Mindfulness: Words for a Moment with the Breath
Gratitude: Why I Write ~ The Beauty of Blogging
This week I am grateful to write. As a kid, I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. I wrote many books and stories, and even about 50 pages of a novel as a teenager {it was terrible}. I continued writing ~ journals, essays, term papers, research papers, lesson plans, letters of recommendation, thank-you notes, emails, Facebook status updates, and Tweets. But I never considered myself a writer. Even when I started this blog, I still didn’t think of myself as a writer.
In just a few months of blogging I have discovered the beauty in renewing, exploring, and sharing my passion for writing. Today I’m exploring why I write, and why I am thankful for my blog!
“It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by.” ~Vita Sackville-West
As I conceptualized this blog and pondered the potential topics I would explore, a doubt nagged within me. Is this authentic? How mindful is it if I stop what I am doing with my children to take a picture of it, Tweet it, or take notes about it so I can write later about how mindful I was in that moment with my children? It was an uncomfortable cognitive dissonance, the catch-22 of noticing “I’m being mindful!”, which is the precise chatter of the mind that should be calming down during mindfulness practice.
But in writing this blog, I am becoming more mindful.
I shared this picture on Twitter the other night of my children reading together in bed, with the caption “These are the moments I wish I could stop time.” And in a way, I did. I briefly held the butterfly in the net. I didn’t leave the kids to read in bed so I could put away some laundry ~ I captured the moment, and lived the moment with my little Buddhas as we read and snuggled before bedtime.
My days don’t “slip emptily by.” It’s awfully meta to think about how blogging makes us more present in our lives when you write a blog about mindfulness! I am thankful that my blog about mindful parenting calls me to parent mindfully.
One of the reasons for writing is the “desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed.” ~George Orwell
Years ago, my husband started a private blog to share updates about the kids with our extended family. Having a blog to document our lives made us more playful ~ we took and enjoyed more family adventures. We love the journey our blog started us on ~ mindfully structuring our days to include time for family, for adventure, and yes, pictures and blogging. Starting Left Brain Buddha has been another avenue for me to share the experiences and ideas I find valuable and to document the moments I do not want to miss.
“We do not write to be understood. We write in order to understand.” C. Day Lewis
Taking notes on the 4th of July!
I now keep a notepad with me to jot down insights and ideas that I want to explore in my writing. Last weekend at our local 4th of July celebration, my children watched the volunteers reenact a Revolutionary War march. They admired their costumes and listened to stories of battles. And I saw my children struggling to figure out what “war” means, what soldiers do, and why people fight. I know these things {I’m a history teacher!}, but I hadn’t thought about war from the perspective of a four-year-old. And I knew I needed to write about this, to explore what I think about war, how I will explain it to my children, and what it means for my children to live in a world with so much violence. I am grateful for my blog: it’s forcing this left-brain teacher to not explain, but to understand and to try to make sense of the world.
“Blogging is the new poetry.” ~ Unknown
When I started this blog, I signed up for Liv Lane’s How to Build a Blog You Truly Love e-course. Liv teaches us to see the beauty that is all around us, and she told us that blogging makes you see and think more deeply. I am thankful that I am paying more attention to what is around me and taking more pictures. I hope it’s also helping you, as it does me, to see the beautiful and the exquisite in the mundane.
I have never considered myself creative {hello, left brain!}, but Liv’s course also encouraged me to think of blogging as an art form. Designing images, creating inspirational quotes, playing with layouts, colors, fonts, words: blogging truly is a form of poetry.
“I write to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see, and what it means.” ~ Joan Didion
The other night, I watched fireworks for the first time in seven years. It was my daughter’s first time seeing them, but not her first time sharing this moment with me. As I held in her in my arms, I remembered being in the very same place, the very day, the very hour, staring up into the stars while my daughter experienced her first fireworks from within my belly, squirming and kicking and reminding me that she was there, too. 2655 days later, I held her in my arms as we stared into the same sky.
I found myself watching her face more than the fireworks. The awe, fear, excitement ~ seeing fireworks reflected on her face was a far more powerful experience than seeing the stardust radiating around me. I remembered one of my favorites lines from a sermon given by Rev. Justin Schroeder at First Universalist Church in Minneapolis, describing a profound realization he had while staring up into the stars one night while camping. He realized he was “stardust, looking up at stardust.”
Stardust, looking up at stardust
I remembered to breathe. To take it all in. To be fully present, alive and in the moment. I knew I wanted to write about this, to find out what I was thinking, what I was looking at, and what it all meant. And to do that, I experienced it with my full being.
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I am so grateful for this gift of blogging ~ writing inspires me think deeply, experience fully, and reflect profoundly as I dance through mothering, teaching, living, and breathing.
And most of all, I am grateful that you are here with me ~ engaging, sharing, and reflecting with me. Together, bloggers {and readers and commenters!} sharing their honest voices with the world creates not just poetry, but a beautiful synergy of authenticity, laughter, beauty, courage, insight, knowledge, artistry, and inspiration. What a privilege to be a part of it.
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What are you thankful for? What made you smile this week?
- A Mindful Approach to New Year’s Resolutions - January 13, 2020
- Just This Next Step - December 16, 2019
- WAIT: A Mindfulness Practice for Waiting in Line - December 9, 2019
