Glow by Lady E

  Dear Glow Girls, It’s been a while since the last issue.  Right now, as I write this, it’s 12:24 am and I just finished decorating 17 notebooks and fulfilling another big order.  I posted 16 notebooks yesterday and one regular client bought them all.  There goes my inventory.  But I’m very grateful. In fact, thank you. More please.  And Lady Flo also arrived. So, yeah.  I’m sure you can imagine how that’s going for me.  I was swamped with orders one after another at the atelier. There was no breathing room.  And then I was commissioned to work on a book project that will last 18 months. So that’s an ongoing thing.  And now, I’m preparing for a bazaar and of course, Christmas! As I wrote this issue, I was also experiencing and choosing gentle healing  in many areas of my life. You’ve read about some of them in this issue.  For many years, I thought of healing as only physical health. But now I am profoundly aware of not only m...

Come sit with me for a while. I have my journal open, and tonight I’ve been thinking about something I suspect I do more often than I realize. I turn healing into another thing I need to accomplish. I want to know when I’ll be over something. When I’ll stop thinking about it. When something that hurt will finally stop hurting. When I’ll feel like myself again. And somewhere along the way, healing quietly becomes another deadline. Another invisible date on a calendar. Another thing I can somehow be late for. But maybe healing doesn’t work particularly well under project management. Maybe there are things I will understand quickly and things I’ll have to revisit again and again. Maybe I’ll feel completely fine one day and unexpectedly tender the next. That doesn’t mean I’ve gone backwards. It means I’m still moving through it. I remember one day, many years ago, when I had fibromyalgia. I lived in constant pain. I just couldn’t get a good day. And then one day, in the office...

  I have a habit of trying to fix things. If I’m uncomfortable, I want to know why. If I’m disappointed, I start thinking about what I should do differently. If I’m uncertain, my brain starts building plans. And if I’m sad, angry or lonely, some part of me immediately wants to turn that feeling into a problem I can solve. Maybe it comes from being used to handling things. I’m very good at asking, Okay, what do I do now? Usually, that’s useful. But lately, I’ve been wondering if I ask that question too quickly. Because sometimes I’m sad because something made me sad. Sometimes I’m disappointed because I hoped for something and it didn’t happen. Sometimes I’m angry because something hurt me. Sometimes I’m lonely. Sometimes I simply don’t know what happens next. And maybe I don’t need to immediately turn any of those things into a project. I don’t need a five-step plan for every uncomfortable emotion. I don’t need to find the lesson while I’m still living through the experience. I don...

My son practicing gentle healing with his plushies by sleeping as much as he wants.  And can we take a moment to appreciate our shark, Maxie’s pose? It’s like he’s posing for GQ - Shark Edition. I didn’t pose him. I found him like this that’s why I took the photo.  Healing is not another deadline. We are so used to measuring progress that we try to measure healing, too. How many days has it been? Shouldn’t I feel better by now? Why am I still tired? Why can’t I do what I used to do? At some point, even healing becomes another task we think we are failing to complete on time. But perhaps healing was never meant to work that way. I have a habit of turning everything into a project. There is always something to finish, something to improve, something I should already be better at. Apparently, I do this with healing, too. I noticed it recently because I kept thinking about when I would be back to normal . When would I have my old energy again? When would I stop needing so ...