Hi friends.  Welcome.

Hope this finds you doing well.  I’m coming to you a little late this week so lets call it the Saturday edition.

As always here are a few good things to get your weekend rolling along on a relaxed note.  

A Good Word

A poem in fact

From Rachel Steffen

A Good Look

Invite yourself into the garden with a reading nook under a tree.

Remember a lawn chair or old blanket and pillow will work just the same.  

More inspiration here

A Good Idea

From Jennifer Dukes Lee 

Permission  to Be Where You Are

A Good Read

from Cal Newport

Favourable Conditions Never Come

In a sermon delivered at the height of World War Two, a period awash in distraction and despair, C.S. Lewis delivered a powerful claim about the cultivation of a deep life:

“We are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to enjoy before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.” – – – keep reading

 

Every evening at bedtime, I pick one of my 4-year-old’s numerous kitty stuffed animals and do an extended call-and-response of meows and “I love yous” in high-pitched feline voices. Even though she has so many plush toys perched next to her she can barely fit on the bed, I know every single animal’s name. Kiki, Giselle, Lottie, Leona and Hope are the current favorites, and I know the order that she wants them arranged and trotted out during our extended bedtime ritual.

This perhaps seems like a small and insignificant part of my parenting day, but it always makes me proud, because it tells my daughter: I hear you. Because you are 4, your kitties are essential to you, and so they’re important to me, too.

And that’s what this series of essays is about: moms saying something nice about themselves, for once. Especially this year, it seems as if all mothers do is talk about our perceived failures: how we’re failing at remote schooling, or making the wrong choices for our kids when all the options are bad, or not being the “fun mom.”

Here is a chance for mothers and mother figures to take a moment to actually revere themselves, and all the big and small things they do for their families. Ideally, mothers can read these beautiful and generous reflections and feel good about themselves — not just on Mother’s Day, but every day, even if it’s just for a moment – –  – keep reading

and from straight talker Anne Lamott on Mother’s Day being complicated.

That’s it for this week friends. Hope you’ve enjoyed.

Have a beautiful weekend, rest up, do something you love xx