Author: Yanninia

Choose to Embrace the Magic

Posted on by Yanninia

Hello, lovelies,

It's a new year, a new chapter, and while I hold no illusion that the struggles of 2020 will fall away like ashes in the wind. I welcome you with open arms and a heart full of hope that this new year will change everything.

2020 was a year stained by grief, despair, and so much pain. But there were moments of intense joy and moments amongst the sadness and grief I hope never to forget. I get it, though. It is easy to see the pain, to see all things that went wrong this past year.

It is hard to remember the good, the moments that made you come alive with magic and wonder. You can blame our survival instinct for that lovely gift. I challenge you, though, to make a list of all the good and all the moments that made you smile.

I'm not asking you to forget: the days spent in isolation, the fear of a global pandemic, the heart-wrenching pain of the riots, and we are not discussing the election, let alone all of your heartaches.

However, I am asking you to take a moment and be truly honest with yourself about what good came from 2020. For me: it was meeting an amazing woman who changed my life, meeting a brother for the frist time, creating again after years of stagnation, periods of introspection and deep reflection, and so many more.

This year changed me, and it took breaking myself down to my core to see the cracks within my skin, the self-sabotaging and destructive habits worn deep into my soul like worn-out groves in a wood floor. It took breaking to finally find the way home.

So I get it. This past year royally sucked. It broke us, but something magical happens right after we break. We have a chance to rebuild, to begin again.

But it's a choice. It's a choice to see the magic in the breaking and the opportunity to grow. I could write you a list of all the ways 2020 failed to impress, and I could tell you how awful it was.

Or I could tell you how happy I am that for the frist time it what feels like a decade, I am genuinely excited and brimming with so much hope. I could tell you how I am going to move forward, how I am going to grow. I could tell you all about the fantastic moments I experienced this year.

I don't know about you, but that second option sounds so much better. So I challenge you to see the magic, embrace the good, and grow.

Until next time,

Yanninia Marie

Ps. Stay tuned as I have so many fun adventures on the wind that I can't wait to share.

Until then, you can check out the following links for a burst of inspiration:

Book of the Week:

"Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: One Introver's Year of Saying Yes" by Jessica Pan

My favorite mediation music:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DWSiZVO2J6WeI

Sign up here to receive notes of positivity and ways to navigate your own inner darkness.

* indicates required

Ask yourself, “Why?”

Posted on by Yanninia

Hello, lovelies,

Today’s Monday Morning Check-In is all about mindfulness and taking a hard look at the life you are currently leading. It is easy to hear the word mindfulness and instantly think of meditation, yoga, deep breathing, and journaling. While all of those things are extremely helpful in cultivating a life that you love and have so many mental health benefits, I am referring to something slightly different.

For the last several months, I have been engaging in mindfulness by merely observing my patterns of behavior and asking myself a straightforward question, “Why?”

Why did I make a pot of coffee this morning? Why do I continue to work a job I know I hate? Trust me, when you begin to ask yourself why you start to see how you could make your life better.

Over the years, I have been incredibly guilty about getting stuck in patterns of behaviors or doing things that don’t align with my heart’s purpose—resulting in periods of deep depression, anxiety, and regret.

I have always been the type of person who would sit there and pretend everything is fine even if the house is on fire. I have always placed responsibility over happiness, having an income over doing what I love.

Last year that cost me dearly. I put a job before my family. I decided to prioritize work, telling myself I would make time for my family later. The clock ran out, and instead of getting one more weekend with my father, I stayed home, went to work, and told myself I’d see him next month.

I don’t want to make that mistake twice, so I started asking myself, “Why?” I even took it a step further and asked myself, “Will this make me happy? If I knew I only had today, would I still do this?” If the answer was no, I knew I need to make a change. So ever so slowly, I have been making small changes, tiny decisions to shape my future.
It hasn’t been easy, and life has a real hard time just accepting that you’ve changed your mind; even our bodies fight us sometimes. It is almost like we become programmed over the years, and so much of our behaviors are automatic.

But little by little, I am changing, growing and I can’t wait for 2021. I have so many plans. I would love to continue this conversation as I know this process is so much more involved than a simple question.

But today, I want to challenge you to be present and ask yourself, “why?”

With Love,

Yanninia Marie

PS. On Wednesday, I will share a video about another mindfulness practice that I engage in when life feels a little chaotic. Stay tuned.

Sign up here to receive notes of positivity and ways to navigate your own inner darkness.

* indicates required

Monday Morning Check In

Posted on by Yanninia

Hello gorgeous humans,

I wanted to take a moment to reach out; I have started a small mini-series on Instagram, as some of you know. The series is entitled "Monday Morning Check-In." It has been running for 18 weeks now, which is a big deal.

I started Monday Mornings to create a space to check in with each other regarding our mental health and stand as a reminder that you are not alone. Like millions of other beautiful humans, I, too, struggle with mental illness, which I lovingly refer to as darkness. For me, darkness wears a mask of depression, anxiety, PTSD, and a weird non-epileptic seizure disorder.

As an artist and fellow warrior in darkness, I wanted to do something to help shine a little light into all of our lives, and while I have loved checking in with you on Monday mornings, I felt like I could be doing more.

So without further ado. Let's get started

Starting today, I will be sending out a Monday Morning Newsletter filled with content to help us navigate our darkness and a healthy dose of positivity. On Tuesday, I will follow up with a video on mental health practices and eventually interview other warriors in darkness to share their struggles and triumphs with us.

I am so excited for this next chapter, and I hope you will join me. I genuinely believe that by coming together, we can find better ways of making it tomorrow.

As always, if no one has told you today: You are amazing; you are magic and stardust and loved more, then you could even know.

Until next time,

Yanninia Marie

~ Oh, and before I forget, I want to challenge each & every one of you to post one good thing about 2020
every day leading up to the new year.
Today my one good thing is all of you lovely humans who support me, my art, and my vision for a better tomorrow. Love you guys.

Sign up here to receive notes of positivity and ways to navigate your own inner darkness.

* indicates required

The Musings of a Dreamer

Posted on by Yanninia

There is something so peaceful about the woods, and the aimless wonderings of a dreamer. Even if I can’t escape the urban juggled around me, I know the woods are always waiting for me.

There is magic in wandering, it is as if the feet and the earth give the mind permission to wander too. Thoughts and feeling once left abandoned coming running to the surface demanding to be held and some simply ask for permission to fade.  It is in these moment I found solace, discover new fascists of the world around me, a few hidden treasures and sometime I allow myself to reemerge into a world where old lovers collide, and children who never exist live.

Sometime I tell their stories hidden in the pages of countless journals, and scribbled hastily on random sheet a paper. It’s funny; you’d think I’d have become a writer with all these scribbles. But I can only ever find the beginning or the end. I am never privy to both and so I am surround by scattered fragment of unfinished stories.

Call me silly but there something about the way the earth feels beneath my bare feet and the warmth of the sun dancing off my pale skin that make me long for those endless days of wandering beneath the trees and losing myself to stories in my head.

Tangible Memories

Posted on by Yanninia

Tonight I found myself surrounded by what is slowly becoming my family, and reminded of something so simple; our families.

I am not talking simply about spending time with them, or enjoying the moments you have with them because let me be honest time is short and before you know it it’s gone. I am talking about something more important. I am talking about creating memories, real tangible memories of our families.

I am talking about the importance of memory. Tonight I sat and I listened to a conversation that started with a disagreement over the specific cut of my fiancée, Brendan, mom’s first wedding ring. A disagreement that result in a rifling of an old ceder chest to find their parents wedding album; only to decided to table the conversation until we could empty the chest completely; as it is currently overwhelming full of teddy bear and decades of lost memories. A task for anther night; I’m sure.  But it didn’t end the conversation.

We eventually ended up talking about how his mother used to dye her hair strawberry blond; which lead to her bring out an old family photo of Brendan’s folks and his older brother, Brain long before he and his middle, brother Steven were born. The first and only formal family photo, but not the last family photo.  I listen to Brendan and his dad, Jim, joke about receding hair lines, and family resemblances, and where each brother gets what genetic trait as his mother, Becky, users us into the living to show off the decades of family photos: a photo of Jim, & her on their wedding day, a family photo of Jim when he was little, a hand-colored photo of her moms wedding, and a set of engagements photo form her when parents got engaged.

Meanwhile as she shows photo after photo each containing a memory, a moment of their lives, their family history, a glimpse into their past I am reminded of the day I first met his mother. The day she pulled out all the baby photos, and showed each and every one of them to me. I remember laughing as she told me the stories of his childhood, the images of his naked butt roaming around the house wearing an over sized hat, and his dad’s boot on backwards, of course. This is his family.

Every photograph, every painting on the walls tell a story of memories long past; but forever persevered. 

So why do I tell you this because we have forgotten; it not about making memories, and spending time. But about creating a way to remember them. Creating a tangible reminder of the memories of your wedding day, the family gathering around a new baby, the first smile, and of course your last smile.

Tonight I am reminded that every time I create an album, or a physical tangible photograph of a newborn I am giving that family a memory, a tangible memory; one that will one day lead to laughter, smiles, stories and remembrance. Although I doubt there’s will sparked by something so simple as a disagreement over the cut of a wedding ring.