letsjustmoveonestepatatime - Tumblr blog

[letsjustmoveonestepatatime]

Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanun 2015 (© Ahmed Hjazy)

[letsjustmoveonestepatatime]

I am setting myself up for 60 hr work weeks and I suppose IT’S FINE

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Whenever I read back on what I wrote, I realize I’ve been having the same rough time for page after page and month after month.

[letsjustmoveonestepatatime]

Do you ever feel hopeless

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You are in bloom. 🌸

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Do you ever just want to scream and sob

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“We must commit each day to our betterment— again and again. In order to change the world, we must all do so together.” — Christen Press

[letsjustmoveonestepatatime]

Could you imagine watching your life partner work for years, finally get a promotion, and feeling the joy as if it were happening to you? I can. That’s abundance.

Now imagine you extend that love and celebration to your entire family. It’s easy, right? Could you extend it to your entire community? To the entire world?

I can imagine how much more love, joy, celebration, and success we’d all have if we did that with every person every single day. That’s abundance. And I believe that we are all infinitely intertwined.

— Christen Press

[letsjustmoveonestepatatime]

I light incense on the stovetop, trail cinders through an empty house. I’ve decided to believe in the power of ashes: Here I am, buying fruit, mending torn shirts, brushing teeth in cramped bathrooms, living someplace new. Wish you were here. I sprinkle sandalwood dust on the ribbon from my first 5K, the token from my first solo trip— milestones so small and unremarkable, only you could understand and be proud. Remember world-history class, how I translated lectures to you each night, partly to practice, partly to keep you with me? Every day, there’s so much new I want to show you, like the spongy tang of injera, pork belly banh mi melting like butter on the tongue, all these places I have traveled without you so I can forget how without you I am. Remember when I was 10 and hateful, trying too hard to be cool, how in a rare moment you said all you wanted was for me to love my life, my only life, this life you started? Here, look how the clouds blush so fiercely; the stark blue winter, so cold and bright.

— Jenny Qi, “Postcards From the Living”

[letsjustmoveonestepatatime]

bell hooks: Pema, one of the ideas in your work that really challenges me is abandoning the hope of fruition. That’s really hard for me.

Pema Chödrön: The way I understand it is that we rob ourselves of being in the present by always thinking that the payoff will happen in the future. The only place ever to work is right now. We work with the present situation rather than a hypothetical possibility of what could be. I like any teaching that encourages us to be with ourselves and our situation as it is without looking for alternatives. The source of all wakefulness, the source of all kindness and compassion, the source of all wisdom, is in each second of time. Anything that has us looking ahead is missing the point.

Source: from lionsroar.com (Pema Chödrön & bell hooks on cultivating openness when life falls apart)

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Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies

[letsjustmoveonestepatatime]

Starting pouring the first day I wore this shirt. LA is just as happy about Pressy as I am :’) 🥰🥰🥰

[letsjustmoveonestepatatime]

‪The love you give recycles and circulates throughout the universe, no expression of love is ever lost or wasted.‬

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:(

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Christen Press on the big screen! 🙌🏻

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I feel deep sadness. Today I felt suffocated. I think it’s time I leave.