Getting a little GOOPed!

I'm not big on surfing the net. In fact, I often ask people how they are able to spend hours upon hours "surfing". Where do they go? What is so interesting that would keep you in front of a life sucking computer screen for hours on end? In my quest to discover, I just recently stumbled upon a website called "GOOP". (www.goop.com). It was created by Gwyneth Paltrow and is basically a weeklyish newsletter of tidbits of advice from her own life experiences. She's divided the site into 6 different sections. There's info on food, travel, clothing, etc all centred around the Oprah-esque "living your best life" or "nourish the inner aspect" as GP says.

I was definitely intrigued. I have to admit, her writing style is quite personable and if you think about it, like Oprah, she's had the benefit of living a priviledged life. Why not pass on all the useful and interesting tidbits of her life experiences to everyone? After checking out only the first few sections of the site, this is my favourite "tidbit" so far. Much of her "advice" is common-sense. But sometimes, in our hectic, material driven lifestyle, we sometimes forget the "common" stuff. So here's a little "goop" from GP on raising children, which I think is actually something people should employ all the time, whether you have children or not.

"...it has been my personal experience (both as a child and a mother) that children are like little radios picking up our frequency. They know the real truth about what we are feeling versus what we are presenting and it is incredibly isolating to find a major discrepancy between the two. When in my grown-up sphere I am confronted with disappointment or my own intolerance and a bad mood to boot, I often name what is going on (in other words, I say, "Mommy is having a hard day, and I am feeling upset") so that the very mundane human “bad” feelings do not turn into some grim phantom in the room with me. Sometimes I don’t have the maturity in the moment, and when it fails me, I apologize at bedtime when my children and I are having a talk. I have felt my daughter’s whole body sigh in relief when I have simply and very specifically voiced regretting my own behavior. Here’s to doing the best we can. "