Flight
Take risks and live big. Reach your goals and push yourself even further. Be inspired by stories of people just like you who have seen their dreams come true. What will your flight path be?
Flight
Taking Chocolate Milk Away from Kids (and Other Things I do for Fun)
If you want to make a bunch of friends right off the bat when your child enters kindergarten, I suggest introducing yourself to fellow parents with a handshake and a clipboard sporting a petition. Asking people personal questions in the school parking lot, such as whether or not they agree with chocolate milk being served [...]
Sharp Turns: Endurance Coach and Athlete Reflects on Her Surprising Life Path
What I wonder about is more a question of process than outcome: how did I GET here, rather than how did I get HERE? My mornings have settled into a predictable, if somewhat harried, routine: I see the kids onto the bus, finish off the last few sips of coffee while chatting with the other [...]
In the Distance: Lessons in Training for a Marathon, Twice
Pilot Mountain Knob is visible from nearly everywhere within Surry County, North Carolina. It sits on the horizon as a constant reminder of my first marathon and all the valuable lessons I learned getting there. A month before I signed up for my first marathon, I had told a friend that I had no desire [...]
GOAL! Sparrow Readers share their ambitions for 2012
The first time I decided to train for and run a half marathon, I wrote about it on my blog. I found the process of going public with something that was so big and scary for me at the time to be both exhilarating and terrifying. I remember thinking: “Well, there is no turning back [...]
Embracing Resistance On Your Path of Soul’s Purpose
My favorite dreams are the ones in which I am flying. They all seem to begin the same way: I suddenly remember that I have this ability to fly. It’s like I am a super hero accessing her special power for the situation at hand. “Oh yeah, of course. I can fly!” I say to [...]
Body
“Yes, Hal. Anything you Say, Hal.” Why I am an obedient slave to training plans
I am kind of a control freak. I prefer to call the shots, make all my own decisions, and I cringe when anyone takes a parental tone with me. Knowing this about myself, it still surprises me to admit that when it comes to exercise, I just want someone to tell me what to do. [...]
Cleansing Foods for Spring
Like a sigh of relief, Spring greets us with lightness and new growth each year. Every passing day brings us more hours of sunlight and there is a collective shift in the energy of things. We all seem to have a little more spunk and zest once the temperatures start rising. This energy shift makes [...]
I Can Break a Board with my Bare Hand: How I found karate thanks to my son
I have a red belt in karate. Four years ago I never would have imagined myself with the opportunity or desire to break a board with my hands or to be able to count to twenty in Korean. I can do twenty push-ups without collapsing. I have learned hand techniques and forms for each of [...]
Treating Allergies Naturally with Essential Oils
Spring is in the air, and unfortunately, so are pollen, dust, mold and other foreign air particulates that can cause inflammation in respiratory air passages resulting in the unwanted symptoms of seasonal allergies: runny nose, nasal congestion, post nasal drip, itchy eyes, itchy nose, watering, tearing of the eyes, and sometimes for those that have [...]
Embracing the Clean Food Challenge; One mama recenters herself with clean eating
Like generations of women before me, I developed some less-than-stellar dietary habits in my teens. It seemed that teenage girls thrived on Diet Coke and Doritos, and I was no exception. As I stumbled from early adulthood into parenthood, though, it became increasingly clear that processed convenient foods were no longer going to work. I [...]
Mind
Learning to Breathe, and Why it is Okay to Cry: a book review
I picked up the book Learning to Breathe already knowing that I would love it. The topic appealed to me: the author’s yearlong quest to bring calm to her life. Dani Shapiro, my favorite writer and an important mentor, both reviewed the book and personally recommended it to me. The description of the author as [...]
Creating Your Personal Tea Ritual
How to make tea: Add dry leaf and hot water. Wait for the tea to brew. How to celebrate tea: Contemplate the leaf, pay attention to the water, breathe. Claim a moment for yourself and in that moment change the course of your day. With my hands wrapped around this warm and comely cup, I [...]
Spring Cleaning Your Mind & Heart
Here we are at the tail end of the colder months, and even though the winter was fairly mild, don’t you just get the urge to pull out the lemons, clear out the closets and spring clean the house from top to bottom? I know I sure do. And I think this cleaning ritual is [...]
Close your Laptop, Open your Heart
What are our bodies trying to express physically as a result of our increasing ‘plugged-in’ nature? In what ways is this relationship to our iphones, blackberries, e-mail and Facebook insidiously compromising other aspects of our lives, such as our intimate relationships, the quality of our attention as parents, our ability to sleep deeply, our habits [...]
Invigorate Your Life Through Play
It is Tuesday afternoon. I am sitting on the couch writing this article on the laptop I am balancing on my knee, a big smile on my face. When I woke up this morning, I had a lot of fear about starting this article. I thought I would never manage to write it, I questioned [...]
Nest
Inch by Inch, Row by Row: Watching our Garden Grow
It is still winter in Maine. That means a few things: short days, cold weather and time to start thinking about this summer’s garden. We still have a few months of cold days and there is nothing better to get me through than dreaming of summer and all of the beautiful and yummy edibles our [...]
All Natural Home Made Cleaning Products
The moment I notice little shoots peeking out of the soil, the sun glistening in the sky, lingering for just a moment longer than the day before, a fire ignites in my winter-weathered soul. I get an itch to get outside and start moving, breathing in the fresh spring air, allowing the new life to [...]
Naturally Fun Parties for kids, by Anni Daulter, with Heather Fontenot: a book review
Naturally Fun Parties for kids is a new book by Anni Daulter with Heather Fontenot. Anni is the author of the well-loved books Ice Pop Joy, The Organic Family Cookbook, and Organically Raised: Conscious Cooking for Babies and Toddlers. Heather Fontenot is creator and editor of Rhythm of the Home and blogs at Shivaya Naturals. [...]
Adventures in Cleaning Out The Basement
Right after the turn of the new year, I was struck by an intense desire to clean out our basement. And by intense I mean I immediately got started clearing clutter, hauling things to the trash and recycling bins, creating a collection to sell on Craigslist, another to sell at a garage sale in the [...]
Overcome Kitchen Craziness And Get Cooking Again
Does your kitchen look like the photo above on a daily basis? Or, do you find that when you open the pantry in your kitchen, you are uninspired? Do you keep buying cumin because you can never find the four other bottles buried in the back of your spice cabinet? Does the chaos of your Tupperware drawer [...]
Connections
Baking is Love
Somewhere I realized that not everyone has a mixer or an interest in baking, but everyone has an interest in receiving home-baked goods. Hi. You know that lady you see at the grocery store buying eighteen pounds of Land-O-Lakes butter because it’s $2.50/pound and you are shaking your head wondering what on earth she could [...]
A Mother, a Boy, and Running to Feel Still
Some families dream of giving their kids a house with a pool, tennis court, the big cedar swing set. I dream of living in a house on the infield of a track. When my son Henry was in preschool and bouncing off walls, I’d fantasize about sitting in the living room while he ran 400-meter [...]
What If Your Journal Could Talk Back to You?
“Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories.” – Laurie Anderson Keeping up the practice of regular journaling can be challenging. There are so many things competing for our attention and sitting down to do something like journaling that may not deliver immediate results often gets pushed to the bottom of the list. [...]
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