Inspiring Women: Christine: Resilience

Christine is not blogging at the moment. “I’m spent by the time I carve out a moment to write, and that means I’m not writing the things I want to be writing. That means it becomes a chore. When it becomes a chore, it creates guilt. The last thing I need in my life is guilt. I’ve worked too hard to find some emotional and mental stability.” So we can find on her Facebook, Twitter and other blogs. I miss her frequent blog posts, nevertheless.

Because I appreciate Christine’s honesty about writing and living, exemplified in this post where she writes: “I realized that the hard work I’ve done to pull myself out of the trenches of depression and anxiety has been important and valuable, but hasn’t yet fully addressed the root of my struggles—my sense of self-worth and my ability to love and honour myself.”

In another, on creativity, she says “Creativity means filling others with emotion, making a difference through beauty or skill, inspiring.” Then she goes on to write openly, “My life has become an array of contradictions. I’m happy, but I’m numb. I’m energetic, but I’m weary. I’m productive, but I’m still hopelessly lost. I’m doing, but I’m not being. I’m full of life, but running on creative empty.”

I consider Christine inspiring because she is willing to acknowledge her difficulties and persist towards equilibrium and self-expression. Look at the compassionate and open-hearted letter she writes to her younger self:

“Take the time to really consider your goals. Don’t worry about the expectations of others. They aren’t the ones who will be living your life. I cannot emphasize this enough. Stop, think and revisit your deepest thoughts often. Reflect on who you think you are and who you want to be. What brings you joy and helps you to feel fulfilled? Use this to help you decide what you want to do with your life. A day will come when you learn that a career should be about passion and happiness, rather than expectation and success. It should complement the rest of your your life, not be your life. Otherwise, you might regret some of the choices you make.”

And the hard realized truths she shares: “And so, if you ask me what I’ve learned this year—after all the reading and introspection, this hard, soul work—I’ve learned that this is just it. Today. This moment. Life is best lived now, not in the past or the future. If you can understand that, I mean really, really grasp it, then everything else either falls into place, or it falls away. All of it.”

Keeping an eye on my reader, Christine, until next time.

Inspiring Women: Roxanne Krystalli: Open Hearted Traveller

Roxanne says in a video response to the question “who are you,” that she is “foreign everywhere and mispronounces everything.” Her honesty and self-effacement and joy are apparent throughout all that she shares. She was born in Greece, went to school in America, describes herself professionally as “a conflict management professional who specializes in the effects of war and conflict on women,” and in the same space as someone who is a “fervent believer in the power of storytelling.” Roxanne’s travels and work have taken her to Egypt, Jerusalem, Latin America and the Balkans, among other locales. On her site Stories of Conflict and Love and in her photo journal she documents these journeys, portraying not only “conflict and grief” but also human “resilience.”

Roxanne’s two posts on non-violent conflict here and here demonstrate both scholarship and lived experience. The first cites reports showing the relative success of strategically organized non-violent movements compared with violent confrontations. The second looks at violence itself and how it may backfire for both those in power and those who resist. While she expresses sympathy for protestors in her native land she does not agree with violent expression and points to a source where 198 alternatives to violent conflict are identified.

Roxanne has a wonderful eye for beauty in the landscapes she travels. See her post on light in Jerusalem during Hanukkah. From a walk in Greece, she shows us spiritual messages interspersed with violent and defiant graffiti. Or check out this variety from the fish on the bicycle in Cuba to the tree reflected in the soup bowl to the children playing in the street. Remarking of herself, Roxanne says she “preaches mindfulness” but frequently dwells in memory or worries about the future and that behind the camera “time stops, ” and that “photography makes me more mindful because it reminds me to really look... to search for beauty (or for surprise, incongruence, contradiction and conflict).” See also a tender post on waiting for someone special, the zenith of which is “I stare at the lily till all I see is a blushing world,” and the extraordinary pictures that follow.

Elsewhere, in her video introduction, Roxanne says, “the power of kindness to ourselves and others is one of the currencies I must believe in.” She exemplifies it through her work, her travel, her writing, her art and her joy.

Inspiring Women: Amanda Oaks: Kindness

From Liz, I learned of Amanda’s blog Kind Over Matter. My immediate response was “this is what I need right now.” While Amanda’s work encompasses so many themes including awareness, appreciation, gratitude, creativity, art, to name several, I want to focus on kindness.

Why kindness? Out of a deep feeling of connectedness, Amanda describes her desire "to pour kind over matter, to create an unstoppable mass of positive energy, kind matter, a
nebula of kind matter, if you will. I am just one tiny star but I've attracted you to me, I get a
kick out of introducing you to other awesome individuals on the same spiritual wavelength &
practices we can engage in together in order to make our time here together even better." (How to Rock this Trip Around the Sun, p.3.)

From the Online Etymology Dictionary: c.1300, "courtesy, noble deeds," from kind (adj.) + -ness. Meaning "kind deeds; kind feelings" is from late 14c. O.E. kyndnes meant "nation; produce, an increase."

Amanda’s work exemplifies courtesy, nobility, generosity and increase, from her promotion of other artists’ work, to her Kind Kindred series, to sharing the spotlight with regular blog contributors. One of her manifestations of kindness is enabling others to “share your story.” I was honored to participate in one of her "Seven Souls, One Musing" on the topic of a favorite childhood memory. And Amanda's weekly compilation from others' sites and artwork, "Friday's Lovelies," never disappoints.

It is kindness in spreading encouragement on a daily basis, and even creative projects such as this printable which generated a remarkable response.

It would be difficult for me to pick a favorite post from Amanda and her collaborators, getting so much as I do from the daily quote and accompanying image (an act of kindness through inspiration, again from the Latin "to inflame, to blow into" or from the Middle Ages "to fill ... with grace;") or any other phenomena in the Kind Over Matter galaxy.