Towel Surfing in Australia

Tomorrow is my birthday which has been been a time of reflection for me this year.  Will be back with some thoughts about the direction of my journey then....

Until then, enjoy this tasty little tidbit... it's one of my favourites, so I hope y'all like it too!

xx

One Step One Breath

This has been a motivational message from Jen at Prior Fat Girl

Say Cheese!

Wouldn't you just love to be caught up in a flash mob?  I sooo would.

Love them!

I may be distracting myself from the job at hand.... finally got new scales and i'm up (128.3kg), although not as badly as I thought I would be from how grose i'm feeling lately... but that's another post entirely...

Now i'm all songed and flash mobbed out, and it's time to go to bed.  I swear i'm looking forward to hubby getting home so that I can get a good nights' sleep... don't like going to bed alone...

Night, night girls xx

Permission to Shine

Hey, what would you say if I can't play the hero tonight
'Cause lately i've been feeling like I can't get anything right
I've been fading into the woodwork again,
and I've been thinking like I just wanna hide
But guess what?   I'm gonna try something just a little bit different this time...


I'm gonna give myself permission to shine
I'm gonna shine so bright,
gonna make every head wanna turn and you're finally gonna see me
Give myself permission to shine
I'm gonna light up the night and shine a little of my light on the world


I've been crazy, i've been holding myself back for so long
But i've got so much I can give, don't wanna be afraid to be wrong
You know i'm not too good at too many things,
but i've been getting real good at getting down on myself
But guess what?
I'm gonna try to break free from this prison i've built...


I'm gonna give myself permission to shine
I'm gonna shine so bright,
gonna make every head wanna turn and they're finally gonna see me
Give myself permission to shine
I wanna light up the night and shine a little of my light on the world



Heard this song today and thought i'd share, a bit of motivation never goes astray.  It's by Bachelor Girl, an australian band from the early 1990's. 

And that got my onto wanting to share some of our great music with y'all that might not have heard it (like, those of you from the U-S of A)...

and THAT got me onto finding a music player to embed on la Bella Vita....

and THAT got me onto finding a songs to share with you... well, you get the picture.

If you don't want to listen, just click the pause button when you enter and it'll shut up... but then I may just have to track you down and send you a personal vlog of my singstar efforts, from which your ears and eyes might never recover...

;P

What songs rock your boat?

Dear Blogger

I really don't love myself THAT much, you know...

When I clicked on the profile of a commenter of mine and couldn't see the name of her blog, I just clicked follow to try and track her down.. honest.

And when it said you are now following la Bella Vita, I tried to fix it...  I really did.

But you keep giving me an error message... and now I look like i'm sad enough to try and bump up my numbers by becoming my own friend.

So if anyone happens to notice that i'm my own friend (well you will now!) ... please be aware that although I like myself, I don't luuuurve myself to the extent that i'll befriend myself on the internet.

United States of Bella?

Helicopter Parenting

I found an article today through this post by Damomma about helicopter parenting that struck a chord with me on so many levels. 

You see, my son is only in kindergarten and already has me hovering around his school like a blackhawk... and I just learned that my daughter might have some of the same issues ... issues with authority  ...  part of the reason I was so interested in the article below.   

I was surprisingly very emotional when reading this article by Susan Gregory Thomas about how Generation X kids overcompensate in parenting their children.

It's obviously something I need to explore a whole lot more, because it was the WHY that got to me...   Here's a taste test for you:

If you want to know what's unhealed from your own childhood, have children.  Key to decoding our parental behavior is understanding that we are, albeit often unconsciously, doing for our children what no one did for us.....  For starters, we are ferocious advocates for our kid.

Generation X ..."went through its all-important formative years as one of the least parented, least nurtured generations in .... history."   Little wonder: Half of all Gen Xers' parents are divorced. We were the first to be raised in record numbers in day care, and some 40 percent of us were latchkey kids.

We've been taking care of ourselves since we started going to school, and we don't trust authority figures, because they weren't trustworthy when we were growing up. Our parents didn't know what was going on at school, and our teachers didn't know what was going on at home. We're not going to let this happen to our children -- not even for a second. We'll do whatever we have to do to make sure our kids get what they need.

This explains my feeling of being neglected as a child (even though I was clothed, fed, warm). 

I've told myself so many times.. 'I don't know what your issue is, so many kids had it much worse than you' and i've guilted myself into tucking those feelings away as invalid...  maybe they aren't so invalid.  Maybe I was just a kid that needed somebody else to take responsibility .... needed parents?

Am I overcompensating with my children (and thus enabling their behaviour issues at school) because of what I didn't get as a child?   How do I fix it?

Food for thought...  Anyone else?