Hello beautifuls! Welcome back.
This is the last group of my favorite things that I have to give away. (I feel a little like Oprah saying that, which I could totally get used to. Grin.) If you’ve already attended and know the scoop, scroll down to see today’s giveaways.
If you’re joining us for the first time, here’s what you need to know:
1. Gifts!
Thursday, Friday and Saturday there will be separate blog posts with different giveaways and new ways to win. Be sure to comment on each post if you want a chance to win that day’s items. Don’t worry if you miss a day because I won’t choose winners until after midnight PST on Sunday.
2. Discounts!
Because I know some of you have been curious but aren’t quiiiiiiiite sure what an energy or space clearing entails, I’ve got specials happening all weekend.
Ready to let go of what’s dragging you down and head into fall feeling lighter and brighter? Pay for a Fresh Start Thursday through Sunday and get 20% off!
Curious about what a space clearing can do for you and your business or family? Schedule your 15-minute Space Clearing consultation* Thursday through Sunday and IF you decide to hire me to clear your space, you’ll get 20% off that too!
*Special note: This is a free, no-pressure consult. I’m not into convincing you to do something you don’t want to do. That just feels yucky. And you don’t need to talk with me this weekend, you just need to reserve your time for us to talk in the next few weeks.
3. Party Favors!
EVERYONE who comments on any of the three posts will get a short Oracle card reading from me as thank you for showing up. This isn’t going to predict your future or tell you what to do next, but it will give you something to think about, meditate on, or provide insight into a current situation in your life. Plus it’ll be fun!
Okay – now for today’s awesomeness!
I’ve amassed a small collection of Liz’s gorgeous jewelry. When I wear them, I feel supported, understood, held and so not alone. This beautiful necklace is a reminder that you ARE on your path, even when the way seems dim. The winner will choose one of the following teardrop gemstones: a purple amethyst for peace and inner strength or a green fluorite for self-love or a deep blue iolite for connection to spiritual growth and curiosity.
I also have a growing collection of Super Love Tees high vibe shirts. Theresa hand screens inspired quotes and sayings on comfy, eco-friendly shirts. I had a hard time deciding which one to choose for this giveaway because they’re all so great. This one has a loose fit (they only go up to a size large) and makes me smile every time I read it.
I wish I had a better photo of my friend Trisha’s gorgeous pottery necklaces (last minute planning on my part – oops!) She makes them in lovely shades of blues, greens, pinks, muted browns and cream. You can practically hear the ocean when you put one on. I’ll choose a necklace specifically for the winner and I guarantee it will be beautiful!
For your chance to win one of today’s gifts, leave a comment below sharing an act of kindness received that deeply impacted your life. Then I’d love it if you could walk into this next week intending to pay it forward in some way.
To enter Thursday’s giveaways, click here. For Friday’s, click here. And to enter today’s drawing stay on this page and comment below.
Remember you have until Sunday night at midnight PST to enter. Winners will be emailed early next week and announced here on the blog Monday or Tuesday.
Thank you all so much for celebrating with me! You’re amazing and I love you.
Alana
P.S. Whenever I think of an act of kindness that touched my heart, I remember the two labor and delivery nurses who took care of me during my ER visits before Ben was stillborn. Several weeks after he died, they left a beautiful hibiscus plant and card at my door. Every time I see the orange blooms I think of their warm, concerned attention and their little gesture that meant so much.
UPDATE: Today’s winners are…
On Your Path necklace – Amy
Be Your Own Hero t-shirt – Sorrow
Seaweed pottery necklace – Sheila
It will take me a while to get to everyone’s oracle card readings, so please be patient and trust that you’ll get exactly what you need, when you need it.
Thank you thank you thank you for celebrating with me. Deep bow to all of you.
Woohoo, I love your Oprah style 🙂 because the goodies for sure are your favorite things!
I think the biggest act of kindness was when my former Zen teacher Karen Maezen Miller decided to step forward and do what I was too afraid of doing myself: reach out and ask for help. She set up a fund in our names and total strangers from all over the world donated money to help us survive in our hardest moments. It is a blessing to be back on my own feet again (financially as well), but I will never forget how selflessly people acted and what a unspeakable difference they managed to make in our life.
This week I’m giving away Maezen’s latest book on my blog. A little gesture in the spirit of those days. (For anyone who’d like to enter: you can do so until August 5th!)
Ooooh! Maezen’s new book. I may have to come enter your giveaway. 😉
For some reason one of the most wonderful gifts I’ve ever been given springs to mind.
Here’s the story: here in Europe we have what’s called ‘infant surprise eggs’. They’re made out of chocolate and inside is a litte plastic container. In that container, there is a gift. I adore a lot of these gifts. There is so much very clever designing going on: all the parts need to fit into the little plastic container. The thing you build from them needs to be interesting. And it needs to be affordable.
I just love to assemble a little block of cheese on wheels with a mouse on top and a little extra on the axis between the wheels to make the mouse wobble when you ride the thing.
I cannot eat the chocolate, so every time a friend of mine an myself went dancing, I had one of these eggs in my bag, so he could eat it and I could get the gift.
On my birthday, he turned up with two big boxes. He had been eating his way through 80 eggs (making them his ‘one piece of chocolate a day’ for 80 days!) and now he provided me with all the little containers that were in them.
That was the start of weeks and weeks of fun for me, opening a container if I felt down or when I felt happy or just because I could 🙂
Thinking about it, I still smile. And feel known and loved.
Doris,
Thank you for sharing this beautiful story. What a thoughtful, loving gesture. I know those eggs – such fun!
That’s true friendship….
I absolutely love this!
Take care,
Casey
I have a friend who has been deeply supportive of me and my design work, lately she has given me a few opportunities that I can’t thank her enough for. I’m so very grateful <3
Reading these words makes me light up inside. Love you, beautiful friend.
love you right back <3
Last week, my neighbor – who is going through a very challenging time with her special needs son – told me, “Give yourself grace. You are in transition.” This little saying changed my entire day around. I even designed my yoga classes around it.
Give yourself grace. That’s lovely!
The first thing that popped into mind for me when I read the prompt was so very strange. I can think of tons of kind things that people have done for me. But one day in particular popped to mind.
I had gone to the bank and I had mapped out our bills, and it was going to be close. I got there and there was some small hold on my account that had left me like $4 short. I was so upset. For me it would have been one thing if I knew something was going to be late, but I hate the idea of bouncing and autodraft and it had felt like such a relief that I had everything covered, because money was so tight at the time.
I walked outside just trying to breath, my whole day just shattered, and a lady walked up to me as I was walking out and said she hadn’t meant to pry but she had heard me talking to the teller about the unexpected hold. She had a timid feel but she handed me $15 and said she would have loved to take me to lunch but she had an appointment to get to and said she wanted me to cover my bill and treat myself.
The bill wasn’t the point it was just that it was such a kind and honest, sincere moment and I cried so hard in front of her.
I have tears in my eyes just reading this. What a beautiful gesture. Holy wow, people are amazing.
This is going to sound crazy, I think, but one of the deepest acts of kindness that I ever received was from a boss who didn’t fire me despite having many reasons to do so. The kindness that he extended in keeping me employed deeply impacted my life. I was going through a terrible time in life — my mother died suddenly and unexpectedly, my father had been diagnosed with cancer, and my husband walked out on me, all in a matter of six months. I was a total wreck at work and didn’t accomplish nearly as much as was expected of me, especially since I was missing at least one day’s work every week to accompany my father to chemotherapy. Add in a child who was frequently sick and no one to watch him so I could work, I was taking days off without pay. My work performance suffered. This kind man could have fired me. In fact, my father told me at the time that if I worked for him, he would have fired me. Instead, this man let me continue working, somehow knowing that I was strong enough to make it out of crisis mode and contribute once again. He’s since left the company for a better job, but his kindness stays with me, especially because of its timing during a difficult period in my life. I hope that one day I can extend this kind of kindness to someone else. And I think that I will be able to, knowing that sometimes life gets this difficult.
Amy, this doesn’t sound crazy at all. What a wonderful example of seeing past behavior to what’s really going on. If only we could all remember to do that.
There are so many things that people have done for me that are kind. So many things that I am so deeply grateful for. I could fill pages and pages of gratitude, ( and I do in a journal) The biggest one that comes to mind however was when my son was accepted into a foreign exchange program and we knew for him to go we were going to have to make a ton of money. ( airfare alone was a HUGE amount) He busted his but, he made pies and jerky and sold them, He found odd jobs and all kinds of things. We raised almost all of the money he needed, but were about 400$ shy at the due date. The neighbor man who had see my son doing all this stuff came over and gave my son 600$ so he could go and the extra was for his spending money.
I was so touched and so was my son, he got all teary eyed and thanked the man. He then proceeded to mow that mans lawn any time it needed it for the next 2 years with out pay ( he refused to take a dime) and he spent 100$ of his spending money on a gift for me.
Sorrow, this is beautiful. It sounds like you’ve raised a truly wonderful man (not that I’m surprised at all).
This just happened recently. I have anxiety problems and have become semi-agoraphobic. I can’t go into stores, so I’ve had to rely on others to get m groceries. Someone who I thought I could count on deserted me and a couple I’m friends with stepped in to help me. That right there was a blessing, but the other day they bought me a cake and had Love You Sheila written on it. I have no immediate family left so I feel very alone and like a burden to others…I needed this message so badly. It was one of the sweetest things anyone’s ever done for me.
This has been great…I have loved reading all the comments and your prizes are fabulous!
May we all be loving and kind to each other. xoxo
Oh my goodness! I just love these stories. What a heart-warming gesture. It’s always interesting (and sometimes painful) to see who can stay for the hard stuff and who surprises us by showing up when we don’t know where help will come from. I’m so glad you have these lovely friends. xoxo
i am so glad you are doing this! an incredible celebration with your entire community. fun, engaging, heartfelt and so thoughtful. just like you. mwah.
a recent act of kindness was given to me by my husband, yesterday. i was feeling unwell, with gallstone flareup, and he went outside immediately and started in on projects that i had wanted finished, but hadn’t expected them to be done any time soon. he did ALL of them, in time for him to leave on a week work trip. very sweet.
Grinning with you about feeling a little bit like Oprah, Alana! 🙂
………..
I had been in the hospital for a very long time already. I had the worst infection in my leg yet and had already been thru about a dozen surgeries that “round” and was feeling quite depressed. We were living 1200 miles from my family, having moved here 8 months prior. (Because of that particular 3-month hospital stay, I now know what feeling suicidal feels like.)
At my request and because the doctors could see how depressed I was getting, they sent me home (still in traction) to my brand new husband of 3 weeks for a weekend because we all *knew* that I needed a break.
When it was time to come back, I was in a lot of pain and unable to get more of the pain medicine that was working for me until I got checked back in. When I arrived, still in a great deal of pain, there were no beds on the floor with the nurses that I was used to (and who had come to know and care about me) so they put me on another floor. I felt so terribly alone.
When we finally got me settled and I was alone in my room, I started crying and crying and crying. Eventually, a seminarian who I didn’t know, came in. I reached out for his hand and he took it. I don’t know how long he just stood by my side holding my hand and letting me cry (and sob). Feeling a little embarrassed and self-conscious, I tried to stop crying several times and he wouldn’t let me. He *knew* that I needed to cry and said so, all while he just stood by me until I was ready to stop.
I will forever be grateful for Dexter and his kind presence when I really needed someone to be “Grace with skin” for me.
(Hmmm…. writing this story today, 26 years, later *still* brings tears of deep gratitude).
<3