Browsing Tag

patience

Family, Guest Posts

The Art of Waiting

June 23, 2015

beauty-hunting-jen-logo-black1-300x88By Amie Newman

I am not a fan of patience. It doesn’t matter if I’m standing in line at the grocery store or figuring out my next career move. It borders on skin-crawlingly-uncomfortable to wait. I live with anxiety, though it’s treated with medication. Still, to breathe deeply and be with myself, in the tumultuous times, in all my uncertainty and confusion can almost cause a riot in my brain. I know I’m not alone in this but it’s a solitary feeling.

The last three years have been filled with the fight of my life, as my husband, two teenage children, and I lived in deep trauma. It was and is a trauma we must keep private and so there are very few who know or understand what we’ve been through. Last year, we climbed out of the trenches, after a long war, dazed and dirty. Like a less funny (though sometimes equally as weird) “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” I am a part of a new and unfamiliar world, post-crisis, that I am scared of and fascinated by. I’m wondering what the hell to do next. I have no idea. I hate the waiting. But I am raw enough and maybe finally wise enough to know that waiting may be the best thing I can do right now. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, Relationships, Self Image

The Single Girl’s Saga. What I learned After 5 years On The Dating Scene.

December 14, 2014

beauty-hunting-jen-logo-black

By Brittney Van Matre

After my 10 year relationship ended, 10 years too long and a lot of angst culminating to the anti-climactic ending, I slowly began dating. I was not ready to be emotional entrenched with someone new; however, this realization didn’t quench my desire. I thirsted to find love in another. And therein began my 5 year saga on the dating scene.

I watched from afar while my best friends fell in love, flaunted sparkling diamonds, bought gorgeous gowns, and painstakingly planned every detail of their “big day”. “Why couldn’t I find a love like that?” I asked myself as I purchased my sixth bridesmaid dress, this time in lavender. Another ugly dress to be worn one night, and one night only. All these frocks were destined for a life of dust collection; soon-to-be second hand store merchandise where they’d likely be purchased as Halloween costumes.

Of course I was elated for my friends’ obvious good fortune; however, I was simultaneously in despair over my own ill-fate with love. My supposed inability to land a good guy of my own easily transitioned to second guessing everything about myself from my appearance, to my personality, to my choice in Facebook profile pictures.

My impatient quest for love included embarrassing words like coercing, manipulating, forcing, controlling, and dramatizing. I endured many years of unnecessary heartache while trying to work for a love that was not yet meant for me. I became more obsessed with the idea of a relationship than I was with any person themselves. Essentially, my ego was in complete control. Continue Reading…

my book

The Extraordinary Patience of Things.

August 9, 2012

Possibility is patient. 

Other things that are patient: Death. Sometimes. Other times, not so much.

Sometimes it comes and grabs you in your cut-offs and yellow I Survived The Bermuda Triangle t-shirt at 11:01 in a Tuesday in July. It grabs you as you take your watch off to put it on the nightstand next to your cigarettes. Like it can’t wait a moment longer. Other times, it lingers patiently knowing it will find you when needed, wherever you may be, and that there’s no hurry. For it to take you now, in a flash, would be rash and unfair. Sometimes it is a patient thing waiting in a corner until the time is right. Like most things, it can’t always be just one way.

The patience of your voice. How sometimes it takes years to find, until one day you do and on that day you walk in a room knowing fully who you are in the world. The voice that has so patiently waited for you fills you with your personality, your you-ness. You may not feel it rejoice but it does. Having waited silently in a corner for you that long without making a peep. It throws a little party in your soul and although you may think it is just excitement or too much coffee, it is your voice, moving in finally. For good.

Heartbreak. Heartbreak is patient. It doesn’t give a shit where you have to go or who you have to be. It doesn’t care. It is patient. It takes it’s times and does what it needs to do quietly, methodically, slowly. It crawls. It stops time and waits for the people to cross and the cars to go. It’s that patient.

Pain. Oh, the patience of anguish. It waits for you at night and is there for you in the morning no matter how slow you amy be moving that day and how long it takes for the coffee to kick, your pain waits in your body. Or your heart. Like a loyal friend you’ve had since childhood and no matter how neglected that friendship is, it still stands, your pain calls every once in a while and patiently waits for you to answer.

Wisdom is patient. Sometimes it takes forever to arrive. Sometimes, and hopefully this isn’t true for you, it never arrives.

Dogs. They love. Endlessly. Without asking for much, they jump on you when you arrive no matter how long you’ve left them.

I have also discovered the patience of miracles and how when you wait for them they will show up, often in disguise but there nonetheless. 

Other patient things: Yoga, and how it meets you time and time again. Love, even when you have sworn off it for the Goddam last time. A breathtaking set of words and how they sit patiently and marinate in your mind until they are part of you entirely. Healing, which can wait until you are blue in the face before it sits down and makes itself at home. A good glass of wine and how it lingers and develops a nose, a body, a personality.

When you think of all the things that are patient it is truly remarkable to think that it is usually ourselves that are the impatient ones. It is me that wants it now. It is me that wants my book written and published.

And for what? isn’t the journey part of the joy? Mustn’t it be?

I remember thinking as an actor how unhappy I was and knowing that if I booked a lead on a tv show I would still be unhappy. I knew that. So, in essence I was admitting that the journey stank. That I hated it.

I love my journey now. So I must have patience. There is so much possibility within these pages. Possibility is endless in it’s patience by definition.

Poetry is patient, love is patient (although I think that is from the Bible, and if so, then love is also kind.)

My life is patient. It has waited for me this long.

My God then, it can wait a little longer. It can hold it’s horses and take a seat next to love and poetry, sunsets and the cycles of the moon, and my husband, who is so very patient.

My life can patiently unfold as I write my book and live beat to beat.

Possibility will unfold, shyly or like a thunderbolt, unexpected and without rain.

Anything good is worth waiting for.