comfort, pleasure, and ease. Why can’t we understand that the fullest and richest experience of life is often the result of the difficulties that life presents, where we are forced to go deeper? Isn’t disappointment our greatest teacher?

21. The Daily Bon, a photo challenge started by Laura Simms in 2012. “It’s simple: look for something in your day that makes you smile, post your pic to Instagram with the tag #thedailybon.” I’m in.

22. Wisdom Notes with Rachel Cole, one of my favorite holiday traditions.

23. “Practical solutions” to emotional eating from Isabel Foxen Duke, in which she says,

We eat emotionally in direct proportion to our pre-occupation with food, and our pre-occupation with food is a simple function of how badly we want to control our weight and our behaviors. 

When all we care about is weight loss, all we care about is food — and when all we care about is food, emotional eating is an almost certain outcome. 

On the flipside,
when we stop trying to control our bodies,
when we respect our bodies where ever they may land,
when our weight no longer dictates our self-esteem,
when caring for ourselves emotionally comes from a sincere desire to change our lives, and not just our outward appearance,
food loses it’s power…it becomes less and less important
…and yes, we finally create space for ourselves to develop new coping mechanisms outside of food. Yes, emotional eating does drop off on it’s own without much effort — ironically, when we no longer care if we’re eating emotionally to begin with.

24. Wisdom from Brave Girls Club,

You don’t have to have special permission to take a break, you know. You have done enough. When you are tired and weary and feeling worn out, it’s okay to be kind to yourself, to shift gears and take gentle care of your body and your spirit…No more working yourself so hard that you can’t even feel anymore. It’s time to REALLY nurture and take care of yourself. You are a gift to the world, so please take care of YOU.

25. Wisdom from Lodro Rinzler, “We should commit ourselves to waking up through our work, treating it as a spacious meditation hall in which our neurosis can exhaust itself.”

26. Monica Lewinsky Gives Her First Public Speech In 16 Years And Says Exactly What Needs To Be Said. For example, this: “Being publicly separated from your truth is one of the classic triggers of anxiety, depression and self-loathing. And the greater the distance between the you people want you to be and the you you actually are, the greater will be your anxiety, depression, sense of failure and shame.” Here’s the full transcript of her speech.

27. Maybe Being a Yoga Teacher Isn’t the Thing to do After All on Elephant Journal.

28. A Meditation on Grief from Jack Kornfield.

Something Good

2 Replies

1. From Brave Girls Club,

Let it go.
Let it fall.
Let it be.

2. Tattoo Stories on The New Yorker.

3. 11 Ways to Let Go and Feel Less Stress from Marc and Angel Hack Life.

4. 9 Mind-Bending Epiphanies That Turned My World Upside-Down.

4. Wisdom from TKV Desikachar, “The more you teach the more you must practice.”

5. Wisdom from Jane Austen, “There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.”

6. Good stuff from Elephant Journal: The pith teaching of all Buddhadharma, and The 10 Things We’ll Never Tell You in Yoga Teacher Training (But Should), (Thanks for sharing this one, Keri), and How to be Naked in front of Strangers, (Thanks for writing this one, Keri).

7. I Decided to Live My Truth on Rebelle Society.

8. Wisdom from Pema Chödrön,

It helps to remember that our spiritual practice is not about accomplishing anything—not about winning or losing—but about ceasing to struggle and relaxing as it is. That is what we are doing when we sit down to meditate. That attitude spreads into the rest of our lives.

9. Wisdom from Mara Glatzel,

In order to show up, we must “indulge” in the quiet comfort of restoration.

In order to show up, we must fill our reservoir of strength.

In order to show up, we require: quiet, sleep, touch, love, foods that nourish us, and space to acknowledge our own divinity – the places where we belong in the family of things.

Restoration is not passive. Instead it the a mandatory process of filling the well so that you will have the resources that you need to keep moving, keep desiring, and keep showing up.

10. Time folds like an accordion on A Design So Vast.

11. Wisdom in poetry form from Nayyirah Waheed,

“in our own ways we all break. it is okay to hold your heart outside of your body for days. months. years. at a time. – heal

12. What It’s like to Fly the $23,000 Singapore Airlines Suites Class.

13. Depression and Suicide In Animal Care Professions: What Can We Do? (Thanks for sharing, Sarah).

14. More wisdom from Pema Chödrön, “The life force of the path of fearlessness is genuineness, that is to say, to not be afraid of ourselves.” (Thanks for sharing, Susan).

15. I Am a Woman Reclaiming Body Trust on Huffington Post.

16. They Were Friends, But She Was In Love. When She Tells The Crowd What He Said, They Go Silent. on Upworthy.

17. Mary Lambert Does One Mic, One Take Version of “So Far Away.”

18. Comparing Grief: A Useless Endeavor.

19. Erin Moon: Walking The Path Back To Life on the Good Life Project.

20. Your Career Homecoming with Laura Simms. I told her yesterday that “I seriously feel a little sad for myself that [my career] is the one place I have my shit figured out. It’s like being too old for the most awesome summer camp ever.”

21. Wisdom from Dallas Clayton,

You are as beautiful now
as when you were a beautiful child
before anyone told you what everything meant
and your beautiful heart could run wild.

22. True Stories Series: Meet Lisa Sadikman from Laurie Wagner.

23. friday’s confession: I’m not here to save you from Tiffany Han.

24. On Liam and Balloons and Staying Open on Momastery.

25. Practicing Nonviolence Toward Self, an important article from Phillip Moffatt, in which he says,

The Trappist monk and spiritual author Thomas Merton once said, “To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is itself to succumb to the violence of our times.”

26. I’m Giving Up on My Son, and I’ve never had a more acute feeling of failure on Medium.

27. 10 Reasons You Don’t Want to Be My Friend Now That I Have Kids on Huffington Post.

28. Meredith Woolnough’s Embroideries Mimic Delicate Forms of Nature on Colossal.

29. Good stuff from Laura Pritchett: The Brutal Truth About Writing About a Father’s Alzheimer’s and Soapbox: Discuss Alzheimer’s disease openly. P.S. Her latest novel, Stars Go Blue, is so good, I read it in a single day.

30. Wisdom from Julia Cameron, “The seeds of our creativity require enough solitude and space to grow unhindered,” and “As creative beings, we need silence.”

31. Skillful Service is Born of a Quiet Heart from Jack Kornfield.

32. Wisdom from Mark Wagner, “Who doesn’t have something for which they need to atone, someone with whom they need to reconcile, something for which they need forgiveness, or someone they need to forgive?”

33. Wisdom from Geneen Roth on Facebook.

34. 17 Mom Confessions about F’ed Up Things Their Kids Have Done on Huffington Post. I get an extra giggle from how many of these involve poop.

35. Other lists of good things worth checking out: