Be inspired. Be inspiring.

I live in Canada. It's winter. And yes, there is snow. I am living in the stereotypical arctic. (Huh. Did you know there were 2 C's in arctic? I didn't.)

Because it's minus 12 outside, I have become a hibernating bear. Many, many evening hours spent inside in front of this computer screen. It's been fascinating.

For instance, there's this red dress. Well, it's more than a dress... it's more like a ball gown. Red. With sparkles and sequence and glitter and flowy things and shiny parts. Jenny bought it. She bought it because:
"I want, just once, to wear a bright red, strapless ball gown with no apologies.  I want to be shocking, and vivid and wear a dress as intensely amazing as the person I so want to be.  And the more I thought about it the more I realized how often we deny ourselves that red dress and all the other capricious, ridiculous, overindulgent and silly things that we desperately want but never let ourselves have because they are simply “not sensible”.  Things like flying lessons, and ballet shoes, and breaking into spontaneous song, and building a train set, and crawling onto the roof just to see the stars better.  Things like cartwheels and learning how to box and painting encouraging words on your body to remind yourself that you’re worth it."


(Jenny suffers from depression and anxiety disorder and recently she posted her experiences with cutting (self harm). She got 2500 comments on that post. Alot of folks read her blog.)

Anyways, she bought that red dress and posted the pics of her photoshoot here. Then? She offered to send that dress to anyone who might 'need' a red dress experience. That dress has been criss-crossing the country being photographed by women who need some magic in their lives. It's been on the road for 18 months and is getting tattered... so she started saving up to buy another dress. She sold some items from her online store, her friend, Ursula gave her a donation and she bought 2 more dresses last week. They too, are bright red. (You can see them here.)

Jenny's best friend, Laura, who also did a red dress photo shoot, posted an update about the whole project and how it's exploded... you can read about it here. People are buying and donating red dresses in all sizes all across the States. And I just love it.

Seriously. So awesome.

I love when the internet is used for good.
I love when women do nice things for each other.
I love how 'community' can be built amongst strangers.

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Three things I'm thankful for:
1. I have an internet connection.
2. I baked a batch of banana chocolate chip muffins this evening, wishing I could zip some warm ones over to Max and EXACTLY then he unexpectedly walked in the front door. Perfect timing.
3. Envelopes with windows. Whoa. How handy.

Shalom,