Thoughts and Favs from this Week 2.27.26

My mood, this week (image via Pinterest).

By: Gabriela Yareliz

The snow piles remain. Winter has us all about to fling ourselves on the snow piles in resignation. “Just leave me here,” we want to say. But “onward,” as someone who does nothing at work typically says to those doing the heavy lifting. Onward, indeed.

Today, I heard a clown horn (you know, the one that sounds like little circus music). I have no idea what is happening out there. On the bright side— it’s warm. It’s 35F and sunny, which is basically summer, here.

Dreaming of this kind of spring (image from Pinterest).

There should be a study on the workaholism that is ingrained in children that have lived to see the sacrifice of their families and felt it deeply. Immigrant families, families that aren’t wealthy, the families that put a lot on education. It’s something else— this work ethic. It’s not the same as people from different backgrounds who, in adulthood, don’t work and take their paycheck anyway. It’s a different dynamic. A different burden. It’s the responsibility that sucks the life out of you, where you can’t even take a vacation. A cure for this needs to be put forward. This is my petition.

All of us, yearning for spring.

This week, I stumbled upon Jungle Johanna (this is her IG handle). She is the first American person of color that I have seen as a Pilates instructor— and she is hilarious, bold, authentic, and she just sort of clicked with my soul. Take it from someone who has done Pilates for over a decade with many instructors— she is unique in this space. I have laughed through several of her classes on the Peloton app. She is great with form, and I am excited someone like her exists in the world. She ends her classes with her motto— “Do no harm; take no sh*t.” Enough said. Amen.

I wrote a postcard this week. This is your PSA to send out snail mail.

I saw this outfit and loved it. Tracy Tutor’s IG. Everything I loved as a kid, big sunglasses, wide pants and platform sandals.

This week, build an outfit made up of the things you loved when you were thirteen.

Vita Sidorkina is launching something big on Monday… here we are all hoping it’s a workout platform that will guide us to her aspirational routine…

The fabulous mother of two.

The weekend has arrived! Let’s go! Be cheerful and bask in the sunshine. Read a book. Take a deep breath. Wash your coat (I did). Let the slush melt away.

Spring continues to inch closer and closer. Hurrah!

I enter the weekend like this little mouse. Image via Pinterest, artist Genevra Bell.

Wisdom on Winning by Andy Frisella

Words by Andy Frisella:

“ASK YOURSELF…

HOW CAN YOU INSPIRE THE NEXT GENERATION OF WINNERS IF THEY DONT UNDERSTAND WHAT WINNING LOOKS LIKE?

THEY DONT KNOW WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE BECAUSE THE REAL WINNERS DONT SHOW THEIR LIVES OR TELL THEIR STORIES

BECAUSE THEY GET SO MUCH STATIC ABOUT IT.

HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT ABOUT

WHY CULTURE VILIFIES & SHAMES SUCCESS?

WHERE THAT COMES FROM AND WHY?

WHAT PURPOSE THAT SERVES AND FOR WHOM?

LET ME ASK YOU SOMETHING ELSE:

DO YOU THINK ITS EASIER TO CONTROL A GROUP OF HIGHLY AMBITIOUS, STRONG, DRIVEN, DISCIPLINED MEN WITH MASSIVE GOALS…

OR

IS IT EASIER TO CONTROL A BUNCH OF FAT, BROKE, LAZY, WEAK, COMPLACENT MEN WHO ARE ESSENTIALLY HOPELESS?

HOW WILLING DO YOU THINK A MAN IS TO FIGHT FOR HIS DREAMS IF HE CAN BE CONVINCED THERE IS NO HOPE?

DONT BE THEIR PAWN.

IF THERE WAS NO HOPE THEY WOULDNT GO THROUGH ALL THE TROUBLE TO CONVINCE YOU OF IT.

IF THERE WAS NO HOPE THEY WOULDNT HAVE TO DEMORALIZE ANYONE.

PERSONAL EXCELLENCE IS THE ULTIMATE REBELLION AND YOU ARE THE REVOLUTION YOU ARE WAITING FOR.

WIN.”

Keeping the Garden

Image via Pinterest.

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Spring arrives on March 20. I love spring. It always arrives right on time— when winter has beat us up and left us in a heaping pile like the inches of snow dropped on us.

Friday was exhausting. It was exacerbated by the anxiety that loomed over me when I realized I had missed my window to do laundry. It haunted me for 24 hours. The tension from the week came tumbling out on the mat. I can’t say I have cried often during a workout, but there is something that gets triggered when you expand the hips. It’s like something unlocks. If you have experienced it, you know. The pelvis holds so much emotion.

This past weekend, a matcha and a bad mood hit me out of nowhere like an electric shock. That night, I couldn’t fall asleep, and I stared through the blinds at the blinding grey light as the snow continued to fall. My bad mood propelled me to finish a book that had been dragging me along. Sometimes, we need to punctuate things. I had liked the book when I started it, but by page 400– I was like, this could have been an email.

My mind stayed racing for hours. (Don’t drink caffeine during your luteal phase— or if you are me, don’t drink caffeine— ever).

I am now reading a book about Eve Babitz and Joan Didion. (I like it!) There is something that always intrigues me about the 60s and 70s. The pivot from the 50s to those two decades feels like such a flip of a switch— sort of like my mood that night. Sort of like the seasons.

The next day, I waded out of my swampy habitation, and decided connection was better. Slow was ok. The flawed nature of it all (and my own flaws) shouldn’t make me sharp like the ice outside but should make me soften like water. It was time to melt.

I recently heard a wise Italian say that, at times, what we need is to say that some seed of a mood inside of us won’t take root. We acknowledge it, and we pluck it up like a bird would and throw it out of the garden. Spring reminds us of the green that starts poking out of the ground. The new. The soft. The colorful. The watered. The pruned.

The resilient.

Image via Pinterest.

Character Defined

“Your character is how you absorb what has happened to you; how you absorb reality; how you absorb the world. Who you choose to be in response to everything you did not choose.” Erwin McManus 

Close

“If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them.” C.S. Lewis

Don’t Die In Another’s World

“Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s.” Anais Nin

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Some of the most glorious moments of our journeys are the ones where we buck all expectations and cultural rules imposed, and we create our own operating system.

My rule is that the only opinion that matters is God’s. Once you know you are doing something in alignment with His character, nothing else matters. Everything else be damned. There are no rules to create a beautiful life but the ten.

We often live in so many prisons of our own making. Sometimes, we sit in the prisons others create for us. At times, it’s almost like we ask for permission to exist, to move, to believe, to stand tall, to move toward dreams, to leave our harm. We live suffocating slowly.

We must own our agency. We must shed what controls and manipulates us. We must wear our faith as a shield. We must speak in truth. We must rise with courage.

Belief by belief— brick by brick, build your own world.

All Sorts of Life

“That’s the kind of story I want to write, the kind that stops being writing and starts being life.” George Saunders

By: Gabriela Yareliz

The Chinese lunar new year. First night of Ramadan. Ash Wednesday. Resurrection Sunday peeks over the horizon on the other side of fasting and journey.

My express train going local. Sigh.

It’s weirdly “warm” compared to what we have had the past few weeks. It’s rainy and damp.

I am listening to old New York stories, and reminded that so many people around us have the most incredible stories. Each person a vault of life, that if tapped, reveals sparks of magic, insight and history that offers sudden understanding.

The stories we tell— these moments of transition have a way of reminding us of our points of transformations. The moments that make our voice break. The moments that make tears fill our eyes to the brim. The moments that make us break out in uncontained laughter. The moments that make us our most undeniably honest selves.

Other’s stories have the power to shift something deep inside of us, like a train that clicks onto a different track (like my currently rerouted train).

If we dare to talk; if we dare to listen— there is so much that deserves to be told, heard and passed on.