Asian Chicken Salad

This post is for all you people who have asked for (and in some cases, begged for) the recipe for my version of Asian Chicken Salad. You know the one: it's the only thing that sounds good to you when it's too hot outside for you to think about cooking (but not too hot for you to think about me cooking... )

I make this salad too many times to count during the summer months. It's cool and crisp, light but satisfying, and easy. Really, really easy--all around the perfect summertime meal. But I make it all year long because it's just that good.

The problem with sharing the recipe with you is that I never follow an actual recipe when I make it. The salad is just a bunch of ingredients tossed together, and I've made the dressing so many times that I don't need to measure ingredients as I stir them together. The last time I made the salad, though, my mother in law asked for the recipe, so I figured it was a good time to measure and record exactly how I made it. Without further ado, the recipe:

Salad Ingredients:
2 Romaine lettuce hearts
1/2 English cucumber, sliced into half moons
2 Carrots, julienned
3 Green onions, sliced (green part only)
2 Grilled chicken breasts, sliced
Toasted almonds
Crunchy chowmein noodles

Dressing Ingredients:
Base: equal parts water, plain vinegar, low sodium soy sauce (A good place to start is with 1/4 cup each for a salad that will serve about 2-3.)
1 1/2 T sesame oil (more if you make more of the dressing base)
Sugar, to taste. I'd start with about 1/4 cup. You could use other sweetners if you want to, but I like plain old ordinary sugar best.

Method:
You could really prep the ingredients any way you like and toss the ingredients together in any proportion that you like. Here's the way I do it.

Slice the romaine lettuce into ribbons. I use one romaine heart per person. If you use a regular head of romaine lettuce, it goes farther (would serve 3-4 people, depending on its size). Slice the cucumbers into half moons; julienne the carrots; slice the green onions; grill & slice chicken. Throw everything into a big bowl and add almonds and crunchy noodles; toss with the dressing.  Enjoy! (the sooner the better, or the noodles will get soggy...)

52 Projects: Project 10

Project 10

Write the story of why you moved to the city in which you currently live.

There's nothing terribly interesting about our decision to move here. It was a practical move, really.

 

We moved to the Tri-Valley, just over the Hayward Hills last summer after living the first two years of our marriage in Fremont. I had lived in there for the majority of my life, so moving away was bittersweet. By the time we left I had felt desperate for new surroundings for months, so I was terribly excited. Then again, leaving meant putting miles between myself and the community I had built over the past 30 years. But leave we did, and Dublin turned out to be a good place to end up.

The reason we moved was simple: I had left my job to stay home full time with our then 9 month old daughter, and since I wasn't working in Fremont anymore, it made good sense to us to move closer to Joey's office. We'd save on time and money that way: eliminating Joey's commute meant he could sleep a bit longer in the morning, spend more time with us in the evening, and save money on gas.

Dublin is a small city nestled in the middle of a valley that is especially beautiful in the winter, when rain turns the surrounding hills a deep, emeraldy shade of green. And in the spring, yellow wildflowers cover the hillsides, like sunshine you can touch and smell. It is a town filled with children and playgrounds and trees and calm, things that are good for the family and good for the soul. 

 

Dublin wasn't our first choice. We looked in the surrounding areas - Danville, San Ramon, Pleasanton. But it turned out that Dublin offered us the best temporary solution to our housing problem: an affordable, comfortable apartment in the heart of Dublin's family-friendly neighborhoods. 

And although there are things about adjusting to life here that are difficult, I will always look upon it fondly. After all, Addie spoke her first words and took her first steps here. It's the first place she recognized as "home." It's the place we became a family of four.  

All in all, it's a good place to call home.

The Crazy Cycle, and Getting Back to the Basics

Like many other women, I compare myself with others. A lot. No, really - a lot.

I know it's sort of a "thing" we do, consciously or subconsciously, but the other day I woke up to the truth of how destructive my habit had become.

Here's the funny thing, though. I haven't been out much lately, unless you count the recent trips to the park or Target. And when I do go out, I honestly haven't been comparing myself to anyone. In fact, most of the time, the people I see are moms of small children like myself, so I identify with them, sympathize with them, wish them luck on getting through their day.

I found the bad habit resides online. And not in a place I expected.

I follow blogs - lots of them. Cooking blogs and decorating blogs and personal blogs and encouraging blogs, blogs about family, blogs about faith, blogs about art and homemaking and writing and crafts. Blogs as diverse as the people who write them. But yesterday I realized something that many of them have in common: most of them make me feel like crap after reading them.

This was a bitter pill to swallow because, ironically, blogging once saved my sanity. I would write for no one but myself, about anything, whenever I felt the urge to do so. Nothing was off limits, and I wasn't hindered by the thought that I wasn't good enough to blog. Soon, I discovered gems in the seemingly endless blog world, writers who inspired me and encouraged me and made me want to become better at my craft. Somehow, over time, that changed. Not because the blogs weren't any good. They were. But something shifted in me, and the more I read, the less I wrote. The more I read, the less I felt like I measured up. The more I read, the less I felt like myself.

A couple days ago I cried really, really hard after I found lots of silvery strands peeking out of my messy pony tail. I hadn't given myself a really good look in the mirror for a couple of weeks; post-delivery bloat and a hazy newborn stupor precluded me from caring much about what I looked like. But on that night, those gray hairs threw me for a loop and my whole world suddenly came crashing down because I hadn't gotten my hair done in a few months.

I laid in bed and began to cry, reeling over my unkempt hair. That's when the spin started. I thought about how frumpy I felt in my now-too-big maternity clothes and my still-too-small regular clothes, which then made me think about how my toddler is better dressed than I am, which made me think about how crabby she's been lately and how I can't seem to spread myself thin enough to make everyone happy, which then turned into being frustrated that I spend every waking minute I have making other people happy, which made me wonder What about myself, for goodness sake? When will I feel like myself again? And why is my life so messy, so ordinary, so far from being the the beautiful adventure I always thought it would be? And I began to think about all the people who had it right, who were living their dreams and doing it with gusto and style.

The next morning, as I sat down to check for blog updates, it hit me: the people I was comparing myself to the night before were authors of blogs--people I didn't even know. And yet I managed to compare myself to them. And then I realized how even though so many of these blogs were written with great intentions, they were hurting me. Not because of them, but because of me.

Let me explain.

When I get up in the morning and pour myself a cup of coffee, I intend to write. I always want to write. But instead of writing, I end up spending my time reading blog updates, and then my daughter gets desperate for my attention and my window of opportunity to write anything closes, and I get upset and discouraged that I'm not doing the thing I love. And then I start to think that it's just as well because I don't have anything to write about. Comparing my life to the lives of the bloggers I've just read about, I feel like my life is terribly ordinary and uninteresting that no one would want to read about it anyway. So I begin to brainstorm ways I can make my life interesting, or projects I can attempt in order to have something to write about, or ways I can infuse personality and character into my otherwise plain old ordinary life. And then I get honest and remind myself how tremendously wonderful my life is and how I sound like an ungrateful little spoiled brat for even entertaining these thoughts. And then I resolve to begin writing about the truth of my life and find the beauty that's already there, starting tomorrow. And then tomorrow comes and I decide to just check the latest blog updates to see what's new before I start writing. And then the whole cycle begins again.

Sheesh. That's a crazy cycle, if I've ever seen one.

In the past few days, I reminded myself that I started blogging to save my sanity. I kept blogging because writing is therapeutic for me. I want to continue blogging because when I write, I see differently. I learn. I grow. I change.

And so, I took a drastic measure to stop the crazy cycle. I cut the blogs I follow down to 10. For a time, I'm only allowing myself to follow 1) blogs written by people I know personally, and 2) blogs that never make me feel down about myself, for reasons which I really can't put my finger on. There are only three in my list; they are blogs written by people I don't personally know, but highly respect. People I learn from and am encouraged by. People who call me up to what I hope to become.

In any case, writing about this is a bit scary because I am pro-blogging.  I love that there is a platform for people like me to explore and share ideas, to inform and to encourage one another. And down the road, I'll start following them again. But for now, this is something I know I need to do to regain some sanity. To see clearly again. To avoid the temptation of comparing myself with people who seem to "have it all together," and focus on writing about the beautiful life I get to enjoy every day.

Not that this will be a cure-all (I still haven't made it to the salon yet, and I'm still between sizes, and my toddler is still cranky...), but at least it will get me back to the basics: I'll be writing, and by writing, I'll be seeing things differently. Learning. Growing. Changing.

Spend Yourself, Rachel

As I alluded to a few months ago now, I started a new blog project called "Shines Like Stars" last year. This morning, I made a (perhaps impetuous) decision. I cleared that blog out. I didn't delete everything, but I imported all the posts I'd written to this space instead. There was something that just wasn't quite right about what I was writing over there. Nothing I ended up writing seemed to fit the original vision for the new blog the way I wanted it to. I felt as though whatever I was writing was censored, which I suppose is a good thing in some ways, but in reality, it's a hindrance to good writing. My writing felt forced, when I actually did it, and so it was a huge struggle to break through that and come up with something real. Thankfully, I never posted anything I wasn't proud to stand behind, but it didn't flow naturally; it was a clear sign to me that something about the blog wasn't right.

I guess it comes down to this: the posts I wrote there were just the sort of posts I'd write here. And that blog was supposed to be different in some capacity. I realized, though, that despite my best efforts, I was attempting to create something new out of my own strength, creativity, and vision. I wasn't listening to what God was saying to me at all. That's a scary realization, but a necessary one at the same time.

So, you'll notice that there are many, many new posts on this blog, but if you've followed along with Shines Like Stars, you've already read all of them. If you haven't, then you'll have some new things to read here. 

Shines Like Stars isn't going away; but it's back to bare bones (or will be shortly) until I get some clarity about what to actually write in that space. The Lord is putting some deep, important things on my heart and I know that He's calling me to do something that's a little bit risky and out of my comfort zone. I'm not exactly sure what that is, but I do know that it will go back to Philippians 2:15, which states this:

“Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of God. Carry the light-giving message into the night.” Philippians 2:15 (The Message)

Since August of last year, the Lord has been speaking to me about this verse, and he's been bringing it up in various ways every so often, reminding me of it and making it very clear that this is what He's calling me to. Last Sunday was sort of the last straw, in that I had all but given up on finding the right groove on Shines Like Stars until He spoke very directly to me through Pastor Terry's sermon last week. He spoke out of Isaiah 58 and urged us to live out that passage in a very real way. It's a powerful passage that talks about how the people of Israel appeared righteous because of the kind of religious motions they were going through, but God implores them to not to bother with those  religious motions because they were empty.  The people were doing things to appear righteous, but really, they were treating others unfairly, exploiting them for their own gain. But what God really cares about, and wants us to bother doing, is to deal with injustice, exploitation, the oppressed, those in debt, the hungry, the homeless, the naked. Even just be there for our own families. In other words, instead of creating a life that makes us appear righteous and important, God is imploring us to create a life out of humility. To serve others. To spend ourselves.

I spent the week mulling this over in light of what God's telling me through Philippians 2:15, and then I saw this verse in the next chapter of Isaiah:

"We long for light but sink into darkness, long for brightness but stumble through the night."

-Isaiah 59:10 (MSG)

I realized that when I'm at home in the middle of an ordinary day, I have a difficult time knowing how to actually do the things the Lord is calling me to do, especially in the culture in which we live. Example: Is it really safe for me to see a homeless man wandering the street and invite him into my home for a hot meal when it's just me and my 1 year old at home during the day? My flesh tells me that no, it's not safe - regardless of whether the man is a danger or not (there's no way for me to really know). But I wonder what Christ would say to that. Where do we draw the line between being wise and not taking a risk for the sake of Christ?

And then I realize that there are things I can do - easily. But I don't. Or if I do, it's few and far between. I long to do more, but I don't. I let myself stumble through the darkness telling myself I'm looking for light instead of actually being the light that I am. I keep looking for ways to spend my time and resources instead of spending myself by just being me and being available to be used by Christ through the heart and resources he's given me, which I strongly believe includes gifts and talents and passions.

Anyway, I've gone off on a tangent here I think, but the point is that Carnival Mirrors will be back to what it used to be, but I will also be doing something new at Shines Like Stars. I'll keep you posted on the progress as I have news to share. But will you do me a favor? Will you pray for me? The task seems insurmountable to me, and risky because I have no idea whether it will actually do any good or not, but the bottom line is that I'm choosing to be obedient and to spend myself, what little I have to give I will give it willingly to the Lord.

Thank you all for your encouragement and support, and perhaps most of all, for reading whatever I happen to write. You have no idea how important that is to me. Being vulnerable with strangers is sort of easy, but being vulnerable with the people who know me best is often the most intimidating and scary. Thanks for making it not so bad after all.

The beauty I see everyday (but usually miss)

In response to my post where I talked about my distorted self-image, a good friend suggested I do an exercise in which I list out the things I like and the things I don't like about my body - specifics, things like "the luster of my hair" to "the dimples on my butt."  (Not that I have dimples on my butt. That's just an example, of course.)

I knew it was something I had to do because I'm in search of truth. I know my self-image is distorted, and I know that I focus primarily on all the stuff about myself that I don't like. Instead of doing that, I'd like to focus on that things I do like, and not just things I like about my character. I know that real beauty is on the inside, but let's be honest: there is beauty on the outside, too. I am a physical being; I'm made up of spirit, soul, and body. And as a woman, I've been endowed with beauty from my creator who is beauty itself. Therefore, there must be something beautiful about my physical self, right?

Anyway, when I finally sat down to do the exercise at least two weeks after it was proposed, I really did think that the things I don't like would outweigh the things I do like. The things I don't like are the things I focus on daily; I rarely think about the things I actually do like, so I was convinced they were few and far between.

I was wrong. The things I like about my body outweigh the things I don't like by more than 2:1. In other words, I like twice as many things about myself as I dislike. (To be fair, though, I probably dislike my thighs more than I like the fact that I have straight hair. And I probably like my olive skin more than I dislike the little bumps on my upper arms.) Even so, I find it completely baffling that by just putting a half an hour into this exercise, I was able to come up with this list. It could grow - in either column - as I think about it more, I'm sure. But for now, it's eye-opening.

I include the list below for a couple of reasons. First, I do so in hopes that I'll really own this list if it's published. I don't want to just shove the list away somewhere; I want to remember it, to use it to focus on the things that are true and lovely about myself when I'm tempted to focus only on the things I'm unhappy about. Second, I hope that somewhere someone might be encouraged to do the same thing and to discover the happy truth that there are many lovely things about herself that she actually adores. If you're struggling with self-image, I encourage you to do the same. And don't berate yourself for things that are beyond your control at the moment you write the list (ie: swollen ankles that accompany pregnancy...). Just think about yourself in your normal, stare into the mirror, and discover the beautiful things that you see every day, but usually miss.

Things I Like

My hair

… its color (brown)

… its shine

… its softness

… its straightness

My eyes

… their shade of deep brown

… the way they smile

… my eyelashes that easily curl

… my little mole just next to my left eye

My mouth

… straight teeth

… soft, full lips

… my smile

My skin

… its softness

… its elasticity

… the olive tone, especially because I tan easily

… the little brown freckles sprinkled over my body

… my birthmarks

… the fact that I don’t have stretch marks

My neck & shoulders

… my collar bone. Strangely, I love it.

My arms

… my forearms: their shape, size

… my wrists (I think they’re dainty)

My hands

… long fingers

… healthy nails with long nail beds

My curves

... the fact that I have a feminine body

… well-proportioned waist, hips, rear

My height

… 5’4’’ –tall enough to feel “not short,” and short enoughto feel “not tall.”

My feet

… a nice size at 7.5

… they look really cute when my toenails are painted

Things I Don’t Like

My face

… its roundness

My hair

… how fine it is

… and how dark and course it is on the rest of my body

My arms

… the little bit of skin underneath them that flaps

… the bumps on my arms

My torso and hips

… extra padding

… my tummy “pooch,” as I call it

My legs

… my inner and outer thighs. Heck, just my thighs in general.

… my calves. They're on the big side.

… my ankles, for reasons I can’t figure out

A Little Perspective

Sometimes, perspective is all I need to set my mind right.

This past weekend I left everything I know behind - schedules, routines, people - and headed up to the mountains with a friend who had invited me to join her sisters and their friends for a girls' getaway weekend. I don't remember the last time I did anything like that, but whereas my natural inclination would have been to decline the invitation (based on the fact that I didn't know anyone), I took a shot and went.

When we first got there, I suddenly felt transported back to high school. I felt awkward and out of place, and imaginary audience of adolescence reared its head in a very real way. When you're the new girl, the only one out of the bunch that doesn't have a long history with any of the others in the group - that's intimidating at first. And as I walked into that cabin, I was flooded with the feelings that every other woman there would be scrutinizing every detail about me: my clothes, my shoes, my hair, my skin, my weight, my height, my style, my voice, my personality - and I suddenly felt as if I wasn't going to be deemed good enough for them. This was before anyone even said hello.

The funny thing is that it didn't take long for it to occur to me that these ladies were not up at that cabin to get to know me. (Funny how during adulthood, things like that actually do occur to you, whereas during adolescence, no one could convince you otherwise).  But then, I was hit with this: "Tell us something exciting about yourself." I had nothing.

Exciting? Interesting might have been slightly easier to come up with, but exciting? What's exciting about myself? My life? The fact that I couldn't answer scared me.

As I laid in bed trying to drift off to sleep after the evening's festivities died down, I found myself longing for that something, that thing that would set my heart on fire and make me want to pursue it so passionately that everything else would sort of fade away as not nearly as important (read: laundry, dishes, diapers, and the like). I thought about all the things that other people do, all the things I like to do, and when I compared the two, I felt as if the things I enjoy aren't nearly as "exciting" as the things that so many other people are excited about (chiefly among them, training for a marathon). And I beat myself up about it for a good bit of the weekend. But by the time I got home, I realized that exciting doesn't have to be limited to running marathons. It doesn't have to be limited to mission trips to China. But, it also can be something more than buying organic strawberries at the farmer's market in January (True story. I bought some about two weeks ago. And it was very exciting.)

I've been searching lately for something more. I don't think that's a secret around here. Something more, though, seems a bit elusive because it's ill-defined. More of what? More busy? More meaningful? More exciting? More productive? More spiritual? More creative? More holy? More what? I think the answer is this: all of that. And that is overwhelming. It's a tall order for someone who feels a bit lost.

When I was working an outside job, I was distracted from this desire. Perhaps the job wasn't my calling or my dream, but it was a good distraction from the fact that I actually want more out of life than just to make it through the day. And now, making it through the day sane is at the top of my list, especially since I've had a very moody toddler on my hands for the past month.

Being surrounded by a group of friends tell old stories from a common past and updates on their current lives gave me a glimpse into how other people live, what's important to them, and what excites other people. I heard recipes being exchanged, discipline tips being shared, plans for marathon training being devised, and stories about trips to other exotic places exchanged. All of this was laced with laughter and the belief that life was actually quite good. Perhaps imperfect, but overwhelmingly good. And perhaps that's what was exciting about these women's lives, not just the marathons or the trips.

After gaining new perspective, I have a deep desire to stop thinking about things I want to do, and actually do them. I've let money and time and fear keep me from pursuing these things that seem exciting to me for far too long, and so today, I'm setting a new course for myself and giving myself permission to go and learn and discover. To try. And to be excited about that.

And the first step, for me at least, is to make a list. So off I go to do so.

  

(Image via)

What sorts of things have you been dreaming of doing lately? What's holding you back? Are those limitations real or imagined? What would it take for you to stop making excuses and just get going?

Here We Go Again

I wrote this last Sunday when I was in the throws of feeling a little off.

Do you ever have those days? Days when whatever battle you're facing - mental or otherwise - seems to be staring you in the face, mocking you, dogging your heels and not giving you a moment's breath? I do, every once in awhile.

This post didn't actually get posted due to some strange problem with Blogger, so in my draft folder it's sat for the past few days. But here I am, finding myself with the urge to actually post it in hopes that it will, again, be like ripping off a band aid and exposing the wound to some air. And Lord knows I could use a little bit of fresh air, these days.

This is something I've dealt with before, many times over in fact. But here I am still, or again, confronting that pesky little thing that comes out when I'm at my most vulnerable. Being pregnant, I'm vulnerable to succumbing to my feelings and throwing myself a pity party about it. 

I have come to realize in a new, very real way that most women aren't very comfortable in their own skin. And if they are, they've most likely walked through a very raw place in their life in which they weren't comfortable with themselves, a place where they were plagued with questions and doubt and frustration and misunderstanding, the unwelcome result of a wound inflicted in childhood, a wound they weren't really even aware of even, until their incessant tendency to compare themselves to other women somehow caught their attention. It's not new news; I've known this on some level for a long time. I understand it in a new way now, though. We're not all that different after all. And the divide that keeps me captive to the idea that "I'm the only one who doesn't have it all together" is fading away.

For most of my life, I simply thought this is just how women are: they compare themselves to each other in some unspoken competition for who could be . . . well, what, exactly, I never knew for sure, but I suspected it was a combination of the prettiest, the funniest, the smartest, the friendliest, the best dressed, the most stylish. It seemed like everything was a competition with us girls - and it didn't matter how much I actually liked the girl I pitted myself against; I somehow usually ended up feeling less than, as if I was somehow cosmically insignificant if my dress size happened to be slightly larger than any one of my friends.

I'm not sure I even really participated in this collective comparison until I was in fifth grade. I call that my "butterball stage," and anyone who knows me well knows why. I was pudgy. No - that's not really fair. I was really pudgy - and I was blissfully unaware of it until the moment that changed everything.

My dad was the children's pastor at our church, and it wasn't abnormal for us kids to go down to the church office every now and then for some reason or another. One day, my mom took me down there, just the two of us. I don't know if I really knew the reason we were going or not, but I remember what happened when we got there. We went into the bathroom and I stood on the scale and my mom read the number aloud. "115. Now, if you can just stay there, you'll be ok." I've never forgotten those words, not in the 20 years or so since I heard them.

Before anyone is tempted to assume that I'm villifying my mother for this, let me say this: the words were innocent. Her intentions were not malicious. Never in her wildest dreams would she have thought that moment would stick with me into adulthood. I love my mom, and I know she loves me whatever size, shape, color, or texture I come in.

What did happen, though, was that those words had power over me for years. After that day, I was acutely aware of weight and size, and how they were inextricably linked to being ok. From that moment on, 115 was my number, the number that I couldn't ever quite reach again, the number that dictated my own sense of self-worth. If I wasn't 115, I wasn't ok. Something was wrong with me. No matter what else was good about me, the only thing that would make me ok was the right number on that scale. I was wounded without realizing it. As I grew up, I came to believe that if I couldn't be ok, than at least I should be humble about it, as if self-deprecation made me a better person or something. And I became obsessed with the scale.

When I got a bit older (and perhaps a bit wiser), the Lord graciously revealed this wound to me and helped me to see its effects on my life. And for a few years, I did fairly well believing the truth about myself and at battling through this weakness of mine, the weakness that makes me feel distinctly less than because of my unrealistic standards for myself. I began to feel comfortable with myself and accepted the fact that 115 isn't a healthy number for myself. I came to terms with the fact that if I got to 115, I still wouldn't be ok because I would be under weight of my height.

Even so, that nagging sense that something about me wasn't quite enough was always with me. Pregnancy brings this out in even fuller force, even though there's a very real (and very apparent) reason why my body is morphing into a shape that feels alien - and even a bit monstrous. The amazing truth that there's a new life forming inside of me doesn't shake the feeling that somehow, it's not making me any more beautiful than before. In fact, as the scale creeps up little by little, I watch my sense of self-worth diminish just a little bit more. And so I start to self-deprecate. I start to berate myself for things beyond my control, and I compare myself with other women who are pregnant or have had children and are all the more beautiful for it. (Especially the ones whose bodies don't change at all except for a slight blip in their midsection.)

But you know what? I'm realizing that self-deprecation is false humility. And I'm also realizing that it is impossible for me to be the only woman to deal with these issues. If heart burn and round ligament pain and swollen ankles and mood swings are all common effects of pregnancy, then a distorted body image probably is one, too. And to go even further, that distorted body image probably doesn't just exist during pregnancy - but pregnancy is the perfect time for it to flair up again and take advantage of an already highly sensitive, emotional girl who is questioning herself anyway.

And so, that being said, there are a few things I want to leave you with today. Since I wrote this on Sunday (and according to my own rules I'm supposed to be leaving you with my favorite tidbits from around the web this week) here are things that have stuck with me for the past few days. The first is a link to My Body Gallery, a site that shows what women with a particular height and weight actually look like. This helped me realize just how distorted my own view of myself is.

The second is a link to a friend's blog where she posted something very similar to this just the other day. When I read it, I thought, "I was right. More women deal with this than any of us really think about." When I catch myself thinking I'm surely the only one struggling with this particular battle, I'll think of her, and then I'll think of all the women she represents, women who outwardly seem strong and secure, but who inwardly are doing their best to get by just like the rest of us. And here's a link to a video she made of herself while she was working through some of these demons awhile back. The video spoke to me profoundly, and I find that the chorus of the song has been popping into my head every now and then for the past several days - a welcome reminder to my weary heart that its time to give up the fight and embrace the beauty of who I am, just as I am.

And finally, here's a link to a project I finished awhile ago: Project 31. Project 31 was a challenge to rediscover my own true beauty, to deal with my demons and get right in my brain about who and what I am. I find that even though I finished quite some time ago now, it really is an ongoing process for me, and I've got to keep going back to these truths to keep my mind healthy when it comes to all this stuff. I'm doing it for myself, yes, but also for my daughter who will watch me and mimic me, who will learn from me and who will emulate me.

This picture says it all.