Magical Love

 Happy Thursday everyone!

It's been awhile, sadly I've been a front row passenger on the struggle bus.

I've missed a couple of months due to illness and then I broke my leg (both bones), shattered my ankle, and tore a ligament. I guess tying sled to Milo and sitting Charlie on it and telling him to haul butt wasn't one of the smartest things I've done.... 

But it was fun while it lasted...

 

Isn't he just the coolest... haha

Anyway on to this month's topic - Magical Love. With Monday being Valentines and the fact I write romance, I really felt I needed to write about love...

I'm sure we have all heard the saying Love Is All You (I) need...and while I would add that clean water, shelter, and doughnuts are important, there is no doubt that love is some powerful magic. It can be truly live changing. 

I'm not talking about romantic love but self-love. Before we can really love another person we need to love ourselves - unconditionally. The latest buzz is all about 'self-care' and 'self-love' but it's still something some of still struggle with.

I was recently with a group of friends and we were talking about how difficult we find it to develop a self-care/self-love routine. I thought I'd share some of the reasons and things we came up to over come them (this is with their permission. I'd never share something personal shared with me without asking).

I don't have time to set-up a self-care/self-love routine. This is was a common factor among us. One that most people relate to on some level. The first thing to banish is that your self-care/self-love routine has to be multi-step involving all the things. I mean heck yeah, I would love to have a hot tub with bubbles surrounded by candles with a plate of doughnuts but in reality I don't even get to take a shower without Charlie pounding on the door. So to try to establish this would be horrible... Milo would knock the candles over trying to get into the hot tub. Charlie would be making Santa beards with the bubbles. And they would eat all my doughnuts. NO self-care there. 

So I set aside 10 minutes a day (the best time for me is 6:30 pm...dinner and the dishes are done, homework is done, and Charlie has his 30 minutes of screen time.) The key to this 10 minutes is to SHOW UP FOR MYSELF. I have found the best way to do this is by having a 10 minute activity in mind. On Monday's I do a face mask. On Tuesday's I paint my nails. Etc. I have found if I don't have a plan, I spend my time picking up and trying to decide what I'm going to spend my 10 minutes on... which ends up nothing.

Now 10 minutes isn't long and I do try to schedule more time through the week and sometimes I get and sometimes I don't. But either way, I have shown up and given myself 1 hour and 10 minutes of self-love. And that might not sound like a lot but it was more than I had before I started this routine.

If you are someone who has trouble finding time for self-care/self-love, I'd like to encourage you to start small and promise yourself that you will show-up everyday for those few minutes. 

Because you deserve them!!!!!

I would love to hear how you schedule self-care/self-love time. 

Accentuate the Positive by Eleri Grace

Celebration – celebrating yourself in particular – is our theme this month. Like Luanna blogged last week, I tend to indulge in rewards or treats when I reach goals I set for myself or achieve a special milestone, but as she notes, I’ve not really thought about it as celebrating myself so much as celebrating the achievement. Perhaps I really should try harder to give myself credit – get out of the “box-checker” mentality to borrow a phrase from Michelle Obama’s memoir and instead focus more on cultivating self-love.

One facet of finding self-love is practicing mindfulness – being fully present and not in a constant state of reaction and over-reaction to what’s going on around us. Heightened awareness of life’s small joys is one of the many blessings I’ve counted during these pandemic times.

Goals and milestones don’t have to be momentous or consequential to merit a celebration – a distinction that is more important than ever right now. I know I’m not the only writer or creative type struggling to find creativity within the chaos around us these days. But instead of berating myself for not using this time to storyboard or brainstorm my next novel, I’m trying to focus on what I am accomplishing rather than what I’ve not done.

I may not have plotted the next Clubmobile Girls novel, but I have done quite a bit of background reading. That novel is percolating, and its characters will burst to life any time now.

I may not have used this time to get into the habit of posting new and enticing content on my social media accounts on a regular basis, but I have done an online class relating to author advertising that I think will improve my ability to promote my new release later this month.

It’s worth celebrating the small things every bit as much as life’s larger moments. A positive mindset is one powerful tool toward truly experiencing gratitude, self-love, and living more fully. It's a habit I hope I will have cultivated enough to carry forward once we return to "normalcy" or more aptly the "new normalcy," whatever that may look like.

 As Johnny Mercer sang so memorably in 1944:

You’ve got to accentuate the positive

Eliminate the negative

And latch on to the affirmative

Don’t mess with Mister In-Between

And speaking of accentuating the positive, I have a new release coming out on May 22nd -- just in time for Memorial Day weekend. Pre-orders for the ebook version are live on Amazon here.

In love, as in war, truth can be the greatest casualty.

When her New Orleans editor refuses to grant war correspondent credentials to a woman reporter, Hadley Claverie finds another route to the front lines: overseas duty with the Red Cross. She wants nothing more than to carve out a career as a respected journalist, but a sexy pilot set on playing by the rules undermines her determination to expose truths about the war, no matter the cost.

Struggling to overcome emotional trauma linked to Pearl Harbor, once-freewheeling B-25 bomber pilot Skip Masterson longs to prove he is worthy to carry on his brother’s legacy. Duty compels him to avenge the horrors his brother and friends suffered aboard the U.S.S. Arizona, but all Skip really wants is peace on a quiet porch back home. His heart has other plans, in the form of an intrepidly curious Red Cross girl who threatens his resolve to fly straight and subvert his hell-raising past.

As Allied forces wrest control of the Pacific, one island at a time, and the military taps skilled pilots for a highly-classified and unprecedented bombing mission from which Skip may not return, Hadley’s journalistic fire places her squarely in an ethical drop zone where truth harms, secrets protect, and love just might be the most harmful weapon of all.

From the sunny beaches of Australia to the lush and oppressive jungles of New Guinea, Carry a Crusading Spirit is a sexy and thrilling continuation of Clubmobile Girls, a series that champions the trailblazing role of women in WWII.

Learn more about me and my writing on my website, and you can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. 

You can purchase my debut novel through the links below.

Amazon US  ~  Amazon UK  ~  Amazon CA  ~  Amazon AU  ~  Google ~ Nook  ~ Kobo