by Krista | Oct 21, 2013 | Spring
It’s been a lovely, lovely weekend and soon I will tell you all about it, but today I just want to share some things that have done wonders in cheering my heart in the hopes that they might cheer yours as well. XO
This little girl who arrived in the world yesterday afternoon. Her sister didn’t make it but she did and just seeing her little stalwart survivor self wobbling about makes me smile and take courage.
This gorgeous post on what people really look like. Hint: “Women have cellulite, men have silly buttocks.”
http://dalefavier.blogspot.com.au/2013/09/what-people-really-look-like.html?spref=tw
This handful of wildflowers picked at sunset while I was meandering with my goats. Now it’s on my kitchen table in a tiny blue vase making me smile whenever I go in the kitchen.
This 3-part series that has brought inestimable healing to my heart and the hearts of many who have suffered spiritual abuse of any kind. I feel like there must be sunbeams shooting out of my heart because it feels so light now.
http://journeyfree.org/rts/rts-its-time-to-recognize-it/
This beautiful little creature who got himself stuck in a water bucket before I happened along to rescue him. I felt like I must’ve stumbled into Brambly Hedge. 🙂
This post by the wonderful Anne Lamott:
“A dear friend has a grievous skin condition that has not yet been probably diagnosed, and she is in the deepest rashy misery every day, especially at several peaks hours. Her whole back looks so painful that you want to start scratching it for her; plus shoot her up with a little cool and refreshing morphine. It may be dreaded Japanese river rash.
Her doctor will eventually figure out what it is and be able to treat it but in the meantime, nothing helps, she could open a thriving black market in prescription unguents, although she is a Nana of 70ish–let’s say fifty-21 and may not your black market typo. She is deeply spiritual and active in her mental and psychological health, with a rich self of humor, yet she feels terrible about feeling so terrible. She’s feels guilty.
She said, “I have friends who are coming through chemo, whose bodies have been ravaged, yet they manage to say positive and grateful. So I am trying to keep it in perspective.”
I said, “I am not heavily into perspective at this time. Please call again during regular office hours. In the meantime, it’s awful to hurt and itch at this level every day. I do not accept it on your behalf. It’s a nightmare. I am going to file a brief itch the complaints department.”
She laughed, but said, “It could be so much worse. I have a friend with melanoma, and another who has shingles. Mine will pass.”
I said, “Stop! That is crazy talk. Suffering is suffering.”
How did we get so brainwashed that we can’t even say, “I am climbing out of my skin; and I hate this, and I need extreme comfort right now, even though that may not be convenient for everyone else in this family?” And how do we get back the right and ability to care for ourselves when we are very down and uncomfortable, the way we would for a friend–the way you would take care of me–even though 90% of the world may be in worse shape?
We just do. We start our new 24 hours over NOW. We cannot take care of others from a true and profound place if we blow ourselves off. It’s just the way it is. We can offer what we have: an apricot tree can offer apricots.
Yet, it is so radical to insist on the right to our own care and rest and love and aid. It breaks the contract we signed at 4 years old, to take care of everyone else in the family first, especially dad and then to make do with whatever was left; PLUS, in general, not to have any needs at all.
So it is an act of disloyalty, and there will be payback, and if we stop the train to get help, the long bony finger will appear in the sky, pointing at us, and saying, “You know the rules.”
So here’s my plan: this Facebook page will be available for everyone to complain about stuff their families said they must suck up, or stuff their husbands or children or girlfriends make them feel ashamed about.
We take the action, that we are worthy of being heard and deeply cared for, and then–and only then–the insight will follow. That if someone is suffering, see if you can. If someone is thirsy, get him or her a glass of water, even if it is you.
So for today, 1) feel free to mewl and puke and spew here about how the last few days have been a nightmare or how much your feet hurt a lot of the time, even though you know that amputees do have it much worse, or how much you hate hate hate your current weight, or what an absolute asshat your son has been lately, or how scary you just find all of life on earth some days, and how you can’t get your Internet working and have been on the line with snotty tech support for so long that you may have had a nervous breakdown. will read every single post, and believe complainy-spoiled-overly-sensitive old me, I will GET it.
2). Baby yourself, all day. Radical self care, naps and lotion on the Auntie thighs and maybe too many scrambled eggs and also a basket of raspberries that possibly could feed a family of three for the day, and the new issue of People, or the new Mary Oliver collection.
Okay? Start your engines. I want to hear some nice juicy complaints: for instance, I was on planes and at airports and in cars for 22 of the last 36 hours, a flight got delayed and i missed a connection and I was trapped at the Newark airport forever, and was completely bitter and enraged, even though I got paid for my lecture in Richmond and sold lots of books, and got to be a writer when I grew up.
SEE?
You can do it. I’ll be right here.”
Are there any quotes, stories, experiences, or people who’ve cheered your heart this week? I’d love to hear about them.
XO
by Krista | Oct 14, 2013 | Spring
As you know, I dearly love mornings on our farm. The animals are happily snoozing in the first warming rays of sunshine and the garden, oh, it is a lovely, magical place and shimmering light and glistening dewdrops.
It’s my favorite place to wander for the morning light captures things I miss during the blazing heat of midday.
Slowly but surely I’m turning it into an herb garden with all sorts of wonderful things I can use in herbal teas, medicines, and skin care products. It’s so fun to see it filling up with bergamot, peppermint, rosemary, sage, comfrey, rose geranium, and fennel.
I learned last year that I simply must have flowers in my garden so I’ve got a few lovelies growing: hollyhocks, nasturtiums, cornflowers, Johnny-Jump-Ups, lupines and a few others I can’t remember the names of.
All this growth and color has inspired me tremendously in creating my own homemade skincare products.
I have extremely sensitive skin and for years I moved from one product line to another trying to find something that wouldn’t hurt me. I knew people made their own skincare products but always assumed you had to have special appliances and skills to make them. How wrong I was!
Over the last year I’ve done a massive amount of research, pouring over books and recipes and ideas, collecting ingredients bit by bit. It’s been so fun getting in the kitchen mixing and testing until I found the combinations that worked best for me. It’s like making mud-pies for grown-ups.
I made and used homemade deodorant from a medieval recipe and loved the heavenly scent and that it actually worked.
For the past few months I’ve been using my own moisturizer and found it so soothing and healing.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been using my own cleanser and toner as well and the difference has been incredible. My skin never hurts now and issues that I’ve had for years are clearing up at long last. It feels so good knowing I’m putting stuff on my skin that is healthy enough to eat.
Here are the recipes that I use each day using simple things like yogurt, cold-pressed oil, flower waters, and essential oils. Next up is shampoo, chapstick, and emulsified lotion.
Have you ever made your own toiletries?
Homemade Face Cleanser
Ingredients:
1/4 plain yogurt
4-6 drops rose geranium essential oil
4-6 drops lavender essential oil
Directions:
- Whisk all ingredients together, bottle and refrigerate between uses.
- When ready to use, dampen face with lukewarm water, pour about 1 tbsp of cleaner into hand, rub together with other hand and apply all over face. Rub gently all over then rinse well with lukewarm water. Use damp face cloth to gently rub face to make sure all impurities are removed. Follow with toner and moisturizer.
Homemade Skin Toner
Ingredients:
2 Tbsp rose water
2 Tbsp orange flower water
Directions:
- Whisk ingredients together, bottle and refrigerate between uses. (You don’t have to refrigerate flower waters, but they’re wonderfully cooling to the skin when chilled.)
- When ready to use, dip clean cotton ball in toner and apply to entire face. Follow with moisturizer.
Homemade Face Moisturizer
Ingredients:
1/4 cup cold-pressed oil such as apricot seed, sweet almond, or jojoba
4-6 drops rose geranium essential oil
4-6 drops lavender essential oil
Directions:
- Whisk ingredients together, bottle and refrigerate between uses. (You don’t have to refrigerate oil moisturizers, but it’s just handy to have all three products in the same place.)
- When ready to use, dip teaspoon into oil and collect about 1/8 of a tsp. Pour into hand and rub hands together. Smooth over face, massaging into the skin. If you’ve applied too much, simply remove excess with a clean cotton ball.
by Krista | Oct 13, 2013 | Spring
Welcome to this weeks edition of Five Things That Made Me Smile This Week. (click here to see part one and part two)
1. A stack of new books to read
“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends;
they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors,
and the most patient of teachers.”
Charles William Eliot
I do so love a good story, especially a new one that pulls me right in. When I moved to Australia I had to leave behind 90% of my library and it absolutely gutted me. It’s been so lovely to rebuild it again through library sales and a funny little bin that sits outside a nearby petrol station where books are available on donation basis. I’ve started a new tradition of beginning each morning with a cup of tea, a good book, and my journal. It does wonders for getting my day off to a fantastic start.
2. Heaps of duck eggs
Through the winter our chooks, ducks and geese cease laying. But once Spring arrives, they lay like mad! Each day I’m collecting bowls full of eggs and using every egg-centric recipe I can think of. (If you have a favorite egg-y recipe you’re willing to share, please do!!) I’m especially excited about the duck eggs because they have such big yolks and are very rich and lovely in baking.
3. A pretty little plate
Bear and I like to have “a little something” with our evening cuppas, and when I found this plate at a thrift store this week, I knew she’d be perfect for holding small delectable morsels. It’s such a cheery plate and makes me happy.
4. Cornflowers and hollyhocks
I was very sad this week to discover that a mystery animal had eaten every one of my cucumber and bean plants. Humbug. But my spirits were restored when my hollyhocks and cornflowers erupted in gorgeous blossoms. They are so beautiful and colorful and cheer my heart every single day.
5. Homemade ice cream
Queensland seems to have skipped Spring completely and launched headfirst into a piping hot summer so I’ve been guzzling iced herbal teas and making batch after batch of dairy-free, sugar-free ice creams. My favorite recipe right now is Strawberry Mint. I use good quality coconut milk (check the label to make sure it’s actually coconut milk and not thickener with a bit of coconut milk thrown in for fun), ripe strawberries, real maple syrup, mint leaves, and mint extract and it is scrumptious. It freezes really hard so make sure to take it out about 10-15 minutes before you’re ready to serve. It’s so lovely to dig into a big bowl of strawberry mint ice cream while sitting on a shady, wind-swept veranda.
What things are making you smile this week? 🙂
by Krista | Oct 10, 2013 | Spring
“Sometimes you need to hang on to someone else’s hope,
someone else’s peace and sanity while yours is under siege.
Do it.
Courage, hope, faith, sanity, peace…they all come and go.
Borrow them from someone else’s supply until your own comes back in.”
Linda Mundy
I read these wonderful words yesterday and they made me teary and feel overwhelmingly grateful for the kind and loving souls who shared their supply with me when I felt so lost, scared, insecure, and crushed in body and spirit.
Since then I’ve had a slideshow of beloved faces running through my mind that send me smiley and weepy all at the same time.
Until I moved to Australia, I’d always prided myself on being a Very Strong Person. After all, I’d made it through a religious cult and brainwashing, several stalkers, being abused by people I trusted, crippling illnesses, etc, etc, and I was Fine. Wasn’t I?
No. I wasn’t Fine. I was simply Hanging On For Dear Life.
I was trying so hard to be strong enough, good enough, brave enough, wise enough so that I wouldn’t be a burden or a disappointment or a failure or an embarrassment. I held the wonky notion that to be strong meant to be unaffected by bad things.
I was wrong.
I didn’t need more strength, I needed healing, validation, and truth that liberates and frees. Mostly I needed love. Real love.
I’ve learned that there are lots of different things that go under the name of love. People beat, rape, break spirits, dull minds, fetter dreams, force into molds, seek to control and manage, all in the name of love.
For a long time I didn’t know what real love was. I believed whoever said they loved me even when they hurt me, lied to me, touched me in bad places, exposed me to molesters and didn’t protect me. I believed them when they said that Love was their motivation for keeping me from the very people who would later help to heal and free me.
But that’s not love. That’s fear. That’s arrogance. That’s one human being believing they have the right to control another.
They don’t.
I don’t.
We don’t.
I’ve learned that Love isn’t a word that people say, it’s something they feel and something they do.
I’ve been learning to love all over again, casting aside the wonky notions I had and embracing affection, kindness, consideration, thoughtfulness, forgiveness, apology, delight, restoration. There’s a glorious peace and acceptance in real love. I don’t have to try to change anyone or fix anyone, not even myself. Yes, I get to grow and learn and share and all those good things but not to prove my worth, simply to thrive as a human being.
I’ve thought about love so much in recent months as I’ve healed from PTSD and Depression, and learned how to stop the coping methods I’d adopted to survive and embrace thriving methods instead.
It’s a hard thing to learn how to thrive when you’ve been coping for so long. Coping is good, necessary, and the very bravest thing you can do when you’re in a dark or dangerous place, but once you’re out in the light, you don’t need to cope anymore. We get to thrive.
Thrive. I love that word. 🙂 It is so ALIVE, so free and open and honest and real. It speaks of freedom of thought and spirit and body, of self-awareness and wholeness, of healing and strength and hope. I love it.
Bit by bit I’m building the things into my life that help me thrive: loving people, exercise, nature, good food, lots of water and chamomile tea, great books and movies, soul-stirring music, supporting others, writing, taking pictures, making beautiful things.
How about you? Have you ever been in a Coping Stage? What things, thoughts, people, experiences helped you transition to thriving? I’d love to hear your ideas. 🙂
by Krista | Oct 8, 2013 | Spring
It is a gorgeous Spring morning, a beautiful day to get back to work and routines after a marvelous holiday. I’m in my favorite green armchair armed with tea and dark chocolate gluten-free banana bread to get me through a massive to-do list. Chores are made immeasurably easier with decadent nibbles in between projects.
Over the holidays Bear and I spent a wonderful day exploring various parts of Brisbane with our dear friend Elizabeth. We had such fun scoping out new places for gelato, meandering through beautiful gardens, and taking in grand vistas from stunning overlooks. My favorite spot of all was the Asian market in Inala.
I felt like I had stepped into another world, as if somehow instead of beetling along in Elizabeth’s car, we had boarded a plane for parts unknown.
I loved everything from the chalkboard signage to the buzz of foreign languages around me. Everywhere I looked were beautiful faces from Africa, Russia, Vietnam, China, and a host of other countries.
The food selection was mind-boggling. I couldn’t focus long enough to buy anything at first. I just had to wander happily and, admittedly, slightly dazedly, as I tried to take it all in.
There were mounds of strange fruits, knobbly tubers, and even familiar fruits in unfamiliar hues.
You could smell the strawberries before you saw them and the mangoes and tomatoes were wonderfully plump and perfectly ripe.
I loved the unexpected vignettes that greeted me as I wandered down one shaded lane after another.
Elizabeth is Chinese and was able to explain a lot of the foreign produce we saw, but some of them had even her baffled. I loved chatting with the shopkeepers who were delighted to help me but burst out laughing when they realized they couldn’t remember the English words for any of the foods I pointed to.
I didn’t mind and happily stocked up on mangosteen and longan and could not resist tiny eggplants the size of golf balls. I quickly filled my box with massive bunches of fresh spearmint and a type of basil that looked like a cluster of maple leaves. I found plump sugar snap peas and massive avocados and a fruit that I didn’t recognize but was told was something like mangosteen.
It was wicked fun and so inspiring.
After the markets we headed into tiny little shops stacked floor to ceiling with weird and wonderful things. I found a massive steamer to make gluten-free dumplings (yay!) and more noodles than you can shake a stick at: glassy rice noodles, purple sweet potato noodles, and silvery potato ones. So fun. 🙂
Elizabeth treated us to an exquisitely delicious Vietnamese lunch of fresh spring rolls, sugarcane prawn salad, and my new favorite soup: phở
It looks like a very simple beef noodle soup, but one sip of that gorgeous broth and you are transported to heights of bliss.We kept sipping and savoring, guessing each flavor as it stood out to our taste buds.
I learned that in Vietnam, each family has their own secret recipe for phở that they guard fiercely. The basic recipe consists of dry-roasted spices simmered long and slowly with beef, onion, and garlic. Once fish sauce is stirred in, it’s poured over rice noodles and thinly sliced beef then topped with bean sprouts and fresh basil and/or mint.
I’ve been experimenting with my own version of phở and it keeps getting better. I only use a hint of anise since it’s such a strong flavor, double the onion and garlic because we adore those flavors, and add slices of crunchy snow peas as a topping. Bear likes a bit of soy sauce added to his broth. It has become one of my very favorite comfort foods.
What is the best fresh produce market you’ve ever been to? Do you have a favorite comforting soup?
Phở
Ingredients:
1 aniseseed pod
1/4 tsp fennel seeds, lightly crushed
4 cloves
1 stick cinnamon
5 cardamom pods, lightly crushed
1 tsp black peppercorns
8 cups water
2-3 cups stew meat, cubed
1 beef bone, roasted (roasted at 375 F for 30-40 minutes)
2 onions, halved (no need to peel)
6-8 garlic cloves, smashed but not peeled
1-2 Tbsp fish sauce
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp sea salt (more, if needed)
2 cups thinly sliced steak (like for stir-fry)
1 package bean sprouts
1 cup snow peas, thinly sliced
1 bunch fresh Thai basil
1 bunch fresh spearmint
1 lemon, quartered
Directions:
- Place first six ingredients in saucepan over medium-high heat. Dry roast, stirring to keep from burning, for 2-3 minutes until fragrant. Remove from heat.
- In large saucepan combine water, stew meat, roasted beef bone, onions, cloves, and spices. Bring to boil then lower heat and simmer for 2-3 hours until broth is strong and rich. Skim off any froth/fat.
- Strain broth through fine mesh sieve and return to pot.
- Stir in fish sauce, sugar, and salt and bring to boil.
- While broth is heating, boil water and pour over rice noodles. Let sit five minutes then drain well. Divide noodles between 2-4 bowls.
- Add sliced steak to broth and simmer until cooked through, about 1-2 minutes.
- Remove steak and divide between soup bowls. Pour broth over noodles and steak.
- Add bean sprouts, basil, spearmint, and fresh-squeezed lemon juice.
by Krista | Oct 1, 2013 | Spring
It has been such a good holiday thus far, busy as can be, but so good.
Bear and I have been juggling a mixture of hard labor and jolly day trips around Queensland, and my heart is full of great memories of gorgeous places, projects completed, and jolly times with dear friends.
I’m going to take the rest of the holiday off from blogging, but I shall leave you with these photos of the exquisitely beautiful and peaceful Japanese Gardens at the Brisbane Botanical Gardens at Mt. Coot-tha.
I love this place so much. Especially early in the morning when there aren’t any visitors about and I have to run through a gauntlet of sprinklers to get inside.
It is a lovely place for slow strolling and quiet sitting.
At this time of year the azaleas and irises are blooming, vibrant bursts of color in a soothing expanse of green.
I love the water, particularly on cloudy days when it seems even more still and peaceful.
“Even the smallest act of caring for another person is like a drop of water -it will make ripples throughout the entire pond…” Jessy and Bryan Matteo
I like that thought very much. It reminds me of another quote I read earlier this week:
“I can’t save the whole world. I can’t bring peace to Syria. I can’t fix the environment or the health care system,
and from the looks of it, I may end up burning my dinner.
But I can be kind.”
Kate Bartolotta
Wishing you a beautiful week filled with peaceful moments, much kindness, and happy memories to cheer your heart when life goes wonky.
xo
