Building Your Resilient Self: A Writing Workshop

 

For those of you who live locally, my friend Judy Brown and I are repeating our writing workshop at RambleRill Farm here in Hillsborough. We’re talking about resiliency for women! We were delighted by the response to our first workshop, so we’re offering it again. The workshop is for both writers and non-writers. Come join us!

During the workshop, we ask participants to write about a troubling experience. This is what one woman reported in her workshop evaluation:

“Just such a memory had haunted me the week before attending your workshop, so I wrote about it. I also wrote about the advice that I would give someone undergoing a similar experience. That night I slept better than I had for some time. So thank you very much for the healing quality of this workshop.”

Here’s the workshop description:

Building Your Resilient Self:
An Afternoon of Wellness and Words

“The oak fought the wind and was broken,
the willow bent when it must and survived.”
Robert Jordan

Come join an intimate group of women for an afternoon at RambleRill Farm in
Hillsborough as we explore writing techniques and how they can be a tool for
resiliency. Whether we are the oak or the willow, life hands us many challenges.
Writing is a strong tool for guiding us to bend when we need to, and to help us
bounce back to physical and emotional wellness.

Judy Brown, a certified holistic health coach, will explain how our emotional,
spiritual, and relational lives can impact our resiliency and our health.

Barbara Younger, an author and writing teacher, will lead us in writing from the
heart to reach the strength within us.

The afternoon will include guided meditations, relaxation exercises, and an
afternoon tea.

Date: Friday, April 1, 2016
1-4 pm

Where: RambleRill Farm, 913 Arthur Minnis Rd., Hillsborough

Cost: $40

Please contact Judy Brown for more information and to sign up for the workshop.
Jfrances40@earthlink.

RambleRill Farm: I snapped the photo of the RambleRill Barn right before our first workshop on a cold winter day. Come meet the farm in the Spring! You can read more about RambleRill here.

My Safari: A Lesson in Wisdom and Innocence

 

 A post by Judy Ackley Brown:

With great anticipation, Martin and I embarked on our long journey to Tanzania. Martin would fulfill a dream, to climb Kilimanjaro.

The trek to the roof of Africa would take six days. I chose to remain in Moshi and find my own adventures. Our B& B hostess, Sandra, organized a three day safari for me and my new Polish friends, Ela and Wojciech.

Our guide for this trip, whose name is Innocent, is a 32 year old Tanzanian, one of six children whose mother left them at an early age, a new father of a six week old son, a smart young man, and an exuberant guide.

His eyes gleamed and his bright white smile radiated innocence. The words from his mouth were wise and wonderful.

The animal and bird sightings, the landscape, the Masai tribe, the drive, the whole adventure, left me breathless. It was one of the most amazing adventures of my life.

My conversations with Innocent, however, left an imprint on my heart.

Our days were full, but hot and exhausting. The dust and sweat stuck to my skin along with the necessary bug repellent and sunscreen.

We were camping, and to my utter dismay, I realized I had no bath towel.

Innocent gave me his one and only towel.

I resisted.

He very calmly explained to me that if his long lost mother ever needed help, he hoped someone would assist her. And so, his generosity to me.

Innocent went on to explain that trees and plants never meet, but people do. This is a blessing, so we need to be kind to each other.

This articulate young man believes we are here to improve on each generation.

His father imparted to him all of his knowledge, as this was the key to a good life.

Now that Innocent was a father himself, he would give all of his knowledge to his son, and be a better parent. He said he suffers from “no mother love.”

While lying in my tent at night listening to all the African noises, I pondered.

Have I shared all of my knowledge with my children?

Have I honestly learned from the mistakes of my parents?

Did I provide abundant mother love?

I will never forget the lions, zebras, elephants, giraffes, warthogs, or the baby baboons.

And, I will never forget Innocent’s smile.

 

Photo Above:  Innocent and I are standing by the hippo pond at Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area in Tanzania. It is the only place you can get out of your car in the park.  We stopped for a well needed break and lunch on our last day of the safari.

Judy Ackley Brown and her husband, Martin, love to travel. Judy is currently enrolled at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, where she is learning all things related to food, lifestyle, and health.  When she travels, she readily partakes in local foods and cooking customs. In Tanzania she enjoyed avocado for breakfast and papaya for dessert.

The Bouncing Ball of Menopause

Child psychologists say a baby learns

When you drop a bouncing ball,

The ball bounces back up.

Babies, smarter sometimes than grownups,

Know that life has its ups and downs,

And after the down, almost always comes an up!

Some of those ups and downs, if you’re a woman of a certain age, are the moody woes of menopause.

Telling yourself that the ups will come back really is helpful.

If this doesn’t work, try chocolate, a brisk walk, and more chocolate.

Frog: The Frog, name unknown to this grandma, was a baby shower gift of guest blogger Judy Ackley Brown, who writes in this post about rainy days and life.

Chocolate:  Make that a tiny bit, each time. Menopause pounds are a real downer.

Poet (of sorts) :  Me. I’ve been having fun keeping up with current thinking in child development from Kath,  creator of Baby Eats Real Food.

The baby: My grandson Mazen, usually upbeat!

Downton Abbey–Will I Be the Next Dowager?

A  post by Downton Abbey fan Judy Ackley Brown:

Season 3 of Downton Abbey is ending soon, and I am quietly grieving.

My obsession with the show is strong.

My Sunday nights best not be interrupted during the DA run!

This season I was intrigued with Maggie Smith’s character of the dowager.  It prompted me to double check on the exact meaning of this uncommonly used word, which is “a dignified elderly woman”.

Where are the dowagers in our culture now?

Have they lost their purpose?

Do we need to regain this quiet but powerful role?

Do we behave with dignity?

Violet is bold, opinionated, sly, but also witty and wise.

Ever present in the daily lives of the family she is the typical matriarch.

The dowager has dated opinions for sure and appears to struggle with the inevitable arrival of a new and modern world. Edith, her granddaughter, a journalist?  Tom Branson to baptize baby Sybil a Catholic?

What struck me this season, in a warm fuzzy way, is that despite Violet’s rigidity, she deeply cares for each family member.

The continuance of the estate and the well- being of the family unit is at the center of her often unsolicited advice.

She embraced Branson when a new great grandchild was in the horizon.

Despite her subtle and manipulative ways, she did play a key role in restoring peace after Lady Sybil’s tragic death.

I hope Violet sticks around for a long while.  I look to her with a new sense of awe. She has qualities I might want to embrace.

This stoic but outspoken dowager might just have her priorities in alignment.

After all, as she says, “It seems a pity to miss such a good pudding!”

Lady Violet has some of the wittiest lines in the show. Her clear opinions of Americans, as seen in this video, endear us regardless of our nationality!

Marathon!  Don’t miss the Downton Abbey Marathon Sunday on PBS

Judy Ackley Brown lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina and enjoys travel, writing, and photography. A professed anglophile, she hopes to plan another trip to England soon.

The photo below shows Judy as a toddler with her paternal grandmother, Fern Ackley. Fern sits stoically like a dowager!