This Sunday - International Be good to Yourself Day!

Yesterday my book proposal headed off to its preferred publishers...

Our boxes are unpacked...

The sun is shining...

We're all healthy...

Hurray!!!!!

So I'm ready for the energy to flow even better.
I am ready to get jamming with the Universe!

So tomorrow, to mark Lughnasa, to mark the end of July, to mark a personal transition, I have set up all sorts of goodies for myself...

And am hereby dubbing it:  International Be Good to Yourself Day!


Make it a day full of yumminess, good friends, wonderful food, celebration, thanksgiving, being out in nature, reading an inspiring book, starting a dream, making peace with an enemy...

I have planned a day with my soul sister of reflection and celebration. Of looking back and letting go, of looking forward and pulling the good stuff in consciously. On the cliffs and by a bonfire. And yes, there is naked dancing planned round said bonfire!!

I am also joining up to not one, not two but three wonderful shiny e-courses run by the glorious shiny Goddess Leonie.

As a circle member I get all this goodness for one fixed price of $100 for the year. Click here to view more details Hurray for me!!!!

Or you can sign up and pay for a single course and see if you like.... (personally, cos I'm a tight-ass when it comes to money, I'd recommend the full circle membership because it is only a few dollars more for a whole year's worth of goodies, and you can pick and choose just what you need, when you need it - think of it as your own private safe full of treasure - and you have the code!)

NB: To those of you have have signed up already - this is a heads up to say
don't miss the goodies on offer starting tomorrow 31st July.
You've paid for them already - so eat 'em up! Bathe in the yumminess on offer! Be loving to yourself! Just sign up from your profile page on the Goddess Circle and you will be part of the goodness for free!

And to those who haven't come along for the ride - do join us!
For oodles of positivity, creativity, inspiration, mindful awareness, inner and outer health creation, meditations and affirmations...

Starting tomorrow we have...

•  Radiant Goddess E-course is a 21 day journey to discovering the radiant goddess in you. This e-course comes with nutrition and movement plans, meditations, a recipe plan & soulful goddess  projects to help you shine all over: mind, body and spirit!
Click here to view more details

• To get your creativity kick started she has the Creative Goddess E-course: a six week path to discover the creative goddess inside you with sacred creativity, meditations & projects. I'll be painting along to that!
Click here to view more details

• Join me on the Creating your Goddess Haven e-course: six weeks to create a home that inspires you with spirited interior design, divine decluttering & magical space-clearing.
Click here to view more details
• For lots and lots of feel-goodness I'll be hanging out at the 30 Days of Goddess course too
which appears to be for circle members only!
• And of course her wonderfully magnificent Business Goddess course which kick started me into writing my book - hurray!
Click here to view more details

Leonie says "All of them I stand behind whole-heartedly and whole-soully. I *know* after 4000 goddesses using these e-courses to change their lives that quite simply... they work."

And the word on the goddess circle, and in my own life is that the do - they help you to shift the sh*t and get into a positive zone and physical space.

Click here to view more details

With each e-course, you’ll receive meditations, videos, guidance and projects. You also get access to a private online message board for you to share your journey with other Goddesses on the journey! (And if you sign up via me, it costs you the same, but I get an affiliate thank you right back at me!)

I'm breathless with excitement.... 
Let the goodness roll in! May we make our lives fertile beds for wonder to grow and thrive in. May we, at this Lughnasa, the time of reaping the harvest, enjoy the fruits in our own lives!

Happy days - summer highlights

Summer days .... free and easy... no compass but our own... a life lived to our own heart beats and desires...

Warmth in our bones, sun on our skin, sand in our sandwiches and fresh strawberry muesli for breakfast, with a dash of double cream!

Lazy walks accruing nature's bounty... tiger striped caterpillars, roadside barley, flowers in hot pink and burnt orange...

And lots of stolen fruit - tiny tart wild strawberries from the crumbling wall on the way up the road, and white peaches from my father's greenhouse, dripping juice down our arms as we suck and smile, ruby red raspberries and loganberries the purple of a bruise.

A fairy girl throwing pots. Lots of pots by us all - a whole new generation of Pearce potters in the making! Hurray!!

A contented husband doing creative woodwork again.

A little girl hanging on to her mama's skirt. A mama who said, "stop hanging on to my skirt, it drives me crazy" - the little girl responds " but I love you mama". This little girl who always claims not to love her mama, who won't love her mama until she is my age.

My soul sister staying the night... talking late into the night. Bestest friends and a dear sister and husband for an impromptu Greek supper: tzatziki, lamb burgers, chickpeas and tomatoes...

A romantic walk with my love through fields of golden barley in the timeless mists of dusk.

Building sandcastles, and knocking them down again. Popping down to the beach after supper - just because we can!

And left-over chocolate birthday cake.

Happy days! So many summer highlights in the space of 24 hours!

And you, dear reader, what are your summer highlights?

Sunday surf...

A round up of some interesting reading you may have missed...

There are certain things we all "know", that all health agencies and writers on all aspects of health refer to, one is drinking at least 2 litres of water - not tea, coffee or milk a day - this is rubbish according to thehealth authorities, medics and researcher - not fact but misinterpretation of a scientist's 1970's statement purposely pushed by... yes, you've got it... bottled water companies. This is a really interesting article in The Guardian

A post by a new blogger I have discovered: Demand Euphoria opens thus... 
I am not the boss of my family. I didn't hire my kids as employees, to follow my orders and make me look good. I don't have a job description in mind for them, a list of responsibilities and tasks they are expected to perform...   It's more like I'm the hostess of a party. I sent invitations to my kids to join me in my life as honored guests. 


It's been on my mind a lot... I like the ideas... and the sentiment. It has certainly got me thinking... Certainly it was our choice to welcome our children into this world.... But after that it makes me feel a little guilty and lesser, and not nearly so nice a mama as I should be... which is why I try not to read too much about parenting... I am not, as I regularly tell them, my children's servants, though they would love me to be. They love to sit in front on the TV and shout demands at me. No, my intention is to raise children with deep love and care... and self-sufficiency. To foster the "I can do it!" feeling and a little hard graft, at times, rather than have them rely on me for everything and get out of the habit of being able to do stuff for themselves. This is partly for my own sanity (see my previous mama bear post), but mainly because I have crossed paths with too many young and not so young adults who were waited on by their parents, and learn to expect it, which in the long run has made them expect others to do it as a matter of course.

I really liked another of her posts: Ten more ways to confuse a child but again left feeling guilty of doing most of them to my kids... oh dear, internal mama-bashing going on in my own head. But then I had a lovely day with my kiddles and decided maybe I shouldn't be retired to the scrap heap just yet!

But they are great food for thought....

And finally, for something completely different on a great site www.yoni.com...

An appreciation of breasts and the life shifting changes that lactating have on you, from a woman's perspective http://www.yoni.com/motherf/cheriesstory.shtml

The memory keeper

One of our sacred functions as mothers is to be our children's memory keepers. To keep momentoes of their precious years which they are too young to remember fully themselves.

I realised this more fully when putting boxes away in the attic this weekend.

A little caterpillar vest with stains from newborn nappies, dyed sludge green in its first wash; pretty embroidered dresses that would fit a fairy; a red jumper for a two-year-old boy with an appliqued yellow digger. All so impossibly tiny. Now only appearing in photographs, no longer populating our washing line or laundry mountain.

Joy Pockets

Baby Ash loving the monkeys at our local safari park - we're going once a week at the moment for the sheer pleasure of seeing her ooh-ooh-oohing at them in pure delight!

My soul-sister being home for two whole weeks

My new life of mystery and intrigue!

Shelves in the attic... which means the last of the boxes can be disappeared this weekend - hurray!

Mint crisp chocolate

Putting a book I hated in the bin - it was THAT bad!

Breastfeeding my cheeky baby

Receiving our GP visit cards - no more worries about doctor's bills

Lazy summer days with our boy at home

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Ta-da!

That is our baby's most recent "word". She drops something on the floor - "ta-da!" She puts cereal in her cup of juice "ta-da!"

So mama bear and dada bear were making the baby bears' beds. Mama bear and dada bear start to get snuggly under the blankets, if you get my meaning. Baby bear comes in and sees mama bear lying down - this means one thing - milk! (Weaning is on go slow right now!!)

Baby bear lifts blanket to access mama bear's mammaries. Surprise! Shock! There's a dada bear under the blanket in competition for the fine assets! "Ta-da!" she says!

Ta-da indeed!

"It"

The theory goes that whatever you think is "it", is not really "it" at all!

That sounds very Zen...

So it's probably also true.

Cos those Zen folk are famed for wisdom, not wise cracks.

Life: it's like learning to ride a bike...

I realized this week that our son is soon to turn six. This summer is a good time for us to focus on physical accomplishments with him: learning to ride a bike on two-wheels, and learning to swim without arm bands. He has had a bike with training wheels for nearly three years.

The new big bike, and a little boy, three years ago...

Something for the weekend

Quote of the week: "toddlers can make you feel as if you have violated some archaic law in their personal Koran and you should die, infidel." (!!!) from Anne Lamott's truly wonderful Bird by Bird: Some instructions on writing and life.

Memory of the week - Baby Ash sitting 6 foot up in a tree with a group of 4 other little monkey children grinning from ear-to-ear.

Post of the week: "You'll miss this..." It drives me nuts when people say this to me, when I'm saying how tired I am from my kids - "oh, you'll miss them" mothers of older children caution. "No I won't" I retort, "not this bit". This post by Talk Birth really gets to the heart of it...

And something for the weekend - have a virtual mojito on the house, chink, chink! (recipe on The Queen of Puddings!)

Joy Pockets

Wondering what to bake - oh the sweet, gooey possibilities

Direction with my writing - hurray, it feels like I have caught the train which for years I have chased after in my dreams, trying to jump on board and always missing it.

Our garden - full of roses - apricot, yellow and a hundred different pints, tumbling orange nasturtiums, scented sweet peas, honeysuckle and montbretia just about to come into full blaze 

Books - coming almost daily from Amazon, intellectual mama-crack!

Picnics for lunch every day this week.

Anticipation of a camping party with friends in our garden this evening - sausages and marshmallows on the campfire circle.

Our first caterpillar becoming a butterfly- and it's lime green! Two more twitching chrysalises to go

The wonder of circus - which makes me a child again too - marvelling at the magic and beauty of life, the skill of these superhuman beings.

Do share your joy pockets with me!

The Tree of Knowledge- Another installment in my son's quirky religious education

So on Sunday we got the "rainbow book" out, on request of my Bible loving three-year-old (those of you of a religious persuasion will be reassured that we have my illustrated Good News version on our bookshelf - it has a picture of a rainbow on the front and she is fascinated by it -the book that is, not just the picture).

They started to look at the pictures. And asked who the two naked people were. Those are Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, I say. And start to run over the bones of the story.

And I get to the apple bit. But Mama, was there only one apple? Is that why God didn't want them to take it? Perhaps he wasn't so good at the old sharing concept, my razor-sharp five-year-old suggested...

I stopped and thought. He looked at the picture again. Look Mama, there were loads of apples. So why was he cross?

Another good point, well made my son!

For other posts on Timmy's shaky religious non-doctrination see:
Jesus in a spaceship
God in the belly

The Magic Time

" A lot of the pull of creativity is an overcoming of time and space- we pull memories forward to us so they might live again, so that we might reignite the spark of life into things, times, people that we held dear - with the stroke of a pencil, the sweep of a brush, the click of knitting needles, we bring them alive in the everlasting now, in tangible form which transcends the fleeting memory, and once again creates the golden time, in our own image..."

I wrote this last night as I was trying to analyse the creative lure - what is it, I wondered, that made us want to create? And for me I realised that much of what feels good and right, that which I seek to re-create in my own home and life, in my creativity was what I absorbed in the rich couple of years, between ages two and four, that we lived with my granny and papa in Wood Cottage. It was a glorious oasis of stability in a turbulent childhood. I was unaware of the adult politics above my head. Instead the glory of the house full of treasures and garden full of wonder filled my heart and soul with their seeds, which over my lifetime I have watered and sought to make bloom. So much of what I experienced there set a marker on my soul for what feels good, right, what I want to surround myself with, what I choose to experience started there:

• hammocks and rabbits ear plants, strawberry patches and bluebell woods, 
• civilized days punctuated by picnic lunches on the lawn, afternoon tea with cake and G &T o'clock (that time just before 6pm when a gin and tonic is as good as medicine to ease you into an evening),
• button boxes and wildlife books,
• the joy of recipe books, especially baking ones,
• the world and travel - through my grandmother's artifacts and photographs from her travels
• a love of Greece, a fascination for Indian textiles...

I am sure you recognise much of this from this blog. Close friends will recognise more.

Do you have a soul time which laid down your foundations? I am pretty sure if this is the magic period for all children, this window between our unconscious openness to the world of sensations as babies, and the  conscious understanding of a school aged child. It is richer than any other point, because our senses are wide open, untarnished by our "knowing" and worldly cynicism.

We experience this feeling again at the point between teenagehood and adulthood as we enter the world as adults. We also get to experience it when we travel and immerse ourselves in other cultures - perhaps this is one of the major draws of travel. We also experience it after a deep meditation. And in the first flush of love. It is as though the colours are turned up on the world, everything is brighter, more real, and the space between us and the world is smaller - it is us and we are it. We experience the unity of interbeing. This is the magic time. One which as adults we can spend our lives pursuing, this memory of richness which we have lost. Some try through drugs, through buying stuff, others through love, religion or creativity. But I sense we are all questing after that feeling, that elusive magic time.

It makes me especially mindful of the richness of the environment that our own children are growing up in. If they're anything like me, I know how vital the creative, imaginative and aesthetic atmosphere is that they drink in.

But if they're like my husband they won't remember anything before the age of 17, and this is all a big waste of energy!!

What do YOU like??

Dearest valued readers,

I am STUCK. And I need potential readers' insight to help me to find which way to go, so I am looking for YOUR input on this...

My book is about creative mothers. It is jam-packed full of useful insight and information. But I am wondering how to structure the information so it is not too bitty. I feel that I need to create a structure so there is something pulling you the whole way through the book..

How do you like to read a book like this?

Do you dip in and out? Do you read from one end to the other, no matter what?  If there are tasks do you do them?

My ideas for structuring it include:

• just as standard chapters - which is as it is right now
• as a map to the terrain of creativity - using metaphors such as crossing rivers and scaling mountains for dealing with the various obstacles to creativity?; 
• as individual lessons (like the Artist's Way) with one chapter a week for 12 weeks with assignments?
• taking the rainbow metaphor that is already there and using it as a structure - so each major theme has a colour...
• using the metaphor of a hero/heroine's journey in terms of the myth of the creative rainbow mama -a kind of fictional framing device such as that of The Alchemist or Celestine Prophecy? (  but I am concerned that this might put off a lot of non-alternative/ non-spiritual women or those who do not consider themselves "really" creative...)
• Do you like step-by-step practical books which tell you what to do?

I know it's hard because you haven't read it - I'm just wondering what works best - it may be totally individual, or there might be one approach that works for a majority of creative mamas...

Also what would YOU want to see in a book like this? And what are your pet hates?

Something for the weekend: The creative process

Still totally absorbed in my book. Part two is flying - should be ready to go to my posse of critics by next weekend at this rate. So no writing for you here - but a great quote I came across this week in my research...

 The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.

Chuck Close

So what are you waiting for? 

Hot off the press - Part One!

So part one of the book on creative mothers is hot off the press into the hands of the critics - ie my best friends and husband. They have been warned to be good lovers - firm but gentle!

This book virgin is feeling excited, scared, my hands are shaking, the adrenaline is pumping....will it be OK?

So on with part two, which is mainly written but needs lots of organising and refining. This is now my top  priority, everything else (with the exception of enjoying summer holiday fun and frolics with my dearest kiddies) is of minimal importance now the book juices are flowing... I am supposed to be proposing new article ideas, organising a workshop, doing interviews and book reviews for another publication... but I just want to write my book. It is turning into the book I always wanted to read... and soon I will be able to!!!!

The Irish namaste!

There is a custom here in rural Ireland. A quaint one, which speaks of a time when everyone knew everyone else. It is the culchie* salute - the greeting of country dwellers. Every driver greets every other driver, cyclist, pedestrian by raising their hand as they drive by. It is a custom of which I am very proud. It means we acknowledge each other, watch our speed, offer lifts to those who need them, flag down a friend for a brief chat or exchange of pleasantries...

It made me think of the namaste bow - the Buddha in me greets the Buddha in you but Cork-stylie...-the culchie in me greets the culchie in you!


*In Irish-English culchie is a term sometimes used to describe a person from rural Ireland. In Dublin, it is often used to describe someone from without the bounds of the 'M50' motorway. It usually has a pejorative meaning, but is also reclaimed by some proud of their rural origin, and may be used by either side in banter between town and country people. Generally the term is more humorous than abusive in rural areas, as opposed to the more offensive term "muck-savage". (Wikipedia)