Stories Connect Us [CELEBRATE This Week 167}
I’m glad you are here to celebrate!
Share a link to your blog post below and/or use #celebratelu to share celebrations on Twitter. Check out the details here. Celebrate This Week goes live on Friday night around 10(ish). Consider it as a weekend celebration. Whenever it fits in your life, add your link.
Please leave a little comment love for the person who links before you.
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| Franki Sibberson & Katharine Hale |
I’m tattered. Things have been rough in my momma corner of the world, but this is the time of year for my favorite conference of all — NCTE.
I cried while packing. I took a photo of packing, posted it on Instagram, and then sat on my bed and sobbed.
“What’s wrong?” Andy asked, surprised when he walked in the bedroom.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “I love NCTE. I love the people. I love the sessions. I love presenting. I don’t know what’s wrong.”
“It’ll be fine,” Andy said before slipping out of the room.
The idea of venturing out, putting forth the energy of connecting, and staying focused on professional work is a little daunting.
I finished packing and made a choice to claim joy. I didn’t feel like choosing joy, but I did it anyway.
I’m grateful for this choice. I folded up my guilty feelings. I put away feeling like I didn’t measure up. I quit worrying about the schedule.
I decided to relax and just enjoy the experience.
I have been so blessed.It’s a little unfair to pick one photo, because my celebration is the collective whole. It’s the goodness of people that I’m celebrating. I love the way paths cross and there’s a hug and a hello. I love the diversity of friends and the way our professional work webs together.
I feel connected.
This feels like an extravagant gift, worthy of a celebration. Because of our intense parenting season, I haven’t been able to keep up with connections like I would have liked.
I love stories.
I love people.
I celebrate the ability of story to connect us and the strength of those connections to sustain us.
If you’re at NCTE, I sincerely hope our paths will cross. Let me know how to make that happen through Twitter. And if our paths have crossed, thank you for your sweet hello and hug. Your kindness makes me smile.
PS — I made a free video mini-training. It was super fun, and I think you’ll like it. You can get it by signing up below. Happy teaching!
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Enjoy the learning and connections! This time will reenergize you to carry on.
It is hard to leave when so much calls you at home, but I hope NCTE will bring a break and a celebration with all your friends there, Ruth.
So glad you decided to claim the joy! Stories, people, connections – it doesn't get better than this. I hope you enjoyed every single moment and stored them up for future days when you might need a lift.
Your tweets empowered me. You chose joy. I am celebrating with you!
Ruth, here I am catching up with the blog posts as I busily prepare for Thanksgiving. It was great fun running into you several times at NCTE. Thank you for the few moments that we spent in conversation about the importance of telling our family stories. Your NCTE presentation that I saw was wonderful.
His strength is perfect especially when things are daunting.
I saw tweets and photos of your time there. Bravo!