How do you come back and sum up the last 3 years in a podcast? You don’t. You just come back and start talking again.

CT47 i’ve made it part 2

click above to listen and download

This is my long overdue promised return to podcasting including a response to part 1 that you can listen to here. So, please bare with me as I jump back into this. I touch briefly upon a lot of topics related to this subject, most importantly:

Value - sepcifically, valuing ourselves and others

I also want to add on to the beginning of the recording - where I suggest that being authentic means truly knowing yourself. I am defining this as, "the willingness to know what beliefs and ideas are yours versus the ones you’ve been carrying around that upon further reflection are actually not yours, but someone else’s". That’s the part of the unravelling, peeling back the layers, that can be temporarily unsettling while ultimately offering a lasting outcome with immeasurable reward. What I’m saying is: Do the work. Figure out who you really are. It’s worth it.

Links relating to this podcast:

Slaves of the Internet, Unite! by Tim Kreider

our move

the porch

handsome coffee roasters

3 reasons , I mean 4 reasons I’m podcasting again:

1) Somewhere, somehow I promised people that  I would respond to part 1 

2) If you are interested in taking my class starting next week, here’s a very up to date read on where I am in relation to our industry. I’m essentially skimming the surface of many topics that I intend to to explore in much more detail in the fish bowl.

3) I’m practicing - sharing my voice again publicly -  for a big project that I’m planning to debut in the next couple of months 

4) there is a fourth reason. I miss podcasting. and quite honestly I’m also tired of hearing {some not all} other people dominating the airwaves with disingenous *bs* that really needs to be addressed. I want to share and inspire in my way; and in a heightened state of vulnerability these past few years I’ve been holding back. Not any more.

5" x 7"

Ever have those days where you feel more integrated, like whatever you’ve been feeling, that was keeping you out of sorts, has finally settled?

Or quite simply; a day you just feel especially good. Today is one of those days. In fact they often happen on Thursday for me, which is why {of course} my business is called Creative Thursday {not Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday} All good and fine days too, but there’s some kind of magic about Thursdays.

So I was filing last week, not a favorite - but necessary project that I hadn’t done for almost a year - which means my file basket was overflowing and I was sorting papers for hours - BUT! I came across this image on an Anthropologie cover that I saved for future inspiration. This painting is my version of an Anthropologie catalog cover that came out sometime in the past year? I am enamored with the orange and white chevron skirt the model is wearing and I particularly love it combined with the lilac top. That Anthropologie, they are good, really good. I often save their catalogs because they feel like art pieces to me. When everything a company creates is so thoughtfully, beautifully executed down to the very last detail, that inspires me.

{click here to buy original}

https://vimeo.com/86559739

If you receive my emails then you already know! 

You should know...I’ve been threatening to explore more abstract painting on Instagram lately. I’ll be sure to share when they are finished. I honestly have no idea where this is going, and that my friends is always exciting.

Love to you out there! xoxo

And by the way, Susannah put together a beautiful PDF, that includes a collection of all the articles written on the topic of 'the delicious truth about getting older', as a special Valentine’s gift for you. Click here to download it.

{original is available here}

This is a dress I’d want to make for her. 

Remember my chicken bag? This is a new pattern from Lynn @ Handmaiden’s Cottage,  and this image features a collection of designs from Just For Fun.

So sweet, I had to share.

This is indeed a blog post announcing the launch of my newest fabric collection, however I shared something in my email newsletter that I would like to share with you here as well. I’m anticipating {big} changes in the way my business is going to evolve this year.

And that is all;  zaza zoo is at a store near you, and I’ve also listed bundles in the shop.

I’m obsessed with the yellow zebras, and then the lavender giraffes and then the black and white monkeys and then the snow leopard....

I’m writing this on the eve of my 41st birthday, actually 29 minutes until to be exact. 

Since Susannah, aka my aquarian twin {I have to say it’s such a treat to share a birthday with her, born just one day apart, it’s as if we have been and always will be on this journey together} wrote to a group of us a couple of weeks ago about her idea of sharing the 'truthful tales of how getting older rocks', I’ve got to be honest and say that this prompt got me thinking about if it really does?

But you know me, if you know me, of course I’m going to come back around, to yes! it most certainly does. It has just been a particularly tough couple of months and/or past year in several ways and I’d be lying to you if I didn’t acknowledge that.

But at the end of the day, there is that knowing that seems to hang on in even the darkest times, the place in us that recognizes that this is an amazing time too, even if it is momentarily masquerading as crap.  Life, to me, is still magic.

And how do I know that? I know because as I sit here listening to music with my man on the eve of my birthday, refelecting on times past, all the memories are good. They just are. And believe me, I remember when some of those very same moments also felt really hard. It’s as if all the experiences just blend together and what I’m left with is a profound gratitude.

Where am I going with all of this? Here’s where: What you have in the early part of your life is this freedom from awareness. No matter how well meaning those older than you are, advising you to appreciate your childhood, your twenties, your thirties, reminding you that the world is your oyster; you’re just never going to get it. You are never going to appreciate the time you have in the way you should because you simply can’t. You have no hindsight. You haven’t lived enough yet to have it. 

But when you’re 40. You know that age that seems to freak people out a little? The same age that many almost univerally say is the moment when they first felt the most in their skin. Like they finally caught up with themsleves? It’s true. Literally a couple of weeks after I turned 40 {I had to adjust} I felt like myself for the first time. It’s fair to say that growing up an only child, spending a significant amount of time with adults, mostly connecting with friends older than me I have always felt ahead of my years. There were moments in my twenties when I actually yearned to be 40 because I knew that the world and the people in it would finally make sense in the way I had always observed it to be. And that’s exactly what happened.

A coming of home of sorts. I have the awareness now to see all the good around me as it’s happening and I still have my youth. 

Notice that I didn’t reference 'the earlier part of life' as 'when you are young' because I have observed that youth is relative, that it is more about a daily decision than it is about how many years you’ve been on the planet.

I couldn’t remember if I announced my age last year, but I did. And I’m so glad I did. Because these can be the years when you start becoming less enthusiastic and anticipatory about the number and the birthday all together. Those of us in the blogging world came up together in our twenties and our thirties, excitedly, anxiously marking those days and years and all of a sudden we’ve stopped noting the birthdays :-) ...but nope, not this group, as you will see by the eagerness to share in a multitude of posts that will be addressing this mysterious topic of getting older.

And I say mysterious because it seems that our society and culture have almost exclusively been teaching us one view of aging, and that is one of decline not one of expansion, vibrancy and aliveness like no other.

When awareness meets with aliveness, you are unstoppable. And this meeting can only happen when you’ve been here for a few-ish years. How lucky we are. Those of us who get to experience this meeting place. Oh, I can’t even begin to tell you the depth of appreciation I feel on most days. Do I still experience stress, worry and fear as I grow older, I do. Honestly more than I’d like to. But now I have more tools to recognize it sooner and sort it out quicker. This skill set alone gives me a sense of freedom that I never had in my 'younger' days.

I have felt more beautiful now than I ever have. I started dancing again last year so I feel in better shape physically than I ever have. I am more in my skin than ever before and on the days when I can really embrace this, the clarity I have from knowing myself so well is the best. It really, truly is an amazing time and I’m so thankful to be here @ 41.

So the reason I’m calling this post born again is because I literally feel like, in so many ways, my life is just beginning now. Like the first 40 years were just a test run {a pretty good test run, I will say}. And now I get to take all that I have learned thus far and apply it to a life lived all over again. However many days ahead I have, I’ll take them! If I get another 40, I’ll be so lucky.  

I am awake. I have been for a while. But now, I get it. Every day I’m here is a gift to live, I mean really LIVE.

thank you to all the women {and men} who inspire me: those out ahead of me, who have shown me and cotinue to show me the way, especially my Mom who is a daily example that life at 75 can be even better still! and thank you to all of you coming up behind me who remind me that the ideals and characteristics of youth are here for me to embrace, always.

I am so ready to just to have a whole lot more fun.  The world is still my oyster.

I have a beautiful life and I don’t want to miss a minute of it.

7" x 5"

"I think if we get more excited about the unknown instead having trepidation about it..." ~ Lisa G.

Last week, out of the blue, I decided to start collecting profound {to me} things people say, and by collecting I mean actually writing them down so I can refer back to them later. This usually happens in the note app of my Iphone and today it’s happening on my blog. 

You know what I’m realizing? When you really listen, people closest to you have a lot of profound insight to share. The best part is; most of the time they’re not even trying to say something profound, they’re just talking, and there it is.

You know what else I’m realizing? We could use a new inventory of memorable quotes. I’ve grown tired of repeating great minds who were on the planet a hundred or more years ago. Not that I don’t appreciate insight from the past but hey, it might be time for something new. 

I’m quoting one of my dearest friends this morning because she reminded me why times of uncertainty should be welcomed and not something to fear. 

And she’s right. And I know this. Yet temporarily I forgot again. Should you need a quick reminder today?

{original painting is available here}