“I believe the second half of one’s life is meant to be better than the first half. The first half is finding out how you do it. And the second half is enjoying it.” ~Frances Lear Recently one of the younger handstanders I follow on Instagram (admittedly, all the handstanders are younger than me) posted how discouraged she felt...
5 Things You Need to Do a Handstand — or Anything Important
“Lately it occurs to me, what a long strange trip it’s been….” — Grateful Dead Miriam Webster defines journey as: something suggesting travel or passage from one place to another. When you consider that my quest to do handstands went from one place (not able to kick up at the wall) to another (kicking up into handstands away from the...
Handstands and Memories at the Monkey Ship
Most people go to the zoo to look at the animals. I, however, recently went to Mesker Park Zoo to do a five minute plank — with the thought in the back of my mind that maybe I would kick up into a handstand near an animal or something else significant. As it turns out “something else significant” was a...
Obsessed with Handstand Success
“Determination becomes obsession and then it becomes all that matters.” — Jeremy Irvine This, my friends, is a moment of confession. A confession that handstands have now become my obsession. You may think this is an exaggeration (only if you don’t know me), but if you read the definition — “preoccupied with or haunted by some idea, interest,...
How Handstands Pushed This Indoor Girl Into the Outdoors
“Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and winds long to play with your hair.” –Kahlil Gibran As a general rule, I don’t like doing anything outside. Seriously, most of my time in the outdoors is spent walking from my car to the store or the office, and back again, and maybe from my...
Something To Look Forward To
“Happiness is pretty simple: someone to love, something to do, something to look forward to.” — Rita Mae Brown I once had a boss who encouraged everyone to schedule vacations. “Everyone needs something to look forward to,” he’d say as he talked about his next upcoming adventure. He was right. Having something to look forward to gives us...
Performing Under Pressure
“Pressure isn’t supposed to break us. It’s designed to make us.” Sarahjohnson.co When I was a little girl, I was an amazingly good speller. So much so that my fellow students would call out my name when the teacher asked who wanted to participate when we competed in a spelling bee against a rival class. There were, in...
“Just One More Time…” Is Probably a Lie
“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” — Thomas A. Edison If you’re ever around me when I’m handstanding, you’ll probably hear me say, “just one more time,” as a signal that I’m going to try one more time and that will be it....
You Can’t Hurry a Handstand (Or Anything Else That Matters)
“If you want to be a success, do not hurry.” — Aesop Technically, I began my handstand journey when I turned 50, but I didn’t really get serious about it until the approach of my 56th birthday. That’s when I started this blog and began telling anyone willing to listen that I was going to nail a handstand...
Let’s Put a Positive Spin on 2020
“Accentuate the positive Eliminate the negative Latch on to the affirmative Don’t mess with Mister In-Between” — Johnny Mercer Let me start off by saying I know there were a lot of bad things that happened in 2020 and I’m not for a moment discounting what was truly a tragic year for many. But while it’s easy to...