following your heart

Sometimes It’s in Your Nature to Take Your Toddler to Play at the Mall

April 22, 2008

A good friend told me yesterday how difficult she finds it to spend a whole day entertaining her twenty-month-old alone. That, she realized, is what those weekly Target outings are about. “Target?” I thought to myself. “Target? Honey, you haven’t sunk to the depths of toddler entertainment desperation until you become a regular at the [...]

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Taking Some Time on Sunday Morning to Honor My Heart

April 20, 2008

I woke up in a cranky mood this morning. “Great,” Mike said when I informed him of this fact, and I don’t blame him, even though I sort of did at the time. One of the hardest things about being cranky for me is knowing that I am taking it out on him. (I was [...]

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What Not Being a Real Buddhist Has Taught Me About Motherhood

April 19, 2008

Last night as I was washing the day’s sippy cups I listened to a podcast of Fresh Air featuring Pico Iyer, who has known the Dalai Lama for 33 years and recently wrote a book about him. The only one awake in the still house on a soft spring night, fresh from dinner out at [...]

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Making the Little Choices

April 14, 2008

I’m on my way to the Carl Sandburg house, and wondering if I learned anything at all yesterday. It was Saturday, I’d been cutting into my work time entertaining relatives, and I really just wanted to stay home and get some work done. Still, there’s a difference between deciding to get some work done and [...]

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Honoring Where Your Heart Has Taken You

April 7, 2008

I was sitting at the local ball park with Mike and Jake yesterday, enjoying the spring day and the buzz of peanuts and beer and baseball gloves, when “Here Comes the Sun” came over the loudspeakers. Normally, I resist writing essays built around a song that someone else has written. (I haven’t ever written a [...]

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Judge the Man in the Red Yoga Shorts only if You Are Ready for Him to Judge You

April 5, 2008

The man in the red yoga shorts was in class again on Thursday. I wasn’t the only one looking. None of us, I assure you, were staring with pleasure. He was wearing the traditional yoga shorts that no doubt were the inspiration for European bathing trunks, the kind regretfully worn only by old German men [...]

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Shopping for Groceries without Jake, or Following the Path I Have Chosen

April 3, 2008

Wednesdays are my no-yoga-class days, when the 7 hours Jake is at school (and I’m not) stretch ahead of me like a pint of Ben & Jerry’s waiting to be eaten without interruption. I imagine productivity the likes of which have never before been seen in a middle-of-the-week frenzy to do all the things that [...]

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Breaking from Break, Part II: Back to Being a Mom

April 1, 2008

So, it turns out it’s not as hard as I had anticipated to jump right back into mothering, working, and living at breakneck speed. Except, that is, for those five minutes this morning when I was trying to change Jake’s poopy diaper. He has now decided that a choice between lying down and standing up [...]

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Why Waiting for What You Want (and Maybe Not Even Getting It) Is a Gift

March 24, 2008

So, I’ve been working on this being a writer thing more or less steadily since I quit my teaching job in 2003. And, not for the first time, I feel like I’m on the verge of it actually panning out. All I’ve got to do is finish my YogaMamaMe book proposal, get the website up [...]

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How Not to Start Out as a YogaMama Blogger

March 19, 2008

Yoga and my life frequently seem to be at cross purposes. Yoga is about slowing down, being in the moment, focusing on exactly what you are doing and nothing else. It is about not pushing, about slow and steady change, respect for one’s limitations, and gratitude for the beauty within us all. It is about [...]

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Day One

March 18, 2008

Last week, I told an agent friend about the proposal I’m working on for a book called YogaMamaMe: How to Be Mindful When Your Mind Is on Your Baby. It deals, I explained, with that period of new motherhood around a year after giving birth when you decide you’re ready to be yourself again only [...]

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