Category Archives: Spring

E is for Easter

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When I think of Easter, my first thought is the flowers, tulips and daffodils especially. I was telling you the other day about the flower beds by the south entrance to the CSU campus, by the parking garage, a tiny universe of blooms in miniature.

I am amazed by them, because they are small, so tiny, but their effort and their impact is so bighearted. They remind me that you don’t have to be big, loud, or important to touch someone, to be noticed and adored, to make a difference in someone else’s life. Small is beautiful, too.

The tiny but kind gesture, the gentle act, the soft gaze, the loving whisper, your silence and stillness, fierce but tender compassion–these are considerable.

And Easter isn’t about the candy, or the fancy dress, or even going to church or having a big family dinner (or maybe I’m just saying that because I won’t have any of those things today), it’s about something much bigger–or actually, maybe Easter is about something much smaller and more precious, something we are usually too busy or distracted to notice.

Easter is about new beginnings, a fresh start, the chance to begin again, and the call to service and to love. Easter asks us to slow down, be quiet and still, be humble and small, but to also open our hearts, be brave, and love with all our effort and gentleness.

We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love. ~Mother Teresa

Kind and gentle reader, I wish you an Easter day filled with small things and great love. Remember that you are precious, and gentleness is your superpower.

Gratitude Friday

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This post is a mashup of The Little Bliss List and Joy Jam, and as such is meant to celebrate: the little things that brought me hope and happiness this week, the sweet stuff of life, those small gifts that brought me joy this week. By sharing them, I not only make public my gratitude, but maybe also help you notice your own good stuff and send some positive energy out into the world.

1. Tiny spring flowers. How do they get them so small?! There are two huge beds of them as you enter from the south side of campus by the parking garage at CSU, tiny daffodils and tulips and a few others I can’t even name, all in miniature but such bright color, such big joy in my heart when I see them. I know the picture above looks like a regular sized daffodil, but it’s full bloom was no bigger than a quarter.

2. Susannah Conway is going to be at World Domination Summit in July, and so am I! She’s proposed a session called “Writing from the Heart” and I hope it gets enough votes to run, but at the very least, I am going to be able to tell her in person, right to her sweet face, how much I adore her. It was on my Mondo Beyondo list to do just that some day, and it looks like it’s going to happen.

3. Eating clean and drinking juice. After two weeks of this, I cannot tell you how good I feel, not just physically but emotionally. My brain works better, I am happier, I have more energy. So simple, so profound.

4. Spring. I know, I know…blah, blah, blah. But, I can’t help but mention it again–the weather, everything budding out and blooming, sitting in the backyard reading, watching Dexter roll in the grass and Sam chase the squirrels. Although, this is Colorado, so Spring weather this week meant it was 80 degrees on Sunday and snowing on Tuesday.

5. This week, I got the best (and most surprising) compliment: she called me “positive.” After years of struggling with anxiety and depression, thinking of myself as moody and dark and disgruntled, it makes me so happy that people are noticing and appreciating the change, the shift in me.

6. WILD. My writing group met today, and we had so much fun, even made Full Moon Dreamboards together. I adore those women.

7. Laurie Wagner’s Telling True Stories. Class officially starts on Monday, but there’s lots of prep happening already, lots of anticipation and excitement. To add to my own personal hysteria, I just found out that Andrea Scher, author of Superhero Journal, and teacher of Mondo Beyondo (the course that started it all for me) and Superhero Photo is going to be there too! I owe Andrea so much gratitude, that even after nine months, I still haven’t worked out quite how to communicate it–it’s just too much.