On Body Wisdom

Every day it speaks to you, sometimes even in your dreams.  It speaks of long-held memories buried deep within the tissues of your muscles, of the hope ready to spring into action coiled at the base of your spine.

It speaks to you about the wings making their way out of the crevice between your vertebrae and shoulder blades.  It reveals the scars engraved into your hip sockets.  Scars so old you didn't even know they were still there--until a movement, a memory stirs them up again and you can begin to release them as you would weeds from your garden, gently loosening their roots from your soil.

It is limbs and torso that tell you when you need to move, to dance, to release yourself, free yourself from the bonds of the day, the shackles of limited logic.  And when you must be still, your body tells you to be still, still enough to hear only the beating of your heart and the new seeds you planted cracking open to lay down roots where weeds once were.

Your body is the deepest wisdom.  The surest answer found in the physical expression of your soul. 

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

On My Bookshelf

You find yourself gazing at this six-tiered monster, three cases wide, stuffed full of stories with no plan, no pattern.  You used to be so careful with your books and their placement.  Once they were arranged alphabetically; another time by theme (here the epic fantasy series all the books stacked together in one fat row; there the collection of poems next to your Victorian women authors); and yet another by height.  You went so far as to separate your hardbacks from your paperbacks once, but that formality didn't last long.

Now they sit squished together, Victorian authors with the sword and sorcery, the poems mixed in with your cozy mysteries amidst knick-knacks and treasures, just as your sister haphazardly placed them when she unpacked them from their moving boxes.  You cannot look upon your shelves now without seeing them as another sister-memory sewn into each book spine.  These precious books, collected over the years, are stuffed into each shelf like paper sardines--you almost do not have enough room so your books must shed their modesty and take up house with a kaleidoscope of other words.  Yet you cannot make yourself bring order to this joyful chaos.

You wonder what they have to talk about, the Collete novels that kiss your collection of fairy tales and hold up your cheesy romances written in Spanish.  You wonder, too, if those stories begin to bleed into one another with their covers pressed so tightly against themselves.  Your bookshelf seems to sign and settle, breathing in the weight of so many stories upon its back, within its skeleton.

It is a map, in many ways, of the stories you will write, a tangled ball of words that you un-knot from your writing desk to spin into new beginnings.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

I Live in Stories

I live in stories.

They frame my world so that each turn of the corner is the prospect of a new adventure, each long-held gaze, a mystery to uncover.  I hold on to the power of narrative in the hopes that it will shape my life, guide it along the path of the heroines that have come before me.  It is never enough to simply do but to record each action, shape them into some semblance of a plot, that tenuous thread that turns ordinary moments into synchronous events.

I live in stories because I am uncomfortable anywhere else. 

I am made up of the words and books I devoured as a child, and later still, as an adult.  In my veins are the ink and pulp that shape the worlds I carry into my own.  The spine of the leather-bound book on my desk is my spine, holding together pages upon pages of written memory with glue and vertebrae.  I do not know how to be anything other than imagination and so flail, often wordlessly, hopelessly when I brush up against the literal--that heavy brick that does not know the meaning of wings.

I live in stories because I know that my life is a mercurial entity, always twining its way through this world in a curious expression of abundance and experience bound by the layers of what could be.

I live in stories because I know that I am a story.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

On Enjoyment

You will never understand those who are too stingy with it--squeezing it in on the weekends, stuffing themselves full in a panic as if Monday might steal their ability to enjoy the world.  They ration it out across each evening, Sundays through Thursdays, push it out of their nine to five days. It is as if they feel their supply is limited, that they must bottle it up, store it in a small jar in the back of their pantry and save it for some other day. 

But that will not do.

Enjoyment is too precious a necessity to sit neglected on some dusty shelf.  It must be brought into the light and savored every day.  You cannot live without the lush, bubbly feeling that tickles your senses like a glass of champagne in your belly, getting you drunk on the pure deliciousness of one moment experienced fully. 

You will not turn away from such bliss, nor wearily resign yourself to a stint (a week? a month?) at more chaste living as if you were perpetually half-ashamed of your hedonism.  No, you will call to it, search for those pockets of enjoyment in your day to day.

You will revel in the early morning bird song, that melodious foreshadowing of spring.  You will relish the stolen afternoon planting your radish seeds--perhaps too soon, but the warm weather has made you reckless--and the feel satisfaction of unscrewing the lid to your mason jar lunch, all that spinach stuffed into such tight quarters a welcome sight come noon.  You will even take pleasure in the afternoon call to the plumber that keeps you home to write and tend house, bringing you back to you.

Enjoyment is a big-hearted creature, growing bigger, bolder each time you seek it out.  It will take over everything if you let it--and you should.  Get drunk on the sunset.  Let the hum of your daily work wash over you, a rhythm made up of pen on paper, classroom to office.  Embrace the heady perfume of your dinner cooking on the stove, the lure of a half-finished book on your nightstand.

Enjoyment is found everywhere, in everything, unapologetically revealing the seemingly mundane as nothing short of magical.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Everything's Coming Up Roses Tea Blend

This tea is like a cup-sized celebration of the bounty in your life, the eternal spring in your heart, and the perpetual enjoyment of love and life.  It is also a perfect February tea as it's laced with winter's warming spices yet heavily perfumed with roses--the promise of a new season.

I used two types of rose petals here; the soft pink ones give a light floral aroma while the red petals offer up an earthy flavor that pairs well with the black Assam tea.  Calendula lends a pop of color.  This tea is a thoughtful Valentine treat for the tea lover in your life that you love to love--try saying that three times fast--or for anyone who needs to be reminded that everything is, truly, coming up roses!

Ingredients:

1 cup Assam black tea

1/2 cup red rose petals

1/2 cup pink rose petals

1/2 cup cinnamon bark chips

1/4 cup calendula

1/8 cup cloves

Combine ingredients in bowl and transfer to a mason jar or other airtight container.  Store in a cool, dry place.  Makes almost 3 cups.  Enjoy!

Health benefits of ingredients:

Calendula: anti-inflammatory, aids digestion, reduces swollen lymph glands, soothes irritated skin.

Cinnamon: antiseptic, aids digestion, calms nervous system, anti-inflammatory.

Rose petals: soothes skin; mild sedative and natural stress reliever; rich in vitamin C.

Clove: antiseptic, antioxidant, aids digestion.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

On Tenderness

Tenderness--that timid little beast full of its own kind of ferocity.  It dares what no one else will: to reach beyond the safety of its armor and the armor of others to stop the world with a soft caress, a squeeze of a hand, or a gentle whisper of things half-said.

It is enough to acknowledge and be acknowledged it says.  Enough to cast aside the temptation to perpetually coat your words in irony, your face in schooled ennui.  Tenderness does not just wear its heart on its sleeve but carves it upon its skin, a reminder that there are blood and bones beneath our shells, and --tucked behind a living cage--a full beating heart. 

It might feel like a bruise at times, that carving, or a pulsing scar, but that is only because it must feel, always feel everything around it so as never to be fossilized by urbane manners or cool posturing.  Those things do not touch it, will not touch it.  Must not touch it.

This little beast knows that to cast aside its armor, so shoddily made of unfounded fears, is to become stronger--to offer itself up to the world as a song of muscle and memory so as to see whose soul beats in time with its own.

There, there lies the naked power of tenderness.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Aphrodite's Sugar Scrub

Valentine's Day is a celebration of the love in your life--and not just romantic kind.  It's about sharing your gratitude for the people who make your day a little brighter and a little sweeter.  What better way to honor this love than by giving them this sugar body scrub to shake off the winter blahs?

Full of cinnamon and roses--long considered natural love potions--this scrub inspires us to invoke the divine Aphrodite and to relish the simple hedonism of a long bubble bath (maybe with a buddy!), pampered skin, and a rosy outlook on life.  Pair it with my Aphrodite's Bath Salts, and you've got a match made in heaven!

Ingredients:

1 cup organic sugar

1 cup olive oil or coconut oil

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1/4 cup rose petals

30 drops cinnamon essential oil

30 drops rose oil or rose water

10 drops clove oil

Mix all ingredients in a bowl and store in a mason jar or other airtight container.  Makes about 1 cup.  Enjoy!

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Aphrodite's Bath Salts

With Valentine's Day around the corner, you might be thinking about what to get for those special someones in your life beyond a glitter coated heart-shaped card, a box of chocolates, or a bouquet of roses--all wonderful, natch, but sometimes it doesn't hurt to shake things up.   And let's be honest, they've probably already used the treats you made them for the holidays! I like to think of Valentine's Day as a time when we can try a little tenderness, as the song goes.  That includes pampering the people that fill your corner of the world with love, light, and happiness. 

And who knows? If you want to treat an extra special someone to some TLC, the aphrodisiacs mixed into these bath salts might just make things a little more interesting.  The clove and cinnamon oil are antibacterial and add a warming energy to your bath, while the rose petals bring a touch of romantic glamor as well as skin-softening and toning qualities.  Adding rose oil and powdered cinnamon just takes this delectable soak over the top!

Ingredients:

1 cup Epsom salts

1/4 cup olive oil or coconut oil

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1/4 cup rose petals

30 drops cinnamon essential oil

30 drops rose oil or rose water

10 drops clove oil

Combine ingredients in a bowl until thoroughly mixed.  Store in an airtight container indefinitely.  Makes about 1 cup.  Enjoy!

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!