5 Easy Ways to Receive More Love
“Consider soulmates to also be in the form of friends and animals, the wind, the tides, the plants, pieces of art, and the moon. Great love lives everywhere.”
— Victoria Erickson
If you’re anything like me, you may have trouble receiving Love and care. Here is a lovely list that may help!
“Consider soulmates to also be in the form of friends and animals, the wind, the tides, the plants, pieces of art, and the moon. Great love lives everywhere.”
If you’re anything like me, you may not have as much trouble giving, as you do receiving Love and care. Here is a lovely list that may help! But before you even get started, I invite you to slow down, soften, and be a little more present. It’s difficult to notice or receive anything when you’re tense or busy rushing from one thing to the next!
Just for you card by Sybil Schleicher
Listen to the birds singing and imagine their song is just for you.
Take a deep breath and literally take in your surroundings.
Feel your skin tingling under the warm water of your shower or bath.
Receive compliments, smiles, hellos, and kind words without resistance or self-deprecation.
Appreciate and fully experience your meals. Engage your senses. Imagine your body fed.
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Black Love
“Black love is Black wealth and they’ll
probably talk about my hard childhood
and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy”
— Nikki Giovanni, Nikki-Rosa
Did you know that George Washington Carver discovered hundreds of uses for peanuts, or that Frederick Douglass was a prominent figure in the abolitionist movement, or that Jackie Robinson was the first Black person to play in Major League baseball? Probably. I think these and many, many other figures in Black history, American history, are incredibly important, their contributions meaningful and so very significant. I can't help but wonder, though, if sharing a list of facts, as has been the Black History month custom since time immemorial, or keeping our reveries focused on a select few actually celebrates the beauty and richness of a culture, its depths and complexities.
“Black love is Black wealth and they’ll
probably talk about my hard childhood
and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy”
Black heart by Bryan Garces
Did you know that George Washington Carver discovered hundreds of uses for peanuts, or that Frederick Douglass was a prominent figure in the abolitionist movement, or that Jackie Robinson was the first Black person to play in Major League baseball? Probably. I think these and many, many other figures in Black history, American history, are incredibly important, their contributions meaningful and so very significant. I can't help but wonder, though, if sharing a list of facts, as has been the Black History month custom since time immemorial, or keeping our reveries focused on a select few actually celebrates the beauty and richness of a culture, its depths and complexities.
I suppose I'm also interested, perhaps more interested, in whether their families broke out into full harmony when singing even "Happy Birthday" to a loved one, like mine does? Was weekly church service an event around which all other activities orbited, like it was in my family - where one's best clothes were worn and complimentary dinners were made and served on white tablecloths with special glassware, where the eldest man said prayer among held hands and bowed heads before anyone sat down to eat and share stories? Could their grandmothers wield an otherworldly kind of confidence and create safety and belonging with pies and cakes, and did they carry culture and pass it down in the most subtle ways to their female heirs, like mine could and did? Where did their ever present dignity come from?
I wish Black history museums curated stories of freedom alongside their many stories of slavery. I wish they talked about choirs and music and dance, about the style of Black pastors. I wish they discussed how hip-hop rose from a musical and cultural legacy of self-expression, and even joy, within hardship. I wish they celebrated textured hair and what its evolution may say about the state of an entire people; or how Black girl magic might very well be a thing - woven together, in no small part, from the character-building patience and fortitude required for routine hair care, and the conversation and community-building that happens all the while. I wish a visit would yield a deeper understanding of how language and culture have morphed and evolved, what lovely things remain, and what things have changed as a result of the diaspora, because I’d sincerely like to know more.
Mostly I'd like the evidence to confirm, to bring to life and living color, something I know to be true: Love never dies. It remains. It endures. It will find a way. There is so much beauty, so much richness in Black culture, so much to be celebrated. I invite us all to go a little deeper - to highlight the threads that are unique, to find the ones that are shared, and to celebrate them all as part of a wondrous human tapestry.
Quotes from the Classics: May
We are in full swing, folks! The showers did in fact bring flowers and maybe some frenzy too. May showcases full-on evidence that we are alive - the bustle, the to and fro, the busy. There are coffee dates to be had, lighter clothes to pull out of storage, and plenty of weeds to pull and while I agree wholeheartedly with Wayne Dyer - “the difference between a flower and a weed is a judgment,” - I still spent three hours last week searching for lettuce and carrot sprouts.
We’re here, we’re alive, we’re excited AND we’re down on the ground, tending, sometimes taxed, and day-to-daying too. If you’re like me (the most introvertive extrovert any of you know), you couldn’t be more pleased about the sunshine and you might also be secretly dreading that dinner party or missing those quiet evenings of journaling and reflection. What a conundrum.
And, we’re off to the races! The showers did in fact bring flowers and maybe some frenzy too. May showcases full-on evidence that we are alive - the bustle, the to and fro, the busy. There are coffee dates to be had, lighter clothes to pull out of storage, and plenty of weeds to pull and while I agree wholeheartedly with Wayne Dyer - “the difference between a flower and a weed is a judgment,” - I still spent three hours last week searching for lettuce and carrot sprouts.
We’re here, we’re alive, we’re excited AND we’re down on the ground, tending, sometimes taxed, and day-to-daying too. If you’re like me (the most introvertive extrovert any of you know), you couldn’t be more pleased about the sunshine and you might also be secretly dreading that dinner party or missing those quiet evenings of journaling and reflection. What a conundrum.
No fear! We get to be both. We can be excited and expansive and abundant and also take care of ourselves. It just takes a little bit of adulting - not the 9-5 job adulting but the I-am-40-years-old-and-actually-this-is-my-life variety. We can be choicy and deliberate and work with this quickly rising May energy to do and make and be and grow whatever we want. We can listen to ourselves and be cognizant of when we need to take a break or move or drink some water. And we can leverage the dreaded NO.
I’ve heard this a million times before and still felt anxiety or the need to lie and make something up every time I was confronted with the need to say no. Of course, more self-Love was a game-changer and part of that journey included more focus on my yesses. My desires and wants are legit, gifted by the Universe, and really important to the thread of humanity. Sounds epic but I believe it now. If I hold my yesses that way, it leaves little room for stuff I don’t want to do. Think about it. “Guys, I can’t do the thing because I’m planning something cool for my new business! Or I’m doing this new meditation I found ! Or <insert other really fun, really exciting thing, requiring an exclamation point at the end of the sentence, HERE>!
It’s exponentially easier to say no when you’re excited about something else. So, what do you want? Who do you want to be? What do you want to create? Let’s be like the ants and get some stuff done, well, maybe with a little grasshopper fun too! Check out the quotes below that are certainly part of larger works but also capture May’s unique essence and energy, and also some things I would definitely say yes to. Enjoy!
Bee by Boris Smokrovic
“Come to the orchard in Spring. There is light and wine, and sweethearts in the pomegranate flowers.”
“She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! ”
“To see a World in a grain of sand
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour. ”
“And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.”
“Earth laughs in flowers.”
“Nobody sees a flower - really - it is so small it takes time - we haven’t time - and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”
“It’s a spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want to—oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”
Love in all things,
April Eileen