Move Forward With Love

Move forward with love. 
How do we move forward after this week tragedy?
How do we move forward after reading the stories of the bravery of the teachers slain?
How do we move forward when with every new update, every new article, every new video of the terror stricken parents, causes our hearts to ache, our minds to put the faces of our own babies on those murdered, our blood to boil with anger at the hyprocrisy of politicians blaming mental illness after having blocked efforts to fund mental health services. 
How do we move forward when we know so many are suffering? 
We lean into connection, kindness, and those we love. 
We take a stand, even if it means not taking a side but standing in the middle, standing for truth, for integrity, for facts over judgment, over fear, over rehearsed stories that serve to put money in the pockets of some and gravestones over the heads of others. 
We move forward being willing to be wrong, to take accountability and listen to others. To hold up to question your own beliefs, your own judgments and reactions. 
We find laughter, love and joy in the easy moments and the hard, the ideal moments and the imperfect, and treasure each moment with the richness often lost in the hectic and mundane of everyday life. 
We move forward with intention, with action and with curiosity to learn what you can do to prevent future tragedies. 
We move forward because there is no other choice, and when we refuse to move, we sacrifice time that we can never get back. Time that those whose sweet babies will never feel the kiss of their mother’s lips, the embrace of their father’s hug, would do anything to get back. Don’t insult their grief by not moving forward, leaning in and living life with those you love. 
“I’ll help you mom!”, Finn’s voice cut through the rain as she ran to help me finish getting the animals in before the storm. 
I watched her cheerfully go to work, & as the rain soaked us both, we laughed, and took this blurry pic together. 
We move forward with love, & with determination to do better, be better. 

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About Becky

Becky Schmooke (pronounced “Smoke”) is a Mindful Leadership Consultant and Speaker, focused on providing action based mindfulness and leadership training to organizations and businesses who are ready to do things differently.

Becky’s Mindful Kitchen, is located outside of Iowa City, and provides truly unique team building and leadership retreats, strategic planning workshops, private parties and classes and weekly summer camps for kids. The commercial teaching kitchen, treehouse, archery range, bush craft skills, first aid training, wood fired pizza oven, chickens, baby goats and timber adventure playground provides endless opportunities for hands on activities.

As a mom to three girls, 60 chickens, 4 goats, 2 dogs and a fire fighter’s wife- life is never boring and provides Becky with endless stories which she uses to illustrate her approach to mindfulness in daily posts on social media.

In all that she does, Becky has one goal, to build confidence in others to take action to live their best life, not just pass time.

On Shame

Shame…we all deal with it- so let’s talk about it.

There’s no shame in box cake.

And for most of you reading this, that statement is a no brainer.

But to some, getting caught baking from a box would cause shame to come running.

Shame tells them that baking from a box you aren’t a true baker, a good mom, a good wife. You are lazy, an imposter, a fake. You don’t really care about your kids if you are allowing them to eat those ingredients.

Powerful is the box of cake eh?

And for those who are still wondering how anyone could feel shame about that, take a hot second and consider what your cake box of shame is.

Because we all have one, or two or 20.

Things we do that we desperately hope no one catches us doing because the story we have told ourselves is that if they knew, they would judge us, shame us, and never look at us the same.

Things we have grown up believing are unacceptable in our society, in our families, in our culture.

It’s why we blame our farts on dogs.

And by ‘we’ I mostly mean women. Because the message we grew up hearing was that men can burp and fart, women can’t.

We grasp onto an identity and shame traps us there, preventing us from being who we really are.

There are so many women right now watching the news about the leaked Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade, their stories of past abortions held captive by shame. Women who have been known as ‘the good daughter’, ‘the smart one’, ‘the doesn’t make mistakes one’…

Here’s the thing about shame, it’s a brilliant storyteller, but only when it comes to fiction. It sucks at nonfiction.

Shame is the narrator of so many of the destructive stories we tell ourselves, the ones that keep us from sharing the stories we need to tell.

I have a commercial teaching kitchen right below my personal kitchen-baking from a box doesn’t make me any less of a baker.

I now spend my time speaking and teaching mindful leadership, sharing stories of how I have failed to do the very same things I am teaching. Doing so doesn’t make me less of an expert. It simply makes me human.

And when we lean into our shared humanity- shame doesn’t stand a chance.

Follow For Daily Posts and Baby Goat Videos!

About Becky

In all that she does, Becky has one goal, to build confidence in others to take action to live their best life, not just pass time.