Archives for October 2011

The Story of the Magic Shirt

[Update: It looks like this partnership is over so I’ve updated links. But it’s still a good fairytale.]

Once upon a time there was a boy in a blue shirt.

Boy in a blue shirt

It was a nice blue shirt. The fabric was really soft and it was good for napping in.

Boy in a blue shirt #3

One day while wearing the shirt, the boy concentrated really hard, trying to hold up two fingers.

Boy in a blue shirt #2

It turns out that’s hard to do when you’re three.

But it didn’t matter, because this shirt was a magic shirt – the kind that looks like one shirt but is actually two (even if you can’t get your fingers to show that).

You see, Olive Juice clothing has partnered with Clothes4Souls to provide clothing to children around the world who need it.

For every item of clothing purchased, Olive Juice will give another piece of clothing to a child in need through Clothes4Souls, the clothing division of Soles4Souls.

That makes the boy in the blue shirt very happy.

Boy in a blue shirt #4

 The End

***

When Soles4Souls asked me if I’d help let people know about this charitable program, I didn’t hesitate. It’s a great cause.

And, people, their stuff is cute. That incredibly handsome boy up there is wearing the marin tee (with some room to grow into it, yay!).

So check it out, will you? Buy something adorable for a special occasion. Start shopping for Christmas. Get a shower gift for the next new baby in your life. Remember, these clothes are magic. For every one you buy through Olive Juice Gives, a child who needs clothing gets a piece too.

(And if I have a girl, someone please buy that Blair sweater dress for me, will you? Swoon.)

 

I was given one item of clothing  for posting about this partnership but was otherwise not compensated (except, hopefully, for a smidge of good karma). All opinions, and the awesome fairytale above, are my own. 

Message in an Ebook

The evening quiet of a house after a toddler goes to sleep is like a grand piano after a concert. The sudden silence pokes you, pushes you, saying, “Notice me.” And I do – aware that the individual parts of the house, like the ebony and ivory of a piano, resonated not long ago with notes both high and low from being crashed upon in the music of life with a small child. The tones echo in my head, growing dimmer and dimmer until all I can hear is silence.

The silence, in my experience, is temporary. New noises quickly take over the available space in my brain. Thoughts of the day, big decisions, what ifs.

It was in this frame of mind that I wearily washed my face and climbed into bed the other night. After my regular browse through the social sphere – commenting on blogs, tweeting, laughing at jokes on Facebook – I shushed the noises and turned to Kindle.

Joanne Bamberget aka Pundit Mom

Joanne Bamberger

I’ve been reading through Welcome to My World, the ebook I contributed to. I’m enjoying the stories by women whose voices I know – honest, poignant, and funny – and revelling in getting to know those I’ve yet to encounter in the wide world of blogging. That night I reached chapter 9 – Building My Empire by Joanne Bamberger (aka Pundit Mom). I love her writing and her point of view never fails to intrigue. She’s far more politically savvy than I, so I looked forward to what I expected would be a different perspective from mine.

But that, of course, is not how the Universe works.

Reading about the path of a woman whose (current) career I admire, I got to the part about how she ended up a stay-at-home mom when an expected opportunity didn’t materialize after she brought her daughter home from China.

Oh, I thought.

Joanne writes about how the loss of her professional identity affected her and how, through the introduction to blogging, she became a work-from-home writer mom.

Hmm, I thought.

I’ve wondered if I could do that. Okay, truth: I want to do that. I know I can but I’ve wondered if I will be able to make it work.

“I’d love to see more women explore this third way of combining motherhood and professional fulfillment,” Joanne writes.

She offers her advice on how to do that. And what do you know – it’s what I, too, believe to be true. But I’m not going to give away her secret – you’ll have to buy it for yourself to find out. 🙂 (It’s only $6.99!)

The cover for the Welcome to my World ebook

(Joanne, I’m up for the challenge! Thank you for the sage advice and a beautifully written essay.)

On Steve Jobs and Living the Life You’re Meant To

There’s a For Sale sign on our lawn.

The listing for our house will officially appear tomorrow, but the sign is on our lawn now.

“How can you make a decision like this so calmly?” a friend asked a couple of weeks ago.

Calm? I’m not calm about anything right now (and evidently I wasn’t entirely prepared for that sign to go up).

I’m not calm about the stuff going on at work, and I’m certainly not calm about the fact that there’s a FOR SALE SIGN on the lawn of the house we’ve lived in for almost 9 years – since before we were married, since before we had our dog, since way before Connor was born.

As far as the stuff that happens next – big move, new house, new job – I’m excited about parts of it and, frankly, in denial about the rest. I’m almost 37 years old and I have spent most of my life living very near my parents. I’ve got really good friends here – pseudo-family kind of friends – I don’t want to leave. Both of those things make me want to barf.

But here’s the thing: I can’t stay here. Oh sure, in the literal sense I could. But in the larger-than-life philosophical sense, I can’t.

Last night as we cleaned and tidied and did the last few things needed for a photographer to come and take pictures of our house, I saw the news that Steve Jobs had died. I was sad; more sad than I would have thought, actually, but I’ve enjoyed revisiting his words of wisdom. Such as:

“When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: ‘If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.’ It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

I think this is genius. We always hear, “Live each day as if it were your last,” which is romantic and inspring but totally impractical. If I knew tomorrow would be my last I’d hop on a plane for Hawaii. I’d go out for dinner with my boys and overeat to an insane degree and then have the most decadent dessert on the menu. I’d spend hours sitting by the ocean. I’d write a really, really long letter to my son. Some of those are things I could do today – or any day – but I can’t do them over and over and savour the moments as though they were my last. Life doesn’t work that way.

The brilliance of the above quote by Jobs is the “too many days in a row” part. Ignoring the little voice that says, “no” is how years go by until we realize we haven’t done what we want to do in this lifetime.

I certainly don’t have it all figured out and I’m not entirely sure what I want to do next. I know the general direction, but not the specific vision. According to Mr. Jobs, that’s okay:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

So I had my little cry about the For Sale sign. I’m not saying I won’t shed many more tears by the time this process is done and I’ve left my first house and the city I grew up in, but in my heart I know those things are secondary.

House for sale sign

Wanna buy a house?

Linking up with Just Write – The Fourth:

I Believed Once

I believed once.

I thought I could make a difference. I followed my heart and used my voice and put it out there. I worked. Hard. I worked through lunch. I worked late, came home, had dinner, and worked some more.

I wrote. I wrote and wrote and brainstormed because I believed. And because I believed I put my whole heart in to my work.

The path my life has taken over the last five years has made me who I am now. Some of that evolution is on this blog, but so much of it is because of my work – the absolute passion and dedication I put into it, the opportunities I’ve had, and the people I’ve worked with.

My work changed who I knew I could be, but it’s the evolution chronicled here that has changed who I am. It has changed what I believe.

It has changed what I believe I can do.

I believe I’ve done what I can do in my current job, especially because recent changes have taken the work in a different direction. Despite knowing this is what I must do, I do it with a heavy heart. I played a big part in building something bold, and because that something will inevitably change – partly because the organization has changed but also because that’s what things do – I feel as though I’m saying goodbye not only to a job and a team but to a piece of myself. When I pack up my desk the box containing my pictures will also contain the shadow of my contribution, exiting the building with me dressed in both regret that things must change and an attempt at preserving something that meant something to me.

It’s time for me to move on.

We’ve spent the better part of the last month sprucing up our house and on Friday a For Sale sign will appear on our lawn.

On a date in the not-too-distant future I will write a letter to my boss and sign a piece of paper giving my house over to someone else.

I’m leaving the work and the people and the organization that changed how I think about what work is.

I’m leaving the first house we owned, and the house I brought my son home to.

I’m leaving the city I grew up in, where my parents – and my son’s grandparents – are six minutes away.

I’m leaving who I used to be in order to find out who I can become.

Who I think I am now.

I believed once.

And I’m choosing to believe again.

Sunrise. A new day in the Canadian Rockies.

 

Linked up with:

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Building Stronger Families, One Mom at a Time

I remember the exact day I found Postpartum Progress. November 10, 2010. It was a Wednesday.

I can’t remember exactly how I found it, but I think the site actually found me. That was before I started this blog. It was before I discovered #PPDChat. It was before I really started talking about my experience with PPD. But someone – one of my Facebook friends – posted a link and I clicked on it.

All of a sudden everything seemed a little better. I looked at the definition of postpartum depression and the 6-things series and I noticed, throughout, the tone of acceptance and support and hope. Finding that site turned me around and pointed me in the right direction, and at the time I had only a glimpse of how totally amazing it is.

That day, I sent an email to the site’s founder, Katherine Stone:

Katherine,

Just a quick message to say that I came across your site this morning via a link on Facebook. I immediately grabbed it and sent it to myself to read later, and I’m so glad I saw that one message pop up before I missed the chance to really notice it.

Your site is incredible, and it’s found its way to me at a very opportune time. My perfectionist personality (oh, how that is a factor for me!) has made it very hard to reach out for help. I finally did that nearly a year ago and overall am much better, but this has been a rough week and I’m realizing that I’m not quite there yet.

I’m not sure where this journey will continue to take me, but I’m very grateful to have found your site as I think it will be a good resource for both me and my family.

Robin Farr

Katherine sent this to me in response:

I’m so glad you found Postpartum Progress, and that it has been helpful.  It is so normal to have rough weeks in the process of recovery.  Just keep doing what you are doing – I am so happy that you reached out for help.  Just keep putting one foot in front of the other!!

The content of that short reply sums up everything that is amazing about Katherine and the work she does.

When I created my mama Twitter account and started blogging, I came across Katherine again and have come to know her as a totally supportive, incredibly dedicated woman. When she started her Daily Hope emails earlier this year, I signed up immediately. For months they gave me what I needed to face each day and while I no longer need them, I still get them. A dose of love and support every day – how could I not want that?

I get a lot from Postpartum Progress, and today I’m hoping to give back.

October 5th is the day when more children are born each year than any other day. Today is Strong Start Day

Strong Start Day logo

I’m going to quote directly from Postpartum Progress to explain the significance:

Only 15% of all women with perinatal mood and anxiety disorders ever receive professional treatment. This means that each year hundreds of thousands more women and their children may suffer from the negative effects of untreated PPD and related illnesses for the rest of their lives.

Postpartum Progress will change that with your help. We are developing a compelling national awareness campaign for postpartum depression, as well as new and improved patient education materials (the kind new moms won’t throw away!), and new uses of technology to reach suffering moms no matter where they are.

On October 5th, the day when more children are born each year than any other day, I am asking you to do one of three things:

1)   Make a donation to Postpartum Progress.  Any amount is welcome.

2)   Ask at least 2 other people who love you and know what you went through – people who’ve come to know that postpartum depression is real and that all women deserve to have access to the best information and help – to make a donation today in your name.

3)   Refer us to contacts at organizations that can help us with our work.

If you are financially unable to donate, send us your prayers or moral support so that we may find the right people to help us make major change.

Today’s the day.  Please help us build stronger families, one mom at a time.

 

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