We had a wonderful weekend last weekend. I somehow managed to talk Albrecht into talking a little break from work so we went for a walk…VIEW POST
Archives for August 2018
JOURNALING MY WAY THROUGH
*Disclaimer*: not a happy post!
I want to be angry and yell in how much pain I was in. How life betrayed me. How I lost everything that was important to me, while trying to hold on as thight as I could – still, it all slipped away. Leaving me empty handed but more so empty hearted. What´s is left if all there is is pain – and a little bit of hope? Hope to hold onto that one day, maybe one day all of this brings a little bit of joy. For someone. No matter how many tears I cry, I can´t undo the fact that I have been the girl running around the blog in the darkness of her neighborhood, sleep deprived because the pain would not let me sleep and every time I stopped to run, unbearable pain set in again. I´ve been the girl that has been carried to bed by her husband because in a split second the pain got so worse I could hardly even stand up, let alone brush my teeth. In just a second a wonderful moment turned into pure horror. I´ve felt the darkest of dark, have felt my sould and heart become numb and dark – and really, what more painful there is to experience than that?VIEW POST
LIFE LATELY
First of all: HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD! Looking for pictures of us, I found these from our holiday last year. Last year was not an easy one but looking back on this holiday brings a lot of wonderful memories! So I pray that this upcoming year will be good to you – just as good as this holiday was!!VIEW POST
HAPPY MONDAY – RISING STRONG BY BRENE BROWN
To be honest, I have had a hard time feeling happy lately. Although I don´t intent to feel happy all the time or think it is something to hold on to in every moment, I know there is a form of contentment and peace one can feel, that can easily move to feeling happy, to feel like you are right where you belong and lets you be present rather than wishing for something else – somewhere else. How did I get here? How do I re-learn being content? The most vunerable I feel like we can get, is by admitting that “I dont feel like myself” or “I feel completely powerless”
I have been reading Brene Browns Rising Strong the last few weeks- it has brought me moments of silence, moments of looking in the mirror and not liking what I saw but most of all it brought small moments of contentment, of “this is right”.
Failure, shame, guilt, thinking needing help is a way of “loosing it”, even more shame, starting to forgo my boundaries and starting to not be true to myself, a never ending circle. But oh the light there is if I look shame in the eye, if I share my thoughts and feelings – if I start to know what I am truly feeling. Going there has bought me to my most vulnerable place but it also brought insight to things I didnt even know it existed anymore!
Here are excerpts from Brene Browns Rising Strong I dont want to forget:
The Latin root of the word integrate is integrare, which means “to make whole”. Integrating is the engine that moves us through the reckoning, the rumble, and the revolution, and the goal of each of these processes is to make ourselves whole. Page 41
Mindfulness means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding enviroment. Mindfulness also involves acceptance, meaning that we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them – without believing, for instance, that there´s a “right” or “wrong” way to think or feel in a given moment. Page 71
That´s when I realized that mindfulness and flow are never in competition with each other. They aren´t the same thing, but they share the same foundation: making the choice to pay attention. Page 73
Owning our stoies means reckoning with our feelings and rumbling with our dark emotions – our fear, anger, aggression, shame, and blame. Page 75
In the absence of data, we will always make up stories. Page 79
We start weaving these hidden, false stories into our lives and they eventually disort who we are and how we relate to others. Page 84
I can never be sure about the intentions of others, but I believe that assuming the best about other people can fundamentally change my life. Page 129
We can´t heal if we can´t grieve; we can´t forgive if we can´t grieve. Page 139
Expectations are resentments waiting to happen. […] This often happens when our expecations are based on outcomes we cant control, like what other people think, what they feel, or how they´re going to react. Page 140
“She wasn´t afraid of people in need because she wasn´t afraid of needing others” Page 175
Trust- in ourselves or in others – is often the first casuality in a fall, and stories of shattered trust can render us speechless with hurt or send us into a defensive silence. Page 198
Seven elements of trust emerged […] Boundaries […] Reliability […] Accountability […] Vault […] Integrity […] Nonjudgment [..] Generosity Page 199-200
Self-trust is often a casuality of failure. […] “I don´t know if I can trust myself again” Page 200
- B- Did I respect my own boundaries? […]
- R- Was I reliable? Did I do what I said I was going to do?
- A- Did I hold myself accountable?
- V- Did I respect the vault and share appropriately?
- I- Did I act from my integrity?
- N- Did I ask for what I needed? Was I nonjudgmental about needing help?
- G- Was I generous towards myself
I truly hope you are having a happy Monday but most of all I hope you are in a place of life where you can feel a moment of true contentment!
Sending you lots of love!!
Madita
LIFE LATELY
I spent pretty much all week with Janis while Albrecht worked a lot. Starting a new business is no joke. I´m grateful that we have the support system to be able to do that and figure it all out before we have more responsibilities than just ourselves. We are making the most of it and learning a lot while doing so 🙂 on to life lately…
WEDDING – PART FOUR
If you missed the rest of my wedding recap you can read it here…
On to the last part! This post does not follow a chronological ordner 😉
Early on Albrecht and I knew that our vision for this weekend would include a kitchen where “we” could cook for everyone. Just like at home the kitchen is the heart of it all, so we felt like it would add a lot of value to our weekend if the kitchen would be in our hands and not have the food catered to us. The question was always though how we could pull that off, since we knew that both Albrecht and I would not be able to cook ourselves. There are only very few people who I would trust with running a kitchen under not so easy circumstances with everyone else helping out – Alex (pictured above) being at the top of that list! Let me tell you – we lucked out having Alex there! He volunteered to run the kitchen and did so, with so much joy! It didnt matter how stressful things got, he always was willing to answer questions, managed all the people volunteering and miraculously was also part of every moment of our wedding. Non of it would have been possible without Alex help!
We served sheet cake right after the wedding ceremony. We baked the sheet cake beforehand and it saved a ton of time on the weekend itself and worked out wonderfully!
Preparation for the salad bar we had at the buffet!
This cheese plates were a big hit at our wedding and I´m still so very impressed how beautiful they turned out!!
Everyone sat down for the reception and these cheese plates were waiting at the table. It was a nice way to start the evening on a relaxed note. Also, it looked really nice which doesnt hurt either 😉
Besides the cheese plates we had a full buffet with a salad bar, quiche, anti pasti and so much more. Sadly I only have a picture of half of it.
For the main course we served pasta with either tomato sauce, meat sauce or parmesan.
The parmesan was also a big hit. Alex re-heated the pasta and put it into the parmesan! Delicious!
We cut the parmesan into 80 small pieces afterwards and everyone got to take a piece home!
For dessert we served lemon-mascarpone mousse and instead of a wedding cake we did apple cumble with whipped cream! It was so good!! Since Albrecht cant it gluten and lactose, this was an easy way to substitute the traditional wedding cake.
Our wedding weekend was more than we could have dreamed or hoped for and I´m so glad we have it to look back on it our whole lives!
<3
LIFE LATELY
“My life has been a path at the edge of uncertainty. Today, I think we educate kids to be settled in a comfortable chair. You have your job, you have your little car, you have a place to sleep and the dreams are dead. You don’t grow on a secure path. All of us should conquer something in life and it needs a lot of work and it needs a lot of risk. In order to grow and to improve, you have to be there a bit at the edge of uncertainty.” – Francis Mallmann
I´ve been thinking more and more about this. How we train our society, our kids and even ourselves to think that comfort and security is the ultimate goal. Life lately has been full of craving security but at the same time realizing that there is so much more to feel, experience and explore if I trust to go into the unknown and feel the unfelt.
More on the not so deep note 😉 we have been bringin life into our new living room.
Right after Katharina moved 0ut it looked like this 😀 just a random collection of things and a place to sit in the cool while the chair from the balcony was the only comfy option available 😉
VIEW POST
WEDDING – PART THREE
I´m so overwhelmed by all the pictures we´ve g0t from our wedding. I´m so happy we have them and it fills me with joy to look at them and have them capture all the big and small wonderful things from our weekend but I have the hardest time picking out just a few of them :-/
If you missed part one or two of my wedding recap you can go and read it here…
The girls and I got ready in our room and it was such a special time together. Not only did they my hair and made sure everything run smoothly and I looked presentable but I felt so loved by the thoughts and actions they put into my special day. Something I will tresure always! I will let the pictures do the taking from here on. We had the most special time, with the most wonderful people. We elebrated our commitment to each other and just had a joyful time together!
LIFE LATELY
Life lately was spent at home and in Holland 🙂
Albrecht found blackberries on his way to his workshop. So one night he decided to pick them and we turned them into jam 🙂
