Shareen machine
My dear ladyfriend Brenna doesn’t eff around when it comes to matters of vintage. (hence the title “dear ladyfriend”). So when she acquainted me with guru Shareen Mitchell in LA, I bowed down. Hard.
Consider this a holiday gift. And admittedly, I am reluctant to give it away, but…
Shareen is the bicoastal vintage Dalai Llama. In LA, her temple is a Pasadena pilgrimage replete with cinder block walls and a “no boys” sign. In NYC, the atmosphere is a bit more civilized. But still delightfully underground. Boys still needn’t apply.
Her goods are top notch. But what really sets her wares apart is the price point: conservative to very conservative.
It reminds me of the little shops I’d cruise in Omaha as an angry suburban teenager because the shiz is bananas yet economically accessible. The older I get, the more I appreciate this endangered paradox.
But lest you think that tip concludes my post, it gets better. Shareen has a newsletter. And I have come to love it. It makes Gwyneth’s ‘Goop’ look like ‘Tiger Beat.’ It is grammatically incorrect, random and awesome.
This week’s was especially great. It touched me. And alas, I felt obliged to share:
I had more than a few responses to my last newsletter. Clients I know well and who I love wrote to me of their losses this year. They shared their shock and their grief.
None pained me more than my dear client who lost her twins before birth at 6 months.
I shake my head, even now. How? How does a woman recover from this?
Where is God in these moments?
I will tell you.
God is here in me and you and in all of us who can reach toward those in need with love.
God does not make illness.
God shows up in the love we hold for one another with a kind word, a thought, an offering of hope and helps transform suffering into triumph.
Those who suffer are being offered moments of massive change, great growth and perhaps miraculous transformation due to the pain they are enduring.
Nothing is for naught.
The human spirit is like a piece of coal, and suffering cuts at the spirit until it has a diamond.
Trust me on this. If you are in pain, you are being fashioned into something truly extraordinary.
Just take it. Cry it. Scream it. Hate it, Love it. Surrender. Go there. Embrace it. and learn about love through it all. You will come out the other side GLITTERING. I promise.
Life is hard. To disagree is to be naive. Life is hard and there is pain and there is suffering.
But I know this. To the degree that you embrace all of life you will be made more beautiful, more rich, more wise, more loving, more real and more ready to help others.
We are not here unto ourselves alone.
We are here to help.
If you are in joy today. if you are in abundance. if you are in ease and hopefulness, your job is to pass that goodness along.
Always remember that your blessings will only multiply to the degree that you share them. Do not waste your good on your self.
This is the spirit of Hanukah and Christmas. Be God. Be a little angel. Go to give.
A smile gives so much. A hand to a shoulder, a compliment well spoken, a message of hope, time of loving attention, even holding high and loving thought is giving.
That is all.
That is everything really that I believe.
I believe in transformation.
I know that those in pain today will be those in joy tomorrow.
And I know that you keep the good you have by giving it away.
Shareen
xoxo
