Category: Self Identity

Encouragement, Health, Inspiration, New Year intentions, Self Care, Self Identity, Self-confidence, Self-Esteem

Three Minute Inspiration

Mona Alvarado Frazier
Three Minutes-gettyimages.com
Three Minutes-gettyimages.com

In my Yahoo feed I came across a website called “Give it 100 days: Practice something for 100 days.”

Three minutes was all it took to inspire me to try something different.

Participants chose weight loss, ukulele playing, learning to dance, or sing. I’m sure this “practice something for 100 days,” could extend to writing what you’re grateful for in a journal, penning a rough draft for a novel, cooking, love letters. The ideas are endless. 

On Give It 100 Days, taking and posting a video everyday to their site is required, although you can do your new thing without a public video. If you’re very determined and extroverted you’ll post a video.

What I decided to do is learn to play the piano. (But no video). This idea fit right in with my intention word for 2014: Move.

I have an old Emerson piano that my daughter learned to play on several years ago. I found her old piano practice books ” Prep Course for the Young Beginner,” and flipped through the illustrated book for 5-10 year olds.

The keys now have taped letters “A,B,C,” on them to help me know where to place my hands. Looks a little tacky but who cares. I’m going start on page one of that young beginners book and give it a try-at least for 100 days.I may just learn a whole song or two.

But back to the three minute inspiration. This came after I viewed Lakiesha’s time lapsed video ” Losing Weight and Finding Love in Myself.” This young woman made a 100 day plan for her health and because she loves herself. 

Check it out.

Do you have a 100 day plan inside of you?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5FkshLcNLQ

Artist Frida Kahlo, Chingona, Empowerment, Frida, Hope, Latino Rebels, Maribel Hernandez Designs, Self Identity, Strong Women

Reasons to Celebrate Frida Kahlo’s Birthday

Mona Alvarado Frazier

Around the blogosphere and Facebook, many are paying tribute to the artist, activist, feminist icon and chingona Frida Kahlo. Last year I remembered her anniversary.  Today is her birthday.  

https://www.facebook.com/LatinoRebels

Over a hundred years after her birth, Frida remains memorable. In addition to her art, much of this has to do with her honesty about emotional and physical pain, her activism, her love of country and her self-identity as a woman. These are reasons to celebrate Frida’s birthday. 

Frida Kahlo produced 143 paintings, 55 of which are self-portraits. When asked why she painted so many of these, Frida replied:

 “Because I am so often alone….because I am the subject I know best.”

Her honesty in her response is precisely why she is remembered. Similiar to her au naturel face of unplucked eyebrows and unshaven upper lip, this was a woman who was comfortable with her identity. What she highlighted in many photographs, was her indigenous and mestizo roots and the culture of Mexico. 


This was a woman who lived a life in physical pain from several injuries and still painted.

 “I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint.” * 

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She was a woman who lived a life marked by emotional pain and depression. Her beloved mother, Matilde Calderon, died of breast cancer. Her father, who encouraged her to paint after her horrible accident died of a heart attack. She had several miscarriages. Her husband, Diego Rivera, was infamously unfaithful.


“I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.” **

Frida was a ‘relatable’ artist. Carlos Fuentes, famed Mexican novelist said: 

“Frida found a way of painting pain – of permitting us to see pain and in so doing, reflecting the pain of the world. … She is a figure that represents the conquest of adversity, that represents how – against hell and high water – a person is able to make their life and reinvent themselves and make that life be personally fulfilling… Frida Kahlo in that sense is a symbol of hope, of power, of empowerment…”

Frida’s philosophy of life was described just days before her death, in her still life, using the words Viva La Vida (Long Live Life). 

This was a woman who took pain and depression, placed it on canvas along with her vision, and created beauty. It takes a strong woman to translate tragedy into beauty.  

 “It is not worthwhile,…to leave this world without having had a little fun in life.” ***

That, right there, sums it up. Happy Birthday, Frida.



*Letter to Ella Wolfe, 1938, quoted in Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera In a footnote, Herrera writes that Kahlo had heard this joke from her friend, the poet José Frías.

**Quoted in Time Magazine, “Mexican Autobiography” (27 April 1953) a year before her death.

*** Smithsonian Magazine