“The hardest clutter to recognize is the emotional kind that looks like care. The worry that feels responsible. The constant mental scanning of other people’s moods. The “just checking in” texts that come from anxiety, not connection. We tell ourselves these are signs of empathy, but they’re often signs of overextension.” Ayushi Thakkar
Excellent Advice for Living
By: Gabriela Yareliz
Today, I am linking to some sage advice. I have had this tab open on my phone for probably at least a year. I always come back to it.
Check out the Excellent Advice for Living here!
The one that always rings through my head is: “Don’t fear failure. Fear average.”
A Great Prayer
“Giving is a great prayer.”
Elena Brower, “Tenses: six,” Softening Time
By: Gabriela Yareliz
My husband and I live in a pre-war apartment, which means we have a hot pipe that runs through the bathroom that now glows with heat. I walked past it this morning, and felt the warmth radiating from below the chipped paint.
The radiator is on and the eye mask is too. Despite the flowing warmth, the wooden floor feels icy. I find November to be one of the coldest months. I have memories of one of my closest friends visiting me around Veterans Day, and that, my friends, was the coldest week of all. We were running in and out of shops and cafes on the Upper East Side (UES) for shelter from the cutting ice wind.
It’s always giving season, in my opinion, but we enter a season that is hyper focused on it. November is shopping and donating season. It’s a season of gratitude, abundance and generosity. This is a time that, for me, is filled with gift brainstorming and gathering Christmas and New Years gifts, little by little, to avoid the overwhelm and December frenzy and stealing of packages. I start hiding things and forgetting where I hid them like a squirrel. I start making my repeated visits to the post office.
They call December sparkle season, but November is not far behind. It’s a season where the nights are darker, but the glitz and glimmer of NYC starts to shine through. Columbus Circle gets decorated, ice skating rinks fill up, UES looks like a scene from a storybook (or it did) and Upper West Side gives itself to the magic of The Nutcracker.
One of the magical Holiday Markets (Bryant Park) is up, and the rest will be constructed this month.
This week, we had a rain deluge and a windstorm. Flooding and wind that made 52F feel like 36F blasted through NYC streets that turn into wind tunnels.
My umbrella was useless as I was literally clinging to street signs to not blow away (thank you, brutal city wind for making me feel light and dainty again). My jacket, I soon discovered, felt a little too thin for the frigid blasts, I realized as I walked down a familiar block to see if our favorite Chinese bakery had reopened from their 1+ month break. It’s time to bring out the other jackets and layers.
I would be lying if I didn’t admit sugar plums are already floating through my head. Yesterday, I got some much needed deep cleaning and reorganizing done. A sigh of relief. I lit a cozy candle, caught up with my mom, and flipped through my new cookbooks (my new favorite pastime) as I waited for the towels to dry downstairs.
I keep checking the Love Shack Fancy page to see if that menorah I want is back. The feeling of Christmas is in the air.
As we creep closer to Christmas, November is for long bundled up walks, candles in the darkness and no overhead lighting, warm teas and lattes to warm the spirit in the mornings and evenings, soupy lunches, butter melting on warm bread.
It’s a cozy season of comfort and scouting. Time to hit up Bleeker Street in the evenings to look into the shop windows and find the perfect gift that reminds a loved one that they are loved and known.
Despite the cold— November invites us to balance the wandering outside with the shelter and cozy we find inside. It teaches us to stay in movement (there is a lot to do, see and plan), but also to come inwards and nourish. What are your November plans?
Figuring it Out
“And you do have more agency than you think. You can try anything, make your own rules, make unconventional decisions that might initially only make sense to you. If you’ve never learned to really listen to yourself and figure out what it is you actually want out of life, you can start now.” Erifili Gounari
What do you want out of life today?
The Struggle with AI
So true. With the mass layoffs this week and last— AI is top of mind. How will the world keep changing? On a day like today where I am dragging myself after hopping onto like 17 trains to get home, can AI clean the bathroom and do laundry?
Ugh. It won’t.
A Train (Love) Story
By: Gabriela Yareliz
I saw the most precious duo on the train (I know— that is a rare statement). Usually, the trains feel like they emerge from hell (D train, I am looking at you)— but here we are. A different morning. Maybe, I was looking for something different, and that helped me find it. The mornings where I am able to start with Pilates are usually magical.
There was a Hispanic father in a button down rust colored thermal and his tiny daughter, in a pink coat with her blonde curly hair poking out of her pink beanie and her tiny pink glasses framing her tiny face.
She was the most energetic in our train car, sitting backwards, facing the subway windows. He whipped out some chapstick and told her that her lips were red. She resisted, but then, grabbed the chapstick and put it on. She wanted to do it. They both made popping sounds, each spreading the chapstick on their own lips. He showed her how, and she dutifully imitated, popping her little lips and smooshing them together. She concluded with a smile.
She asked if they would have spaghetti or pasta, and when he told her spaghetti is pasta, she laughed as if it was the funniest thing she had ever heard.
She then did something that warmed my heart. She leaned in and started buttoning the top button on her dad’s thermal shirt. She wanted him to be warm.
It was time for me to switch trains. I told him that his daughter was the cutest and crossed the platform. I am convinced I witnessed one of the greatest love stories I have come across.
Every gesture toward his daughter was one of protection and care. Down to the chapstick. He was so attentive and down to giggle with her about meatballs and pasta. He was an example; nothing about him was performative. And that little girl radiated a golden energy like her blonde ringlets.
People, including children, radiate the energy that reflects their character. With discernment, you see a lot of a child’s character even while very young— and this little one was pure joy and goodness.
These moments and interactions that seem ordinary— the affection we show our children, spouses and family— it all sends a message to the outside world.
Deep love whispers, “Look, look at the beauty of being loved. Share this love, too.”
A Call to Prayer
By: Gabriela Yareliz
At first, I had prepared this as a piece to a post I was going to have go live earlier, but this merits its own post and many more.
We encourage all who read to join the global body of Christ in prayer for Kevin Rideout, U.S. missionary abducted last week in Niger. We also join the church in prayer for all Christians around the world who are facing persecution, martyrdom and hardship.
We often highlight these circumstances in isolation, but this is an ongoing global crisis. Together, we pray.
May God’s hand move mightily on their behalf, and no matter what they face, may they feel God’s deep love and presence in the darkness. May the love and light they represent echo and shine throughout the globe, piercing all darkness, silence and hopelessness. May their faith be unforgettable and stay with those who do evil against them.
And the rest of us, who read and write from comfort— may we also pray for discernment and strength of faith to meet our coming moment with resilience and unwavering resolve.
Whether we are walking through a Manhattan subway station or through a jungle on the other side of the world— the Holy Spirit within us is the same. May we ask for a double measure of Him in us.
May this be an everyday prayer, in the same way we pray for our families. May we never forget all the ties that bind.
1 Blest be the tie that binds
our hearts in Christian love;
the fellowship of kindred minds
is like to that above.
2 Before our Father’s throne
we pour our ardent prayers;
our fears, our hopes, our aims are one,
our comforts and our cares.
3 We share our mutual woes,
our mutual burdens bear,
and often for each other flows
the sympathizing tear.
4 When we are called to part,
it gives us inward pain;
but we shall still be joined in heart,
and hope to meet again.
5 This glorious hope revives
our courage by the way;
while each in expectation lives
and waits to see the day.
6 From sorrow, toil, and pain,
and sin, we shall be free;
and perfect love and friendship reign
through all eternity.
(John Fawcett 1782)
This Week’s Pinterest Mood Board
Commitments
“Our biggest commitments, the things we are most dedicated to, rarely pay us back in equal measure.
That might be the point.”
Seth Godin
Before Goop There Was My Mom
By: Gabriela Yareliz
Before I was obsessed with Gwyneth Paltrow, and before I found the article on Goop that changed my life— there was my mom, my original health influencer.
In every house we had, my mom created a garden (not just flowers but food). She has always been a nature person. I think she did her best in the 90s trying to decipher what had vitamin C and nutrients (though the 90s were a low point, nutritionally, for all of us in the U.S.).
As I got older, we all collectively learned more. By the time I was in my teens, we were mindful of sugar intake, she would order homemade bread from a lady at our church who made it from scratch, and we would make lunch sandwiches with it. We leaned into home remedies and activated charcoal. We became plant-based, which removed a lot of hormone-injected meat from my diet (which I know helped my own condition). I would do exercise DVDs with her, and follow her example. That’s the stuff that stays with you. (Denise Austin is a QUEEN).
She found us a functional doctor who had worked for the military, and always tried to give us the best. As I reflect back on this, I am so grateful I had a mom who led the way with wellness in a time when we were all trying to figure out what was what. When I made changes and protocols to heal my own hormones, I never felt skepticism or gaslit by her, but on the other hand, I felt encouraged. I found support in my mom that I didn’t even find from doctors who were fine to let me know what was wrong with me but offered no solutions. To this day, my mom and I talk about health and the little experiments we try on ourselves. (To fast or not to fast). I am grateful to have someone to talk to about wellness. It occupies so much of my brain space.
My mom is a very strong woman. If at any point I took charge of my own health and found my pockets of healing and process, that strength to research, try and advocate for myself came from her because she gave me the permission to be unconventional early on. She was unconventional early on.
The other day, I heard Tracy Anderson say that those who find her method and do it are those who don’t try to find the easy way out. They take the harder road for lasting results and longevity. When she said this, it reminded me of my mom. She doesn’t take shortcuts. My original wellness influencer— whether I realized it at the time or not.
She had us eating homemade bread. I mean, what a gift.
Forever grateful for my mother.
GABRIELA YARELIZ 