Hello Lavender Ladies and happy Wednesday!

1. Pressing pause on Netflix. 

2. Pressing play on classical music. 

3. Doing yoga. 

4. Reading the Bible. 

5. Drinking matcha. 

6. Going for a run. 

7. Drinking more water. 

8. Praying the "Serenity Prayer". 

9. Watching these YouTubers. 

10. Reading The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. 

11. Creating a cleaning routine. 

12.Putting the kitchen to bed. 

13. Eating mindfully. 

14. Pressing the reset button. 

15. Eating intuitively and listening to your hunger cues. 

16. Eating more whole foods. 

17. Making more meals from scratch. 

18. Writing more letters. 

19. Developing a skincare routine. 

20. Living for microjoys. 

I've been getting into a little more of a routine with my blog posts, and I'll admit it's been a lot of fun. I really enjoy sitting down and drafting a quick little message for y'all. It's relaxing and also, in some way, liberating. It's sort of like setting my thoughts free, and I hope you enjoy reading them. As always, comments are welcome. I'd love to start conversations about some of these things.

Alright, so onto today's topic. I don't know if I've talked about this on here yet, but I'm Catholic and as a Catholic, I celebrate Lent. While not every Christian celebrates this season, there are a lot of different non-Catholic denominations that do. I'm not an expert on Lent and you can find some better explanations of it here and here, but the biggest thing to know is that it's a time of fasting to mourn the death of Christ and prepare ourselves for His rising, which is celebrated on Easter. It's a huge season of personal growth where people are encouraged to challenge themselves to develop in new ways and move toward a holier and more meaningful existence.

Even as a little girl, before I fully understood all that, I enjoyed and looked forward to Lent. I remember attending CCD—which stands for Confraternity of Christian Doctrine and is a weekly afterschool program for Catholic children not attending Catholic private schools—and I remember that the week before Ash Wednesday, everyone would ask each other "What are you giving up for Lent?" And I remember feeling excited. I think there's something about challenge that has always invigorated me, and maybe invigorates everyone, and I was excited about this opportunity to choose something to give up for Lent that would be really meaningful.

In case you aren't familiar with the concept, the idea is that, since it's a season of fasting, you are supposed to select something to give up for 40 days in order to bring yourself closer to God. Some things I remember giving up as a child were candy, TV, and video games. As I've gotten older, I've started to really lean into this idea of challenging myself to grow toward God. I'll spend a few hours each year perusing different articles online to figure out the perfect thing to give up for Lent, because I want it to be meaningful. Not only that, but I want to feel different when Easter arrives. I want to feel changed.

Something I've realized through all this is that the best things to give up for Lent are typically the things I don't want to give up. Last year when I was trying to decide what to give up, my boyfriend suggested I give up putting so much sugar in my coffee. ***Aside: I've always had a sweet tooth, but back in the day (aka the 2019-2020 school year) I was putting a lot of sugar and creamer in my coffee. I'd put up to 5 sugar cubes in a cup or a huge slosh of creamer and it just was not healthy, but I couldn't make myself stop.*** Anyway, my boyfriend suggested that I stop putting so much sugar and I remember kind of brushing him off and saying "Nah, that's not what I need to give up." 

But the truth of the matter is that's not what I wanted to give up. Luckily, I realized I was getting in my own way. I gave up putting sugar and milk in my coffee and tea for 40 days, and boy oh boy was it a struggle. I went through sugar withdrawal and everything. But it really tested me, and I really turned toward God in those moments of temptation. I celebrated the opportunity to indulge in a latte on Sundays (Sundays are not fasting days because they're celebrations of Christ's resurrection). And now it's been a full year since that Lent and I still drink my coffee black. It was a Lent that changed the way I live my life.

So I wanted something similar for this Lent. And I sort of ran into a similar issue where what I needed to give up for Lent was not what I wanted to give up. I scrolled through countless blog posts about "10 Things to Give Up for Lent" or "What You Should Give Up for Lent This Year," and I kept on seeing the idea of giving up using streaming services. But in these past few months, I became heavily reliant on streaming services. In January, I moved to a new city in Texas for an internship through my university, and being in a new place where I didn't really know anyone has been quite a challenge. Netflix and ABC's The Bachelor were my solace in it all, and I couldn't imagine what I would do when I got home from work exhausted and couldn't watch Netflix while eating or cooking.

So I did not want to give up streaming services. I'm pretty sure I read more than ten different articles that mentioned it, but I was still just like "nope." Finally, somehow, in some way, I recognized my own resistance and I made the connection between how I felt about giving up streaming services and how I felt about giving up sugar and creamer last year. I realized it was what I needed to do.

So here we are, three weeks into Lent and I think I made the right decision. That's not to say it's been easy giving up streaming services. I mean, the first Monday of Lent was actually pretty rough for me. I was tired from work and all I wanted, more than anything, was to get home and watch The Gilmore Girls while eating the cookies my boyfriend sent me for Valentine's Day from Tiff's Treats.

But somehow I stayed strong and watched some YouTube videos instead, and looking back I know that's exactly what needed to happen (I'll make a post soon about some of the YouTubers who have changed my life in these past few weeks). Giving up streaming services has given me back hours of time in the evenings. I'm studying more for my teacher certification exam (which is coming up soon), I'm cooking nicer, healthier, more delicious dinners, and I'm ultimately just using the limited time I have each evening in a more productive way.

So anyway, that's my update on Lent. Do you celebrate it? Why or why not? And if so, what have you decided to give up and how's it going?

Stay focused, stay disciplined, and as always, stay lavender!

Love,

- Theresa

I grew up in a predominantly Spanish-speaking area. My hometown is along the southern Texas-Mexico border, and so even though the language is not spoken in my own home, it is spoken in the homes of lots of people I care about. Because of this I have always been passionate about the language, even though I have never crossed the threshold of bilingualism.

When I was in first grade, my teacher gave me a set of Spanish flashcards to use over the summer, in case I wanted to learn. As a seven-year-old, I didn’t quite have the dedication to follow through with that, but I did learn that a pato is a duck, so I guess that’s something.

My desire to learn Spanish has never fluctuated, but my dedication to that goal has been pretty turbulent. I’ve downloaded and re-downloaded Duolingo probably ten times (or more) by this point in my life and I’ve gone through phases where I've tried to convince my boyfriend to only speak in Spanish to me (since he speaks Spanish). I took three years of Spanish in high school and three semesters of in college, and while I have improved, I’m still not where I want to be. Learning a new language is difficult, and crossing the threshold from being-able-to-sorta-get-by to total fluency is especially challenging.

As a soon-to-be math teacher, I’ve been getting into describing things with graphs lately, and so I drew this graph, which I think resembles how learning a second language has felt over these past few years.

For any other math nerds out there, this is a modified cube root graph that I vertically stretched and shifted to the right and up. I feel like learning a language is something that happens really slowly at first, accelerates, and then slows back down before plateauing. When I first started trying to learn Spanish, it was pretty difficult and everything seemed fresh and unfamiliar, from articles and masculine/feminine words to everyday vocabulary. These were the early days of Duolingo for me.

Then I started taking classes and I made a lot of progress. My vocabulary expanded, my grammar improved, I learned different tenses and conjugation. But ever since then, I feel like I’ve plateaued. I haven’t seen much development in my Spanish from the last class I took as a first-semester sophomore.

About two weeks ago, in a conversation with a close friend, I decided I wanted to start trying to learn Spanish again. I also decided I wanted to do it in a way that would be a little more natural and maybe even enjoyable. These are the five things I’ve started doing these past few weeks:

1. Watching a Netflix show in Spanish. I started with a kid’s show called Puffin Rock translated into Spanish and have since switched to a Mexican drama called Ingobernable (which is absolutely fascinating). I use a Chrome extension called Language Learning with Netflix that you can find here.

2. Journaling in Spanish. I’ve been trying to get back into the habit of journaling every night, because it’s a great way to unwind and process my day. To improve my language learning, I’ve started journaling partially in Spanish. I’ll begin my journal entries with about a page of Spanish, and then I’ll go back and use the translation app on my phone to correct my writing. Then I write in corrections and highlight words that seem like useful vocabulary, which I add to the list in #3.

3. Keeping a running list of Spanish vocabulary. Every time my boyfriend uses a Spanish phrase or word that is unfamiliar to me, I jot it down on a running vocabulary list I have in my Notes app. I have also been doing this with words I use in my journaling and phrases I see in Ingobernable.

4. Using Quizlet. I have always been an avid Quizlet user. Quizlet got me through basically every single class I’ve ever taken starting my freshman year of high school. I’ve even used it to remember people’s names (I’m not kidding). So using it for language-learning was a natural transition. I started out with a Quizlet of the 100 most common words in Spanish and I’ve just been adding words and phrases from the list in my Notes app.

5. Practicing with people. This is probably the most beneficial, and it’s unfortunately the one I do the least frequently (mostly because I get nervous). But even practicing Spanish with another person (especially someone whose fluent) for just a minute has helped me out enormously. Practice makes perfect, and even though it’s awkward and a little scary, it really is so essential. Benny from Fluentin3months.com recommends creating a basic conversational script and memorizing it so you have something to go off when practicing conversations. It’s up to you. But the most important thing is to start.

Well, that’s all I have for you today. Stay inspired, stay dedicated, and stay lavender, ladies!

— Theresa

Some of you might be aware that these past few days have been pretty rough for Texas. From what I can understand, they've been rough for the entire central United States, from the Rio Grande Valley, which is where I'm from up through Chicago. There have been frigid temperatures and power outages across the state and country and, from a Texas perspective, this is particularly bad since most homes and people in Texas are not equipped to deal with weather this cold. We aren't prepared to drive in it and we aren't prepared to live through it when our power goes out.

1. Pray or Meditate.

2. Exercise (maybe try a little yoga).

3. Get busy.

• applied to 30+ full-time positions in a recession,
• spent 2 weeks in isolation because of a COVID scare,
• wrapped up my final semester of college,
• accepted a job offer with a nonprofit that trains and places teachers, and
• moved to a new city for a spring internship through my university.

This has probably been one of the biggest things I've had to learn since starting my college career. Boundaries are important with everything, and that's especially true when it comes to our time. Time is a resource and we have a limited amount to use each day. Learning to say "no" to other people is absolutely crucial, whether it's a social event or a responsibility someone's dumping on you that you know you can't handle. In my college leadership organization, I learned it's best to be transparent about what's going on in my life and how overwhelmed I am. If my team leader knows I already have a lot on my plate, they're more understanding when I let them know a particular obligation is too much.

It's also important to learn to say "no" to yourself. I'm the kind of gal to find all kinds of random volunteer opportunities and trainings that I want to apply for. I create plans to achieve all kinds of new goals. I've had to learn that I really can't do it all, and that's okay. If you struggle with this, get an accountability partner. Have someone in your corner who can tell you when you're trying to take on too much and believe them when they tell you to chill out.

2. Identify your priorities.

I recommend sitting down at the beginning of each week, month, and year to determine what matters in your life. At the beginning of my college career, I decided my grades would be my absolute number one priority and because I set that precedent, I was able to pursue high academic standards. Now here is where it's important to recognize the distinction between commitment and involvement. There's a saying my dad shared with me a year or so ago that goes like this:

It's also important to recognize that just because something is lower on your list (an involvement instead of a commitment) doesn't mean it's not important. Sometimes we have a lot of different goals going on at once, and that's completely okay.  However, a big part of time management is being realistic with ourselves. Sure, I can tell myself all the things I do are of equal weight, but there's no way I can pour 100% of myself into all of them all at once. You might think telling yourself you can do it all will make you do it all, but that hasn't been my experience. Normally when I tell myself that every sphere of my life matters equally, I start to prioritize the things that don't matter over the things that do and make myself feel really bad for not prioritizing the ones that don't.

4. Use a calendar.

This is where we get into the nitty-gritty physical "management" of time. The best way to manage your time is to know how much you have and how it's already distributed. At the beginning of each school semester, I would input my entire class schedule into a calendar. From there, I layered extracurriculars, my part-time job, and any habits/tasks I was trying to accomplish on a daily or weekly basis (such as the writing goal I mentioned above). 

This isn't super complicated, but in order for it to be effective, you have to be consistent with it. As soon as I learn about an upcoming obligation, I immediately input it into my Google Calendar. While I'm no longer a college student, I still do this to manage my time today. I set reminders for myself and block out time for important assignments. Without a calendar, it's really hard to plan ahead, and when you aren't planning ahead, then everything you do is a reaction. We want to be more than just reactors. We want to own our time, and the way to do it is with a little extra effort and forethought.

5. Use to-do lists.

We started with the broadest time-management advice and we've been slowly zooming in. We went from controlling where we pour our energy to creating goals to planning those goals out on a weekly or monthly basis. To-do lists are for daily planning, so this is about as zoomed in as we're going to go.

I've gone back-and-forth with to-do lists. Sometimes I use them religiously and other times, I drop the ball and just go off Google Calendar. But back to reacting vs. acting, to-do lists are another key way to ensure we are not just reacting to our responsibilities. We want to manage our time, not have it manage us.

I've used a few different apps for this, from Apple's Reminders app to MinimaList to Google Keep. Google Keep is what I've been using lately and it's by far my favorite. I have several different lists on there, and my favorite part is that it gives you the opportunity to "pin" certain lists to the top of the screen so you don't have to scroll to find them. I have a to-do list for each day of the week, certain organizations I'm in, and then a shopping list that I regularly update throughout the week.

At the end of the day though, different people have different preferences. Maybe a bullet journal works for you, or your phone's Notes app, or an Expo board you keep above your desk. How you keep track doesn't matter. All that matters is that it works. If you've been keeping a to-do list and still somehow keep forgetting to do things, then maybe it's time to switch up the medium.

I hope these tips are helpful to you and that they help you get organized for this coming year. Comment below some of the things you want to accomplish by managing your time. 

Stay organized and, as always, stay lavender ladies!

— Theresa

Let’s do a brainstorming exercise. What are some things that come to mind when you think of the concept of femininity? Up until recently, my list would have looked something like this:

• Pink 
• Makeup
• Flowers
• Fashion
• Motherhood
• Not outdoorsy
• Timidity
• Soft-spokenness

While I think these are typical feminine associations, I don’t think femininity is as simple as these words. The problem with defining femininity like this for the past few years is that I excluded myself from the concept by definition. By my own understanding of the word, I was not feminine. I didn’t like pink; I didn’t wear makeup; I didn’t know anything about fashion; I was outdoorsy; and I was loud. So when I thought of femininity growing up, I thought of a woman very different from me. Not only that, but I thought of a woman I didn’t want to be. I didn’t want to wear makeup. I didn’t want to be soft-spoken. I didn’t want to stop being outdoorsy. And so I convinced myself not only that I wasn’t feminine, but that I shouldn’t be.

I think the issue with lists like this is that they are too superficial. These are classic feminine associations, but that’s not because these things are the essence of femininity. It’s the other way around. Femininity is its own essence and often manifests in these ways. It often manifests in a preference for the color pink, a desire to wear makeup, an appreciation for flowers, and so forth, but those things aren’t the absolute definition of femininity.

So what is?

We can answer this question by examining the common thread running through each association, identifying a trend. We can determine why we think each thing is feminine and how all those whys connect. You can do this with your own list, but my list ends up looking like this:

• Pink is feminine because… it’s tied to life and beautification; think flowers, fruit, etc.
• Makeup is feminine because… it’s a creative outlet and it allows a woman to beautify and express herself with her appearance.
• Flowers are feminine because… they’re delicate and, biologically speaking, they’re the reproductive part of floral plants.
• Fashion is feminine because… it’s another creative outlet through which a woman can beautify and express herself.
• Motherhood is feminine because… women are able to create life within their wombs and nurture that life afterward.
• A lack of outdoorsiness is feminine because… it’s a manifestation of vulnerability and a need for protection from the elements.
• Timidity is feminine because… it is a manifestation of gentleness and vulnerability.
• Soft-spokenness is feminine because… it represents gentleness and consideration for the people around you. 

So what we can do here is pull out the common threads that make each of these things seem feminine to create another more specific list. Mine looks something like this:

Femininity is…

• Tied to life/life-giving/nurturing
• Creative/expressive/beautifying
• Delicate/vulnerable/gentle/considerate

Growing up, femininity was unattainable for me, because I was not and did not want to be the things on my list. I did not want to be less outdoorsy, wear more makeup, or become interested in fashion. But the truth is I don’t have to do those things to be feminine. What I have to do is cultivate my ability to “give life” to those around me, to nurture my relationships and the environments I exist in. I have to develop my ability to express myself through creative pursuits and beautify the pieces of the world I encounter. I have to learn to be considerate of the people around me, to embrace my vulnerabilities (when it makes sense to), and to depend on the people around me (again, when it makes sense to).

And these are all things I can do without forcing myself to like a superficial color, faking timidity, or forcing myself to give up something I’m passionate about like camping. Femininity is not a color, a hobby, or a habit. It’s an essence, a creative, life-giving, delicate essence.

What does your list look like?

As always, stay lavender.

— Theresa