Sharegiving for Women

04/10/2022

We are all beautiful—at every age, every body type—as long as we are kind, we are beautiful!

When she was a little girl
they told her she was beautiful
but it had no meaning
in her world of bicycles
and pigtails
and adventures in make-believe.

Later, she hoped she was beautiful
as boys started taking notice
of her friends
and phones rang for
Saturday night dates.

She felt beautiful on her wedding day,
hopeful with her
new life partner by her side
but, later,
when her children called
her beautiful,
she was often exhausted,
her hair messily tied back,
no make up,
wide in the waist
where it used to be narrow;
she just couldn't take it in.

Over the years, as she tried,
in fits and starts,
to look beautiful,
she found other things
to take priority,
like bills
and meals,
as she and her life partner
worked hard
to make a family,
to make ends meet,
to make children into adults,
to make a life.

Now,
she sat.
Alone.
Her children grown,
her partner flown,
and she couldn't remember
the last time
she was called beautiful.

But she was.

It was in every line on her face,
in the strength of her arthritic hands,
the ampleness that had
a million hugs imprinted
on its very skin,
and in the jiggly thighs and
thickened ankles
that had run her race for her.

She had lived her life with a loving
and generous heart,
had wrapped her arms
around so many to
to give them comfort and peace.
Her ears had
heard both terrible news
and lovely songs,
and her eyes
had brimmed with,
oh, so many tears,
they were now bright
even as they dimmed.

She had lived and she was.
And because she was,
she was made beautiful.

~ Suzanne Reynolds, © 2019

Photo credit: Nina Djerff
Model: Marit Rannveig Haslestad

01/08/2022

To all the moms of tweens and teens…

My parenting story isn’t cute anymore. It’s true. I’m in those years of parenting that just are nitty-gritty-not-redeemable by instagram. It’s the middle years and the teenage years and the young adult years and friends, it just isn’t cute.

It’s a great deal of no sleep, but not due to waking babes, but me sitting up waiting for them to return.

It’s a great deal of worrying and wondering and hoping and homework and tests and sitting in a car while your heart is pounding out your chest while you’re yelling “brake brake brake.”

It’s a great deal of amazing talks and deafening silence. Oh the silence. No one told me about the silence. Who would have thought that there would be a day when I wished for a bit of noise?

It’s a great deal of feeling alone and wondering, just like you did when they are young, if you are making the right choice. The choices, the choices, that part never seems to end.
It’s a great deal of waiting and cheering and hoping and trying and worrying and letting go and being brave.

And it is just not cute.

There are no longer cute sleeping toddlers or fun crafts or goofy faces. There are no longer the fun costumes or times pushing swings at the park or all of them in the car, strapped in, with silly songs on.

Hah, now the music is their music and the memes things that I'm like, "I just don't get it...."
It’s just different.

And just because it’s different doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. It matters so much even if it isn’t as Instagram worthy. It matters so deeply in the most un-cute way.
It matters.

You see in all of motherhood it is the simplest things that matter so much - the showing up, the loving, the dealing, the listening, the giving, the caring.

It all matters.

Years ago I wrote about why being a mom is enough. It still is, even if it isn’t cute or adorable or any of that. It matters just as much and in it all you are enough. You are still enough, more than enough, in this most unseen and often lonely place of motherhood.

You see the truth still stands.

They need you.

They need you in your tired, imperfect, showing up, loving them unconditionally, setting the rules, being their mom way.

Maybe you are more tired or the pics are just you or you are feeling alone. But you see, you are the pulse, the life, the love.

You matter.

You are enough.

It's a season. A new season. And even though it looks differently, it doesn't mean it doesn't matter. It is just different, with love that deepens and pride for them that grows. It may not be as adorable, but oh my goodness, the depth and the ups and downs and letting go - it is all there.

This season, this not-so-cute season matters.
And so do you.

-Rachel Dan
who still is hoping for sleep...that part stays the same.
follow Finding Joy

11/26/2021

"There comes a day, somewhere in the middle of every woman’s life, when Mother Nature herself stands behind us and wraps her arms around our shoulders, whispering
“It’s time.”
“You have taken enough now. It’s time to stop growing up, stop growing older and start growing wiser and wilder.
There are adventures still waiting on you and this time, you will enjoy them with the vision of wisdom and the companionship of hindsight, and you will really let go.
It’s time to stop the madness of comparison and the ridicule of schedule and conformity and start experiencing the joys that a life, free of containment and guilt, can bring.”
She will shake your shoulders gently and remind you that you’ve done your bit. You’ve given too much, cared too much, you’ve suffered too much.
You’ve bought the book, as it were, and worn the t-shirt.
Worse, you’ve worn the chains and carried the weight of a burden far too heavy for your shoulders.
“It’s time” she will say.
“Let it go, really let it go and feel the freedom of the fresh, clean spaces within you. Fill them with discovery, love and laughter. Fill yourself so full you will no longer fear what is ahead and instead you will greet each day with the excitement of a child.”
She will remind you that if you choose to stop caring what other people think of you and instead care what you think of you, you will experience a new era of your life you never dreamed possible.
‘It’s time’ she will say…
“to write the ending, or new beginning, of your own story.”
~ Donna Ashworth

TreeSisters: women seeding change