this has moved to a new location at cristinacarlino.com! i hope you will check out my blog there, along with all of the other great content!
xo – c
this has moved to a new location at cristinacarlino.com! i hope you will check out my blog there, along with all of the other great content!
xo – c
Posted in Uncategorized
Unpublished Work © 2011 Cristina Carlino
i am honored and grateful to be featured in this month’s “O the Oprah Magazine.” i was asked as an expert on beauty and a woman who is closing in on 50 to tell “The Five Things I Know for Sure About Aging.” i can say now i am “living my best life” after taking a profound and unplanned inner journey to loving both the beauty and the beast within me, since the time my friend, susan casey wrote my answers a few months back and this issue reached the stands, i have am sure i know at least five more things i could add to that list. and i will here. that is the beauty of aging.
each day i know more because as one of the great thinkers of all time, carl jung, said, “midlife is the time we begin to listen with our heart.” and that is where my knowledge is coming from. a heart that knows more and thinks less. my eyelids may droop a bit, i may be thinning out everywhere but my hips, but i have new ears! the ones that choose to listen first with my heart as i wasn’t able to do the years i was creating and building and loving my businesses while not so much myself. the ones that know we cannot hear what we need to hear one second before the moment we are ready to hear it. and that moment is not up to us. there are many of these moments along the path.
my first mid-life moment came at 40 with the birth of my beautiful daughter. the next, the one that sent me on my journey, came in my 48th year in an unexpected phone call from my office that led to my resignation from philosophy. it was a “calling” that like many i see now was thirty years in the making. looking back now, two years later with a more knowing heart, what i thought was the end was really the very beginning as it was the greatest awakening of my life second only i suppose to the day of my actual birth. but first, as carl jung also said, no conscious awakening comes without some pain. and rest. that is what my interactive journal, “Beautiful Beast” is about. surrender and peace not just to age but to everything.
i can tell you from my heart today i realize i had to leave the beauty business to get to this place where what i feel inside is positively gorgeous. my inner eye is my only mirror to see myself and quite frankly others. this has been the gift of age for me. i am at peace with getting older. never has the divine been closer and never has the synchronicity of events, some wonderful and some frightening, been more obvious to me. life isn’t meant to be perfect and neither am i. but it is meant to be lived.
so here are five more things “I Know for Sure about Aging” today:
(1) that a sunset or a pretty moon or telling the person you were speaking to “i love you” is not to be missed ever if you can help it
(2) that the only thing real, at least to me, is love.
(3) that loving people doesn’t always mean rescuing people.
(4) that surrender, not resignation, is the greatest anti-aging elixir i have ever discovered.
(5) that five months from today, i will know at least five additional things if i keep listening to my heart.
i’d love to hear what you know about aging.
with peace and blessings, c
Unpublished Work © 2011 Cristina Carlino
last week in my blog about journaling, i mentioned a song i wrote called “hands and knees” that i would love to tell you about today. music is the heart and soul of my life journal. the songs i write or in this case co-wrote with stuart mathis are not born in between the pages of a book’s binding, they all speak to the time in my journey that i never want to forget. hands and knees was written about 18 months after i sold the company i founded and created called philosophy.
for the past thirty years i have been a recognized authority on beauty. today, i know my true expertise comes primarily from being the only person who will ever live my life. our life experiences are what we have to share. over the next several weeks, that is what i will be doing sharing parts of my story with you that until now have lived inside of me.
so looking back, here’s how “hands and knees” came to be: it was a crisp fall morning at philosophy and like many other mornings, i was in an overly caffeinated conference room filled with many other wonderful women. we all worked together in a culture we strived to create as supportive. these women are both mothers and not mothers, married and single, overloaded with responsibilities, beautiful, competent sisters and i was suddenly struck by a profound site of overworked, under loved super girls. we were sharing a silent collective moment i call the breaking point. the breaking point is not a power point presentation. you don’t actually see it till it breaks. but i sensed clearly it was on its way. what i was not able to see in that moment was how forcefully it was coming for me, too. but i heard a few words in my mind that become part of the chorus to this song:
“honey my hands and knees have grown tired from the road
i need relief
honey i’m beat from a broken heavy load.”
now a girl is a girl is a honey is a girl and i believe the truest part of our feminity is our vulnerability. our bodies are more vulnerable, our sensibilities and sensitivities on 24 hour alert. our lives are packed with jobs and responsibilities to ourselves and others with or without children even before we show up to where we actually earn our living. we may recall when we were little children waiting for the slow, slow time to pass until we became grown- ups. then, at last we would be vulnerable no longer. we would be free. now we know to love is to be vulnerable. and to live is to be vulnerable. to never have enough hours in a day is “grown up.” to do so silently and without enough nourishment day after day as we take constant beatings with our own sticks that remind us we have got to be more, and aren’t doing it all to perfection can make us very unsafe.
the freedom we were waiting for comes now in being there for each other while we’re getting “the job” done. this is how we lighten the load. whether in a corporation, a small business, or doing the work of raising our children at home. so I’m wondering, how are you doing this today?
do you reminding each other to take a lunch break?
do you take a moment to listen to someone who really needs to be heard?
do you offer a loving smile just because she looks like she could use it?
when you go in the bathroom, can you look in mirror and say “i love you” just because you need it most of all?
do you make it your business to have a good laugh with someone at least once during the day – no matter what?
can a single moment of being still be as essential as your morning cup of coffee?
i wrote powerful lyrics and melody lines for “hands and knees” so i might stand in my truth side by side women trying to stand in their truth. “honey i’m beat” was the battle cry in each chorus. i will tell you more about the stories behind the verses of hands and knees’s in next week’s blog.
until then, please think of an expression i told myself everyday/during that time. “this too shall pass.” each one of our songs seems to follow the next. the next chorus of “hands and knees” was the prelude to the song that came after which would journal the moment that brought me to my breaking point. that song in turn ended up being the opening to my next miracle. discovering the woman i was always meant to be. right here with you. and i am so very grateful.
peace and blessings,
cristina
Posted in Cristina Carlino
Tagged journal, journaling, journey, lyrics, music, self love, self respect, writing
Unpublished Work © 2011 Cristina Carlino
i love this quote from the talmud, “every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, “grow, grow.” and i figure we do, too! will we get still enough to hear them. the official beginning of spring is around the corner –the season of rebirth. but then isn’t every season? any occasion is ripe to begin anew.
springtime, new year’s day, your birthday; easter, next monday when for sure we’re starting our new exercise regime. the end of a crisis, the beginning of a clearer path ahead, a brand new relationship; and most definitely just a brand new day – the angels are our gentle cheerleaders whispering, “let go and grow.” create and begin anew over and over and over. it’s what most turns nature on. the letting go part may seem a bit less exciting to us at times. but maybe that’s why we invented “spring cleaning.” and now is the time.
so here is my short list of things you may want to let of to grow as you clean house. inside and out. things seen and not seen. from winter clothes to a last season’s grudge. and i’ll be right there letting go with you.
l. an old worn-out story.: one that’s no longer true. our stories can be reborn with the change of a few simple words. from “he left me” to “i knew it was time to say goodbye” can have us grow from victim to victorious.
2. toss old cosmetics: any you’re still holding onto in your cabinet since the Spring of l999. lets grow with the flow. try a new color. treat your skin to what it most needs today! maybe there’s still a wee bit left in the tube but our skin cells have shed and and renewed a thousand times over since then. and so has the rest of our bodies.
3. rewrite the lists of what you think i have to do and who i have to be: “grow, grow, grow” doesn’t mean so we can be more loved, richer or more powerful. but to simply and magnificently become more of who we are. let go and discover you are always loved. there is nothing that can make you feel happier.
4. surrender the remote: give up some time on the tube. spare your thumbs the texting and grow to discover a friend you can take a walk with. or a book that’s been just waiting for you to find it.
5. let go of thinking that growing old means growing up: just because we are getting older doesn’t mean we are automatically growing up. beginning with letting go of all the notions that frighten us into thinking that “old” can be anything less than gold.
because it is. blossoming, growing, rebirthing. in this very instant. at every stage of our lives.
i would so love to hear what or who you are ready and willing and able to give up this month as we welcome the whispering angels of spring.
peace and blessings,
cristina
Posted in Cristina Carlino
Tagged personal growth, rebirth, spring, spring cleaning, starting over
Unpublished Work © 2011 Cristina Carlino
do you remember this classic john lennon song?
“Love is real, real is love
Love is feeling, feeling love
Love is wanting to be loved”
i’m singing these visionary lyrics to myself today and wondering, can it be? in a world of a trillion love songs trying to figure it out –can it really be is this simple? yes. my heart knows this is true. great vision is simple. great lyrics, not so easy. i know this myself as a songwriter. can love still be this pure, 30 years after this song was written? has it always been? can love remain this innocent in these record changing times? past valentine’s day, beyond motherhood. lennon was without a doubt a genius.
and so is love .
love is god’s masterpiece.
god’s greatest gift
free without purchase
free with our without a religion
available in all sizes and in eternal supply
can i remember when i am wrapped up in my complicated relationships that
“love is touch, touch is love
love is reaching, reaching love”
if i can’t, can i try to recall
a tiny baby laughing in a crib
discovering her own toes,
playing, touching, reaching
completely In love with herself. her image. your face.
can i strive to remember that to reach love now
i don’t need a ladder to climb up on
or a plane to fly me there
can i sing, simply, “love is asking to be loved.”
will we just ask for love
instead of fearing we must earn it?
will i love you without reason
except that nothing feels more right?
“love is you
you and me
love is knowing
we can be”
love is free, free is love
love is living, living love
love is needing to be loved
if i am living love, knowing i need love
i am always safe in the world.
change that comes
dreams that go
people who we have to let go of
so much more is here
no object a million words have been able to define
nothing we can visibly see
nothing that is more real.
all god sees is love.
like baby toes.
will i just see love today
if only in little glimpses?
will we sing like dear john lennon
“it’s easy…
all you need is love?”
i love you,
cristina
Posted in Cristina Carlino