notes from the studio :: october

I have a confession: We've started listening to Christmas music in the Soul Mantras studio. Bonnie wanted to turn it on last week, and it felt perfect because we're planning out our holiday and word of the year offerings that I'll be sharing with you in the coming weeks. Not that I'm ready for Christmas time. I mean, I have to first figure out how to style Ellie's hair like Rey's by Friday's after-school Halloween parade. But I have to tell you, there is something deeply grounding about listening to Bing and Rosemary sing about walking in a winter wonderland. 

I hope you're noticing what's grounding you these days. It's a good idea to keep an ongoing list of grounding self-care moves to turn to. Just the act of making the list invites in mindfulness and self-care. One practice that's always on mine is using a mantra.

My Current Mantras

A few mantras that have been getting me through lately:

You have this day: I've been carrying around a talisman stamped with these words, and I shared the story behind it over on the Soul Mantras blog.

We go high: Michelle Obama's beautiful quote, "When they go low, we go high" comes up for me daily. I keep thinking about stamping it in my own "Secret Message" bracelet to wear when I need to remember how I want to move through the world.

I am with you: After I shared this story here and on Facebook about how my skin has been feeling like it's on inside out lately, a sweet soul posted "I am with you," and suddenly I felt like I could breathe deeper. I am with you. Yes. Yes. Yes. I'm holding those words so close to me.

Enough: From "I am enough" to "enough is enough is enough" to "you have done enough, sweet soul," this word has so many layers of meaning, and it's the one word I've stamped in metal more than any other since starting Soul Mantras back in 2008. It is a mantra I often repeat while using a mala while meditating.

What mantras, words, prayers are you holding close lately? If you feel moved to, please leave a comment and let me know. Hearing your stories is such a gift to me. (Thank you.)

With the idea of helping us all keep our mantras, intentions, and prayers close to us, I'm having a 15% off sale over at Soul Mantras through the end of the month. When you check out, just use coupon code YOUAREAMAZING (in all caps) to take 15% off your order. The coupon works over on Etsy too.

We're customizing all of our hand stamped items these days, so if you love one of the mantra designs and want to customize it, that's totally possible (like the Secret Message bracelets above). I also love helping you find the mantras, gemstones, and intentions that support you, so if you have any questions, just reply and let me know. You can also explore Five Ways to Use a Mantra over on the Soul Mantras blog.

Big love,

Liz

my skin is on inside out

My skin is on inside out. This is what I keep thinking and saying to a few close friends. My skin is on inside out. I'm watching and reading the news. A lot. I'm praying. A lot. I'm trying to gather my practices to fortify myself. And yet, I feel myself slip toward the fear and the sadness. How did we get here?

::

My favorite movie is Lincoln. My daughter asks me this weekly, waiting for my answer to change to a movie she's allowed to watch.

"Why do you love it, Mama?" she asks.

Today, I would answer: Because it's a dive into a time in our history where one man was holding our future in his hands and he understood that truth in his bones. He was breathing that truth as he made mistakes and angered many and made choices only few can truly understand the weight of. Because somewhere in my heart I believe that each time I watch that movie, I move just a little bit closer to being able to be that brave.

::

I took a walk to get the mail this afternoon. We're in one of those neighborhoods with the boxes all together. I walked and noticed my senses. The lawnmower, the squirrel, the leaves fluttering against one another, the colors colliding, the clouds painted on the blue. I took a walk and tried to just focus on my senses to give my mind and heart some space.

::

As I watched the debate, and in the days since, I'm in this space of knowing I need to be a witness. A witness to your stories, to my own. A witness for this woman who stands tall against a man who symbolizes abuse and rage and fear of other. My skin is on inside out as I hear your stories. As I watch her stand tall as he looms. As I hear an audience on the news chant about repealing the 19th amendment so that women cannot vote anymore.

::

My skin is on inside out. But I'm standing. I'm a witness to it all. I will not look away. And I will acknowledge those with less privilege who have felt this way their entire lives.

::

I hear these words:

We breathe. We hope.

When they go low, we go high.

Let freedom ring.

I hear these words and I lift my head up toward the sky and let the love and connection that is waiting for each of us hold me for a moment.

::

This is The And Space.

This is where I hold fear and disbelief in one hand and love and hope in the other. This is where I dig deep into what I know and dig even deeper to understand what I do not.

This is where we all live.

(Can you feel this truth even more, right now?) 

And in telling our stories, we will realize again and again that we are not alone in this space.

quiet in-between moments

Making these little altar vignettes, gathering the simple and sacred pieces that speak to me, telling the story of this moment, this has become a way to practice self-care in the in-between moments while the house is quiet and the flurry of all that must get done can wait a little longer.

Notice what fills you up in the quiet in-between moments.

Go there more often, dear heart. 

(Shown above: little Ganesh statue, Truthbomb deck vol 1, fluorite heart from my Soul Mantras shop, prayer stick I wrapped during the presidential debate, and a jade plant - they are so easy to take care of, you can do it!!)

I can choose to keep my heart open.

A story I shared with the lovely souls on my newsletter list:

I'm over here in my studio in the in-between space before Ellie gets home from school, and I'm thinking about you. And I want to talk about something.

I want to talk about how we struggle to stay open even as we long for more love in our lives. How we push others away yet we long to feel seen. How we want to protect ourselves from hurt even though being human means we will get hurt. 

I want to talk about how we close ourselves off from what we long for in such subtle ways.

We close our hearts when we don't accept a compliment, when we put ourselves down, when we get upset with our loved ones about the little things even when we know we could let them go. 

We have signs and quotes in our homes that talk about enjoying the simple moments and choosing dancing over doing the dishes, but we pile on the self-loathing when we scroll through Instagram and see perfect kitchens and flawless self-portraits.

We each have our own ways of making the choice not to open toward this life we're longing for, and I've been noticing how these choices happen in the most routine moments.

The other day, I had an experience of healing around, and I want to tell you about it. Earlier this week, I shared this photo on Instagram. 

And I paired the photo with these words: On Sunday evening, when I was taking a photo of our dinner table before letting everyone dive in (as one does), Jon said that I looked beautiful and I should take a selfie right this minute. I scoffed (as one does when married for a long time): My sunglasses are on my head. We're about to eat dinner. I don't want to be the blogger taking a selfie while her family waits to eat. But then I stopped and just flipped the camera around and took it. And today when I found it on my camera roll, I had this moment of getting how he sees me. Going to let that sink in as I make my way through this day.

Because here's the truth: Yes, I practice the mirror meditation and have come to a really positive space with how I think about my own beauty. I feel comfortable sharing self-portraits, and I certainly don't aim for flawless, perfection when I do. And yet, it is very hard for me to believe my husband when he tells me I'm beautiful. Especially in an everyday moment. I usually say something sarcastic or roll my eyes or use the "it's because I put on mascara" excuse.

But this time he said it right in front of our daughter who was taking in every word. And when I started to reply sarcastically, I looked at her watching me and stopped and took a breath and chose to listen.

It was such a simple, everyday kind of moment; one that none of us would have really remembered no matter how I responded. But one that deeply impacts all of us.

Dismissing someone's love is not how I want to move through my world over here, especially when this someone is my husband. And I don't want my daughter to witness this dismissal. 

I can choose to make another choice.

I can choose to keep my heart open.

This truth is why I have these words hanging in my studio.

I wrote these words and then made a little print so I could hang them up, so I will read them again and again to remember that keeping my heart open to all of it is a huge piece of my life's work.

This really is The And Space - we keep our hearts open to the joy and heartache, the beauty and the mess, the truth and all that we cannot control. All of it.

Even though this can feel huge, I have good news for both of us dear heart: This work of keeping our hearts open is actually done in the simplest of moments. At the kitchen table when someone else says, "You are beautiful." And you choose to believe them.

This work is done: 

• When you smile at the new mom at school who looks as unsure as her child.

• When you say, "Yes" to getting out of the house to connect with others.

• When you look yourself in the eye in the bathroom mirror and whisper "You've got this."

• When you stop talking on the phone when going through the checkout line.

• When you see the dishes in the sink and choose the dance party anyway.

• When you don't hold back the tears when with those you trust.

• When you gently say, "Could you listen to me instead of fix?" when a friend dives into her fixer role.

• When you wake up 10 minutes earlier to give yourself the gift of quiet before everyone else gets up.

• When you wear the red lipstick because it brings you joy.

• When you order takeout because the day really was that long and hard and no one is grading your ability to make dinner every single night.

This work of keeping our hearts open is done when we choose love and kindness and bravery in simple, real, moments that make up our daily lives.

So here's a little homework for you: Look for your own simple moments where you can choose to keep your heart open (even when the old stories might be pulling you to do something else). And then, if you want to, come back to this email and press reply and tell me about them. Or tell me about one of these moments that happened recently to you. I'd really love to hear your stories.

And remember honey, you are a light is this world. We are all blessed because you are here.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

there are things I want to tell you

I want to tell you about the sound of my daughter's laughter when it overflows out of her body and onto the memories of all who surround her.

I want to tell you about the way one deep breath, and then another, brings me closer to love when I make the choice to pause and breathe and listen.

I want to tell you about the birds, oh those birds, who sing every morning with no concern for who is running for president or who has a cleaner kitchen or what words make the perfect sales page.

I want to tell you about the light in our new home and how it heals me every single morning.

I want to tell you about the fire in me that simmered for so long and is now licking at my insides.

I want to tell you about that morning on vacation when I slipped out of bed and went down the hall to find Ellie, and we both wore long dresses and walked out onto the beach while most people were sleeping and took photos of one another twirling in the water and the magic was shimmering in the air and I knew we would never forget.

photo by eleanor jane

What stories are waiting inside you, dear heart? What stories are you wanting to tell? 

get out your camera (eleanor at 6)

A few weeks ago, Eleanor and I went to Point Defiance park to walk around the rose garden. We were working with prompts from Chapter 2 of Inner Excavation and using our senses to explore.

It was awesome. I let her use my phone to take photos of whatever she wanted, giving her the prompt of "find your senses," which she quickly expanded to "find flowers in every color of the rainbow." 

While she took photos and ran around, I took photos too. With my "big-girl camera." I snapped lots of flowers but also captured Eleanor at 6.

What I found on my camera today made me so very happy I got my big camera out and just had fun.

Capturing everyday life through our lens helps us gather evidence of the beautiful, messy, real life we're living every single day. This evidence in turn pushes us to see the ways we're already living the life we sometimes long for. We see examples of the ways we slow down and really enjoy our loved ones, how we take the time to notice the simple beauty around us, and how we honor our own needs. And sometimes a photography practice actually invites these moments of mindfulness and love into our lives. 

Gathering evidence is one powerful way to navigate The And Space. Try it and see what happens. Then come back and let me know what you unearth. 

in the dig site together

This summer, Eleanor is joining me (and more than 300 others) for the Inner Excavate-along, the read-along meets create-along of my book Inner Excavation.

And it's awesome. She's teaching me so much as she dives into the prompts and does things her way. 

At the beginning of any course I teach, I invite participants to create an intention for themselves. I wanted to teach this to Eleanor as well. So we read the introduction at bedtime a few weeks ago (she asked such awesome questions: Did you really write all of this? How did you know what you wanted to say?) and talked about what an intention is. The next day, she came up with this as her intention and wrote it in her journal.

Play. Have fun. Make mistakes that I can fix.)  She's working on spelling the words she knows and was delighted when she spelled fix as "fixe" so she could fix a mistake right away! 

I want to always remember that.

As we dive into each chapter, we're reading some of it together (especially the introductions) and then talking about the general themes. Then we work with a couple of prompts that I choose. (Depending on the age of your child, you could choose them together, work through all of them etc. Ellie is 6, so I'm going with what makes sense for her.)

So far, it has felt like the most important pieces I'm sharing are the different ways to "tell your story" - through photos, words, color, and any other way that makes sense to you. We're gathering words, going on walks to take photos, and also sitting down with our journals and creating with what we've gathered. 

Sometimes, I give her a jumping off point based on the prompts in the book if we don't already have a plan. I'm gently pushing her to write her own stories without asking me to spell every word; she's pushing back that she wants to learn how to spell the words she doesn't know.

I'm also learning how to stay quiet when I have an idea of what we might create and she's diving in and just having fun without needing any instruction. And I'm also figuring out ways to teach - "look what happens when you do this with your watercolor brush" and encouraging her to be curious and experiment. And I'm trying to let go of my expectations of how this experience "should" look.

So basically, the usual parenting lessons with a big side of color. 

And hopefully along the way, I'm giving her even more tools to express herself, her stories, her feelings, her dreams. Yes yes yes.

I'm also remembering that I need my own time where I can write my stories down, so I'm creating little pockets of alone time to do that too.

There's still time to join in this summer's free Inner Excavate-along. You just need the book! The course is always available and new folks are joining us every day in our magical Facebook group. You can buy the book here and sign up for the course emails here.

let yourself be seen

There's this space between all the roles and the chatter in your head and others' expectations and misunderstandings and wonderings. There's this space that exists between the inhalation and exhalation. A pause you can find if you slow down enough.

If you pay attention.

On the days when you might be wearing the same clothes you wore the day before, when you need a shower, when the way things are isn't quite the way you thought they would be, find that pause. And then another. And then another after that. See if you can find you - the you who isn't buried by the shoulds - in that space.

And when you do, take a photo and let yourself be seen (by the one person who knows you best of all: You).

This is what Inner Excavation is all about.