// cultivate joy

Last week I took the kids to the park. While they were playing on the playground — running around, climbing, jumping, going up and down the slides — I sat down on the swing. I started swinging back-and-forth. Pumping my legs, going higher and then higher still. Suddenly I was flying through the air. I got so high that on the downswing my stomach dropped, as though I were on a roller coaster.

I was going so high, so fast, and for a few moments it felt like control had completely slipped away from me. There was nothing but me and the sky and weightlessness and I just started laughing uncontrollably. Joy filled my entire body. For the first time in so long I felt no pain, no worry, nothing. I just was. I need to figure out how to get that feeling more often.

I see it in my children so often — joy, excitement, weightlessness, fearlessness. They are so beautiful and pure, radiant and loving. There is so much that we, adults, can learn from children. I feel that it is my greatest duty as their mother to embrace all of their joy, to cultivate it inside of them and inside of myself too.

I want my children to know that every moment is a gift, a small miracle filled with magic and possibility. How we must seize each precious and magical moment that we are blessed with — that is the great lesson.

I took these photographs in our backyard yesterday morning. I look at them and I feel like my heart could absolutely explode for joy. There is no explaining the light that my children bring to my life; no explaining the gratitude that I feel that we live in such a beautiful place. There are so many hard moments in my life, moments when I think —how can I go on? But then, I think of all of the good and I think —how could I not?

Happy Monday, dear friends. Hope that you have a beautiful, magical week. xo

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wearing:
Marina’s Shirt //
Marina’s Skirt //
Marina’s Shoes //
Roman’s Shirt //
Roman’s Shorts //
Roman’s Shoes //