Category Archives: Renegade Mothering

Something Good

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Poudre River, image by Eric

Poudre River, image by Eric

1. The 100 Day Promise from Sandi Amorim. “The 100 Day Promise is a practice that guides you through the process of change in an in-depth and soulful way.” I mentioned this last week, but wanted to tell you again in case you missed it because the program started on January 1st, but Sandi is leaving registration open until the 7th. You should also check out her book , The 100 Day Promise: A Guide To Changing From The Inside Out.

2. Things you should quit this year (Sugar is not one of them!). This last part, “Health and fitness comes in all shapes and sizes. Truly. You cannot tell by looking at someone how fit or well they are. You don’t know if they have strong mental health, absence of illness, physical strength, and stamina or if they have a disordered approach to food, suffer from mental health issues or struggle with fatigue. A person’s size cannot tell you these things.” Word.

3. Nigella Lawson: Clean Eating Is ‘a Way to Hide an Eating Disorder.’

4. 9,500-Year-Old Tree Found in Sweden Is The World’s Oldest Tree. So cool.

5. Here’s How Many People Fatally Overdosed On Marijuana Last Year.

6. What 8 body positive activists want you to know about losing weight in the new year.

7. The 50 Funniest Tweets From Women In 2015. So funny.

8. Baby trying bacon for the first time. 🙂

9. There are performances, and then there are performances. It takes a certain kind of woman to go on stage in an ankle length fur coat (ethics of wearing fur aside). It takes whole other kind of woman to take that coat off, throw it on the floor, and SING.

10. Onion Dip from Scratch recipe. Confession: I love onion dip and a good crisp salty chip.

11. Carrie Fisher to haters: Youth and beauty are not accomplishments. What makes me crazy about this is I saw the movie, and thought “she looks amazing.”

12. In Defense of Food and the Rise of ‘Healthy-ish’ “A new PBS documentary and Bon Appetit’s January issue espouse a radically moderate approach to eating.”

13. President Barack Obama on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. I’ve said it before, will say it again: I’d vote for him again if I could.

14. White Awake. “White Awake’s mission is to bring contemplative spiritual practice to white affinity work around race and inner transformation.”

15. Don’t Cry Over Oprah’s New Weight Watchers Commercial. Amen.

16. The Weight-Inclusive versus Weight-Normative Approach to Health: Evaluating the Evidence for Prioritizing Well-Being over Weight Loss from the Journal of Obesity.

17. Manifesting 2016: Consciously Creating Your Year from Andrea Scher, self-paced and pay what you can.

18. Happy New Year, Weirdos from Renegade Mothering.

19. Change, Part 1: A New You For a New Year a great dharma talk from Philip Moffitt. I especially love this: In our saying “Happy New Year” one of the things we may be meaning is “This year, may you cease to be the cause of your own suffering.”

20. Happy Notes from Jennifer Belthoff. Such a great idea.

21. A Celebration of Ravi’s Life. “In 2014 Maggie Doyne took malnourished Ravi in at her school and home in Nepal and saved his life. A little over a year later, he passed away in a tragic accident. All money raised will go to Ravi’s siblings in Nepal.” This story is so heartbreaking. Thankfully, this fundraiser gives us the opportunity to do something.

22. Wisdom from Rumi, “I have been a seeker and I still am, but I stopped asking the books and the stars. I started listening to the teaching of my soul.”

23. A Sentiment for Blazing from Danielle LaPorte. I love the last part, “let your pure faith burn the way.”

24. A beautiful New Year’s wish from Andrea Gibson, a poet even in her Facebook posts.

25. Dear Oprah: Please Stop Projecting Your Insecurities Onto Me. Amen.

26. When You’re Both Overweight and Anorexic.

27. 23 Things To Do To Improve Your Mental Health In 2016. A good list.

28. Wisdom from Seth Godin: Surefire predictions and Who is Us?

29. What I learned not drinking for two years.

30. Speak For Yourself Oprah from Dances With Fat. Word. Also from Ragen, New Year’s Revolutions.

31. How to write a simple and beautiful manifesto from Alexandra Franzen. In her latest newsletter, she also shared a link to this cover of Drake’s Hold On, We’re Going Home that’s super dreamy.

32. 10 Best Articles on Writing of 2015. Disclaimer: I haven’t read all these, so I can’t promise these are truly the 10 best.

Something Good

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image by Eric

image by Eric

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. ~Hermann Hesse

So great to be partnering with Wanderlust to share this list with a larger audience.

1. My Cup Runneth Over by Jena Schwartz. This is real life — a mess, and some kind of magic.

2. Big Magic: Elizabeth Gilbert on Creative Courage and the Art of Living in a State of Uninterrupted Marvel on Brain Pickings. She was also recently interviewed on Good Life Project radio, Elizabeth Gilbert: The Creative Life.

3. I am my own worst enemy by Paul Jarvis. (Just to be clear, I am one of his rat people, “the people that get what you do, appreciate it, and love you for it”).

4. Wisdom from Seth Godin: The 2% who misunderstand you, and The banality of the magazine rack, and Dreams and fears.

5. Yoga, spinning and a murder: My strange months at Lululemon. I love what this has to say about being who you really are.

6. Francine’s interview, from Human (the movie). “Born in 1933, Francine Christophe was deported with her mother at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1944. Released the following year, she continues to share her experience and memories, particularly with the younger generations.” (Confession: I’ve had a lifelong obsession with stories from the Holocaust, specifically the way that moment in history brought out the best and the worst in those involved).

7. Human, the movie, Volumes 1-3, which you can watch online, for FREE.

What is it that makes us human? Is it that we love, that we fight? That we laugh? Cry? Our curiosity? The quest for discovery? Driven by these questions, filmmaker and artist Yann Arthus-Bertrand spent three years collecting real-life stories from 2,000 women and men in 60 countries. Working with a dedicated team of translators, journalists and cameramen, Yann captures deeply personal and emotional accounts of topics that unite us all; struggles with poverty, war, homophobia, and the future of our planet mixed with moments of love and happiness.

8. Bryan Chapman of Mississippi has hummingbirds drinking out of his hand!

https://youtu.be/5Y87lUIAnEs

9. Author Lauren Myracle calls on overprotective parents to stop banning books. Find out more about Banned Books Week, Sept. 27- Oct. 3, on the official website.

10. Wisdom from Chögyam Trungpa, “In the garden of gentle sanity, may you be bombarded by coconuts of wakefulness.” I love this quote. I also hate this quote.

11. Uh-oh. I think my new favorite album might be Ryan Adams’s reimagining of Taylor Swift’s 1989. NPR did a really good piece about it, No Blank Space, Baby: Taylor Swift Is The Soul Of Ryan Adams.

12. Start Here Now: An Open-Hearted Guide to the Path and Practice of Meditation, a great review of a great book.

13. 10 Reasons We Should Defund Planned Parenthood IMMEDIATELY. *gigglesnort*

14. Jenny Lawson “The Bloggess” Gets Furiously Happy con Queso with an Interview, an Announcement and an Old-School Giveaway.

15. So much wisdom from Alexandra Franzen, How to love your work… even when you don’t love your work, and How to avoid being someone’s “assistant” for the rest of your career and finally do your own thing, and 7 beautiful, meaningful writing projects that you can finish in a single day. Because finishing is sexy.

16. One-Pot Butternut Squash Alfredo. I bought two butternut squash at the grocery store this weekend, not really surewhat I was going to do with them exactly. THIS, this is what…

17. Why I Almost Didn’t Tell You About the Book I’m Writing from Be More With Less.

18. Good stuff from Austin Kleon’s weekly newsletter: Thoughts on authenticity from the documentary The Search for General Tso, (we watched this documentary, and I agree with Austin’s assessment of it), and Everyone lies about writing, and a great video tutorial, How to make a newspaper blackout poem.

19. I never should have followed my dreams. “I quit my steady gig to fulfill my potential. Instead I went broke, and got fired from a job in doggie daycare.”

20. Six-year-old’s heartfelt lecture to mom and dad. An adorable little girl’s words of wisdom have gone viral after her mother uploaded a video of her pleading with her divorced parents to be friends. The video has been viewed more than six million times. In the video, Tiana tells her mom, “I think you can do it. I think you can settle your mean heights down to short heights … I just want everything to be settled down, nothing else. For everything to be as good as possible. Nothing else.” She’s so earnest and sweet that you can’t help but want to try harder to be nicer after listening to her.

https://youtu.be/vm0UNn7tJ5o

21. 15 Celebs Answering Badass, Inspiring Questions On The Emmys Red Carpet, because it’s time to start asking more than “What are you wearing?”

22. Grab your tissues: This couple’s wedding day was all about their ailing dog.

23. A hedge fund bro bought an AIDS drug, then raised the price from $13.50 to $750. Compare that to Kickstarter Focuses Its Mission on Altruism Over Profit.

24. He Wears Nail Polish Because He’s a Good Father.

The only thing that is missing from this video is Nathan’s backstory. He’s even more amazing than what they show here — in 2011, he was diagnosed with Stage 3 rectal cancer, and nine days later, his wife Elisa was diagnosed with breast cancer. Nathan beat his cancer, but Elisa died in March of 2014.

25. It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers. *gigglesnort*

26. Andrea Scher has a new website just for her photography. I was lucky enough to do a session with her. She’s fantastic.

27. Japanese Photographer Documents The Beauty Of Everyday Life In Japan. Confession: I’m a Japan-ophile. Even though I long to, I’m afraid to travel there, worried I’ll love it so much I won’t want to come back.

28. Library Haul – September 2015 on Allowing Myself, one of my favorite blogs/bloggers. I love Justine’s description of the power of books and reading, “Non-fiction holds my attention. Fiction keeps me afloat. Reading calms and centers me in a way that not much else can.” And if you need more proof of why I love this blog, just read Tiny Shifts — honest, vulnerable, tender, and sad, but so inspiring. Justine writes about what is hard, but she makes it clear she’s also not giving up. Tender and terrible, beautiful and brutal.

29. Meet the blogger who turned her battle with an eating disorder into a body positive movement.

30. 100 questions to discover yourself from Positively Present. I love this kind of thing, use them as journal prompts, as well as regularly torturing friends and my significant other with them.

31. A Blog Is Only Dead When You Are, more on the topic “is blogging dead?” (which honestly is a silly question, akin to something like “are books dead?”).

32. permission on Chookooloonks.

33. AngelList, a platform for startups to hire people. If I were looking for a job, I think I’d check this out.

34. A Person You Should Know: Courtney Carver. I shared this site on a Something Good list a while back, and the creator Josh Spector asked who I thought he should profile. Courtney is one of the people I suggested.

35. A White Artist Wrote ‘Black Lives Matter’ 2,000 Times. But His Mural Almost Said ‘All Lives Matter.’

36. Is Teaching Yoga Your Path? 8 Qualities of Excellent Teachers. “Considering yoga teacher training? 90 Monkeys co-founder Amy Ippoliti suggests you start by asking yourself some tough questions.”

37. Spiritual practice won’t stop shitty things from happening to you. However…, a reality check from Danielle LaPorte in which she makes some important distinctions about the benefits of practice.

38. Alison’s Story, another installment of the Transgender in Colorado series from The Denver Post.

39. To the stinking alcoholic at the liquor store last week from Renegade Mothering. I’m sharing this with someone I love. I hope she reads it. I hope she gets it. I hope she stops before it’s too late.

40. When the Everyday Calls For Super Powers and a Good Plum Tart on Flingo.

41. 8 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Make In A Muffin Tin. Too bad the pictures they used for this post are so horribly unappetizing.

42. Watch Shiva Rea’s Moon Salutation.

43. Why I Quit Teaching Yoga & Hope to Never Go Back on Elephant Journal. The reason is not at all what you’d expect, and makes me think all of us yoga teachers should do the same thing.

44. Watch These Dancers Tell A Breakup Story In A Way Words Can’t Convey.