One of our popular Facebook posts is a reminder to relax and breathe…
I just need to breathe…
We have found that sometimes the best thing to do when the mother/daughter relationship gets acute is to stop and take a breath. Focusing on something else for a while can help your emotions settle down until you can again retain your equilibrium.
In this section we have included various ways to help you “breathe.”
Visit our new YOU Page – Learn about taking care of yourself, increasing your self-esteem and accepting who you are. This is an important part of managing the Mother-Daughter Relationship.
Click here to watch relaxing slide show
UNC Study: Positive Emotions Increase Life Satisfaction by Building Resilience
People who seed their life with frequent moments of positive emotions increase their resilience against challenges, according to a new study by a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill psychologist and colleagues.
The study, “Happiness Unpacked: Positive Emotions Increase Life Satisfaction by Building Resilience,” appears in the June issue of the bimonthly journal Emotion.
“This study shows that if happiness is something you want out of life, then focusing daily on the small moments and cultivating positive emotions is the way to go,” said Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D…“Those small moments let positive emotions blossom, and that helps us become more open. That openness then helps us build resources that can help us rebound better from adversity and stress, ward off depression and continue to grow.”
SPRING WILL COME
By Marlou Newkirk
Spring will come. It has come every year that I have been alive. If it has been a really hard winter and Spring has suffered she comes in crying.
As a line in a Rolling Stone song goes “I watch as tears go by like falling rain”. Spring is like that. Sometimes she sobs enough to defrost the ground quickly.
When she is feeling more peaceful she begins her work slowly and gently. First, the pussy willows, then the crocus, the snowdrops and the green shoots of the daffodils.
Then her sister radiant Sun appears. Together they take out their paint boxes and paint our part of the earth green using many shades and hues.
The ground begins to see grass, fragile at first but getting stronger as the days past.
Then there is the forsythia bush. They both have a fondness for this one so it is one of the first flowering bushes to appear. Friends and family say to each other “I saw a forsythia bush today. Yea! It is a sure sign that Spring is here. Joy is ours! Joy is ours.
The sisters are just getting started. Now come the flowering trees and bushes. The azaleas, sometimes the pink and white branches intertwined, the cherry blossoms and the dogwoods; they are all so resplendent, so beautiful, and so breathtaking.
Then come the lilacs, the peonies that perfume the air; you can bury your face in them drunk with the fragrance and the beauty of the flowers. How can such a miracle come to be?
Next they work on flowers not so close to the ground. Daffodils are now gathering strength and blossoming and after that their cousins the tulips are coming forth in so many colors it is mind-boggling. There is one so dark that it actually looks black. If you asked Spring and Sun why there is a black like tulip they would giggle and laugh and say because we can.
Spring is an event to be anticipated. The thought of Spring gets us through miserable days of numbing cold, dangerous roads, mounds of snow, actual blizzards. For her visit we try to put aside burdensome problems, to put our houses in order, to take a two-month vacation from grinding life.
When she finally comes we restore ourselves, reminding ourselves that true beauty is what all man made art is measured against. Her visit is sheer joy. If there were an ode to Spring it would be “Spring is Here. Spring is Here. Halleluiah, Halleluiah.”
