Charmed Monday Minute Jan. 15

Happy Martin Luther King Day and best wishes all ‘round...

On the resolutions front, I discovered a great way to keep up with my resolve to have some spectacular fun each day. I’m calling each tasty life-treat a piece of candy and, in contrast to those years of resolutions about never having candy, I’m now resolving to have at least one piece of this kind of candy every single day. On the weekends I can have more. Yesterday, for instance, I nearly downed a box of it:

First piece - a session with my personal trainer. He is my big splurge, but so worth it. With all I’ve been going through with the headaches I wouldn’t have done anything if I didn’t have the commitment to see him twice a week.

Second piece – a visit with my friend Lane. I was just going over there to drop off a blender, but it was such a sweet time. We’ve known each since 1989 and every time I see her, I see myself.

Third piece – church at Unity of NY (www.unityofnewyork.org) and it was really special. The minister asked everyone who was going through a remarkable healing to come on stage. I went up. I was nervous. I’ve spoken there four times and I don’t get nervous; I know I’m a good speaker and I have good information and there’s nothing to be afraid of. But this was different: I was being vulnerable. I was saying, “I’ve been going through a very dark night and I trust I’m coming through it.” There were about 20 us onstage (and it is a stage – the church meets in a concert hall, Symphony Space, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan), and the whole congregation prayed for us. It was extremely powerful.

Fourth piece – lunch with my friend Olivia. She is a super-networking expert (www.spitfireteam.com) and a super human being. We went to Mana, a macrobiotic restaurant on Amsterdam Avenue and totally caught up. (And a lovely young woman came up to me there thanking me for these Monday minutes! I was so surprised I think I mumbled. Please, if you’re seeing this, drop me an email via Joya - charmedassistant@aol.com -- and introduce yourself so I’ll know you by name next time.)

Fifth piece – an afternoon class in restorative yoga at Yogaworks (www.yogaworks.com). I was introduced to restorative yoga at the spa (if you didn’t read last week’s minute, the spa where I greeted this New Year is www.newagehealthspa.com). It is a luscious form of gentle yoga -- all about props and getting in a perfect, comfy position and staying there for a very long time – like fifteen minutes. In the meantime, one of the two instructors comes around to give hands-on corrections, like gentle mini-massages, while at the same time one of the instructors talks about some yoga precept. Yesterday, in honor of Martin Luther King Day, she talked about ahimsa, the power of non-injury, dynamic harmlessness, the roots of Gandhi’s and King’s nonviolent movements.

When you get five pieces of candy in a day, it sweetens the sour stuff like having to take down the Christmas decorations – but even that I did with the show-tunes channel on, which enlivened things quite a bit.

Some other people sent in resolutions to share:

My resolution this year is to be vegan. I've been a vegetarian for 25 years but I finally felt the push to go vegan. I guess I finally figured out it was really possible especially since Native Foods moved into the city! My second resolution is to try and live in balance. I am forever doing too many things. Maybe they are really only one resolution! -- Bajamama

I technically do New Year’s affirmations. The work “resolution” seems so negative – you resolve to do this or not to do that. It puts a down spin on whatever your goal or pledge for the year would be, which technically puts a stamp of failure on it. An affirmation on the other hand is a positive statement or pledge in which a great outcome is visualized. My affirmations: losing some weight so that my lifespan is stretched and I can have as much active fun as possible with my three young grandsons, donating 20% of the “clutter” in my home to charity (not to mention the clothes that will no longer fit me as I lose weight), and learning a foreign language well enough that I can help someone if they are having trouble communicating with others – you never know when a situation like that will come up, and I am sure it is a helpless feeling. There is also a desire to write and illustrate a children’s book, but that may take several years of affirmations to complete. -- Paula

(If you’d like your resolutions in the newsletter – there are two more Mondays in January, so there’s time, send your resolutions to Joya: charmedassistant@aol.com.)

Question of the week: “My current problem is menopausal weight gain around my middle. I hope to start the New Year with continued dedication to health and fitness, and intend to re-read Fit From Within during my holiday vacation. Is there anything in particularly you can recommend that would target any hormonal issues that might exist for weight gain around the waist?” – Irene Irene, you have discovered a fact of life that the world doesn’t seem to want to tell us until we get there. I talk in the first part of Younger by the Day about how there was invasion of the body snatchers in my bedroom, and how virtually overnight my flat stomach was traded for a round one and my round bottom for a flat one. It was horrifying. On the one hand, it’s nature. Just as an eighteen-year-old body and an eight-year-old body are shaped differently, a woman’s body after menopause has a different shape from the one she had before. Somebody even said it’s nature’s way to make sure men won’t be attracted to women who aren’t fertile, but that is just depressing and ugly. So, in my experience and opinion, you can’t totally change this nature-imposed shape-shifting without surgery, but you can do a lot with exercise. You know you need cardio work to keep your heart healthy, but it also keeps your fat level low. Look at runners: they’re lean, regardless of age. The roll we get around the middle, even if hormonally motivated, is made of fat, and consistent cardio can help keep your fat level down. (The old Fit or Fat books by Covert Bailey are still among the best on this.) In addition, around menopause, weight training becomes more important than ever before in life. It not only protects your bones, but it shapes your body. Your abs might not be a washboard or a six-pack, but they can get pretty darned decent, and your waist, although not a Scarlett O’Hara 17 inches, won’t melt into oblivion. (You didn’t ask about thighs and triceps, but they’ll be a lot stronger, leaner, and more toned as well.) While cardio can help keep you fat level low, weight-training gives you muscle. Otherwise, you’d just be “skin and bones” – no shape, no energy, no sex appeal. With weight training in the mix, you’ve got your best shot at a youthful-looking body in your fifties, sixties, and beyond. Now, if you read Suzanne Somers’ books (Ageless: The Naked Truth About Biodentical Hormones and Suzanne Somers’ Slim and Sexy Forever: The Hormone Solution for Permanent Weight Loss and Optimal Living), I think she’ll tell you that taking bioidentical hormones will help keep your body pre-menopausally shaped for just about as long as you live. I am not making any medical recommendations, but if you want to read up on these from a source I trust, you can visit www.obrienrx.com. (Note: if you’ve sent in a question that I haven’t answered, I do have it and it will be answered, as they say on the voice mail, in the order in which it was received. If you have a question you’d like answered, please send it to charmedassistant@aol.com.)

Correction: The New York Times does it, so I guess we can, too... Last week, with the pumpkin pie recipe, I gave a wrong website for Lori Finlay Hamilton. The correct one is www.womenwisdomandwellness.com. (Sorry, Lori – and all of you who went to the site I listed and didn’t find her.

Have a great week, everybody!

All good things,

Victoria Moran

Charmed Monday Minute Jan. 7

Happy New Year to all! I hope 2007 will bring you success, peace, and every opportunity to fulfill your happy destiny.

I’m thrilled to report that I am feeling much, much better. I spent a week at a marvelous, healing place, the New Age Health Spa in the Catskill Mountains about 100 miles from New York City (www.newagehealthspa.com). When I first arrived there, I felt so bad I thought I’d made the wrong decision, that I should be at a starker, more medical kind of place. But within a couple of days I was feeling better and now I’d say that 90% of the pain in my head in gone. I don’t know the reason: I had some amazing treatments there – hot stone massage, acupuncture, cranial-sacral therapy, foot reflexology, and several steams and wraps and scrubs to detoxify. In addition, there were two yoga classes and two meditation sessions each day, plus other classes in tai chi, Alexander Technique, Nia, Chinese healing, and more. And I started to reread Deepak Chopra’s wonderful book, Perfect Health, and I’ve been following an Ayurvedic lifestyle for my body type. (According to Ayurveda, having Vata dosha out of balance – I’m a Vata, so that imbalance is what I’m prone to – exacerbates nerve pain. Very interesting.)

In addition, before I left one friend gave me Reiki, another treated me to a massage, my fabulous Chinese healer from KC just sent me some specially compounded herbs for the condition I’ve had, and I just learned that someone dear to my heart has been doing distance healing for me from the Midwest. And I’ve been on the Silent Unity prayer list this whole time. (If you don’t know about Silent Unity, they use affirmative prayer for people of any faith or no faith, 24 hours a day, and they’ve been at it for over 120 years. Their number is 816-969-2000 and you can call any time day or night.) It all adds up to feeling more well than I had dared to hope. I’m seeing a medical specialist on Wednesday and it will be interesting to see what he thinks of my recovery via these unusual methods.

Anyway, I have a new lease on life – a perfect way to start a year, I think. I wish you this kind of joy (but without being sick first!).

(Note: This is a longer Minute than usual – okay, it’s a 4-or-5-Minutes)

Love and Light to you in this New Year,
Victoria

Movie of the week: Miss Potter. This is the Renee Zellwegger film about Beatrix Potter who wrote and illustrated Peter Rabbit and other classic children’s books. It is visually exquisite, charming and heartwarming, and a lovely look at a woman’s life in a time when women had precious little freedom or self-determination. I loved it, my husband loved it, and all the women in the bathroom afterwards loved it. Only the critics pooh-poohed it as “too sweet.” It’s not! I don’t go for gooey-sweet myself, and this isn’t. It’s just a beautiful movie and one that you could take a child to without wishing you’d brought a blindfold and earplugs. Recipe of the week: In the pre-Christmas newsletter, Joya and I forgot to include the pumpkin pie recipe kindly sent by Lori Finlay Hamilton (www.wisewomanwellness.com). We’re adding it here. Certainly it’s okay to enjoy pumpkin pie in January! Happy Heart, Happy Hormones (low fat, dairy free- "guilt free" pumpkin pie) Pre-heat over to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C) 1-1/2 package Mori-Nu Lite Tofu (firm or regular Silken Tofu) 1 cups (480 ml) canned or cooked pumpkin 2/3 cup (160 ml) honey 1 tsp vanilla 1 Tablespoon Pumpkin pie spice 1 unbaked 9" pie shell Place Tofu in Blender or Vita Mix container. Blend until smooth, about 20-25 seconds on medium speed. Add remaining ingredients, and run until well blended. Pour into a 9" (22.5 cm) unbaked deep pie dish shell and bake for about 1 hour. Filling will be soft, but firms up as it sits . Chill and serve. Great for breakfast treat- without the guilt! A note from Lori: I've served this with company and they had no idea this was a "tofu pumpkin pie" :)

In search of... ...the lovely reader from out West who is an Arbonne representative. Please email me: I want to do a little write-up on Arbonne in a future newsletter (the products are yummy) and my daughter is craving body butter and some kind of magical masque. Thank you. Question of the week: I apologize: I was so sick before I left town, I managed to somehow delete your questions. It was some kind of Blackberry-to-regular-computer misstep on my part. In any case, please accept my apologies, kindly resend your questions to charmedassistant@aol.com, and I’ll answer all of them next week. The whole Monday Minute can be a sort of tribute to Ann Landers. Thanks for understanding. My resolutions: Yes, I make them, and they are: Enjoy life each day (I write more about that in the blog entry, pasted below), and: Live Ayurvedically for one full year. I find an assortment of ways of being and ways of living so fascinating that I’ve never really stayed with one system of well-being consistently for an extended period. This year I intend to stay close to the Ayurvedic principles for all twelve months and chart my progress. This includes keeping a regular schedule, getting up early and to bed on time, doing warm oil massage most mornings, meditating twice a day, doing yoga regularly, and eating the diet that’s best for my body type. Much of this I’ve done before or do a good part of the time, but this year my intention is to have a serious commitment to this way of life. I also want to go for panchakarma, a special Ayurvedic cleansing/healing program, at least twice this year as well. It seems like a lot but I have a lot of incentive. I’ll keep you posted. (If you’d like to share your resolutions with the rest of us, send them to Joya (charmedassistant@aol.com) – and we’ll include them next time with your first name or, if you’d prefer, in total anonymity.)

Help for a friend:

To any New York area readers who might be able to help: my dear friend Alima is looking for an apartment-sitting situation for a minimum of six weeks. I’ve known Alima since I was 22, when she and her mom and brother were renting a big house in Kansas City with Patrick, my then-to-be-husband, and his sister. Alima is a gifted intuitive and for some years has divided her time among Kansas City, Sarasota, and New York City, never having a permanent residence here. When she last came up to see clients in NYC, however, she was struck with a serious illness and has been hospitalized for nearly five months.

As you can imagine, not being able to work for that long, plus dealing with uncovered hospital expenses, has made a huge dent in her financial reserves. When she is released in the next few weeks, she’ll need a place to live in New York. If you or anyone you know is looking for someone to stay in their place while they’re away---especially is there is a cat (or cats), bird, or fish to care for---this would be a godsend. (She is using a cane and is not physically able to care for a dog.) A perk is that she is an animal communicator and would be a lovely friend for a pet whose family is away. And she would probably work something out with you so that you could get regular readings for some extended period. She is very good at what she does. If you can help, you can call her directly at the hospital (212-636-8521). She cannot be reached by email there, but if you’d like to visit her website as an fyi, it is www.alima.ws. Thanks, all.

Christmas/New Year's blog

December 28th

Hi, everybody –

Since we’re not doing a “Charmed Monday Minute” Dec. 25 or Jan. 1, I wanted to at least check in, wish you a joyful holiday season, and let you know what’s going on here.

Healing update: I have really been going through the fire with the nerve condition that started with a dental procedure November 7. The past two days have been pretty good (hurray!) and I’m trusting that will hold. Two days last week, when I returned from California after Richard Carlson’s funeral, were lie-on-the-couch/don’t-move awful. I’m headed off tomorrow (Friday, December 29) to rest and get some detoxifying treatments at a spa in upstate New York. After the setback I had from the trip out West, I gave up on the idea of going somewhere far away. I’ll give you a report on the spa after I get back.

Richard Carlson: Some of you have asked about Richard Carlson’s memorial. It was really beautiful, 700 people in attendance, and included in the service were a lovely slide show of his life with his family, and an audio clip of a talk he gave in the parish where the memorial was held. Despite the tragic circumstances of his early passing, the service was a real celebration of his amazing life and contributions.

Wonderful restaurant: When I was in the Bay Area, Patti Breitman (Richard’s former literary agent and mine) and her husband Stan Rosenfeld took foreign rights agent Linda Michaels and me to a really delightful restaurant in Berkeley. It’s called Café Gratitude and is vegan, mostly raw food. The dishes all have affirmations for names, i.e., “I am beautiful,” “I am loving,” “I am abundant.” Richard would have approved. And the food was amazing. Here are a couple of the quotations from the walls:

“By letting go, it all gets done.
The world is won by those who let go.
But when you try and try, the world is beyond winning.”
Lao Tzu

“Abundance can be had simply
by consciously receiving what has already been given.”
Sufi saying

If you’d like to read more about Café Gratitude, here’s a link: www.withthecurrent/menu.html.

The Moran/Melton family Christmas: The miracle was, we had one. I’d been so sick we didn’t even get a tree until the night of the 23rd, and we had to let the branches drop so we actually decorated it on Christmas Eve. That’s a first for us. It’s a precious little tree, though, and I love being able to keep it up through Epiphany on January 6th and have it keep its needles.

Siân, William’s daughter, has a job at Urban Outfitters and had to work late on Christmas Eve, so it was just William, Adair, Nick, and I for December 24th dinner, and Bobby-the-cat for added company. Despite all the recipes I’ve given in recent “Charmed Monday Minutes” for the traditional meal we usually have, we didn’t do anything traditional this very unusual year. Adair brought stuffed mushrooms and a winter vegetable puree. I made a vegan Caprese salad (yes, of course: tofu masquerading as mozzarella), and baked apples. Those without nerve damage shared a lovely bottle of Italian red wine.

On Christmas morning, William and Siân and I went over to Nick and Adair’s place for Christmas morning with them and the two dogs. Such a sweet experience start to finish! It was our first Christmas in maybe seven years with any of William’s kids with us on the day itself, so it was really special to have Siân there. And Adair totally has the Christmas gene. Her sense of decorating and gift-giving and tradition---well, it warms the heart of a mother whose favorite movies include Miracle on 34th Street (original version) and Elf.

Among the wealth of lovely and thoughtful gifts I received were:

From William, a Philip Stein “teslar” watch. You may have seen these on one of Oprah’s “favorite things” shows. They’re amazing. The watch contains a teslar chip to protect again electromagnetic radiation. A host of studies indicate that wearing it improves athletic performance, calms the mood, helps sleep, and even promotes healing (I want that). I am loving having this watch on my wrist. If you want to read about it, you can check out www.philipstein.com/ .

From Adair, a professional portrait of Aspen, officially Adair’s dog but mine, too, (I found her starving on the streets of Kansas City). Aspen is, gosh, twelve now, maybe thirteen, and she moved in with Adair and Nick when they got married. Doubly special: the photographer said to Adair during the shoot, “While we’re here, let me get a few of you with Aspen,” so I have the most exquisite 5x7 of my precious daughter and precious dog together. I put it on my altar because those two faces say L-O-V-E to me.

And, again from William, an invisible dog! You see, I would love to have a dog who lives with us, but William has always wanted to wait until we have a bigger place. Since I’ve been injured, though, he was thinking that a dog would help me get better. When I asked him if he was okay with doing Christmas Eve at our place and Christmas morning at Adair’s, he said, “But one of your presents will be really hard to get over there.” Hmmm. I’d asked for a watch. Something told me he was thinking “dog.” I told him I couldn’t take care of one in my current situation, so on Christmas morning he gave me a card with a cute little white terrier on it and a promise that when I’m better we can go to the shelter or contact a rescue organization and adopt a living, breathing pooch.

I am mega-lucky to be so loved.

After presents, we went to Zenith in the theater district for Christmas lunch. Nick and Adair went home to play with their toys, and William and Siân and I went to the movies---plural. We saw Dream Girls and Charlotte’s Web. I liked both of them a lot, and of course I’m a major pushover for Charlotte, “a true friend and a good writer.”

Wishing you a beautiful, bountiful, and peace-filled 2007: I trust that in this New Year you’ll see dreams take shape, you’ll grow in wisdom and the ability to be happy, and that each of us will put forth energy in whatever way we can to make our entire world more peaceful and whole.

I’ll close with something that really spoke to me. I hope that in the retelling it will mean something to you, too. I was watching 30 Days, Morgan Spurlock’s very positive reality show on FX in which someone spends thirty days living and working in very different circumstances from their regular life, usually with people whose lifestyle or ideology differs vastly from their own. In this episode, a minuteman, an armed civilian who patrols the border to keep illegal immigrants from crossing, went to live with a family of undocumented Mexican immigrants in LA. One day he was out working with the man of the family. They were clearing a plot of land and out from under a rock crawled a creature that was, to human sensibilities, ugly---even creepy. It was sort of worm-like, but it had feet so it was sort lizard-y, too. As soon as he saw this humble, crawling thing, the Mexican man, who had been through so much hardship in his life, said, “Let him go so he can enjoy his life.”

I’m still not sure why that was so incredibly meaningful to me, but it was and it still is. We’ll all here to enjoy our lives---all people everywhere and every being of every description. I made me want to do what I can to help everyone whose life touches mine have the opportunity for that joy, and it made me promise myself to get some joy every day, even the ones that, at first glance, look pretty crummy.

Love and best wishes,
Victoria

December doings

Hey -- I'm looking out my window at the red-and-green Empire State Building. That's a happy thing to do . . . I'm not in the best life-place at the moment due to the dental mishap of four weeks ago. It was a shot of novacaine gone awry, leaving me with a hugely painful condition called trigeminal neuraligia. Some days are better, others not. I'm doing holistic treatment; the neurologist said to just wait since the side-effects of medical treatment can be very bad. I'm looking at going for three weeks to either the Hippocrates Health Institute (Florida) or the Optimum Health Institute (Austin) to see if my body's own defenses, when properly mobilized, can take care of this thing. I also know everything happens for a reason, although the reason for this escapes me . . . On days that haven't been so bad (some days I think I'm really getting better, then it comes back with a wallop) I've done pre-Christmas stuff and love that. My daughter Adair and I make such a big deal of Christmas. We met on Tuesday to go to K-Mart. There are two of them in Manhattan although going to them seems like such an un-Manhattan thing to do. We scoured all three floors. Plans are to put up our tree this Saturday, Nick's and Adair's on Sunday . . . Mostly I'm resting, taking things slow and easy. Prayers appreciated . . . Love and light to everybody ... Victoria

Back to Blogging Again!

Hello, kind people who keep looking at this blog to see if it will win take the record for most neglected blog of all time…

For those of you who aren’t on my e-mail list, I have a new mailing service that has enabled me to send out a weekly mini-zine called The Charmed Monday Minute. It’s newsy and fun and I think you’ll like it. If you want start receiving it, click on the “Subscribe to Free Newsletter” icon on www.victoriamoran.com, or go directly to www.victoriamoran.com/newsletter.html. The plan is to be in touch weekly with the more informational stuff and use the blog for just catching up. (There won’t be a newsletter this coming week because of the holiday, but we’ll start up again November 27.)

I have to tell you that I had a major shock when I learned that people get to rate the author blogs posted on Amazon.com. It’s bizarre to me that we’ve become a culture in which everything is judged and graded. It’s a reality-show mentality, I think: the most desirable bachelorette, the savviest apprentice, the biggest loser. When I think of a blog---a friendly blog anyway, not one that centers on politics or something like that---it’s a person sharing his life or her life. To be graded seems just plain cruel. “You get the good grade when you go to Paris, a bad one when you only go to the post office.” I must say it put me off writing for awhile. I expect my books to be reviewed by other people, but not my day. What do you guys think?

Well, let’s see, graded or not, here’s what I’ve been up to: I had dental surgery last week and ran into an anesthesia problem. It was just a local but it did something to my trigeminal nerve and I’ve been through a scare with that. For a couple of days, it was frighteningly painful. Now we’re down to the dull ache stage, so I’m convinced it will go away. I’m getting acupuncture, though. I am such a fan of acupuncture. My body takes well to it and it’s helped me through a lot of things.

I’m taking the 4-T---Tithing of Time, Talent and Treasure for Prosperity and Fullness of Life---(www.4tprosperity.com) class at the Unity church here. This is the fourth time I’ve done it and it’s very powerful. It’s about changing your consciousness. I think it works so well because participants have to sign a contract agreeing to do a lot of disciplines: financial tithing, daily prayer and meditation, volunteer work in the community, listening to the 4-T CDs twice during the week as well as in class, and being part of a prayer group that is dedicated to helping each group member get to the next level in his/her life. In addition, each of the twelve weeks is dedicated to one step in the 12 Step program, so it’s a way for people who aren’t in 12 Step programs to benefit from those amazing steps. It’s taking some time but somehow I seem to have more time than before. I love the delightfully illogical logic of Spirit. I don’t understand it, but I know it works.

Speaking of such things, have you seen the DVD everybody is talking about, The Secret (www.thesecret.tv)? It’s about the Law of Attraction. I just got a copy and watched it a few days ago (while recovering from my dental affliction). It was fascinating and, in my opinion, right on. I wrote a lot about the Law of Attraction in my new book as well. It’s interesting to see how that ever dependable collective unconscious brings necessary ideas to light in so many places and through so many channels when the time is right.

This weekend William and I are going to Providence, RI. I’m speaking for pre-Thanksgiving dinner of the Rhode Island Vegan Awareness on Sunday (www.veganawareness.org). My daughter and her husband are going to the Woodstock Animal Sanctuary (www.woodstockfas.org) for their pre-Thanksgiving celebration. And this comes from Amy Gonigam of Chicago (she’s also a wonderful writer who gave me some interesting info for my new book on periods of intentionally going without a computer): she adopted a turkey through Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, NY. (The turkey will live at the Sanctuary; Amy is more its sponsor.) Anyway, she sent me these adorable (well, I think so) turkey photos you might like to see: http://www.adoptaturkey.org/adopt.htm.

A couple of weeks ago I had a very quick trip to my hometown of Kansas City to visit my mother-in-law. I was just there for a minute, it seemed, so I didn’t get to contact many people, but it was sweet---well, sweet and bittersweet---to be back home. I remember Kansas City as being so urban and vital and centralized when I was a kid. Downtown was booming. Over the years, like most cities, my hometown has spread out to suburbs on all sides, and although there’s a great art scene in KC, and some wonderful theater, the urban energy I remember isn’t the same. I suppose part of what I’ve found in New York is a memory I kept looking for in Kansas City. I was talking with a woman here recently who said she was dying to move to LA, that as a native New Yorker she can’t bear to see how New York is changing. I guess I’m blessed that I don’t know how it was, so it seems absolutely grand to me.

I think that’s about it for the moment. This evening I’m going to a book launch for John St. Augustine’s new book, Living an Uncommon Life: Essential Lessons from 21 Extraordinary People, based on John’s long-running PowerTalk Radio series. He’s now working for Oprah doing programming for her XM station. It starts at 6, it’s 5 now, so I need to start making myself presentable. Thanks for taking the time to share some of your day with me. I probably don’t know you, but I do appreciate you.

My very best,
Victoria

Fall Thoughts

Hello, my dear readers, listeners, clients, friends, and everyone else who’s reading this blog--

Thanks for much for visiting. I wish you a happy fall, my favorite season. I was just in Vermont for a wedding and although the missed the fall colors by three weeks or so, I saw little previews of gold and red. This season always makes me want to buy a plaid cotton dress and little Mary Jane shoes and go back to school…

I feel as if I have been in school since I’ve been working long and hard on my next book, now titled Fat, Broke & Lonely No More: Your Personal Solution to Overeating, Overspending & Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places. My devoted and persistent editor Gideon Weil has worked with me tirelessly to get the title right, and this was not my favorite. At least I can stop holding off on getting new business cards until I have the new title. It will be so nice to stop writing my name and e-mail address on cocktail napkins. Anyway, my deadline is this Friday, September 22. If anyone wants to send some nice positive book energy my way in the meantime (or in the direction of HarperSanFrancisco on Friday), it would be most appreciated.

For those of you who haven’t seen my last blog, I need to let you know some sad news: my radio shows are, as of October 1, defunct. They want to make the Martha Stewart Channel truer to the Martha Stewart brand, and part of that is to do away with the life-coaching shows and many of the other individual programs. Each day of the week will correspond to one of the Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia magazines, and weekend programming will be replays of weekday shows. The people at MSLO, who have been very nice through all this, are promising that there will be a role of some sort for me on the station as a contributor. I’m not sure at this point what that means but I’ll definitely put it on the blog when I know.

My last few shows are going to be super, though: Saturday the 23rd my guest will be Alexandra Stoddard, discussing her latest book, Time Alive. (Please call in with your questions about decorating, spirituality, whatever else is on your mind---866-675-6675, 2 to 3pm Eastern time.) Sunday the 24th I’ll have Michelle Anton with Weekend Entrepreneurs: 101 Great Ways to Earn Extra Cash. On Saturday the 30th (another call-in: please do!), from 2 to 2:30 I’ll have on Sera Beak, author of The Red Book (see mini-review later in newsletter---it looks as if Sera is going to host a spirituality show for 20-somethings on the E! network). From 2:30 to 3, I’ll be talking with Thom Rutledge, author of Embracing Fear. Thom is a psychotherapist with expertise in addiction and eating disorders whose take on overcoming fear is that you can’t get rid of it but you can disagree with it. And my swan song, October 1, will be about a song, “From a Distance,” the Bette Midler hit with a timeless message of peace and oneness. I’m so blessed to be spending an hour in-studio with its composer, Julie Gold. It feels good that my last show will send out a little message for peace on earth, as much as we need that now.

In my little personal world, I do have something lovely coming up: a week at The Greenhouse Spa in Dallas with my daughter the last week of September. I’ll be the featured author for their annual Book Week. If you’re up for a week of blissful indulgence (or if you’d just like to read about blissful indulgence as I often do), pay a visit to www.thegreenhousespa.net. I’ll be speaking in Bismarck, ND, October 16, at the First Lady’s Women’s Health Summit and if that’s your part of the world, please take a look at http://www.bismarckstate.edu/cce/whs/. In November, I’ll be speaking for the Thanksgiving dinner for Rhode Island Vegan Awareness in Providence; the e-mail for info on that is riva@veganawareness.org.

And finally, with the completion of the book, I am back in the coaching business! So many of you have written about that since I’ve not taken any new clients for the past ten months. I will be as of October 1. And I’m doing a special, back to last year’s prices temporarily as a way of saying thanks for your patience. If you’re interested in coaching, the info is on my coaching page (www.victoriamoran.com/coaching) but the prices are lower: $395 for a month (three 45-minute telephone sessions plus unlimited short calls and emails as needed in between), and a $100 discount if you sign up for three months. I can also offer you a free 20-minute sample session, and there are past and current clients who would be happy to tell you about their experience in coaching with me.

Remember: you deserve a charmed life!

Victoria

Connecting on 9/11...

September 11, 2006

Dear readers and friends –

I’ve been rather silent due to the book deadline, but I wanted to reach out today and be in touch, deadline or not. This is a somber day in New York City, as in the whole country I’m sure, and yet it is a very beautiful late summer day at the same time. One of my friends talked this morning about waiting for the bus before 9/11/01 and how she always saw another bus that said “World Trade Center” go by the other way. She routinely saw the same eight or ten people waiting at the stop to get on that bus. After the disaster, there was no more bus and there were no more waiting passengers. She never knew what happened to any of them. Over time, another bus took that route, this one saying “World Financial Center,” and now again, five years later, eight or ten people wait every morning at that stop. The tragedy is in some ways so fresh, and yet life goes on, and we are evidently supposed to be a joyous part of that ongoing.

There’s a lot to share from me to you since I haven’t blogged in awhile. Let’s see, there’s:

The way you look tonight…My stepdaughter Siân moved in with us last week. She’s a young makeup artist, trained in Toronto, who wants to do fashion shows and model shoots. She got a gig through Elle magazine to do four days for Fashion Week, and today she got me in to the Malan show. It was dizzyingly fashionishta-like! Malan was in season 3 of Bravo’s Project Runway and his designs were all flowy and gauze-like, fantasy clothes with lots of skin showing. It was so much fun to take a break from reality and go over to 7^th Avenue and pretend that all that glitz is my real life.

My old Kentucky home…This past weekend I spoke in Louisville, Kentucky, which was lovely and fun. The hotel I stayed in there, the 21C Museum Hotel, was built to showcase a collection of amazing 21^st century art. It was like staying late at an art gallery and getting to spend the night. The Louisville Courier-Journal did a wonderful story about the event at which I spoke, Norton Healthcare’s “Celebrating Women,” and ran a Q & A with me. If you’d like to read those, the link is:

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=features. (That will take you to today’s features, but if you scroll down you’ll get to last week’s. The story about me ran Thursday, September 7.)

By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea…I spent the last week of August on writer’s retreat at the Serendipity Bed & Breakfast in Ocean City, New Jersey. It was so charming! Ocean City has a wonderful old-fashioned boardwalk and a serious downtown with real shops for shopping. They have a five and dime, an appliance store, a bookshop, clothing stores. I was totally sold. I plan to be a regular. (And Serendipity is terrific: it’s a vegetarian and vegan-friendly b&b. I got spoiled having somebody make me scrambled tofu every morning.) The change of pace did propel me forward on the book and I’m about eight short chapters shy of being finished. I won’t have it in by September 15, but my editor has kindly given me a week’s extension. I’m still writing like mad, and will be away this weekend in Vermont for a wedding, so I’m getting up extra-early these days and spending a lot of time at Starbucks at my special writing table.

The name game…On the book front, we’ve been going through a lot of discussion over the title. I am very lucky with this one that everyone at the publishing house is so behind the book, they want have input on the perfect title. The downside of that is that everyone has a different opinion. It was originally Fat, Broke & Lonely: The Stupid Lie that Runs Your Life & 5 Savvy Secrets for Breaking Free. Then my editor came up with one I love: How to Break Up with Fat, Broke & Lonely: When You’re Finally Ready to Split from Overeating, Overspending & Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places. I was sure that would fly, but some people think it sounds like a book on how to break up with a boyfriend/girlfriend, so we’re back to the drawing board. I wrote to my agent today: “We should just call it what it really says: God Doesn’t Want You Fat, Broke & Lonely.” She called back and said, “I really like God Doesn’t Want You Fat, Broke & Lonely.” As she spoke those words, a gorgeous orange butterfly flew past my window. You’ve got to understand: I’m on the far East 50s in Manhattan, not near any parks---and I’m seventeen flights up! I think that seeing that butterfly was a sign. And whatever the book ends up being called, I’ll always believe that. (And I will let you know via blog as soon as the saga comes to a conclusion. The book, by whatever title, is due to come out in June of ’07.)

All good things must end, they say…and one of the best things in my life is, sadly, coming to a close: my radio shows, A Charmed Life and A Charmed Life II, on Martha Stewart Living Radio, Sirius 112. October 1, Sunday at 2 p.m. Eastern, is my last show. It will be very special: my guest will be Julie Gold, lyricist and composer of Bette Midler’s mega-hit From a Distance. That song is so important, I think, for its message of peace and oneness. It feels like a gift that, even though I’m losing these programs which mean so much to me, I get to go out with a show that could ripple on to bring a tiny bit more peace to the world. What is happening with the station, as I understand it, is that they’re tightening everything up to make the channel more distinctly Martha Stewart. Virtually all the individual shows are being eliminated, and weekend programming will be all replays of weekday shows. Each day Monday-Friday will focus on a different magazine in the Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia family. There has been some talk that I’ll be kept on as a contributor, but I know nothing specific yet. Again, I’ll keep you posted….

A few of my favorite things…Well, a few of my favorite books actually. I’ve been introduced to so many fabulous books for the radio show. Some of the ones I’ve loved lately have been Diary of a Modern-Day Goddess by Cynthia Daddona; Microthrills by Wendy Spero; Unleash the Power of Nature Foods by Susan Smith Jones; The Office Sutras by Marcia Menter; and The Flip by David Rippe and Jared Rosen. For now, I’d love to share with you one that I absolutely love: The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark, by Sera Beak. I met Sera last week and she is an utterly delightful 27-year-old with a Masters in Divinity from Harvard. She has whirled with dervishes, volunteered at Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying in Calcutta, and had a private audience with the Dalai Lama on her twenty-first birthday. She is such a radiant light, and yet also a thoroughly contemporary, fashion-savvy, has-a-cute-boyfriend kind of gal. The E! network is in negotiations with her to host a TV show on spirituality for a young, hip audience. I think this is very exciting. And the book, even though it’s geared to 20-something women, is a great read for any person, any age. I can tell you honestly that I feel more spiritual from being in the midst of it. Do take a look.

I wish you all every good thing. If anyone is reading this who has a personal connection to someone who died five years ago today, know that you are in the thoughts of many, many people, and certainly in mine.

-- Victoria