Month: March 2017

Tell Your Story

- Alexis 3 Comments

My One Line A Day Five Year Memory Book, with a pen on top

I’m a big believer in the transformative and connective power of telling your story.  It’s been almost a year now since I began my practice of writing creatively on a nearly daily basis, and I have learned so much about myself in the process.  While most of what I’ve written has never been shared publicly, taking the time to reflect on the events of my life and how they’ve shaped me has been truly invaluable from a personal development perspective.  And while I was a little nervous about starting this blog and putting my thoughts and personal stories out there on the internet for anyone to read, I’ve been so moved and encouraged by the feedback I’ve received.  I love getting an email or comment from someone who can relate to what I’ve posted, and this blog has helped to deepen the conversations I have with some of the people in my life.

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How to Lift Yourself Up When You’re Feeling Down

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An oil painting of a blooming bradford pear tree
Pear Tree in Bloom, 2015. For details and purchase information, please contact Alexis.

Even the most optimistic and happy-go-lucky among us occasionally have bad days.  I’m not talking about clinical depression; I’m talking about those days when things don’t go your way, or you get some bad news, or a long stretch of misfortunes culminates into a wave of negative emotions.  We all deal with those days in our own ways, some healthier than others.  May I offer a few suggestions for working through these tough times?

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Quote of the Week

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“There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate—the genetic and neural fate—of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death. I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers. Above all, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.”

Oliver Sacks, Gratitude

The last bit of color in a dusk sky reflects on a lake

 

My AncestryDNA Experience

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Many people put a lot of stock in their bloodlines. They like to tell tales of famous ancestors and are excited to learn that their great-great-great-uncle performed a heroic deed. I find this tendency rather curious. Why do we care so much about the lives of long-deceased people we’ve never met, simply because we inherited some of their genes? Do we believe their greatness has been passed down to us? What about the ancestors with less admirable stories — do we believe we inherited the shame of their misdeeds? (And if we go back far enough, aren’t we all part of the same family tree?)  Whatever the reasons, there’s no question that our biological and genetic descendancies form key parts of our identities.

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The Weekend Listen

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A pair of wireless headphones for podcast listening

I listen to a lot of podcasts while driving, working out, and doing chores around the house. In this weekly feature, I’ll tell you about one episode I particularly enjoyed that week.

My choice for this week is Your Weekly Constitutional’s episode, “The Original Black Elite.”  Your Weekly Constitutional is a public radio show and podcast hosted by a constitutional law professor, Stuart Harris, that addresses a variety of timely and controversial constitutional issues.  In this episode, Stuart interviews scholar and author Elizabeth Dowling Taylor about her research into a largely overlooked period of black American history: the era between reconstruction and Jim Crow, when there was a proud “colored aristocracy.”  I learned a lot from this discussion, and I hope you will too.

Are you listening to a podcast I haven’t mentioned yet?  Tell us about it in the comments!