Today is Friday. We have made it to the finishing line before the long holiday weekend. At least, I hope it’s a long weekend for you. Wherever you are, I hope you will celebrate the completion of this week even if it’s just a little bit.
Buy yourself some grocery store flowers like the sunflowers I bought for myself a few weeks ago. Take a long walk in the woods after work. Stop by your favorite local bookstore and buy some fabulous book to kick your feet up with. Take a long, hot bath. Grab your favorite sandwich at the local deli. Pack a bag and take an impromptu road trip. Close the curtains to keep out the heat and have a Harry Potter movie marathon.
Do something that will bring you joy or peace or relaxation or excitement or whatever it is you need to help you say “it was a long week but I managed the stress and I am still standing.”
A couple of years ago, I discovered a publication called Bella Grace. It’s a thick, perfect bound magazine on quality paper. There are no ads. The photos are soft and the ideas are sharp.
It’s timeless and well done.
Basically, it’s the opposite of everything else that’s popular these days.
They aren’t selling products and ways to fix yourself. They are shining a light on calm and beauty in this world. They give you stories and writing prompts to make you think. Reader submissions are creative, thought provoking and sometimes so familiar it’s exciting to know there are others out there who think like you. It’s also sometimes mindset changing to read thoughts from people who are different. This is how we learn.
Bella Grace is about making the everyday special and making hard days easier. It’s about making the good stuff magical.
In short, it’s a soothing balm for my nervous system that I didn’t even know I needed.
I’ve only seen it in two stores in Ohio – Barnes and Noble and Joseph Beth Booksellers on Cincinnati so it feels like a special occasion when get to pick one up. It ain’t cheap but it’s not a throw away piece either. I keep my past issues lined up together on a bookshelf and always have one or two lying around the house. They are great rereads because you always spot something new.
They also publish a companion piece called “Bella Grace Field Guide To Everyday Magic.” The new one is more than 130 pages of quotes, worksheets, lists and writing prompts to recall memories, make you think, spark creativity and to help you view your world differently.
One prompt asks in what ways you are like your five year old self. Another is what books you think everyone should read. Others deal with everyday beauty in common things, adventuring in the world and the loveliness of being a homebody.
Perspective is a huge theme because the things some find workaday can be viewed by someone else as having great value.
There’s a two page spread with 31 blocks – a calendar with no dates, if you will. Each block is an inch square. The prompt is to write something about every day. It can’t be too long and can be just snippets like “dark and rainy, read Frankenstein, laughed with a friend.”
This time I’m using mine to write something good that happened every day. Most days are easy. Some are really hard. That’s how life goes.
This week there were good things to report even on the hard days. In fact, it felt like the hard days outnumbered the good. But, as I sit here looking back over the week, it’s hard to focus on the bad when there was so much good. Just this week, I had porch suppers on pretty nights, saw the governor speak at the ribbon cutting of an amazing new community college facility here in my hometown, saw a rainbow, and my dad rescued a kitten from a tree because he’s a really good guy.
That’s not too shabby.
I think half the problem with this world is that people focus too much on the bad and on what scares them. That’s certainly understandable given the social injustices, cruelty, anti- intellectualism, mental health struggles, poverty, closed mindedness, inflation, and narcissism of the general population that exists every day of the week.
Don’t get me wrong. I think about those things too and I worry we are on exactly the wrong path toward the future. Worst of all, I can’t change it. I can only change myself and try to be a role model for decency.
Bella Grace feels like the escape that everyone needs and most people don’t want right now. it’s certainly the escape I need. Less stimulation, prejudice, anger, and all around cruelty and more calm, kindness, and thoughtfulness both inward and toward the perspectives of others are a good start toward a better world.
Be the change you wish to see.
And if you get a chance, pick up an issue of Bella Grace and see what you think! As for me and the 31 days of good things, I’m almost done with my available space. It has been good for my mental health so I think I’ll find another way to keep doing it!
It’s Saturday which means it should be Adventure Day. I hope you are out experiencing something fun, interesting and fabulous.
Life isn’t meant to be spent in a cocoon. You owe it to yourself and your mental health to shake things up as much as you can – even if it’s just a different route to the grocery store or a walk around a nearby town that looks interesting.
Do something enriching every chance you get. Life is for the living and it’s hard to tell how many more Saturdays you have left. Do not waste them.
This mural is from Pittsburgh’s famed Strip District. It’s so vibrant and full of life, I find it mesmerizing! Plus, there’s a black cat!
As I consider my own gratitudes, exhaustion, and seeking ways to soften my own life, I find this concept has been a recurring theme.
The general idea is that a glimmer is something small that sparks joy in your life. We are tallkjng about the truly small things like that first sip of hot chocolate on a fall evening, catching sight of the full moon, or hearing laughter from afar.
Glimmers usually aren’t typically planned although I suppose they could be. They are incredibly good for our mental health because they are small reminders that life isn’t so bad and they help us build emotional resilience.
When you see the good in the world, you assume there is more good beyond what you see. There’s something positive around the next corner.
A glimmer is the opposite of a trigger. While triggers are the small things that irritate us and fire up lots of negativity, sadness and anger, glimmers will calm and soothe. They make us happy. They make us smile. They spark creativity and joy.
This week has not been the best but I have been enjoying some glimmers here and there. One day this week I was waiting my turn at a busy intersection and happened to look over to see a little bird splashing in a mud puddle at the side of the road. That little guy was experiencing pure bliss, splashing, ducking under the water, and spinning around before splashing some more!
That same day, I saw a beautiful rabbit in a neighbor’s yard.
I was on the road for work yesterday and experienced construction and traffic delays in multiple locations. As I headed home, I impulsively drove right past my turn to come home and headed to the Dollar General down the road. Whoever owns the field next to that store has planted it with sunflowers. It’s a glorious display of sunflowers right there along a busy state route.
My pictures are terrible because I didn’t want to trespass and had to aim my phone camera through some brush and the iPhone camera isn’t great. Still, isn’t it lovely to think that someone would plant such a beautiful display of flowers just to give me a glimmer one August day?
Look around you, friends. There are glimmers everywhere. You just have to know how to spot them!
Monsoon season continues here in southern Ohio. To be fair, it doesn’t rain all the time. Sometimes it’s dry and blistering hot. Regardless, you can be sure the humidity will be over 90 percent so there’s absolutely no reason to put a lot of work into your hair.
So far this year, I’m growing a terrific crop of weeds with a few flowers in the middle and I can’t begin to keep up with the work.
Yesterday, I stood at the window watching an absolute deluge run off my already saturated yard as cars puttered by with their windshield wipers on high. The rain was hard enough to practically knock down a small child but it wasn’t enough to break the flowers outside my window.
How is it that a steady drip of water can reshape rock but a storm like that can’t damage the petals of these flowers?
I don’t know the answer to that question but it got me to thinking about resilience.
Humans experience all manner of storms in life. I couldn’t begin to list the ways that illness, money, job loss, death, depression, and the corrupt world around us can bring relentless downpours of problems into our lives.
Some people lose their footing and never find their way back while others get knocked down but manage to pop up again. A few never fall at all.
Those who nurture their minds and spirits to be resilient always find a way to not let the storm ruin them. They don’t let the deluge of troubles damage their petals.
What do these people have that makes them better able to resist the challenges life throws at them? How do they keep standing against life’s storms?
Maybe it’s stubbornness. Perhaps it’s a sheer will to keep going, to never let life steal their joy and calm. Maybe it’s an inner toughness.
Whatever that quality is, I wish for you that you find it in yourself. I suspect it’s there in all of us if we dig deep enough.
There’s no rain in the forecast today but you can be sure I’ll be ready with a cute umbrella if it does come back. You can’t stop the rain but you can be prepared.
