And as today is a day of countdowns, I thought I would look back on the top six Facebook posts (because five just didn’t feel like enough) from the past 12 months that resonated the most with you. Because, really, that’s what this is all about – a way to connect with all of you. READ MORE
I bought a deeply unattractive wreath the other day. Matt and I were at the farmer’s market buying vegetables and salmon and we came across a wreath maker. She had long brown hair, a huge smile and was weaving twigs and ribbon together. Then I noticed the wreath dangling on a piece of raffia above […]
decided to put a red string around a Wall Street statue called Fearless Girl. Everyone needs a red string (or the thought of one), even statues on Wall Street … So, natch, I have a question for you: Did you get your own red string? And have you used it or the idea of it […]
Today is the solstice, the shortest day of the year, the longest night of the year and paradoxically (starting tomorrow), the return of the light. In these days of so much going on outside, remember the inside. Your sweet always there, always waiting for your attention, self.
We learn about boundaries (or the silent insistence not to have them) from our relationships, and so it is fabulous to do the red string project with someone else. A friend, a partner, a colleague. You get to see what you believe you’re allowed to have or say or want — and that’s only good […]
One of my favorite books ever is Middlemarch by George Eliot. She (George was her pen-name) manages to so perfectly capture motivations, behavior, the way people are, and uses such gorgeous language while doing it.
the red string project video — thank you. I’m awed and heartened by the fierce turn of speaking up, speaking out and reclaiming these bodies. Wow. I’d love to hear (via your comments below) how it’s going for you. Above is a reading from the red string project chapter in my new book, This Messy Magnificent […]
I love that Time magazine’s person of the year is “the silence breakers:” the women who spoke up, the women who started the #metoo movement, and let’s include all of us who are beginning to speak up, reclaim our bodies, break the cycle of harshness and judgment by the way we treat and speak to ourselves.
My father put his hands down my pants, kissed me on the lips, called women broads. And nothing I saw or heard as I was growing up taught me that what he was doing was aberrant or wrong. One man masturbated in front of me, others grabbed my breasts on the subway, pinched my butt, […]
My first pair of high heels was navy blue, and from Chandler’s on Queens Boulevard. They matched my dress for the eighth grade prom I was going to the following week with Gary Stein. They were so deeply unutterably uncomfortable. I couldn’t really walk in them (and didn’t understand how anyone else could either), and they also gave me blisters on the back of my feet. But walking wasn’t the point. These shoes were for looking at. Thirty seconds after I hobbled into the prom, I threw them off. …
I’ve come across this past week. Inspiring, truthful, get-right-to-the-heart of it articles. We all could use big doses of that… The story of a woman who helped raise more than $300,000 for a homeless man who spent his last $20 on gas for her car: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/woman-raises-300000-dollar… This strong op-ed in The New York Times on […]
Yesterday — Thanksgiving — might have been fabulous. It might have been fabulous and awful. It might have been just awful — in some ways, perhaps not in others. What do you do on the day after if you:
*ate too much
*fought with a relative
*said something you wished you hadn’t said
*done something you wished you hadn’t done
*didn’t do what you said you would …
and there they were: Hostess Snoballs. A whole rack of them. And although I know I’ve possibly written about them more than the Hostess company has, I can’t help but write about them one more time.
that ended this past Sunday. As always, it is stunning when a group of women gather in a room for a week with the intention of unraveling what keeps us stuck and powerless…
One of the themes was how fiercely attached we are to our suffering. I know that sounds silly — who wants to be in pain — but over and over, as someone would pop into joy or happiness, she’d get worried that “it is illegal” or “I’m going to get in trouble.” And the result of that would be that she’d pick up her anxiety again. Or get worried about what life would be like at home. I kept pointing out, because I know it so well in myself, that it’s unfamiliar to allow ourselves to feel joy for no reason. Joy just because we are breathing and get to live another day on planet Earth.
from our Asilomar retreat, which is happening now:
This morning, at our first eating meditation, a woman said — this is a paraphrase, not her words exactly — Oh My God — I get it. All these years I’ve been trying to fix myself. I’ve been working on myself, thinking I was going to finally get to the point where what was wrong wouldn’t be wrong anymore. But now, here, I see that I could have kept that up for the rest of my life because really, there is always something that seems like it needs to be changed or fixed. But when I drop the story of being broken, when I see that it’s like a mantra I keep repeating (I’m broken, I’m broken, I need to be fixed, fixed, fixed), there is a wholeness that is also here. A softness. Something that has never been broken. And it feels like love.
with some business women and thought leaders and the subject of enough came up. One woman told me that she was convinced that having a baby was going to fill the not-enough place inside her heart. This, despite being in a relationship with someone she loved, having a job about which she felt passionate and having enough money to shelter and food and pleasure. Then she said, “Although I do love having a baby, it didn’t do what I thought it would do.” It struck me again that enough isn’t a quantity and that it’s so challenging to really understand that.
I was trembling. I’d never had a book published and was shopping the proposal for “Feeding the Hungry Heart” around. Peg had a stuffed pencil hanging above her desk.
Although I said I had a whole book, I only had a book proposal. Or maybe I said I could write the whole book in a few months, I can’t remember now. All I know is that I was excited and terrified and had to keep pinching myself that I was actually sitting in the office of a editor in a New York publishing house. A year before that, having a book published was a dream that I wasn’t sure I could ever realize.
these past three days. There’s just nothing like sitting in a room with a group of people who want to dive into what’s keeping them from living their own version of a messy magnificent life. From owning their bodies, disengaging from the crazy aunt in the attic, being unbelievably kind to themselves. I am always wowed and awed at the humor and resilience and the utter devotion that comes through.The passion of the life force, the desire to take their lives back from food or whatever keeps them constrained.
Thank you all for your many responses. At this point, the air quality is so bad that people are walking around outside with masks. When you look to the trees, you see them shrouded in smoke and the sky is grey. It’s difficult to take a deep breath (and not advisable). So many people have lost everything. And so far, 31 have lost their lives. (The photo below is CNN’s, not mine).
“Feeding the Hungry Heart,” no one was writing about issues around women and food, including breaking out of the cycle of shame, deprivation and self-torture. The prevalent wisdom at the time was focused on dieting. I suggested another way, which struck many as completely radical.
