Love List | Springtime Blues

pansy ass pastels

Springtime makes me sad. I get the way folks who live in snowy places get around February when they’ve had enough of winter. Except it starts for me right around the time the pastels come out in the stores and everything is bunnies, flower blossoms and candy coatings.

I still haven’t quite gotten to the bottom of it. Perhaps some deep buried PTSD around crucification sermons, plastic shoes, and itchy tights. But I think it’s something deeper. Anyhoo. I CAN get behind the idea of holding in our minds eye what we want to give birth to. The fertility lying in every moment of our existence. I mean YES please!! I would just rather it be cold outside, and that I’m wearing a brown sweater, sitting by a fire with a stack of books and my favorite pen.

To alleviate this deep crankiness I’ve curated a very short play list of songs, which you may or may not like, but which I find great delight in listening to right now (with my headphones on - not kid appropriate) and silently lip syncing to with all the emotion of my twenty one year old self. I’m telling you springtime is my angst time…but these songs are just moving and I think deeply feminine so don’t be afraid to listen in.

Also, if you haven’t read Feel Free magazine yet I can’t recommend it enough. If you can find it, start with vol. 1, it’s magic. Vol. 2 just came out and it’s lovely but start with the first one because it was, really truly, an incredible issue. It’s a magazine that will actually make you feel good. Strange concept right. You’ll feel free and maybe a little giddy and hopeful; free to be creative, to be messy, to be imperfect, to be human, and to read about other people doing the same thing. In this issue I discovered Alexandra Valenti and she is just…love. Her paintings are so grounding I just want to hug her and sit in front of them all day while I eat yummy little sandwiches, smell lilacs, listen to bees buzz, and drink iced tea. She makes me want to paint.

Here is the one I loved.

And the last love list item of the month comes directly from my growing stack of books all being read at the same time. Joy-Full AF by Dr. Erin Baker. I had a coaching session with them last week, they utilize the Internal Family System model, which from my one time (truly wonderful) encounter involves inviting all the parts of yourself to the table and really understanding them instead of putting the angry “baby” in the corner. Or in my case the desire baby. I have a hard time with the word desire which makes sense because it’s directly linked to what’s deeply true and that’s why we’re here my friends. To find it. To find what’s true. I’m only in the first quarter of the book but I LOVE the directness and it’s hitting close to home.

“Because when a woman knows what she likes, what would fulfill her, what would make her happy — what direction she wishes to grow in next —she is mapping her destiny.”

and this pure genius below…

“I sought joy; I found me”

-Joy-Full AF, Dr. Erin Baker

Here’s to music, art that inspires, books, joy, and desire…even if that desire is for all the colors to just commit already and stop being pansy ass pastels.

Love to you.