The following is cross-posted from the Weekly Gratitude Blog. I post there every Tuesday and decided to post those posts here, too. For those of you who read both blogs, I apologize in advance. Some weeks the content might be different and other weeks, exactly the same.

---

I’ve always wished I could be an artist. Wished that I had the talent to draw. My mom can draw. She has natural artistic talent and has always been that way. She has taste and ability to see possibility in an open space.

Me, not so much.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not one of those “please tell me how good I am” posts. I know that one gets better with practice. I also know that what you tend to see is people’s best work, not their rough drafts, etc, etc. Having said all of that, I also know that artistic creativity doesn’t come as naturally to me as it seems to, to my mom. Or to others, I imagine.

I suffer from a loud, critical voice in my head. I suffer from my right-brain taking over and telling my left-brain that it’s more important for the project to be “done” than anything else so I should finish it instead of letting it brew or seeing where it might take me. I tend to give up because nothing I do looks good to me. Almost ever. It’s painful to share with others. It’s painful not to share with others. It’s hard to read the “this is great” comments because I feel they are so meaningless but it’s harder to get no comments. There’s just so much “stuff” surrounding this issue for me.

Yet, I still crave it. When I sit at my table, surrounded by paints, paper, glue, photos, I am happy. I am peaceful.

I am home.

At that moment, I don’t think about whether it’s pretty or ugly. Whether I will share it. What others will say. I am just playing, creating, re-living, listening to my soul. And it feels so good. And I know that no matter how deep and frustrating the issues surrounding this might be, I will never give it up. I don’t ever want to give it up.

I think that’s exactly what hobbies are meant to make you feel like. You don’t need to master them. You don’t need to be applauded for them. You just need to enjoy them. You need to bask in that wonderfully warm feeling of familiarity and joy. Forget about what comes after and just enjoy the moment.

The moment of feeling so at home with something.

The following is cross-posted from the Weekly Gratitude Blog. I post there every Tuesday and decided to post those posts here, too. For those of you who read both blogs, I apologize in advance. Some weeks the content might be different and other weeks, exactly the same.

---

I was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey. But ever since I can remember, it never felt like home to me. While I loved my family, I felt constrained and a constant sense of not-belonging. Very early on in my life, I decided to study computers and shortly thereafter I decided I wanted to go to school in the United States. (All of this was before I was 12 years old.)

It took another six years, a lot of sweat and blood for me to finally make it to the United States in 1992. Even though I had dreamt of this moment for a very long time, the first year was scary and foreign more often than it was fun and refreshing. I remember being homesick a lot. I wrote and received a lot of letters. (This was before email was as widely spread as it is today.) And I cried a lot.

There were a lot more cultural differences and language nuances than I’d expected. Pittsburgh was a very different city than Istanbul. And I just felt like I wasn’t going to adjust any time soon. Several times, I questioned my decision to take such a big step. Maybe I was just the “not belonging” type and my problems had nothing to do with being in Istanbul.

But then I made friends. I started dating. I joined clubs. I got jobs on campus. I made more friends. Slowly, I learned a lot of the colloquialisms. And four years later, I had quite a few solid friends, an undergraduate degree with a minor and a graduate degree and I had started dating the man who would end up being my husband.

I then moved to New York for my first job. New York is a lot like Istanbul: big city, a lot of people rushing around, dirty, and always moving moving moving. It’s also very multi-cultural. New York felt a lot more like home to me. My husband and I spent seven years there (working very hard, long hours) before we decided to move away. At the time, I thought I was totally done with New York.

Our next home ended up being San Diego. We moved there sight-unseen, no friends, no jobs. In many ways, it was like Pittsburgh all over again. I felt out of sorts. The culture here was too different and I felt like a foreigner all over again. It took a few years but the birth of our first baby gave us the opportunity to make some good friends and we slowly started to get used to San Diego. I must admit that both of us felt like we missed New York dearly.

A few years later, we ended up moving to the San Francisco area. Northern California is similar to New York in a lot of ways. It’s also full of computer programmers and we have a lot of classmates here from college so it feels much more like home. And yet, we now miss San Diego. We long for the beach and the relaxed, quiet life we lived there for a while.

If you notice one pattern in each of my experiences, it’s that each time it took me a while to get used a new environment. To make it my home and find my place. I think this is how “home” works. What makes it home is the people, the familiarity, the routine, the comfort. All of these things take time.

Another thing I noticed is how I always long for the previous place once I move. When we left New York, we were totally done with it and ready to move. Yet when we moved to San Diego, we remembered so much of what we loved about New York. When we moved to Palo Alto, we realized how much we missed the beautiful beaches of San Diego. I think this is also typical since we often don’t tend to appreciate what’s in front of us until it’s disappeared and we realize how much we were taking it for granted.

I’ve now been in the United States for 18 years. I turned eighteen two weeks after I moved here so this is my break-even year (I’ve lived here the same number of years I’ve lived in Turkey) and I can tell you without a doubt that I belong here more than I’ve ever belonged in Turkey. I’ve now made homes in 4 different cities in America. I’ve got an American husband and two beautiful boys. I’ve even become an American citizen (a lifelong dream come true for me) and I’ve been gainfully employed for fourteen years in American institutions.

While I firmly believe home is where you make it, I do also think there’s an innate sense of belonging that you feel in some places. A pull. Maybe it’s that the people there are more your people. Or that you connect with nature there more. Or it’s the weather. I don’t know. All I can tell you is that my home is here. And I am so thankful to have found it.

There’s nothing that feels as good as a sense of belonging. Like you’ve come home.

The following is cross-posted from the Weekly Gratitude Blog. I will post there every Tuesday and decided to post those posts here, too. For those of you who read both blogs, I apologize in advance. Some weeks the content might be different and other weeks, exactly the same.

---

Last week, I lost my grandmother.

She was 91 and she lived a long, healthy and full life. When I learned of her passing, I wrote a few words about our memories and how much she meant to me. As I was writing the post, I realized how much stronger “Weekly Gratitude” has already made me.

I am the melodramatic kind. I tend to over-analyze everything and feel emotions deeply. I worry too much and have a lot of hopes and wishes. While I love living in the United States, one of my greatest fears is not being near my family when something happens to them. For the longest time, my dad used to smoke a lot (he went from 3 packs a day to nothing, bless his soul) and he didn’t eat all that well and slept even less. I had these fears that we would lose him and I wouldn’t even be there to hold his hand. I had this long list of things that I never got to do with him. I felt that I would never forgive myself.

And yet, I am still terrible about visiting home. I dread flying with the kids and my life is pretty hard to uproot. So I haven’t been home in a long time. Thankfully my parents visit me and I’ve had the opportunity to see them. (Not nearly as frequently as I would like of course but they are so kind to take the long trip when I won’t.) But I hadn’t seen my grandmother since 2006. And now I will never see her again. When Nathaniel (my 10-month-old) was born, my parents asked me to visit so my grandmother could meet him. But I didn’t. I was too worried about flying with a baby and a 5-year-old.

So you would think that now that she’s gone forever, I would be wallowing in remorse. And I think the old-me would have. But this project has helped me see the positive side of so many things this year. I’ve noted 3 things that I’m grateful for every single day. That makes 159 things this year so far. (That’s quite a lot isn’t it? And we’re only in February.) It has shifted my focus from the bad to the good. To the “glass is half full” perspective.

And it has allowed me to move past regret into appreciation. Into being thankful for all the times I did have with my grandmother. For having had the luxury of meeting my grandmother and sharing so much with her. And on and on. I know that if it weren’t for this project I would be feeling sorry for myself so much more. Which is, of course, taking the focus off of her and making this all about me. Instead, I can celebrate her and make this all about how amazing she was. And will always be.

Which also brings me peace about my parents. Peace about my life. About living it daily. Living in the moment. Living with gratitude. And choosing joy.

This project has already changed my life more than I ever thought it could.

I will miss you, Omama, may you rest in peace.

The following is cross-posted from the Weekly Gratitude Blog. I will post there every Tuesday and decided to post those posts here, too. For those of you who read both blogs, I apologize in advance. Some weeks the content might be different and other weeks, exactly the same.

---

I’m a fan of Karen Walrond and have been reading her blog for quite some time. She’s recently started answering anonymous (or not) questions on formspring. Here’s a recent question and her answer that really spoke to me:

What is the most frustrating thing about being photographer for you?

The most frustrating thing about being a photographer is that people rarely see their own beauty when you take their picture of them — they’re far quicker to zero in on the mole or the laughlines they hate than the fact that they just have a great face, or a warm smile. I shot a wedding for someone as a gift once, and even though she was radiant, when she saw the final pictures, all she saw was that she hadn’t lost the weight she’d wanted to before her wedding. I still haven’t put together the album as a result!

This is something that I really struggle with all the time. I can tell you a million reasons why I dislike the way I look. Some of them will be about cruel friends during my formative years, others might mention dieting since I was twelve, but the fact is, there’s no excuse for me to feel the way I feel except that I keep perpetuating ideas that other people put in my head. Or maybe they didn’t even do that and I just chose to believe it for so many years. Nonetheless, I loathe to have my picture taken so much that two years ago, when we first started creative therapy here’s the art I made for the very first catalyst which was about “something you lost.”

Here’s the journaling:
I am the girl behind the camera. I am the one who takes photos I capture the moments I preserve the memories. There was a time when I was in front of the lens. When I let people take my photo, but now when I see a photo of me I cringe. I see all the flaws all the fat all the ugliness. I lost the ability to see myself clearly. I can’t remember what it felt like to look at the photo and see me. I miss that.

Every word of that is so true. Over the years I’ve made so many attempts at making peace with seeing myself in photos. For the longest time, it was a “I need this to feel good about myself” thing.

But now that I’m a scrapbooker and our family’s “memory preserver” I realize that having photos of me is not just about feeling better about myself. It’s so much more than that. Imagine if (God forbid!) something happens to my mom and there are only a handful photos of her and they are many years apart? I would be devastated. To me, every single photo of my mother is breathtaking. It’s not about whether her makeup is perfect or every stand of hair is in the right place, it’s about my mother. How she looked over the years, how much her soul shines through each photo, how much I cherish her smile, the glimmer in her eyes. How I can almost hear her when I see the photo. Almost smell her, even. I love looking at photos of my mom from her childhood, her youth, from all the years when we were kids, teenagers, married and everything in between. Who am I to deny that to my own kids?

When I look at a photo of myself, it’s true that I always see my huge, crooked nose. My uneven and thick eyebrows. My funny smile and messed up hair. I see all the blotches. I see everything wrong. But if I look deep down, I know that it’s important to document this, too. These stages of my life. Of our life. I know that even I will cherish having these photos years from now.

In the spirit of taking a solid step forward, I asked my husband to take photos of me and our youngest today:

Yep, I still cringe a lot when I look at that. I think that it will be a while before that goes away (if ever.) but I’m no longer letting that stop me from taking these photos. I was here, I existed and these photos are proof of my life and my stories. As someone who believes in documenting life, I cannot leave such a big hole in mine.

So, my challenge to you today is to get a photo of yourself. Hand over the camera to someone else. Put it on a table with a self-timer. Find a reflective surface. Do whatever you need to do to snap that shot. You are worth it. And I promise it will be good for your soul.

The following is cross-posted from the Weekly Gratitude Blog. I will post there every Tuesday and decided to post those posts here, too. For those of you who read both blogs, I apologize in advance. Some weeks the content might be different and other weeks, exactly the same.

---

I’ve been thinking a lot about this project lately and the format I chose. I will admit that when I see some of the art other people are doing, sometimes I feel guilty. I love what they do and I feel like maybe I should be more artistic, too. Maybe I should be making mixed media pieces or some beautiful scrapbook layouts. I should at least be printing my work out, shouldn’t I?

But here’s the deal: The format I chose is working for me. Working really well actually. I feel so comfortable with the photos and words approach I’ve chosen that I could probably do a year’s worth of gratitude entries in one night. While this may feel less creative, the greatest thing is that it gives me the space to focus on what matters most: the gratitude. I don’t spend any energy fretting over picking the right papers or embellishments or worrying about whether my art will measure up.

I pick a subject matter, find or take a photo that works and then just write my thoughts. This is what’s most natural for me. It’s the part I struggle the least with and so it makes my system work brilliantly. And if I want to then create a layout about my gratitude topic, well there’s nothing stopping me from doing that, too. But there’s no pressure.

The trick is to find what works best for you. Are you someone who struggles with words but has no problem capturing photos? Great. Skip the words. Don’t force yourself to “improve” while you’re doing this project. The focus of this project is gratitude, not improving a skill or learning a new one. There’s no grade here. If you’re better with drawing, then draw. If you prefer to write in pen, write in pen. Do what works for you.

Do what comes most easily, most naturally.

Not sure what that is? Here’s a way to find out. For the next six weeks, try a different system each week. Here are some ideas:

1. Use Kim’s journaling cards to journal on the computer or by hand.
2. Use my template to do a photo+word combination.
3. Make a scrapbook layout.
4. Do some sort of mixed media creation (quilt, sewing, altered art, etc.)
5. Draw by hand. Sketch.
6. Do an art journal entry. Paint, draw, cut out photos from magazines and glue.

Each week take a note of how the process felt. Was it hard but rewarding? Did you put it off or feel like you couldn’t wait to sit and do it? Did you feel relieved when it was done? How long did it take (did you notice how long it took?)?

Make a note of your observations each week. Then, at the end of the six weeks, pick the one that felt most natural and like the least amount of work. It’s an extra bonus if it felt rewarding, too. But the goal is to make it feel effortless. So that you will keep doing it for the next 46 weeks. You want to practice gratitude. You don’t want anything at all getting in the way of that.

This is the mantra I repeat to myself when I drool over other people’s art. I love it but I know my system works brilliantly for me. It feels effortless to me and when I think of doing it for another 46 weeks, I don’t cringe or panic at all. It feels 100% manageable.

My advice to you this week is to find what works for you. Find the system that’s most effortless and use it. Remember that’s just a tool. The goal is keeping gratitude at the forefront of our lives for all of 2010.

Once you find it, you can even make an entry on how grateful you are for the system that works so efficiently for you.

---

If you have found a system that works really well for you, please leave it in the comments. It might end up being the best system for someone else, too.

The following is cross-posted from the Weekly Gratitude Blog. I will post there every Tuesday and decided to post those posts here, too. For those of you who read both blogs, I apologize in advance. Some weeks the content might be different and other weeks, exactly the same.

---

For the last week or so, I’ve been reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book, Committed which is about marriage. I have many thoughts and feelings about the book but the passage that led me to today’s post was about how generations and generations of women in her family have given up personal hopes and dreams in favor of their family. Here’s the passage:

The women in my family, anyhow, are very good at swallowing disappointment and moving on. They have, it has always seemed to me, a sort of talent for changing form, enabling them to dissolve an then flow around the needs of their partners, or the needs of their children, or the needs of mere quotidian reality. They adjust, adapt, glide, accept. They are mighty in their maleability, almost to the point of superhuman power. I grew up watching a mother who became with every new day whatever that day required of her. She produced gills when she needed gills, grew wings when the gills became obsolete, manifested ferociuos speed when speed was required, and demonstrated epic patience in other more subtle circumstances.

My father had none of that elasticity. He was a man, an engineer, fixed and steady. He was always the same. He was Dad. He was the rock in the stream. We all moved around him, but my mother most of all. She was mercury, the tide. Due to this supreme adaptability, she created the best possible world for us within her home.

I am an engineer and I am lucky enough to have been able to achieve many of my dreams and yet so much of this still speaks to me. In my natural state, I aim to please people and I will bend and contort to help them out. Nothing makes me happier than to see my husband and kids (and loved ones) happy. I will do countless sacrifices to get them to be happy and feel very guilty if I cannot (or choose not to) prioritize their happiness over mine in certain situations.

And I don’t regret that. I love making my family happy. I don’t mind sacrificing for them. It doesn’t feel like a burden because it’s a choice I make. And I know many other women who do that, too. I think women, as a gender, are pleasers (yes I know I am generalizing) and tend to sacrifice personal joy and happiness sometimes.

Yet, it’s important to take care of oneself, too. I know that my husband and kids also like to see me happy. They feel better when I am happy and smiling and rested and taking care of myself. So this month’s theme is one I am going to take to heart. I think it’s important to feed the soul. When life gets too hectic (as is often the case) we tend to forget that. We do the urgent and then the more urgent and then we collapse in bed and then do more of the same the next day.

It’s important to take time for yourself. Even for six minutes a day. That’s not so long. I told myself last week that I would like to mediate for five minutes everyday. I tend to be very fidgety and I am always doing stuff or talking so staying completely still and completely quiet for five whole minutes would actually be hard for me. But it might be good for my soul. So is taking a walk and noticing the flowers. Or connecting with a friend. Or eating a healthy lunch. Or getting a manicure. Or journaling.

Sometimes a few minutes spent on yourself gives you enough positive energy for the whole day which then means you’re nicer to your kids, husband, workmates or even strangers. It means you’re more productive and optimistic. These are the dividends of self-care. They are worth it.

You are worth it.

So pay attention to yourself. See how much time you’re taking for yourself. See what gives your soul a lift and try to squeeze some more of those things each day.

That’s my goal for this month, too.