Friday Five
The 5 top things that sparked joy this week 🌸
I love the promise of a new month. Everything feels fresh and alive and so full of possibility. Oh and the primal urge to spring clean my entire house is in full effect, so I’m happily riding that wave. We’re heading to Austin this weekend for a little family escape before Jonny shoots there all week, and Auggie is so excited. When we first told him we were going he said, “That’s where all the cowboys live!”, so I sure hope we come across some on our Texas travels. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend and new month ahead 😊
Humor is my love language, and Paige + Hannah from Summer House have truly nailed it with this book. It’s a lighthearted self help book about navigating life’s challenges with grace, and not taking yourself (or the world) too seriously. I think these girls are brilliant, with such a refreshing blend of intelligence, self awareness, humor and modern day feminism.
5 Minutes with Gavin Scott + Carl Sagan
One of my Dad’s recent videos explores the world of Carl Sagan. I love these deep dives into the lives of interesting figures throughout history, and this quote particularly resonated with me:
“What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
My Daily Walks
Walking is my therapy. I walk between meetings and after work evening. Moving the body and having space to process the day and let my thoughts settle is a really important part of maintaining homeostasis for me. I love listening to podcasts + audiobooks on these walks, but sometimes I also just love to walk in silence, letting my mind meander over the events of the day in complete peace. The jasmine has also just started blooming in my neighborhood and the scent is intoxicating.
Tina Brown is an incredibly talented British journalist and author of The Diana Chronicles, The Vanity Fair Diaries and The Palace Papers. I adore her fiercely intelligent, witty and nuanced writing style, and in an age where so much chaos unfolds on a daily basis in this country, she provides some excellent commentary.
Life as Seasons
Remembering that life happens in seasons has been really helpful for me lately. Auggie is 26 months now and he’s experiencing lots of big feelings. Little things things like not wanting to relinquish a knife or having the wrong water bottle will send him into a full spiral. Nothing gets him out of these states except for time, so I just let him know that I understand his frustration and that I’m here for him whenever he’s calm and ready for mama. These moments are incredibly hard, but I know it’s all temporary and that this is Auggie’s season for growing into his full two year old self, illogical tantrums at all. But along with these tantrums have also come some of the most special moments we’ve had to date, with elaborate full sentences and hilarious reviews of the world around him. Parenting really is the ultimate surrender and duality seems to be at its core, so I shall try my best to embrace it all ☺️