Rumor has it the weekend is supposed to be glorious and you may rush to be out in the fresh air, but in the even that April gives a capricious wink and conjures up winds and rains, you can tuck into your coziest spot, with a well-loved blanket and mug of whatever flips your switch, and ingest these gorgeous words.

AprilMusings

Gratitude and awareness of blessings is a hard thing to teach, particularly when I still struggle with it myself. I love this essay from Rudri Bhatt Patel, which demonstrates so beautifully how we should never deny our kids an experience because we think it might be beyond their ability to comprehend. I want to follow her lead and do this.

Let me know what you think.

 

This exquisite choreography of emotion and language is from a new-to-me-voice, Jena Schwartz. I can only say go, read it, inhale it, feel the truth envelope you.

 

I think a lot of raising daughters. I have no idea what I’d do with boys. I am so grateful to women like Kim Simon, who are honestly and deliberately raising their sons to know love and respect the big, amazing thing that sex can be. She also deftly addresses responsibility for both partners and parents. I am just in awe of this and really hope that I can do as well with my three.

 

I discovered this next one from Kelly Hoey, a person I follow on professional level for her insight and confidence related to building connections and moving toward goals. The post is about millennial women needing to speak up for themselves. Millennial is a word that gets a lot of my play in my industry, but it has become more real as I have worked with millennials. They are people and, though they aren’t yet as experienced or worldly as we are, their views are every bit as important. I am grateful for Kate’s. When Kelly linked to this post I immediately hoped that it would be received by the women it’s meant for as a gesture of reaching out a hand and saying, “You are important and I want to hear more of what you have to say.”

 

Speaking of women, of all ages, I wrote this post over on Medium to work through some of the feelings I am having of the cyclical waves of fights between women that are sparked by campaigns and headlines. It’s rarely women who pick these fights. I do believe that ultimately we all just want to be happy and even have a genuine hope for others being happy too. I don’t mean to attack companies, I simply want to try and generate the waves we need to attack divisiveness and that there is only so much of a thing—that only certain people can be happy or sexy, that only ________ is real or healthy or sexy.

 

Have you read something amazing? Will you share it in the comments? I am always on the hunt for new writers.