****Disclaimer: I do on occasion get affiliate benefits from being an “ambassador” for services and products. However, I will *never* be an affiliate for, nor praise on this blog, any item or service I have not used and loved my own self! For the sake of transparency, I do get monetary bennies if you sign up to plantoeat.com or Goddess Circle using my links. I get nothing from 750words.com, and if you get an invite for MindBloom through me, I get no money but I do get points (or “seeds”) that I can use in the game. ****

750Words.com

The other day someone on Facebook  mentioned this tool, available at 750words.com.  When I popped over, I discovered that the site is a private, easy to use tool for writing your Morning Pages (a tool recommended in Julia Cameron’s Artist’s Way book)  every day, something I often resist doing. It’s also motivational — you get reminders, stats for the day, points for each day you write, and a chance to see how many other folks did their 750 words that day along with you. Community is a great way to approach these things, which is one of the enormous benefits of challenges such as NaNoWriMo. I am so glad to have found 750words!

PlantoEat.com

When I decided to go vegan, which is now leaning more toward macrobiotic, I felt I needed someplace to track my new recipes and mainly to organize a shopping list based on the recipes I’ve chosen. PlantoEat allows me to add recipes by hand or from the web, and then to queue the ones I will use often so I can quickly add them to the days I choose when I do my menu-planning. The planner then calculates how much of each ingredient I need, depending on how often it shows up in my planner for the week, and develops a shopping list accordingly. I haven’t used it as often as I had expected to, largely because the summer has been too hot for cooking, but it’s an ingenious tool and I was all too happy to subscribe after my trial period ended.

MindBloom

MindBloom is a gorgeous, interactive, motivational tool that I also discovered via a Facebook friend.  You create your Tree of Life based on your current life goals, and every time you do one of your goal-directed tasks, the leaves on your tree get a little greener. The location your tree resides in changes, as does the music that plays when you arrive. Once the music is over you can listen to the birds chirping and even the cows bellow (my tree currently resides on a farm) and I have been using these ambient nature sounds as my focus background when I do my morning “nothing” meditations. You can go there and get signed up on your own, but if you’d like an invite from me, you’ll get to be my “friend” in MindBloom (and yes, I’ll get points if you accept my invite!).  Simply leave a comment here asking for an invite or shoot an email to me at: mindbloom @ soulspackle dot com (without the spaces and using appropriate punctuation, of course!)

Goddess Circle

Oh, the lovely Goddess Circle! It opens today and it is just going to be a delight! I’d be playing there right now, but I’m waiting on Goddess Leonie to do a little magic for me. In the meantime, though, I anticipate what loveliness will unfold there. The Goddess Circle memberships offer year-long access to the materials for Leonie’s previous course offerings, most of which I’ve taken. There’s the delightfully inspiring Creative Goddess course, which I’ve written about here, and the Radiant Goddess course which introduced me to detox and raw foods. There’s heaps of meditations, and if you’ve never experienced Leonie’s meditations, you are in for a treat — I’ve had so many amazing experiences based on her guidance, when it seems she is actually *in* my MP3 player and not half a world away! The best part about the circle though, aside from the magical mama Leonie herself, and the promise that we get her new e-courses and goodies as they come out in the next year, is the circling! The women are circling again! In our very own sacred space, where we get to support and lift each other up on a regular basis. Leonie always says that when women circle, magic happens.  I would like to say that when women circle under Leonie’s leadership, that is truly the magic formula for miracles.

Namaste!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVwdBCb8S1I

Honestly, I think we all have a little Sadie inside us, and if we remember that, perhaps we will stop being so mean to ourselves. Because Inner Sage Sadie does not deserve it — just look at that face!!

This week I started the Inner Mean Girl Cleanse. It’s all about taking those nasty voices and mean girls inside you and turning them into allies. And it’s about time. I have this one Inner Mean Girl who throws spitballs at me every time I so much as *think* about going back to school. And I’m done with her. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but the plan is to get my Bachelor’s in Anthropology (with a specialization in Medical Anthropology) while pursuing certification to become a doula. After that, I’ll study to become an ND (Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine) and a midwife. Did I just say that out loud? I think I just got a spitball in the eye.

But Sadie says I can, and she’s a wise woman in a little girl’s body, so there.

Due to technical difficulties with my digital camera (the USB cord shorted out. I was able to borrow my sister’s, but then hers started not “fitting” my camera suddenly, and my computer complained it was drawing too much power so I think the port is shot. Now I need to get an SD card reader to bypass all that), I cannot show you my latest August Break photos nor my Full Sturgeon Moon Dreamboard. This mosaic that I created using the themes that turned up in my dreamboard this month will have to suffice.

Jamie asked us to consider this month, when building our dreamboards, how it is that we wish to shine. I’m a woman of many passions and interests, some which fade away after a season, others which return again and again. One of the primary motifs for me has been the empowerment of women and children, and one of the cooperative motifs has been regarding health. As I go on my own intense journey toward health and healing using knowledge I’ve gained from both allopathic and naturopathic models of medicine, I see the value in Functional Medicine, and in the wisdom of our own bodies. I’m brought back to my passion for childbirth. I’m trying to work out a plan, which may involve many years of schooling and I am already in my mid-30s! The other driving forces of my life are a passion for nature, the environment, and animals.

I’d like my financial life to shine, opportunities for travel, and for my body to follow suit as I care for it healthwise. That’s why you see a scantily clad Jennifer Love Hewitt up there. :)

For August Break

I made Alissa Cohen’s Marinara Sauce.. and then I put it in a canning jar. It made me feel smart and special, but the sauce? Total heartburn.

For August Break

Culinary delights, on my vegan+fish mission: canned salmon with Blackberry Sauce, from Shauna James Ahern’s Gluten Free Girl, and Sicilian Collard Greens from Alicia Silverstone’s The Kind Diet.

For August Break

For August Break

For August Break

Therapy, for me, is all about learning how to be in the driver’s seat.

For August Break

Kind of sums up my whole summer!

For August Break