seattle, wa
I wrote a long post & then magically deleted it. this isn’t my first time making this mistake which leads me to believe that my desire to put out a blog is being deeply hindered by my internal desire to reject anything that feels like an obligation, lol. it feels very young madison of me. anyway, a short blog it is.
my weekend in nyc was full of simple inspiration…
i hope you find some simple things that bring you inspiration on this gloomy, post day light savings monday.
xx, madison
learning to accept my identity as an artist…
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the monday after a dance convention is essentially a day to regroup as a person. i will be spending this monday cleaning, prepping for the week, getting in a workout & savoring some quiet. as i look back on this past weekend i feel completely grateful to get to do what i love. and, i am so lucky to have such kind, hard working & passionate people around me. one way i make my mondays more joyful is savoring a cup of coffee and reminding myself it’s a gift to simply be alive. sending you love on this sleepy monday.
xo, m
photographer: karen kirsch
knowing I am publishing a blog each monday has made me retreat from wanting to write. this is completely on brand for me- loving something and having so much to contribute until I make a commitment to do it and then I immediately don’t want to anymore. it’s my go-to reaction to commitment…i’m all in until i’m all in. ha. while I would love to have something profound and thoughtful to say every monday (I have 10 unpublished blogs just sitting in my drafts folder), i am leaving today’s post short & sweet.
my simple monday thoughts to myself…madison, drink all the water. your body will be happy with you. take a few minutes to just be. no technology. no other people. just you spending time with you; soaking in being alive. fill up your gas tank before you’re home for the evening- you will regret putting it off till the morning. when you make your bed in the morning it’s like immediately winning the day. get back into your skin care routine- aging is real. you never regret a workout. invest in your roth ira. look at beautiful art each day…the world can feel heavy but there really is so much light in humanity. oh yeah, and order that hand vacuum you’ve wanted.
and my simple monday thought to you…no matter how you started this monday, just know you are loved, worthy & the world is lucky to have you.
xo, m
“surrender” tattoo by winter stone
five years ago I started some “new year” practices that have refined themselves over time. I begin the process in december, typically a couple of weeks before my birthday (that falls a little before christmas). while I am not one to really set ‘resolutions’ at the actual new year, I do like to take some inventory of my previous year and see what I loved, what didn’t work well, what thrived, and mostly to acknowledge what I have created over the last 365 days. so by the time my bday hits I typically have a new word of the year that becomes my guiding light (or likely my glaring reminder) of what I would want to create for the next year of my life. for context, my previous words of the year are below…
year 32: health
year 33: gratitude
year 34: wholeness
year 35 surrender
year 36 trust
so as I was approaching my birthday, I did some of the usual things I would do to help create my word of the year. at the end of all the different things I would typically do to help create my word, I was completely stuck. nothing came to me. nada. zero. nil. all the prayer, meditation, journaling, ritual burning of sage/palo santo/candles, and everything in-between lead me to a dead end. hitting a proverbial brick wall that no matter how often I stepped away from and came back to felt fruitless. nothing stirred within me to help find the word and in a way I wondered if I would even have a word of the year. and then, out of no where last night the word arrived.
my word of the year for year 37 is consistency. oof. looks like being 37 is gonna be a journey of responsibility, habit-building, and growth for me. here’s to a year of being consistent. 🖤✨
xoxo, m
so this morning i wrote a whole post about looking back on my life…etc etc…and it was eloquent and thoughtful and considerate. and somehow i managed to delete the entire thing before posting it. so now, at 9:30p on this monday, i find myself trying to rewrite what I had said before and it’s coming out all wrong. none of it feels the same. or sounds the same. and i’m laughing because the entire original post about ‘looking back’ and the waxing and waning i did about reflecting, has turned into me trying to recreate something i already wrote. ha, how poetic.
and i’m reminded in my life how often i try to recreate experiences, feelings, ideas, relationships, thoughts, seasons of life, because of the comfort they once brought me. but instead, i could just let it all go. surrender it all to the era of that time and accept this is the now. there is no recreating what has once been- there is only this moment, the present. i know there’s more for me to navigate in this lesson but for tonight, this is enough. xo, m
5, 6, 7, 8…
hi there, i’m madison. it’s taken me some time- well, quite a bit of time- to gain the nerve to start to create something for myself. and while i know more is ahead for me, i figured i should start from the top of this whole ‘mondays with madison’ thing. it began as a silly way for me to curb the idea that the start of each week meant i had to have ‘a case of the mondays’. so instead of dreading the start to the work week, i started sharing stories of my most entertaining, amusing, and quite honestly, personally embarrassing, dating stories from the weekend. my hope was, if i can make someone laugh or smile then mondays are something to look forward to and not dread.
back then it was silly dating stories and cheeky tales of a newly single girl in seattle. and now, ‘mondays with madison’ just means a way for us to connect. whether it be sharing something light-hearted, inspiring, or fun, or me sharing about my journey healing trauma in therapy; this is a safe space for creativity and connection to flow. i’m grateful to get to share this monday with you. i hope you stick around for more…
xo, m