Today: Listening to Roy Orbison (so many wonderful songs including Oh, Pretty Woman) and reading The Nature of Small Birds by Susie Finkbeiner
What brings us peace and joy and what triggers us? Is it our phones, the news, some depressing book that just sucks the energy out of us, the little plant that refuses to survive no matter what we do, the spiders that just seem to multiply every time we turn around or the critters that just won't give up digging around our homes?
What if tomorrow morning, let's wake up, smile, and stretch first. Instead of our phones, we'll pick up our books and spend five minutes just for ourselves with a cup of coffee or tea. Just for the first hour of the day, we will leave our worries, emails, work, and the news far away from our reach. We'll acknowledge that our to-do lists and worries will clutter our minds but we will give ourselves some grace and say "not yet". Perhaps we will be able to afford the time to write a morning journal entry or write a silly poem about squirrels paddling in a little puddle or sketch a butterfly. What if we will be brave enough to take a walk around the neighbourhood (I'm still not there) or even just at home around our living room and kitchen and then we will listen to music in the background and embrace the day.
In the evening, as all is quiet, we will make ourselves a heartwarming cup of tea and reflect. What do we need right now to be peaceful. Early sleep, music, our journal, a movie, a magazine, a book? We will stretch once again, smile and remind ourselves that tomorrow we will do our best to be kind to ourselves once again. Slowly, very slowly, we'll listen more intently to the cues and signals that our bodies are sending us and adjust accordingly.
Wishing you a lovely day,
Loba
The Nature of Small Birds by Susie Finkbeiner
In 1975, three thousand children were airlifted out of Saigon to be adopted into Western homes. When Mindy, one of those children, announces her plans to return to Vietnam to find her birth mother, her loving adopted family is suddenly thrown back to the events surrounding her unconventional arrival in their lives.Though her father supports Mindy's desire to meet her family of origin, he struggles privately with an unsettling fear that he'll lose the daughter he's poured his heart into. Mindy's mother undergoes the emotional rollercoaster inherent in the adoption of a child from a war-torn country, discovering the joy hidden amid the difficulties. And Mindy's sister helps her sort through relics that whisper of the effect the trauma of war has had on their family--but also speak of the beauty of overcoming.Told through three strong voices in three compelling timelines, The Nature of Small Birds is a hopeful story that explores the meaning of family far beyond genetic code.