Do What you LOVE & the rest will follow…

I want to tell you a quick story about my book, Musings – Reflections of Gratitude.

When I wrote it, I thought I had accomplished my mission. I thought it would go into bookstores and I could sit my bottom down to rest and write again. But, life had other plans for me.

For a good year and a half now, I have been signing copies of this book. I kid you not. It has gone to print over 6 times and not a week goes by without a stream of corporate gifts walking out of my front door. Each person who bought it, seemed to think of many other people (moms, friends, grannies, colleagues) to whom they wanted to gift the book.

Don’t laugh! That’s my game face (tongue & all)

There are many nights when I find myself sitting at my dining room table, surrounded by hundreds of pink gift bags, pink ribbon, pink tissue paper with my little people packing the personalised books signed Mary, Sophie, Lebo, Maria, Fatima et al.

You see, what I have come to realise about this book, is that my job was not simply to write it, my job was to LIVE it. That is, the lesson about giving and receiving. About being truly grateful.

It has truly been a labour of LOVE, one which I have truly been rewarded for over and over again.

Talking about love, support and all things gifty, I’ve partnered with the lovely mom duo Debbie and Lauren from The Domestic Dolls for Women’s month and you can order signed copies of the very book for your besties, your bookclub, your staff members and all the wonderful women in your life through this website : https://the-domestic-dolls.myshopify.com/collections/books/products/musings-reflections-of-gratitude

Don’t forget to tell them how grateful you are for all they are and all they do.

xoxo

Lee

How do you find YOUR purpose? It really isn’t rocket science

Writing comes easy to me. I started writing when I was 9.  

I wrote a poem about a Tiger.  I got 0/10. Yes, zero!  I had never gotten zero before.

The teacher cited “copying”.  She decided that my poem was so damn good, that I could only have copied it.

That moment changed my life. Because instead of causing me to shrink in shame and embarassment, it lit a fire inside of me. “There’s something there huh?” I thought, “a kind of Magic?”

So began my journey of doing what I love to do.

I knew there was passion.

I simply followed that passion.

And just like in the movies, my passion led me to my purpose: to write to inspire! 

YOU can do that too. No jokes.  Simply go with what you love to do. The rest will sure as hell follow.

No need to thank ME. It’s the law of the universe.

 

Grateful Always,

Lee Mayimele

 

 

Do you have a heart-wound after a LOSS? If so, come listen to my story….

All this talk about Mother’s Day has me feeling anxious, I must admit. My heart-wound has only just begun to form a scab and I have been taking good care of it.

 

My approach to its healing has been quite simple, actually. Like a good mother, I have looked primarily at INFECTION PREVENTION.

 

For starters, I took a conscious decision that I needed to keep the environment sterile and germ free.  And while I am under no illusiions that one cannot engineer every social environment or interpersonal encounter completely (particularly with family), I knew that it was indeed possible to focus on “access control”. So, I did.  Quite intuitively, I have been terribly circumspect about who I engage with, what I share, and how I could avoid people with energies that felt harsh to my sensitive film. The daily “disinfectant” through meditation and “fresh dressing” through prayer have helped tremendously.

 

Secondly, I focused my attention on creating a HEALING ENVIRONMENT for the heart-wound. Once more, led purely by my instinct, I began to draw on my good memories of my mother and to allow that positive energy to flow into my home, into my work and into my relationship with my own children. I have also played, laugh, rationed screen time and increased my reading time.  I began to seek out real experiences, people, food and music that made me smile.  And sure enough, the smiles came.

 

I am, of course, always mindful that with this sort of wound, research tells us that there is no prescribed time frame for healing completely. In fact, research tells us that there isn’t really a “cure” at all.  Like diabetes perhaps, one simply learns to “manage” the beast and one learns to adapt one’s lifestyle in order to lead a productive life.

 

So, adapting I am.

And it would seem that the wound is indeed closing up.

And the scab will fall off.

And all that will remain is the scar. 

 

How I will relate to the scar, is of course another story entirely, but I will tell you this honestly:  there IS always light at the end of the proverbial tunnel after a loss. Yes, even when you think your entire world has gone black forever.

 

You will one day be able to reflect on your scar and know for sure that every single day is a GIFT. (After all, no scar is able to form on that which is not alive). And like me, you will also be able to CELEBRATE not only on Mothers Day, but every single day that you are alive.

 

Aluta continua, as they say.  May you never take a day for granted.

 

 

© A Heart Full of Stories, 2017

Reflections on Mama Karma through 3 generations

 

My daughter is beginning to get embarrassed by me. Not by anything I do/say/wear or how I use my hands to eat. Just ME. The whole package. Even when I am silent and using a knife and fork to eat pizza.

 

There’s a blush beginning to develop. A very faint pink flush but it’s there all right. It’s there and I know it well.

 

From experience.

 

It really brings into focus my relationship with my own mother, who was a non-conformist of note. And while I can be a real people-pleaser, never wanting to cause any waves, she was very much the opposite.  

 

She would embarrass me constantly too. Not by anything she did/said/wore (well sometimes the Converse trainers and expletives were a bit much) or how she smoked with the young girls while her peers drank tea in a circle saying the rosary. No, just by being herself. 

 

And history will judge us both.

 

Me for being me, slightly too teacher’s pet, always wondering how I can change/ tone down/conform.

 

And her for daring to stand out.

 

As for my daughter, the blush still needs to mature to a deep red, I’m afraid. I mean, what’s a childhood if not filled with cringe worthy moments unwittingly created by our parents? That’s karma right?

 

Hopefully by the time my sweet girl becomes an adult, her reflections and experience of the “blush”, will guide her to a place where she too can just BE. You know, just be herself, with the full appreciation that we are all different, all the same….and that’s wonderful.

 

Now shhhh, don’t tell her this BUT if she leans a little more towards the nature of her rebel of a gran, then that means my work is done.

 

That will be karma too. A fate I will gladly accept.

 

 

© A Heart Full of Stories, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Lee-Ann Mayimele and www.aheartfullofstories.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.