Spend some time celebrating where you are in this moment.
Happy Thursday Friend,
I hope this week’s note finds you well. What is one thing you can celebrate in this moment? If you feel like it, hit respond and let me know. I always enjoy hearing from you.
This week’s note is all about embracing the moments that linger in between our ups and downs.
In this Week’s Featured Article (it's also posted below): How to Embrace the In-Between Stages of Life, I share 5 ways to enjoy peace and savor wherever we are, especially when life is neither high nor low. If you’d rather view/listen to this week’s feature, you can access that by going to this week's Happiness Video (also posted below).
However the week unfolds Friend, may you see how amazing you are as you are, and love the life you are in.
Helpful resources to enhance well-being and create lasting healthy habits.
You Are The Medicine, is a beautiful new book and resource by Indigenous Medicine Woman Asha Frost. I’ve participated in Asha’s full moon and new moon ceremonies and I admire her work and wisdom. In her new book, Asha invites readers to follow the path of the 13 Ojibway moons with animal spirits as your guides to unlock powerful teachings that will help you directly experience your own medicine connection to your inherent healing powers. If you feel you don’t have access to your roots, ancestors, or spiritual connection and you look outside of yourself for answers, you are forgetting the medicine you need lives within you.
The Thrive Global App is a free resource that will support you in creating and sticking with healthy habits.
The Fall in Love With Your Life Seasonal Planner is a feminine style planner that factors in your weekly intention, your mindset and your self-care. Once you have a planner, there is also a supportive group space available that helps you stay accountable to using the planner. It’s all about personalizing your weekly planning ritual, easing overwhelm and having quick, easy ways to reset through the week. There is ample room to join the Love Your Life Weekly Planning Group, and no pressure or added requirements from you.
Life is an adventure filled with mystery and miracles, highs and lows, and an extraordinary range of in-between experiences along the way.
I love the lead up and everything about the events that make up the highlight reel of life. The exciting times: like getting married, the births of my sons, embarking on a new career path, celebrating milestones with loved ones and the list goes on.
We all have our own highlight reel, and while our experiences may be as different as night and day, the emotion that underlies the experiences is very much the same. It’s the zest, the zeal, the passion, the ‘Wahoo, life is Amazing!’ kinds of feelings and encounters that make us feel truly alive.
On the flip side of the highlight reel, is where the low points in life reside. The heartaches, losses, rock bottoms, goodbyes to loved ones and on goes this list as well.
The types of experiences that result in grief and hopelessness, often instigate intense emotion that can become all-encompassing. What I’ve noticed and personally experienced in these stages of life, is that time stands still and the intensity of the hurt can feel as though it will never wane. While it is never desirable to have to travel down these roads, the sensation of the emotions has a strange way of also making us feel very much alive, though not in a ‘Wahoo’ kind of way by any means.
This leaves the in-between part of the life adventure. The place where life settles into a rhythmic pattern with space between the ebb and flow. Life is neither really high nor really low. The subsequent feelings of being truly alive through those intense experiences can also begin to fade. This can be an uncomfortable place to sit for many, myself included.
It can feel like a waiting game and there can be an impatience about what is next, or a desire to numb the experiences we’ve just had. During these openings, it’s not uncommon to want to busy ourselves. Sometimes we can become so busy and distracted we no longer recognize the nice calm space that has been placed before us. The period in time where we can just be, where we have an opening to breathe and the time to cultivate a sense of awe for the gift of being alive.
In an effort to truly embrace the “in-between” phases of life, I’ve made this list of reminders to help recognize the many opportunities to enjoy peace and savor the moment, especially when life is neither high nor low. If they seem like a fit for you, try them out or make your own list of reminders.
#1 Be Relieved
When the dust settles and life is neither high nor low, breathe a sigh of relief! Enjoy this time and do things that nurture your soul.
#2 Give Thanks
Give thanks for regular mundane tasks, chores and routines. The act of doing something familiar and straightforward provides an opening to engage our senses. Focusing on our senses like sight, smell or sound, helps us experience the task at hand from a richer perspective. Life can be enjoyed in new and refreshing ways when we approach it with heightened presence and appreciation for regular things we get to do.
