Quarter Life Crisis by Lindsey Moss

Graduating college in a down economy was a very influential time of my life.  I consider myself to be a very driven individual and pretty much always knew my path in life: do well in high school so I can go to college and then get some sort of job.  My parents have always been a great support system and were a large guidance through my first quarter of life.  In addition to their support, I had also been
in a long-term relationship for both high school and college.  As you can imagine, we were best friends and he was a huge part of my life.

Upon graduation from college, there was a significant shift in my outlook on life.  Many of my friends were having a difficult time finding jobs and although rather broke, we were all trying to live above our income bracket.  I personally felt like I had lost my path.  I luckily convinced my internship to hire me on full time, which I discovered through Cindy Brown and her Real World Planning class.  This class happened to be the only time in college that challenged me to think about what I wanted to do as a career, and help me figure out how to get started.  However, after the job scare was settled, life still didn’t feel quite right.

My boyfriend had been going to school and hour away, and I had always believed when we graduated we would end up in the same city, both get great jobs and live happily ever after.  All of a sudden, that dream seemed scary and unreasonable, and I realized I needed to find myself without the pressure of another person. After all, we had been dating for most of my adult life!  It was scary to think of my life without him, but I knew it was something I had to do for myself.  My mom kept saying, “If it is meant to be, it will be.”  But, of course, at the time I had no idea what she meant by that. Read more…

In the Swagger community, we’ve been discussing why it can be difficult for women to say “no” in situations where, by societal pressures, we feel obligated to say “yes.”  We also talked about why Disney Princesses are getting stronger, and yet maintain the unattainable symbols of beauty and success our children cannot possibly attain.  Much as I appreciate Disney’s latest attempt to make its princesses appear to be self-sufficient andstronger, I was a bit shocked when viewing the latest of Disney’s princess movies, Rapunzel.

My girls, ages 4 and 6, went to the movie with their Dad, and came home wide-eyed and breathless, as any good child would after seeing aDisney movie.  Immediately, though, I could sense something major happened.  My eldest said, “Mommy – you are not going to believe what happened in the movie!”  My youngest, “Mommy – you would not like what happened in this movie.”  I was amused and thought some dragon had been slayed or some prince spurned.  “Mommy – Flynn Rider cut off Rapunzel’s hair!”

Huh?

I didn’t get to see the movie for a few more months, but gathered from family and friends’ descriptions that Flynn had cut Rapunzel’s hair off for some reason.  When I saw the movie, my feminist alarm started to ding loudly when it came time to view the act.  I don’t want to spoil this for you, so if you haven’t seen the movie, fair warning – the next paragraphs contain spoilers.

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Grief and dating

Why are you online looking for friends? Probably because you lost someone, one way or another. Have you dealt with your grief? Have you faced it and let it unravel within your body? Did you sit with your feelings long enough to give the chemistry/adrenaline the time to exit the body? This is a spiritual activity: you check in with your body, feel what it is feeling and how it is related to what you’re thinking. Am I looking to be saved? Do I want to have another in my life so I am distracted from my more painful, uncomfortable or shadowy feelings? Am I looking for an escape from my grief?

Detachment

When I feel the energy and spirit in my body, I am not lonely. But when I am thinking, I cannot tell what my body is feeling anymore and I can’t feel Spirit energy within. So the practice is to keep coming back, keep coming back to the body sensations, the breath, and move out of thinking, move away from expectation, from analyzing or judging or rejecting or accepting. None of these activities is real or productive. It is usually the ego holding on to a fantasy/thought. In general any holding on activity is ego-related. What is real is detaching, staying open and in the moment and not knowing, not knowing why we are alone, or fantasizing about not being alone but staying in the balance of the present. Letting all thoughts come and go. It is just like regular life no matter how many pictures or profiles of people keep coming at you. Maybe online dating requires more practice than everyday life, to stay balanced and aware of spirit within. Just keep letting thoughts (or photos or profiles) come in, and go out. Come back to the body. Breathe. Read more…

What do you want to do in your life?  Read Amanda’s thoughts and her challenge to all of us!

What do you desire to do in your life? This is exactly what should be on a life list; all those dreams and wishes you’ve pushed into the back of your head, all those lost fantasies you had as a six year-old, all those ideas you abandoned. But guess what?

Those dreams can be redeemed on a life list and can come true if you set your mind to it. The goal of a life list is to accomplish all of those dreams you wrote down, giving you confidence and buoyancy. However, the problem with some people’s life lists is that they don’t do anything to make it happen. You can’t just hope and wish it will come true, because it most likely won’t.

If you really want your life list to come true, you need to do something about your wishes. The most wonderful thing about a life list is that you will see it every day, so you’ll think about it each day. This will lead to wondering how to accomplish it and eventually making real plans to achieve these goals. Now, some may think that having far-fetched goals dangling in front of their face every day will discourage them. There are always things to do and people to see, leaving no time. But these goals will encourage you to take baby steps while still doing what needs to be done. However you decide to accomplish your goal, you’ll eventually find a way to accomplish them, leaving satisfaction and a great memory. What do you want on your life list?

Amanda is 12 years old, and attends middle school in Littleton, CO. She enjoys writing and entering her pieces in contests. Amanda also enjoys reading, rock climbing, hiking, listening to music, and hanging out with her family.

My 20-year old who lives across town with college roommates asked me last week if we could go to Costco because she was out of bread. I used to spend a lot of money there when she and her sister were at home. But now the portion sizes are so large there’s hardly anything I can buy that won’t spoil before I use it or take up too much space for my own sanity.

I keep my membership for the olive oil, tuna, and apparently beach towel swagger.

I hadn’t told my daughter beach towels were on sale during the car ride but just past the cereal aisle she spotted them. In-gasp of breath: “Oh, can we get one of those?” Meaning, “Will you buy that for me?”

“Sure,” I said. “I actually have a coupon for that.”

“That’s one of my favorite memories from childhood, Mom,” she said. “When out of the blue you would bring home new beach towels for us.” Read more…

How do you feel about your age and your face?  Read what Priestess Entrepreneur Cindy Morris says.

Smoke and Mirrors

by Cindy Morris

One of the great things about moving along in life with even a minor commitment to self-awareness, is that I finally have come to accept some basic truths about myself, and the picture’s not so pretty. Coming to the end of a remodeling, reconfiguring, and decorating project of turning the front apartment of my Victorian duplex from a yearly rental into a vacation rental I see that I have a rather unsuccessful style of doing things. Like a 4-year-old I will throw myself joyfully into a project I know nothing about only to realize I have made a colossal mess of things and spend more time cleaning up after my messes than it took to make them in the first place. In a momentary flash of insight while I was scraping the bathroom sink, the toilet, the floor, and every other surface I did not think to cover before I painted the walls, I could see that I have always rushed headfirst into everything in my life without proper preparation, believing and hoping that somehow it all would all work out.

 As my finances flirted with disaster and ruin and, at the very last possible moment, the hand of God stepped in and averted the inevitable collision into the giant iceberg floating clearly in my line of sight. I was two breaths away from fiddling my last song on the decks of my own Titanic. Romantically there are no words for the long term implications of the spontaneous choices I have made. In retrospect I see the folly of falling for glossy blue eyes above a tattooed bicep and the gift of gab that lulled me to sleep, or stupor, the seduction of beauty, snappy repartee, and the deliciousness of a moment of ecstasy over any hope of a long term comfort. I actually had to pay certain unnamable persons just so they would go away and leave me alone. Hence some of the financial debacle-all tied up in a big, sloppy knot fueled by hormonal impulses aimed at achieving great moments of transcendence through the exchange of skin and fluids with another. Read more…

The avoidance of legitimate suffering is the root of all neurotic behavior.

                          Carl Jung

Facing grief? It is a simple idea yet it sounds awful. We were taught to get over grief, not dwell on it. We are supposed to go through stages so we can be done with it. But use it to our advantage? Don’t hear much about that.

What is grief? Loss? Abuse? Trauma?Abandonment? All of the above?

 The basic premise for us physically is that the body is charged with stress chemicals that allow us to survive traumatic events. This has been called fight or flight (mobilize) or disassociation (immobilize). We need these responses to survive. Animals need these responses. However animals, once they have reached safety, will tremble and the stress chemicals can exit their bodies. Humans don’t have this automatic mechanism that expels the chemicals once the trauma is over. Our cells will hold chemicals and ‘memories’ of the trauma in our bodies. Subsequent events can trigger these chemicals and memories so that we feel the trauma all over again, as though it was in the past. This looks and feels like a flashback. We react with energy or anger or fury that seems inappropriate to the present event. Read more…

Have you ever had a moment where you hear or see something really simple, and really elegant, and you just feel your whole body say “ahhhh”?  I had one such moment a few years ago on a particularly challenging mommy-day.  My two-year-old was being her funny, charming, oh-so-naughty-self, and my months-old baby was in need of my rapt attention. 

The two-year-old had a way of finding the absolute most dangerous thing to do in every room of the house, and I felt like I was constantly saying “no.”  This particular day, she was spinning around and around trying to make herself dizzy, in close quarters with about a dozen sharp corners.  The baby was in my arms with a bottle, and I was semi-exhausted that day.   The spinning was stressing me, but I had said “no” numerous times and she persisted. 

The fact was she had no idea what could happen to her if she fell against the fireplace or the coffee table.  In fact, she felt none of the worry that I felt in watching this little circus act.  And, while my tension was mounting, I had to stifle the urge to smile.

She was giggling so much she had hiccups.  Her face was flushed and awash with joy and fun.  When she would stop spinning, she would stagger around like a drunken man, eventually falling to the floor, her eyes still spinning.  She was chortling in that melodious way kids do when they are completely engrossed in a happy moment. Read more…

When Cindy Brown asked me if I could write about maintaining your swagger as a mom, I thought it would be easy!  After all, I’m one of those bring-home-the-bacon-fry-it-up-kind-of-girls.  Sure, I spend my days running after two little girls, working part-time, writing part-time, cooking, cleaning, volunteering, and making endless trips to school.  Wait a minute – is there any swagger in there?

As mothers, we have a rare chance to re-discover what makes us swagger.  For instance, the first time you decide your child is sick enough to go to the doctor – well, that takes confidence, particularly if it’s in the middle of the night.  As adults, we may question whether to go to the doctor and perhaps go a few too many days or weeks before giving in.  But, hold a sick child in your arms, and you know when it’s time.

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