Tag: strong women
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THE CHAMPAGNE GIRLS GUIDE TO CREATING THE LIFE YOU LOVE PODCAST – EPISODE 1
Lauren, Beth, and I are neighbors in a lovely little historic neighborhood. We are all at different stages of life, divorce aftermath, careers, and motherhood. Each Sunday evening we gather on one of our lovely porches to chat about life, love, and our artistic passions. We are big on talking about those things that we…
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Fear
The power of journaling – diagnosing my fear I was journaling today, you know, writing the mundane boring things. This helps me define what’s most important to include on the day’s list of tasks and what not. While journaling I realized – I am struggling with fear. I’m not afraid of anything huge – there…
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Yearly Focus Words for 2023
I selected the words carefully with the goal of fine tuning my life into a more goal oriented one and less of a floating like a feather in the wind sort of one.
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My girl goes to college. . .
I drove my girl to college last weekend. And I’m doing fine. Really I am. Really. I miss my girl. I miss out interactions. We have been close from the moment she was placed in my arms. I am not a fan of letting her go. But I am a really, really big fan of…
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Optimism – believing in the 1% possibility
Here’s the thing. I knew better. I knew how this was going to turn out, yet I did it anyway. I allowed my dog to stalk a rabbit in a neighbor’s driveway on leash. ON A LEASH ATTACHED TO ME WHILE HOLDING MY PHONE. Seriously, I knew there was a 99% chance I was going…
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Walking in Circles
All I ever wanted, growing up, was to be a wife and a mother. It was my dream. It came before everything else. I can remember dreamily staring off into the distance my freshman year of college wondering what it would feel like to finally be matched with my soul’s mate, my best friend for…
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Get a Move On
I have really been making an effort to improve my health and wellness over the last few months and as part of this effort I have been walking. Fellow Champagne Girl, Beth, and I walk about 3 miles (sometimes more) almost daily. We call it “walking our crazy out.” It took around 6 weeks for…
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I’m such a Martha. . .
Over the course of the past couple of years I have been searching for a deeper connection to God. It began in 2020 when I went to visit my sister in Mexico and visited the Catholic church in the Zocalo in Mexico City. I was so overcome with emotion inside this beautiful church – it…
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Notes from Champagne Sunday
We are all creative. Lauren works in theater; Beth paints, stitches, and writes; and I paint and write. We get together each Sunday night to have a glass of champagne and bolster each other through the next week. We discuss relationships (romantic and otherwise), kids, and the general business of being single moms. We are…
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One Year
Tuesday, July 12, 2022 It was one year ago today my son and I found my ex-husband, deceased, in his home. I am emotional today. I miss all of those things that can never happen – a peaceful existence between us, a fun and growing relationship between my kids and their father, and a hope…
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Yearly Focus Words
Have you heard of the trend of choosing a single word as a focus or theme for your year? I have heard this and I have done this before, but without much success on it being an actual focus consitently. What would I choose this year and how could I use these words to actually…
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Dust
“We can’t always assume the broken pieces of our life circumstances are terrible and pointless – not with our God.” Lysa Terkeurst Seeing Beautiful Again (23) This was in the devotional I read this morning by Lysa Terkeurst. She goes on to talk about dust and the pottery process and how something new can be…
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Surrendering MY will. UGH.
God keeps pointing me in this same direction that is no longer making any sense to me. What do I do with this????? I surrender my will and my understanding. Or, I try. Every day. I am TRYING. Ha. This surrendering of my will when I am in a state of confusion is a bit…
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New Years resolutions
My resolutions kinda run the year. They aren’t just a New Year’s thing. I revise and add new ones as my life progresses. I always want to get healthy so I am not even counting this one. This year I’ve decided to make some measurable goals to strive for in other areas. I am using…
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Fruits of the 21 Day Fast
I sat in silence most of today. That is unusual for me. Before my 21 day fast from, well – everything (basically), I had to have NOISE everywhere. I could not abide silence. At all. But, that has changed now. It is one of the many things that has changed in me thanks to my…
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Pablo Picasso
The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston had both a Pablo Picasso exhibit and an impressionist exhibit. Both were wonderful and inspiring. Picasso always fascinates me. I would love to go back in time and crawl inside his mind to see how he sees the world. He pulls things apart and rearranges them on canvas…
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How long did it take us to realize we were in black and white
There is a long hallway full of bright yellowish orange light in the Fine Arts Museum of Houston. We had made it about halfway down this hallway before we had looked at each other long enough to notice something was off. Our skin was grey. We were in black and white. It was so cool.…
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Head on collision at 10 mph
I was in a head on collision this morning in a parking lot. A man had just tested positive for Covid and he was FREAKED OUT so he started to black out. And, staring right at us, hit our car. Because of this tiny fraction of time his car is mangled. It was his only…
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Defining Convictions/Beliefs
I use the word “conviction” because it sounds so much more non-negotiable than the word “belief”. I didn’t even realize I had convictions until a big one was staring me down. And, it took a really long time for me to clearly define this conviction. It was:
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Worry = lack of faith
Worry. As a mom, as a friend, heck, as a WOMAN, worry seems like a natural part of life. I worry about my kids, about my job, about my friends, about ridiculous things – like “does this top really go with these pants?” But WORRY is really just a call to PRAYER.
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Waiting = Patience
Do you have to wait to build a life you love? Today I went to the Van Gogh Emerson Experience with my fellow Champagne Sunday girl. During our many conversations over this adventure the subject of WAITING became a prevalant theme – specifically, waiting for a big change you know is on the horizon but…
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The Magic of Disney
Recently I went to Disney for work. (Great place for a conference, by the way.) I have only been there twice before: once when I was in middle school and again with my kids a good many years back. I’d forgotten how magical the place actually feels. It did my soul so much good to…
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What is important
When I realized my life was wonky, long before I divorced, I took inventory of what I used to have and love and compared that list to where I was at the time. I believe, especially as mothers, that it is very easy to let some of the best parts and some of the best…
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The Christmas I gave up on love OR the Hallmark Man Prayer
This is something I think some of us struggle with after the ending of a toxic relationship. It is glorious though, to know I will be happy alone, or not, but that I don’t need anyone else to make happy happen. . . I embraced the vulnerability that allowing the possibility of love to enter my…
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She would have been 107 this month
My grandmother, Mama, lived to be 105. She passed away the January before Covid hit and thankfully didn’t have to deal with any of that. It is funny, we all worried about her health all the time and she never really seemed to. She didn’t really consider death, from what I could tell, even after…
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Time to activate one of those infinite DO-OVERS God has gifted me with . . .
Really, I was just looking for a little guidance to climb out of the hole I’ve thrown myself into and instead I get an added emphasis on the power and importance of wisdom – the “she” in line 8 is “wisdom” not some random woman. So, my tasks are to 1) understand where I am:…
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The MOST lovely couple
I spent the majority of my Fall Break in Cancun relaxing with friends, finding my center, appreciating the life God has gifted me. While there, enjoying pool time, God sent to me the most beautiful and faithful woman. She was on her honeymoon and their love story absolutely renews my faith in God and my…
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Tennagery People
I was privileged enough to be asked by my daughter to take her and friends to Atlanta to see some obscure band play at the Mascarade. I say privileged because I think she and her friends are comfortable enough with me to be ok with me listening in on their conversations and they trust me…
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Travel feeds my soul
I have not always loved to travel. It wasn’t that I disliked it, I just hadn’t been anywhere and didn’t know. But once I’d been on my first international trip I was hooked. I want to go everywhere. Today I am traveling to spend time with friends in a far off place that requires a…
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Work in progress. . .
I love this stage of a painting. It has good bones. It has made it past the ugly phase. It is waiting on those final tiny choices that will make it into something magnificinet. Something I am truly proud of. I feel that way about me, about my life. I have good bones, I have…
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Silly Songs . . .
Life has taken unexpected twists and turns since I spent my days innocently singing along with Bob and Larry. I think of the woman I was and wonder, if I could travel back to her and tell her anything, would I? Would I tell her to brace for what was to come? Would she even…
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Champagne Sundays
Weekly check ins. This is what Champagne Sundays are all about. I have become wonderful friends with my next door neighbor and each Sunday we get together on the front porch and have champagne from my vintage champagne glasses and discuss the week we’ve had and the one coming up. We celebrate our wins and…
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Living in the moment
Being present as a person who loves to plan her future is, well, sometimes a bit tedious. My head is always trying to look ahead and skip the uncomfortable parts. BUT, what I am finding is that when I cannot see a future, I am more engaged in my present.
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Live like a college graduate
I am thankful for my Lifetime moments as much as my Hallmark moments. I am thankful to just feel again, all of the feels, to have been broken open and set free to experience life once again. Every day is a day for a new beginning or to pick up an old beginning again. I…
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How do I look at such a toxic and traumatic time through a lens of love, and why would I want to??
I was scrolling through TikTok last night, watching the many videos on trauma, toxic relationships, and narcissism that tend to be on my “for me” page, and I recognized myself in literally almost every post. I understand the trauma, I have lived in the toxicity, I have labeled my ex as a narcissist without any…
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If it was toxic for me, it was toxic for him
But what I could not see due to the bubble I had crawled into to try to protect myself, was that if I was in a toxic relationship, SO WAS HE. He was not choosing to live in a toxic place on purpose. Who would do that? He was miserable too. No one actually wants…
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Wait. What?? What do you mean I am not in control?
My ultimate goal when I woke up every day was to see my life and my people through a love paradigm. This is still my goal. How could I have regret if I loved my way through the difficult times instead of allowing bitterness to reign?
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You are sooooo mental (said in my best Valley Girl voice)
Shouldn’t the person we choose to spend our lives so intimately with be chosen, at the very least, with the same standards we use to choose our friends?
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Fatal Optimism (I made that up)
I allowed myself the possibility that happiness could be realized in the paths I had once been so dead set against instead of the one I was so dead set ON. I conceded that I was not giving up on the commitment I made in my marriage, I had lived it out. When I chose…
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Easter Sunday
He can and DOES take situations and parts of us that we think are dead and gone and he resurrects them as something new. This right here, this is an amazing and wondrous thought, isn’t it? God can raise the dead. If he can raise the dead he most certainly can breathe new life into someone who…