The wildflowers look amazing!!!😍 and can’t wait to read more about your tarot journey and that generational trauma book! I want to add it to my TBR list so badly, but I’m making myself pause now that summer has officially begun and my kids will be home. I just know I will only have time for the pile of books I already have 😆 can’t wait to hear more about what you think of it!
Thank you! And thanks for the deck recommendation (I wanted to give you a shoutout but your personal name wasn't taggable, so -- here it is -- THANKS!!!). I hear ya about pressing pause on new books! Can't wait to share more about the various aspects of this intriguing journey :D
Your post showing your wildflowers has created a problem for me, which is I might need to uproot myself, pack all my belongings in a moving van, and come live next door to you. Hopefully the house next to yours is actually for sale, so I wouldn't have to become a squatter, hiding out in your neighbors' toolshed or something, furtively munching on the vegetables they're growing and drinking from their garden hose. Moving from the Sonoran Desert to rural Ohio would likely be very disruptive to my daily routines. And as an autistic person, I live and die by routines. But those flowers!!!! Oh, my Dog! They are just gorgeous. I **need** them! ;)
In all seriousness, I would love to read anything you might be willing to share with us about inter-generational trauma. Thanks for highlighting that book. I think of myself as versed in a few basics about trauma, but the inter-generational aspect is an aspect I know very little about. So, pretty please, write about that? And resetting affective circuits? :)
Thank you for making me laugh!! 🤣🤣 I'm glad you take such pleasure in the wildflowers. I have more pictures I could send you but I feel like only so many pics are appropriate for one post. Also, I think you live in CA, is that right? I had to Google "Sonoran Desert" and now I just learned a new thing. It's extremely hot where you are! Once upon a time I road tripped by myself and part of my route was Grand Canyon to Joshua Tree, so I feel like I probably was in your territory!
"A few basics about trauma"?? You are selling yourself quite short! But yes, I will share some more about what I end up learning -- so far it's soooo interesting!
And yes, I haven't forgotten about resetting affective circuits! I think it probably sounds far fancier and mysterious than it actually is. I practiced with a couple of clients this past week. Essentially you depersonalize whatever emotion you are talking about (sad, mad, shame, helpless, you name it) -- come up with an image wholly unrelated to you -- and do EMDR style "just notice" about it and see what evolves. What generally happens is that a sort of narrative gets formed about the image that will end up in some kind of neutral to positive resolution. Sort of teaching the brain that emotions are not just *this specific experience that I had once or many times and felt terrible*, but separate things that we can experience but also are temporary and don't have to define our entire being. (That's Christine's summary, and hopefully it's accurate!)
My current rabbit hole is cyanotype printing. I recently did an in-person workshop and promptly ordered my own supplies and am actively adding to a Pinterest board and planning my first prints. First I need to recover from my root canal, boo.
I also love gardening. This year I’m trying to keep things simpler by adding an automatic watering system to my tomato pots. I’m looking forward to figuring it out.
I enjoyed this post, Christine, for what it reflects in you--your excitement about understanding and appreciating life, not just intellectually but intuitively and aesthetically with your whole mind and being. I suspect your readers have the same mindset, which is why we keep reading, whether you're writing about child rearing, EMDR, wildflowers, or tarot.
Aw thank you -- that feels so heartwarming! And that we're all here together, sharing diverse passions and interests but with lots of overlap with each other. 💜
I have gotten into gardening too! The midlife hobby it seems! 😂 I also recently got a deck of tarot cards and did a reading with a friend who knows about it. I was shocked how it was not about fortune telling at all! I'd always heard it was of the devil kind of thing and it is so NOT doing anything weird like that. Ugh. Another way we were misinformed. I also read that intergenerational trauma book! Our venn diagram of interests is definitely overlapping!
We really do have a good amount of overlap -- yay! You liked the book? I'm only on chapter 2 but I'm so engaged in it so far (it's my bedtime reading). Gardening is SUCH a good midlife hobby I guess -- do you read Culture Study and the offshoot (lol) Garden Study? Gardening... it's such a thing. Ooh I'd love to do a practice reading with a friend. Baby steps, baby steps!
Beautiful gardens!! 😍 That has lately become my hobby too! I started planting native plants instead of grass and then what evolved from that is I started looking for free bricks to border them and became super interested in local brick history and trying to score the local historical bricks, and better yet, the bricks that were inscribed with brickyard details...
Also, being super annoying here, but one thing I learned is that one can put cardboard on the grass and compost or dirt on top and the seeds on top of that and the cardboard will decompose by itself but in the process kill the grass, which is much less work intensive for the gardener and also somehow better for the soil? maybe? Options! Many ways of doing things... It usually takes about a year before it's ready to be dug into, unless it's done in the fall and has the whole winter to decompose.
I love this! Not annoying whatsoever! I was looking into the cardboard thing but it was a little too late by the time I was considering it (hahaha plus I think we'd just recycled like, all of our cardboard, coincidentally).
I would love to get rid of more grass and do native plants or these wildflowers again. I was amazed the grass didn't really grow back in that area, so maybe there's hope it won't just take over again! And I love that now you accidentally fell into a side hobby of learning about bricks 😆
Thanks for the book rec, that sounds fascinating! Also, yay for tarot! I was just coming to comment that you should read Lindsey Melden, but I see that you two have already connected!
The wildflowers look amazing!!!😍 and can’t wait to read more about your tarot journey and that generational trauma book! I want to add it to my TBR list so badly, but I’m making myself pause now that summer has officially begun and my kids will be home. I just know I will only have time for the pile of books I already have 😆 can’t wait to hear more about what you think of it!
Thank you! And thanks for the deck recommendation (I wanted to give you a shoutout but your personal name wasn't taggable, so -- here it is -- THANKS!!!). I hear ya about pressing pause on new books! Can't wait to share more about the various aspects of this intriguing journey :D
No worries at all! I hope you love the spacious deck 🩵
Your post showing your wildflowers has created a problem for me, which is I might need to uproot myself, pack all my belongings in a moving van, and come live next door to you. Hopefully the house next to yours is actually for sale, so I wouldn't have to become a squatter, hiding out in your neighbors' toolshed or something, furtively munching on the vegetables they're growing and drinking from their garden hose. Moving from the Sonoran Desert to rural Ohio would likely be very disruptive to my daily routines. And as an autistic person, I live and die by routines. But those flowers!!!! Oh, my Dog! They are just gorgeous. I **need** them! ;)
In all seriousness, I would love to read anything you might be willing to share with us about inter-generational trauma. Thanks for highlighting that book. I think of myself as versed in a few basics about trauma, but the inter-generational aspect is an aspect I know very little about. So, pretty please, write about that? And resetting affective circuits? :)
Thank you for making me laugh!! 🤣🤣 I'm glad you take such pleasure in the wildflowers. I have more pictures I could send you but I feel like only so many pics are appropriate for one post. Also, I think you live in CA, is that right? I had to Google "Sonoran Desert" and now I just learned a new thing. It's extremely hot where you are! Once upon a time I road tripped by myself and part of my route was Grand Canyon to Joshua Tree, so I feel like I probably was in your territory!
"A few basics about trauma"?? You are selling yourself quite short! But yes, I will share some more about what I end up learning -- so far it's soooo interesting!
And yes, I haven't forgotten about resetting affective circuits! I think it probably sounds far fancier and mysterious than it actually is. I practiced with a couple of clients this past week. Essentially you depersonalize whatever emotion you are talking about (sad, mad, shame, helpless, you name it) -- come up with an image wholly unrelated to you -- and do EMDR style "just notice" about it and see what evolves. What generally happens is that a sort of narrative gets formed about the image that will end up in some kind of neutral to positive resolution. Sort of teaching the brain that emotions are not just *this specific experience that I had once or many times and felt terrible*, but separate things that we can experience but also are temporary and don't have to define our entire being. (That's Christine's summary, and hopefully it's accurate!)
My current rabbit hole is cyanotype printing. I recently did an in-person workshop and promptly ordered my own supplies and am actively adding to a Pinterest board and planning my first prints. First I need to recover from my root canal, boo.
I also love gardening. This year I’m trying to keep things simpler by adding an automatic watering system to my tomato pots. I’m looking forward to figuring it out.
I had to Google cyanotype printing to learn what you’re up to, but now I can see how pretty it is! No wonder you’re getting into it!
Ooh automatic watering would be so helpful. And good luck with that root canal recovery! 😵
I love everything about this! And you've described tarot in such a beautiful way!
Yay! Thank you!
I enjoyed this post, Christine, for what it reflects in you--your excitement about understanding and appreciating life, not just intellectually but intuitively and aesthetically with your whole mind and being. I suspect your readers have the same mindset, which is why we keep reading, whether you're writing about child rearing, EMDR, wildflowers, or tarot.
Aw thank you -- that feels so heartwarming! And that we're all here together, sharing diverse passions and interests but with lots of overlap with each other. 💜
I have gotten into gardening too! The midlife hobby it seems! 😂 I also recently got a deck of tarot cards and did a reading with a friend who knows about it. I was shocked how it was not about fortune telling at all! I'd always heard it was of the devil kind of thing and it is so NOT doing anything weird like that. Ugh. Another way we were misinformed. I also read that intergenerational trauma book! Our venn diagram of interests is definitely overlapping!
We really do have a good amount of overlap -- yay! You liked the book? I'm only on chapter 2 but I'm so engaged in it so far (it's my bedtime reading). Gardening is SUCH a good midlife hobby I guess -- do you read Culture Study and the offshoot (lol) Garden Study? Gardening... it's such a thing. Ooh I'd love to do a practice reading with a friend. Baby steps, baby steps!
Beautiful gardens!! 😍 That has lately become my hobby too! I started planting native plants instead of grass and then what evolved from that is I started looking for free bricks to border them and became super interested in local brick history and trying to score the local historical bricks, and better yet, the bricks that were inscribed with brickyard details...
Also, being super annoying here, but one thing I learned is that one can put cardboard on the grass and compost or dirt on top and the seeds on top of that and the cardboard will decompose by itself but in the process kill the grass, which is much less work intensive for the gardener and also somehow better for the soil? maybe? Options! Many ways of doing things... It usually takes about a year before it's ready to be dug into, unless it's done in the fall and has the whole winter to decompose.
I love this! Not annoying whatsoever! I was looking into the cardboard thing but it was a little too late by the time I was considering it (hahaha plus I think we'd just recycled like, all of our cardboard, coincidentally).
I would love to get rid of more grass and do native plants or these wildflowers again. I was amazed the grass didn't really grow back in that area, so maybe there's hope it won't just take over again! And I love that now you accidentally fell into a side hobby of learning about bricks 😆
👍😄
I loooove your broadening interests!! And I looooooooooove wildflowers. And my friend did a tarot reading for me recently. It was fun!
Nice!! Turns out tarot is a lot of places once you start looking!! 😄
Thanks for the book rec, that sounds fascinating! Also, yay for tarot! I was just coming to comment that you should read Lindsey Melden, but I see that you two have already connected!