Friday flâner

Years ago, I wrote a weekly roundup post called Friday flâner. The French word flâner, pronounced “flah-nay”, means to stroll, hang around, or dawdle. And a flâneur is an “idler; dawdler; loafer”. Think of someone strolling around window shopping while sipping a latte. That kind of thing.

This word has more meaning to me now. I’m embracing rest and self-care (formerly dirty words) as I recover from Religious Trauma Syndrome and cPTSD.

My spirit animal at the moment is the sloth. No one would accuse him of being lazy. Also, laziness does not exist.

_{Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash}

I decided to bring this weekly feature back. I’ll share with you cool things I find around the web and an old post from my archives.

This article from Sheenia on how to make peace with past parenting mistakes is comforting. I don’t regret much about my life, but I do regret raising my older children inside a high-control religion. I see how it has damaged their mental health, harmed them financially, and caused fractured relationships. My oldest son is shunning me, his stepfather and siblings as a result of our exit, which breaks my heart over and over.

I enjoyed this article about how depression makes negative beliefs “sticky”. We all have a little cognitive bias going on. This served our ancestors well by helping us conserve calories to grow bigger brains. But it has a negative byproduct. For anxious or depressed people, our brains tend to ignore evidence that would contradict negative beliefs about ourselves. And gives more weight to evidence that confirms those unhelpful sentences in our brain. We need to be aware of, and fight this tendency.

Loved this article from Leif of FiveYearFireEscape on How To Stop Buying Stuff: 20 Unique Ways to Change Your Spending Habits. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Love of sloths aside, I do try to get lots of movement in my day. This post by NPR shows how a little movement makes a big difference. Exercise doesn’t have to be all or nothing!

From the archives:

How to get out of debt as a single mom. I’ve made plenty of money mistakes, but one thing I’m proud of? Fifteen years ago I got out and stayed out of debt.