A reminder to not let the little joys tucked inside of boredom escape through incessantly, unnecessarily filling our time with phones, screens and to-do’s:

I sometimes, ungraciously, fill the down spaces of my day. Often, I have to remind myself not to do this.

It’s a particularly important reminder because I’m raising two little kids.

Each day, with two small children home with me, is one filled with unexpected joys, disheartening struggles, happiness beyond my wildest dreams at simply being told the strawberry shortcake I made is the “best thing ever”, as well as stress that makes me question if I can handle this parenting gig that I’m already far, far inside of.

Motherhood is wondrous, as kids are endlessly fascinating, but it’s the other moments that sometimes keep me afloat—when my girls are finally chilled out together coloring or reading a book or watching a TV show, that I dash into the kitchen and sneak a quiet phone call to my sister, or I finally text my friend back, or I hop on Facebook and click “like” on a few friends’ posts before my kids noticed I was on the phone and now urgently need me for no real reason at all. These stolen moments of “me” time in a day filled with caring for other people sustain me more than I’m comfortable admitting. And still they do.

While I’ll easily say that “wasted time” like Facebook and texting are things I, even as an adult, need to keep in check and keep balanced, I won’t anytime soon be found on an anti-social media soap box because, in my life as a mother to young kids, it provides friendship and connections in a way that are hard for me to feel, unfortunately, in real life right now. This said, it’s good for me to be bored—no, it’s great for me to be bored.

It’s important that I remember that the best part of my whole day was when my 20 month old looked into my eyes and smiled and acted intentionally silly to make me laugh. I could have missed it easily if I hadn’t put down my phone.

Being bored forces me to experience real life.

I’m forced to look up at the way the clouds look like white, cottony wisps across a neon blue because I’m outside playing with my girls, without a screen between them and me. I’m forced to read with my kids, and to hear how well they know this particular story we’ve read a hundred times, because I set my own book on the edge of the couch to share theirs instead. This kind of “force” is the real gift of my life, not being retweeted by a celebrity or selling a certain number of books. It’s funny how easy it is to place false importance on unimportant things and people, but to ignore, or not properly appreciate, the ones that so deeply matter.

I see how cool it is that my oldest makes rainbows using the spaces between her fingers, with her palm spread out across her construction paper, carefully selecting a crayon to use as the next line. I observe this when I don’t go into the kitchen and leave her to color alone, because she’s being good and quiet and so I can get away with it.

This isn’t to negate the reality that it’s good for my kids to not have me helicopter-whirling around them all the time. Some of the best conversations between my two children are overheard when they think I’m not listening. They are left to learn for themselves how to value alone time, and boredom, and to be sustained and nourished by their own individuality, rather than filling these spaces and holes that are inevitble formed inside of us as we live, learning to plug them with people or experiences, if only to not have to feel our voids from time to time.

I want to be bored.

I want to love myself and my life enough to not gloss over it, but to dig my heels into the dirt around me that I grow from and simply experience the sensations of my toes in the mud.

Some days in our lives are harder to want to be present within than others. I find, again and again, that it’s these places when I’m best off making sure not to tune out.

And so each day I unplug, just a little—just long enough to be reminded that while I’m certainly not perfect, and my life isn’t either, it’s mine, and I love living in it.

The post When Boredom Is Good for Us. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

I’m sitting here writing this with a baby nursing in my lap.

I am no stranger to exposed breasts.

I am no stranger, either, to the excitement and curiosity of new people and places and of moving, traveling and living life how I choose rather than according to an arbitrary rule book.

I support equality (and, thus, gay marriage and choosing no marriage or children regardless of mate preference, for that matter).

I’m, in many ways, a rebel at heart.

I’ve not shaved my legs or armpits, dabbled in social taboos and, most generally speaking, don’t mind making noise.

However, one thing I’ve learned through my experimentation is that making noise for the sole purpose of making it is not a grown-up thing to do. I’ve also learned that part of being good at being a grown-up is to realize that I’ll never quite be grown and to find both the humility as well as the joy within that reality.

I’m sitting here with a baby upon my lap, nibbling at my breast. My husband and daughter are in the other room, folding laundry.

I’ve chosen, obviously, marriage and “two kids” and living in a house and cooking dinner most nights of the week.

I’ve chosen, too, the laundry being stacked in the same piles on the same shelves and the toys and books stored and stashed in nearly the same spots each night.

For example, this chair sits in the same little corner of my kitchen, right next to the oven. This chair was my Nana’s.

This golden shawl is from my sister.

This diaper bag was lovingly crafted by an artist friend.

All of these things were, for a time, anally cared for and protected before becoming familiar and still cared for, but also treated with less controlling caution. Frankly, they are now loved and routinely normal, though still special.

But that’s how life is: routine and normal and wonderful, with bursts of new and snazzy and different. And despite the familiar and known being occasionally taken for granted or having a different kind of sparkle—one that has nicks and snags and wrinkles—it’s precisely this pure joy and to-the-bone-marrow love that make me truly happy and filled with life.

I’ll always choose old jeans, my twenty-year relationship and the daily grind of parenthood over anything else.

I’ll choose the mailbox that mostly contains bills, the yoga practices in the same tiny room in the back hallway of my house, and the sweater that smells just a touch because I’ve worn it three days in a row.

And there may be times when I want to fly away from it all.

There may be moments when I want to run wildly down a beach I’ve never dug my toes into, or instances when the burdens of my “traditional” choices seem both overwhelming and underwhelming simultaneously.

But, this brings me to the most important thing I’ve learned so far: life has, for each of us, a different calling and thrill and my most grown-up knowledge is the acute awareness that not every grown-up is anything like I, and that my own days of running wildly had me, mainly, running from myself and not into the greatest excitement of my life.

And, though not everyone wants to write with a baby nursing in her lap, I do. (Even if I’m also more than okay should my own gulping baby not, someday, choose to have her own.)

And, although a chair is just a chair, and a shawl is just a shawl, and a diaper bag is only a cloth place to put my other things, I know that, in their own ways they are symbols of many different feet standing on flat hard wood to learn how to cook, and knit hugs when my sister is across the state, and sewn transportation so that I can make new memories with my babies.

In short, I’ll take what is the mundane life to some, because, to me, there is divine brilliance there.

Photos: Author’s own.

This article was first published by elephant journal.

The post A Love Note to the Traditional Grown-up. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

I thought that I knew what soul food was.

But then I read Kate Bartolotta’s new book Heart Medicine. This book is pure soul food.

“Write your story; Heal your heart.”

This subtitle speaks volumes as to what the reader should expect: a palatable yet artfully detailed guide on writing our own stories and healing the deepest parts of ourselves—the spaces that we often deem impossible to re-write.

“When we take ownership of the stories inside us, they become more than just personal myths. They become a tool we can use to grow, heal and transform our lives.

They become our Heart Medicine.”

And for those of us who write, this book offers a considerable amount of practical advice.

Whether we choose to write in journals or publish our work for all to see, writing is a creative passion, of course, but it’s also a skill that can, and should, be honed and cultivated. Bartolotta tells us not only what exactly to place into our toolboxes, but she also offers clear directions for how to care for this new set of instruments.

However, don’t be fooled. This book is for anyone and everyone.

Heart Medicine gently commands us to look closely at how our lives are constructed of all the stories that we tell, both to others and to ourselves, as well as the stories that go untold.

If you’re looking to create a life made up of the best stories that you and your heart have to offer—and aren’t we all?—then this book is an absolute must-have.

 Heart Medicine is available on Amazon.com. Visit here to purchase your copy.

The post Kate Bartolotta’s New Book Heart Medicine is Pure Soul Food. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.