The beautiful and wonderfully honest Ev`Yan has a great post today about our relationships to our body.  

A tasty snippet: “Think about all of your senses: you are tasting, feeling, smelling, hearing, seeing incessantly; these sensations enrich your life & make it gorgeous, vibrant, liveable.”  It’s a wonderful, true, much-needed message for all of us.  I hope you’ll read it, absorb the message, & share it with all the human beans you know.  We ALL need this reminder, constantly. 

And this photo, which I think ties into this topic well, has been floating around facebook this week.  Apparently this ad of Ruby, the anti-Barbie, was so offensive to Mattel that they’ve issued a cease-and-desist order.  Maybe they need the message of body love as well.  Here‘s where I found the ad. 

PS.  You are BEAUTIFUL.  Just as you are.  Right now.  And always.

Yes!  Rosa Parks has been one of my sheroes forever.  Imagine being a black seamstress in Alabama in the 1950′s and looking up into the face of a white man and saying “No, I won’t get up for you to sit here.”  It must have been terrifying for her, since people had been beaten for slighter offenses.  But she courageously charged right through her fear into a movement for change and the pages of our history books. 

Heather Plett, of Sophia Leadership, talks in this post about leading like Rosa Parks.  Often, we try to be like the big leaders- Oprah, for example, even though most of us will not reach that level of influence.  But we do each have choices to make, everyday, which can affect and change the world.  Heather suggests we change our vision and lead like Miss Rosa.   

“Rosa was a seamstress. She probably never used the word leader to define herself in her whole life. She was just a seamstress… and yet, she had a passion for justice. She had a vision for change. She knew that it was time for the world.

And so she took her seat on the bus. And she refused to get up when the bus driver told her to give it up for a white man. That action may seem insignificant, and yet it changed the world.”

Here’s a snippet:

It is not always pleasant to be in our bodies, but to stay open and say yes to what is, means to welcome life in its totality. It is a deep commitment to constantly letting go into the unknown, to feeling deeply, and to meeting each moment anew. It is commitment to the moment, where we even choose to feel hurt rather than to kiss the cold lips of yesterday’s bliss. It is tempting to try to live in a world made of daydreams and tidy ideas rather than living right here. Many of us use our intellects and even our spirituality as an attempt to escape this wild messy turmoil called human life.

You can read the entire post here.

This delightful gem came into my inbox today from Tara Gentile.  I know that SOOO many of us artists and creatives and not-in-the-box types have trouble asking people to pay for the services we provide.  I know that I personally struggle with this and this post is great for that kick in the pants we all need sometimes to remember our work has worth and so do we. 

A taste of the wise words she shared: “I began to assume that I was truly worth the $13 per hour they paid me.  I assumed I would never be worth more.  At the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey, this was a burden I carried. I assumed my worth had been set. What I soon learned is that your personal worth surges out of you even when you don’t expect it.” 

Here’s a video

And here is Eve’s incredible V-Day Project.

Click here and you can stream Moby’s latest album for *freeeeeeeeeee*, my lovelies! This has been on heavy rotation here in The Little House That Could for days now and it’s gorgeous!

You can thank me later. :)

“Poems like this are an anchor, a cornerstone for my faith. I pray them as a means of dialogue, of hearing God remind me of who I am, who God is and what life is all about.” 

Poets like Mary Oliver, Hafiz, Rumi, Alice Walker, Oriah Mountain Dreamer, & Maya Angelou have always whispered prayers into my heart, I just never thought of them as sacred text.  I’m loving the new frame of reference.  Check it out for yourself here.

Thank you, Paul Simon, for your music, for your artistry, and for being Rayna’s Dream Maker.

via NPR

Here’s the video on YouTube

(Click to see it full size on A Year Of Truth)