Lovely day today up at our cabin. I love being alone – most of the time. That’s when I get creative. That is, if I don’t get sluggish –which is always a possibility too. Today I spent checking in on blogs I enjoy. I don’t often get the time to do that, which is a ridiculous statement because I’m retired. But still.
Blogging is interesting. Many say it is a sign of self-absorption. Maybe for some, but not for the ladies whose blogs I follow. And interestingly enough, they all seem to be women. Yes, I pour out my soul with total honesty, throwing details of my life all around the universe as do they. I’d like to know sometimes who is receiving these scraps of my soul because I get over 1900 unique visitors a month – small in blogging terms, I’m sure – but who are they all?
So my details are flying through the air colliding with other bits of other lives. Some of those others stop in, then think, I’m not really interested in this, and go back to colliding with other scraps. Some stick. The ones that stick often come from shared blog challenges so we already start with a mutual interest, in my case, in art and life. Is there anything art and life don’t encompass?
These women sometimes read what I have to say and I read what they have to say. I always, emphasizing always, come away with something to think about. Sometimes an insight, sometimes an idea or a new way to approach something. Once in a while I come away with an enormous emotional upwelling.
That happened to me today. I was visiting Emma James at Pleasure Notes and encountered her poem The Bench. Would I always react as I did today? Probably not. But today, I felt the entire circle of life through her poem, the enormity of a life, a single life. And the possibilities for change that go unnoticed. I wanted to sit right down on that bench and think.
I headed over to see Julie Jordan Scott at Julie Unplugged, who most recently has written about permission. In short, giving oneself permission to be oneself. Sounds so easy. But as women I think we exist in a web of expectations, imposed from without and within. Our inner lives are complex and they have to be woven into our public lives. The web is strong, as is the web of Black Widows, and sticky, and if we’re not careful, we’ll be ensnared with no escape.
Julie is coming to terms with giving herself permission to live as she chooses, even if unconventionally, and why shouldn’t she? As long as we care for those entrusted to us – i.e. children – and do no harm to others, we only answer to ourselves.
We find this so HARD. I’ve been retired two years and I still have trouble picking up a book in the middle of the day, or watching a movie. I should be gardening, or cooking, or doing something for/with the children or my parents. I’m having a hard time getting out of the web. I look at my husband, who works part-time and doesn’t seem at all bothered by taking a nap, sitting on his bed reading, or watching political stuff on television. And he certainly is not judging me and what I’m doing. I need to give myself permission, and recognize that I don’t have to be useful to others every second of the day.
Another Julie over at Unabashedly Female wrote about divine robes of feminine flesh. She talks of our bodies, how This feminine flesh is divine. It robes a home where Spirit and matter are brought together in a miraculous way. Creation has made this humble home for life to come into being by way of this womanly body. I just copied in a part of her post because I cannot write as eloquently as she can. And she talks about being ourselves, not making apologies for who we are. Which in a way takes us in a circle back to the other Julie and the topic of permission.
Julie Unplugged has given herself permission to love her body, even if it is a bit too abundant and curvy. My body is certainly abundant – but my curves are sinking so all that abundance ends up around my waist. I am not a pleasing sight naked. But – why not? Can’t I give myself permission to look like I do and see the beauty in a body, even one outside the norm of “attractive” or “beautiful” which usually means appealing to men? Actually, I gave myself permission to look like I do long ago. It was a waste of time and energy to bemoan what wasn’t going to change. It was more productive to acknowledge who I am and be me. Not that I still don’t have moments.
And, you know, my body is beautiful. This flesh has carried and nurtured three children. It’s carried burdens and known joy. Maybe that is what the standard is – not the appearance. The crystalline microbrains in episode 17 of Star Trek, The Next Generation, called us (and the most conventionally beautiful among us) “ugly bags of mostly water.”
It’s one thing to know something, and another to give yourself permission to live what you know. Which, I believe, means abolishing guilt. Giving yourself permission.
I cruised over to Jeanne at The Barefoot Heart, who is always entertaining and straightforward. She wrote about a blog challenge involving yoga and writing and how she enthusiastically embraced it, went out to buy a yoga mat and CD, and counted down the days until the challenge began. And then proceeded not to do it at all, while thinking about doing it all the while. Why, she wondered? I think I know. It’s about that permission thing again. Permission to be who you are.
This is what I mean. I would love to go to the gym and do all the wonderful cardio and stretching exercises my daughter and her family do. I’ve joined gyms numerous times over the years, only to stop going. I realized I don’t like to get hot and sweaty and have to change clothes to do something and then change back, and if I have to drive there to do it, I don’t want to. And I’m not a morning person so I just can’t do it first thing and then come home and shower. But when Jennifer was describing the wonders of her gym, I thought, wow, I should join. But really, I shouldn’t join and I give myself permission not to. I know from experience it isn’t going to work for me.
So it’s like wanting to do something you know you ought to do, and loving the idea of it, but knowing yourself enough to not do it. Maybe that was what Jeanne was experiencing. Maybe not – after all, it was her experience. You can go visit and read for yourself.
So that was my journey around the blogosphere today along with a few visits I made to blogs new to me that I found on Creative Every Day. There’s so much out there and I can’t find and follow every fantastic blog even though I WANT to. In the circle of what I read today, there seemed to be a synergy. Maybe it was just me finding what I needed to find.
And that’s one of the joys of blogging. You might help me, I might help you, and we all might understand a little more. If we understand a little more about ourselves and our world, maybe we can stay out of that web and weave our own lives as we wish.
So that’s it for Blogging the Bloggers.
