Hello there, and welcome to my valley. It is frozen and quiet and yet there's so much life
everywhere. The paw prints of little rabbits dot the snow and today i found evidence of
the very elusive moose. The winter birds are surprisingly active now, seeking out the bird
feeders townsfolk leave on their lawns. January was the month of the wolf moon, paying homage to
the many animals who are hungry this time of year yet ever patient for the first signs of spring.
I'm looking forward to it as well, though my labrador and I are greatly enjoying ourselves.
He loves to be outdoors even more than I and he insists on pulling my sled everywhere.
I think it feels like a game of tug-of-war for him and it's always so funny.
Maybe you are curled up in bed while watching this, traveling, at work, out in nature,
somewhere else all together. Wherever you are, I hope that today offers you some moments of joy,
be it the moon rays the chortle of a bird or the warmth of the sun on your neck
I decided to start the morning reading some texts
that were about spirituality, but also just mindfulness and this paragraph really stood
out to me so I thought I would read it to you at least paraphrase it as best I can. We can
choose to have an ancient psychology that holds a refreshingly positive view of human nature.
Our emotional difficulties are temporary and more superficial instead of all-consuming.
We can choose to emphasize what is right with us, not what is wrong with us and use that to inspire
who we are. For example, a more ancient psychology acknowledges our disturbing emotions but sees them
as covering our essential goodness, like clouds covering the sun. In this sense our darker moments
and most upsetting feelings are an opportunity for uncovering a natural wisdom, if we choose to
look at it that way. By being attentive to our emotions we can delve deeper into the moment
to perceive the little subtleties of ordinary life. In this sense mindfulness creates a wise
attention to our days a space of clarity that emerges when we have a quiet mind
it makes us more receptive to the whispers of our innate intuitive wisdom.
I thought that was a very beautiful way to talk about being mindful in your day and
I will keep it in my heart today and try to let it influence me, because I was feeling a little bit
anxious this morning being aware of all the things I had to get done. So that that's just beautiful,
anyway I wanted to share it with you and my tea has probably gone cold so i'm gonna go warm it up.
Today I was thinking about the past and what advice I would give my younger self.
The person I once was is so different from who I am now
and something that really helped me feel more at ease was changing the words I speak to myself
and to others. I wanted to hear your thoughts on this because I think it
is especially relevant right now when we communicate not only in person but online.
When I was younger, newly graduated working at a department store,
I had a habit of defaulting to negative statements when I was unhappy or frustrated. This was fed
by feelings of not having control over my life, feeling like a constant victim of circumstance.
I didn't like the person i was becoming, so negative and bitter, I worked a customer service
position that was quite stressful and all it would take would be one rude customer to ruin my day.
Sometimes customers would call me names, make fun of my job and even throw tantrums and
throw things sometimes and if you work in customer service know that I have the utmost respect for
you and all your hard work and patience it is not an easy job and often under appreciated.
These memories of the past amuse me, because even though i would experience the kindness of so many
people throughout my shift I'd go home crying because of the single angry customer who told
me I would never amount to anything, and yet by doing that I readily handed over all my power
and agency to them, pretty much welcoming them into my heart and mind and letting them dictate
the rest of my day. That is something I've slowly worked on changing, realizing that
I have the choice to process experiences how I wish and to my past self I will always say,
take notice of the words you use, see them as having power over others but most of all yourself.
See them as little seeds that you're holding in your heart and be careful about which ones you
water and allow to grow. Words have so much power and what we do with the words we speak but also
hear has a lot to do with how much we can enjoy daily life in our own company or that of others.
In celebration of another trip around the sun and some excitement for the spring and the longer days
that are fast approaching. I decided to make a spring-inspired embroidery pillow,
I've never had much patience for needlework so I did not have high expectations for myself
but considered it a wonderful practice in mindfulness and slowness and a wonderful way
to just try something new. Even if it doesn't come out perfect I definitely made many mistakes but
I really enjoyed how it turned out. Please let me know if you have any craft projects
in mind or recipes that I should try because i'm looking to learn new things all the time.
I once had a very good friend who loved tea and she would heat up the water for her tea
drink her cup of tea and then spend the next few hours just
holding the teapot and keeping warm and I thought it was so funny and I
have been doing that a lot this winter because it really works, if you just hold your teapot to you,
you feel nice and warm and cozy. It's actually been quite a quiet week over here,
one of my favorite times of the month is when there's the full moon because if you walk outside
during the full moon the moon rays dance across the snow and glitter it is just amazing. If you
have lived in a place with snow you know that snow glitters at night when you shine light on it, but
to see the moonlight creating this kind of shimmery cast over everything is really magical. I
just love it. I’m looking forward to the next full moon. It'll be very beautiful for sure. Anyway,
last but not least, I did have a question several months ago that a few people reached out about
and they were wondering about a green dress that I wore and have worn in some of my videos and so
I wanted to show it to you I will put in some clips. I don't know if you can call it a dress,
it is kind of inspired - I think - by a bit of a sarong. It's a multi-use piece of fabric. You can
wear it as a dress but also a skirt and I think you can even make it into a short dress or shirt.
So there's a lot of different ways to wear it but yeah, I will show you a few, I have not been able
to find anything like it online unfortunately. I have researched for quite a while, maybe i'm
just not using quite the right keywords but it is a really wonderful piece of clothing. I bought it
when I was at a medieval fair, they were available and I actually have seen them quite a few times
available at festivals and medieval fairs so maybe that is the best place to go find them.
But yes it's just so beautiful and light and airy and I love it especially in the summer but also in
the winter when I'm inside and I'm doing a lot of work around the house. I'd love to wear it as well
and yeah, I wish I could give you more information on it but I am sure that it is fairly easy to sew
it yourself. If you are someone that's handy with a sewing machine it might be worth a try
but I will give you an update once I know where that's from. That was something very random,
but I had quite a few people reach out and email and message and all that so
I did want to address that unfortunately. I just don't know where it's from but it is a really
really fun dress so if anyone has any examples similar to it please share them down below.
Anyway, it has continued to be a nice relaxing week. I had a little meeting this morning with an
editor to talk about changes to my book that I'm working on and that was really really exciting.
I am going to be working on that this week, working on orders, working on a lot of different
things and I am also continuing at the bookstore, thank goodness, so I was very excited to be doing
that - so glad I am able to help out there every week. Anyway, I hope you all have a wonderful day
and I will see you very very soon and I will hopefully give you an update on the housing
situation very soon because we are trying to be approved for a loan so we will see if
we are but anyway sending my love sending Mr. Darcy's love and I will see you soon, goodbye.