Saturday, 2 August 2014
Wednesday, 28 May 2014
Maya Angelou in fifteen quotes
"If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain." Maya Angelou
www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/28/maya-angelou-in-fifteen-quotes
www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/28/maya-angelou-in-fifteen-quotes
Thursday, 10 April 2014
Monday, 7 April 2014
She was never yours to keep
She was the first.
She was a yank in your stomach
and an ache in your bones.
She was a galaxy sleeping next to you,
a swirling mess of stars and dust and light,
and she was home when you lost your way;
her arms strong and steady,
her chest warm and familiar.
She was the first yawn in the morning,
barely awake but beaming,
her lips soft on your shoulder,
and you could never,
you could never have imagined
you would ever love someone
quite like this.
She was the first that made you cautious
but the last to make you worry,
and There. There is where you love her.
There, in the lull of the evening,
when her hands had made their way
idly to your hair
and you felt a tug at your heart
and a hitch in your breath
when she kissed your temple.
She treaded lightly while you stumbled,
she was grace when you were mayhem,
she was the calm of the storm
when you were lost out at sea.
She was the fire you felt in your lungs
and the guilt that rooted itself in your chest
because she was too good, too good, too good
for you, and you knew it all too well.
She was a fleeting moment,
brief, passing, momentary,
but she was also an eternity,
and when someone asks you
what your favorite number is,
you will say Her,
because she is still your favorite infinity.
l.a.o, she was never yours to keep
She was a yank in your stomach
and an ache in your bones.
She was a galaxy sleeping next to you,
a swirling mess of stars and dust and light,
and she was home when you lost your way;
her arms strong and steady,
her chest warm and familiar.
She was the first yawn in the morning,
barely awake but beaming,
her lips soft on your shoulder,
and you could never,
you could never have imagined
you would ever love someone
quite like this.
She was the first that made you cautious
but the last to make you worry,
and There. There is where you love her.
There, in the lull of the evening,
when her hands had made their way
idly to your hair
and you felt a tug at your heart
and a hitch in your breath
when she kissed your temple.
She treaded lightly while you stumbled,
she was grace when you were mayhem,
she was the calm of the storm
when you were lost out at sea.
She was the fire you felt in your lungs
and the guilt that rooted itself in your chest
because she was too good, too good, too good
for you, and you knew it all too well.
She was a fleeting moment,
brief, passing, momentary,
but she was also an eternity,
and when someone asks you
what your favorite number is,
you will say Her,
because she is still your favorite infinity.
l.a.o, she was never yours to keep
Sunday, 9 March 2014
7 Reasons Why You Should Travel Alone At Least Once In Your Life
http://thoughtcatalog.com/yara-coelho/2013/12/7-reasons-why-you-should-travel-alone-at-least-once-in-your-life/
Don’t date a girl who travels
She's the one with the messy unkempt hair colored by the sun. Her skin is now far from fair like it once was. Not even sunkissed. It's burnt with multiple tan lines, wounds and bites here and there. But for every flaw on her skin, she has an interesting story to tell.
Don’t
date a girl who travels. She is hard to please. The usual dinner-movie
date at the mall will suck the life out of her. Her soul craves for new
experiences and adventures. She will be unimpressed with your new car
and your expensive watch. She would rather climb a rock or jump out of
an airplane than hear you brag about it.
Don’t
date a girl who travels because she will bug you to book a flight every
time there’s an airline seat sale. She wont party at Republiq. And she
will never pay over $100 for Avicii because she knows that one weekend
of clubbing is equivalent to one week somewhere far more exciting.
Chances
are, she can’t hold a steady job. Or she’s probably daydreaming about
quitting. She doesn’t want to keep working her ass off for someone
else’s dream. She has her own and is working towards it. She is a
freelancer. She makes money from designing, writing, photography or
something that requires creativity and imagination. Don’t waste her time
complaining about your boring job.
Don’t
date a girl who travels. She might have wasted her college degree and
switched careers entirely. She is now a dive instructor or a yoga
teacher. She’s not sure when the next paycheck is coming. But she
doesn’t work like a robot all day, she goes out and takes what life has
to offer and challenges you to do the same.
Don’t
date a girl who travels for she has chosen a life of uncertainty. She
doesn’t have a plan or a permanent address. She goes with the flow and
follows her heart. She dances to the beat of her own drum. She doesn’t
wear a watch. Her days are ruled by the sun and the moon. When the waves
are calling, life stops and she will be oblivious to everything else
for a moment. But she has learned that the most important thing in life
isn’t surfing.
Don’t
date a girl who travels as she tends to speak her mind. She will never
try to impress your parents or friends. She knows respect, but isn’t
afraid to hold a debate about global issues or social responsibility.
She
will never need you. She knows how to pitch a tent and screw her own
fins without your help. She cooks well and doesn’t need you to pay for
her meals. She is too independent and wont care whether you travel with
her or not. She will forget to check in with you when she arrives at her
destination. She’s busy living in the present. She talks to strangers.
She will meet many interesting, like-minded people from around the world
who share her passion and dreams. She will be bored with you.
So
never date a girl who travels unless you can keep up with her. And if
you unintentionally fall in love with one, don’t you dare keep her. Let
her go.
https://medium.com/better-humans/802c49b9141c
https://medium.com/better-humans/802c49b9141c
Tuesday, 18 February 2014
Thursday, 13 February 2014
Sunday, 9 February 2014
Tuesday, 4 February 2014
Friday, 10 January 2014
Thursday, 9 January 2014
Saturday, 21 December 2013
When Your Mother Says She’s Fat
By Kasey Edwards
https://medium.com/human-parts/bf5111e68cc1
Dear Mum,
I
was seven when I discovered that you were fat, ugly and horrible. Up
until that point I had believed that you were beautiful — in every sense
of the word. I remember flicking through old photo albums and staring
at pictures of you standing on the deck of a boat. Your white strapless
bathing suit looked so glamorous, just like a movie star. Whenever I had
the chance I’d pull out that wondrous white bathing suit hidden in your
bottom drawer and imagine a time when I’d be big enough to wear it;
when I’d be like you.
But
all of that changed when, one night, we were dressed up for a party and
you said to me, ‘‘Look at you, so thin, beautiful and lovely. And look
at me, fat, ugly and horrible.’’
At first I didn’t understand what you meant.
‘‘You’re
not fat,’’ I said earnestly and innocently, and you replied, ‘‘Yes I
am, darling. I’ve always been fat; even as a child.’’
In the days that followed I had some painful revelations that have shaped my whole life. I learned that:
1. You must be fat because mothers don’t lie.
2. Fat is ugly and horrible.
3. When I grow up I’ll look like you and therefore I will be fat, ugly and horrible too.
2. Fat is ugly and horrible.
3. When I grow up I’ll look like you and therefore I will be fat, ugly and horrible too.
Years
later, I looked back on this conversation and the hundreds that
followed and cursed you for feeling so unattractive, insecure and
unworthy. Because, as my first and most influential role model, you
taught me to believe the same thing about myself.
With
every grimace at your reflection in the mirror, every new wonder diet
that was going to change your life, and every guilty spoon of
‘‘Oh-I-really-shouldn’t,’’ I learned that women must be thin to be valid
and worthy. Girls must go without because their greatest contribution
to the world is their physical beauty.
Just
like you, I have spent my whole life feeling fat. When did fat become a
feeling anyway? And because I believed I was fat, I knew I was no good.
But
now that I am older, and a mother myself, I know that blaming you for
my body hatred is unhelpful and unfair. I now understand that you too
are a product of a long and rich lineage of women who were taught to
loathe themselves.
Look
at the example Nanna set for you. Despite being what could only be
described as famine-victim chic, she dieted every day of her life until
the day she died at seventy-nine years of age. She used to put on
make-up to walk to the letterbox for fear that somebody might see her
unpainted face.
I remember her ‘‘compassionate’’
response when you announced that Dad had left you for another woman. Her
first comment was, ‘‘I don’t understand why he’d leave you. You look
after yourself, you wear lipstick. You’re overweight — but not that
much.’’
Before Dad left, he provided no balm for your body-image torment either.
‘‘Jesus,
Jan,’’ I overheard him say to you. ‘‘It’s not that hard. Energy in
versus energy out. If you want to lose weight you just have to eat
less.’’
That night at dinner I watched you implement
Dad’s ‘‘Energy In, Energy Out: Jesus, Jan, Just Eat Less’’ weight-loss
cure. You served up chow mein for dinner. (Remember how in 1980s
Australian suburbia, a combination of mince, cabbage, and soy sauce was
considered the height of exotic gourmet?) Everyone else’s food was on a
dinner plate except yours. You served your chow mein on a tiny
bread-and-butter plate.
As
you sat in front of that pathetic scoop of mince, silent tears streamed
down your face. I said nothing. Not even when your shoulders started
heaving from your distress. We all ate our dinner in silence. Nobody
comforted you. Nobody told you to stop being ridiculous and get a proper
plate. Nobody told you that you were already loved and already good
enough. Your achievements and your worth — as a teacher of children with
special needs and a devoted mother of three of your own — paled into
insignificance when compared with the centimeters you couldn’t lose from
your waist.
It broke my heart to witness your despair
and I’m sorry that I didn’t rush to your defense. I’d already learned
that it was your fault that you were fat. I’d even heard Dad describe
losing weight as a ‘‘simple’’ process — yet one that you still couldn’t
come to grips with. The lesson: you didn’t deserve any food and you
certainly didn’t deserve any sympathy.
But I was
wrong, Mum. Now I understand what it’s like to grow up in a society that
tells women that their beauty matters most, and at the same time
defines a standard of beauty that is perpetually out of our reach. I
also know the pain of internalising these messages. We have become our
own jailors and we inflict our own punishments for failing to measure
up. No one is crueler to us than we are to ourselves.
But
this madness has to stop, Mum. It stops with you, it stops with me and
it stops now. We deserve better — better than to have our days brought
to ruin by bad body thoughts, wishing we were otherwise.
And
it’s not just about you and me any more. It’s also about Violet. Your
granddaughter is only three and I do not want body hatred to take root
inside her and strangle her happiness, her confidence and her potential.
I don’t want Violet to believe that her beauty is her most important
asset; that it will define her worth in the world. When Violet looks to
us to learn how to be a woman, we need to be the best role models we
can. We need to show her with our words and our actions that women are
good enough just the way they are. And for her to believe us, we need to
believe it ourselves.
The older we get, the more
loved ones we lose to accidents and illness. Their passing is always
tragic and far too soon. I sometimes think about what these
friends — and the people who love them — wouldn’t give for more time in a
body that was healthy. A body that would allow them to live just a
little longer. The size of that body’s thighs or the lines on its face
wouldn’t matter. It would be alive and therefore it would be perfect.
Your
body is perfect too. It allows you to disarm a room with your smile and
infect everyone with your laugh. It gives you arms to wrap around
Violet and squeeze her until she giggles. Every moment we spend worrying
about our physical ‘‘flaws’’ is a moment wasted, a precious slice of
life that we will never get back.
Let
us honor and respect our bodies for what they do instead of despising
them for how they appear. Focus on living healthy and active lives, let
our weight fall where it may, and consign our body hatred in the past
where it belongs. When I looked at that photo of you in the white
bathing suit all those years ago, my innocent young eyes saw the truth. I
saw unconditional love, beauty and wisdom. I saw my Mum.
Love, Kasey xx
https://medium.com/human-parts/bf5111e68cc1
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