Rita’s Notebook | Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

Roaring Creek, image by Eric

1. The poetics of spinach on Rita’s Notebook, in which Rita says, “I’m realizing that whether I am growing poems or spinach, there is a vital part of the process that requires me to leave things alone. There is a part that is beyond my control, that is determined by things I cannot put my hands on.”

2. Lori’s story – Gratitude Grows. “For more than a year, artist Lori Portka painted her gratitude through individual pieces of art for 100 people who have made a difference in her life.”

https://vimeo.com/121724954

3. Voices from Nepal: Earthquake survivors tell their stories, illustrated stories on Medium.

4. Wisdom from Brave Girls Club. I really needed to hear this.

Dear Lovely Girl,

Sometimes it’s tempting to bend and twist and stand on our toes to change enough for certain others to like us, for us to be able to ‘fit in’. Self betrayal doesn’t ever lead to happiness, however, and doing things that we know in our gut are not right for us, bending our values, those things just lead us down a really tricky path — a path that often leads us to places that are so far from where we wanted to end up that we just can’t figure out how we ever got there.

When we decide to put value in those who love us exactly as we are, life gets really sweet. Sometimes we have to wait to find those who like the real us, but it is always worth the wait.

Beautiful friend, you are wonderful in your purest, deepest, truest form. You don’t have to change to be loved. There are those who will love all that is real about you, and those are the real relationships that a meaningful life is made of.

You are worth waiting for.
You are so very very very loved.
xoxo

5. Shared on Rowdy Kittens’ Happy Links list: Building a Living Around Your Creative Soul: Cynthia Morris (a Good Life Project podcast) and Do More With Less, a film about hiking the Pacific Coast Trail that I’m sure Eric will want to watch with me.

6. You don’t have to work to become. You already are. Kylie Bellard on Medium.

7. “Practical” body image tip #1… from Isabel Foxen Duke.

8. Good stuff from Austin Kleon’s weekly newsletter this week: Terry Gross To Marc Maron: ‘Life Is Harder Than Radio’ and A Woman on the Margins: An interview with Vivian Gornick about the problem with writing programs, the memoir’s potential for dishonesty, and finding her way as a writer and Works in Progress: A very small sampling of the female artists now in their 70s, 80s and 90s we should have known about decades ago.

9. Good stuff from this week’s Positively Present Picks list: 9 Addictions 90% of Us Struggle With, and How Art Can Heal Anxiety, and 7 Thinking Patterns You Use to Distort Reality.

10. Good stuff from Susannah Conway’s Something for the Weekend list: What Do You Do When the Internet Hates You? and How To Meditate (Funny) – Ultra Spiritual Life episode 14 – with JP Sears.

11. Truthbomb #802 from Danielle LaPorte, “Try staying open when you want to shut down, it changes everything.”

12. Shared on Peaceful links from Peaceful Triumphs: Maria Popova — Cartographer of Meaning in a Digital Age, an On Being podcast with the creator of Brain Pickings.

13. Abandoned House In Detroit Brought Back To Life With 4,000 Flowers on Bored Panda.

14. money talks • stefanie renée and liz kalloch, by Sherry Belul.

15. Dog Chases Owner’s Ambulance After Suffering A Stroke. This video almost wrecked me, and yet I feel like I needed to share it. Don’t let the title throw you — it’s actually a PSA about being an organ donor.

16. Wisdom from Anne Lamott, “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”

17. As Memorial Day Nears, a Single Image That Continues to Haunt.

18. Wisdom from Geneen Roth,
thewayout