Powerful Goddess Portraits

Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Wife & Mother

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Why I’m Happy on My Birthday

10 Jul 2014 6 Comments

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Birthday Celebration, Glamour Portraits, Women's Empowerment Tags: aging, best birthday gift, gift ideas for her, Stop The Beauty Madness ad campaign, youth and beauty

Birthdays are good for you.

Statistics show that the people who have the most

live the longest.

Larry Lorenzoni

Another birthday for me this week and I am happy to notice that I’m in a good place–of surrender! I can patiently sit through women’s conversations about weight, diets, workout obsessions, and cosmetic procedures without feeling compelled to chime in or do something about myself. But when I hear the husbands discuss the exact same topics among themselves, I do wonder, “What has our world come to?” As we age, is it our fear of death that makes us cling to vestiges of youth and beauty? Why, just a couple of centuries ago, men and women could not have even expected to live past their 40’s! I say anything beyond it is a big bonus to relish, not worry over. 😉

So what does help me age graciously? A wicked sense of humor, the thought (and threat) of the example I’m giving my daughter, and taking a lifetime to question what I grew up believing. Plus there was that secret pact I made as a teen with God that I would not complain about anything else if my pimples would just go away, pretty please. Reality is always easier to bear with a little grin as in this Stop The Beauty Madness ad campaign.

Click on “Leave a Comment” (above left) to share what helps you relax into aging or simply write me Happy Birthday wishes!

xoxox

Sharon Birke

201 697 1947

Sharon@PowerfulGoddess.com

Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Wife & Mother

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Break Free Today

03 Jul 2014 4 Comments

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Best Books for Women, Boudoir Photography, Glamour Portraits, Women's Empowerment Tags: Break Free Today, Freedom and Independence, Parenting Teens, pin up, When Things Fall Apart Pema Chodron

The truth will set you free,

but first it will piss you off.

Gloria Steinem

Here’s Summer! With three teens under my roof, freedom and independence are never far from my mind even when it’s not the 4th of July. On the radio, I hear lyrics of pop songs like Wasted and Fancy that revel in the freedom of being unconsciousness, blacking out as a convenient excuse for “I don’t know what happened to me!” Do the young seriously believe adults don’t crave this same relief from living the straight and narrow?! Red, white, and blue don’t do as much for me as seeing red lips pop on black and white with Powerful Goddess Cora Poage.

Pema Chodron speaks of a more genuine freedom in this excerpt from her book When Things Fall Apart:

We are told from childhood that something is wrong with us, with the world, and with everything that comes along: it’s not perfect, it has rough edges, it has a bitter taste, it’s too loud, too soft, too sharp, too wishy-washy. We cultivate a sense of trying to make things better because something is bad here, something is a mistake here, something is a problem here.

To dissolve this dualism, we must question our habitual tendency to struggle against what’s happening to us or in us. What if we move toward difficulties than backing away? We don’t get this kind of encouragement very often.

Everything that occurs in our lives is not only usable and workable but is actually the path itself. We can use everything that happens to us as the means for waking up. We can use everything that occurs–whether it’s our emotions and thoughts or our seemingly outer situation–to show us where we are asleep and how we can wake up completely, utterly, without reservations.

In the practice of lojong, a slogan says, “When the world is filled with evil, all mishaps, all difficulties, should be transformed into the path of enlightenment.”

We’re trying to learn not to split ourselves between our “good side” and our “bad side,” between our “pure side” and our “impure side.” The elemental struggle is with our feeling of being wrong, with our guilt and shame at what we are. That’s what we have to befriend. The point is that we can dissolve the sense of dualism between us and them, between this and that, between here and there, by moving toward what we find difficult and wish to push away.

Click on “Leave a Comment” (above left) to share your blacks, whites, and reds.

201 697 1947

Sharon@PowerfulGoddess.com

Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Wife & Mother

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When We Tell Her She’s Pretty

26 Jun 2014 3 Comments

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Family Adventures, Glamour Portraits, Women's Empowerment Tags: children, computer programming for girls, Empowering girls, Girls Who Code summer program, Inspire Her Mind Verizon Ad, Reshma Saujani

Women want men, careers, money, children, friends,

freedom, respect, love,

and three dollar pantyhose that won’t run.

Phyllis Diller

We don’t have TV, so the only time I see an ad is when I catch up on the latest episode of “Reign” with my daughter on CW.com. She is thirteen soon and thinks she’s twenty. She wants the right to roam and bike the streets alone like her much bigger and older brothers. She tests my resolve to mother through reason because she is certain she will know what to do in dire circumstances and that nothing bad can possibly happen in broad daylight.

I admit there is a very good chance I will always be more concerned for her safety even when she’s as old and tall as her brothers. I also recognize the disparity with which we speak and treat children of either sex as exemplified by this ad I love:

National Science Foundation cites the statistic that while 66 percent of 4th grade girls say they like science and math, only 18 percent of all college engineering majors are female. This powerful commercial is a partnership between Verizon and Makers, narrated by Girls Who Code founder, Reshma Saujani. Girls Who Code provides free intensive summer programs to encourage girls in their sophomore or junior year in highschool to explore their love of technology and computer science. Prior computer science experience is not required!

Click on “Leave a Comment” (above left) to share how you encourage equal opportunity among your children.

Sharon Birke

201 697 1947

Sharon@PowerfulGoddess.com

Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Wife & Mother

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Beauty and the Beastie

18 Jun 2014 2 Comments

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Best Movies for Women, Boudoir Photography, Glamour Portraits, Women's Empowerment Tags: Angelina Jolie movie, fine art nude, Maleficent Movie, Sleeping Beauty Fairytale, Villain and Heroine

Everything has beauty,

but not everyone sees it.

Confucius

“What did you love about Maleficent?,” I asked my daughter after our very happy Father’s Day at the movies without the men.

“She’s very pretty!” she smiled. May we all be as easy to please! Indeed, what’s not to love about a strong and beautiful heroine–albeit a villain, too?

Maleficent is the wronged and misunderstood woman in this revisionist-backstory fairytale. She suffers the deepest betrayal imaginable from the person she loves and trusts the most, the one with whom she shares her first “true love’s” kiss. While it is mainly about bloodlust after being violated and stripped of our power, it is also about the journey of moving forward and making the most of what is. I like how it reverses the pedestrian notion of true love, a necessary expansion of every child’s understanding of what real love can be.

Best of all, I love how it is a cautionary tale against quick judgments and our propensity to take every “victim’s” side. Like King Stefan, it is human nature to choose the version of the story that makes us look good and pitiful. It takes courage to notice that when we feel like “Woe is me!,” there is an angle of culpability we’re not admitting. For in every beauty, there is a beast. And in every villain, a heroine who can save herself.

Click on “Leave a Comment” (above left) to share the beauty in your beast.

xoxox

201 697 1947

Sharon@PowerfulGoddess.com

Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Wife & Mother

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The Rules

11 Jun 2014 2 Comments

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Best Books for Women, Glamour Portraits, Women's Empowerment Tags: Father's day gift ideas, Praise for Difficult Women, The Bitch book Elizabeth Wurtzel, The Rules book

I probably do need to learn to behave.

But I don’t like it.

Elizabeth Wurtzel

That we might learn a thing or two from men on Father’s Day, an excerpt from Elizabeth Wurtzel’s The Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women:

I have no quarrel with The Rules or the advice it gives–it actually seems pretty sound to me–but if we had really come a long way, baby, if men’s perceptions of women had transformed fundamentally and intensely so that we are accepted as full-fledged sexual creatures and romantic operatives who were free to chase or be chased, and if this expanded dimension of women’s sexual personae were not frightening or overwhelming to them, then we would not need The Rules.

So of course the bitch persona appeals to us. It is the illusion of liberation, of libertine abandon. What if you want to be large in a world that would have you be small, diminished? You don’t want to diet, you don’t want to say no, thank you, and pretend somehow that what is there is enough when always, always, you want more. That has been your defining characteristic: You have appetites, and only if you are truly shameless will you even begin to be sated because nothing is ever really enough. Not because you are greedy or insatiable but because you can’t help it, you can’t go along with the fiction that the world would have you believe and adhere to: that you ought to settle and be careful and accept the crumbs that are supposed to pass for a life, this minimized self you are supposed to put up with.

This is about what has become the almost monstrous notion of female desire. this is not about making demands of other people or wearing down those who have their own screams for MORE! to address. You’d be amazed at how often we are reluctant to indulge ourselves by our own means. It is amazing that the smallness of the space we’ve been told to squeeze into has meant that we don’t even know how to ask or what to want.

How nice it must be to just decide I will not be nice, I am never sorry, I have no regrets: what is before me belongs to me. For men, this attitude is second nature, it’s as much in their atmosphere as snow is in an Eskimo’s. They don’t even know how much they assume.

A very Happy Father’s Day to our favorite heroes! Click on “Leave a Comment” (above left) to share what you love about men.

xoxox

201 697 1947

Sharon@PowerfulGoddess.com

Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Wife & Mother

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Grace for Grace of Monaco

22 May 2014 2 Comments

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Best Movies for Women, Glamour Portraits, Iconic Women, Women's Empowerment Tags: birography, Grace Kelly look, Grace of Monaco movie, Hollywood icon, Nicole Kidman movie

If you want to sacrifice

the admiration of many men for the criticism of one,

go ahead, get married.

Katharine Hepburn

A film I’ve been looking forward to seeing has been thoroughly trashed by critics. When it was released at the Cannes Film Festival this month, the family whose story it’s supposed to tell declared it may not be labeled a biopic for failing to represent their version of reality “needlessly glamorized and historically inaccurate.” The director and the US film distributor want different finished versions of the film. The critics were extra harsh in their reviews of Grace of Monaco, starring Nicole Kidman as Grace Kelly. Geoffrey MacNab of The Independent was already gentle in saying, “Kidman excels in a role in which she is called on to project glamour and suffering in equal measure – and is never allowed to be seen in the same outfit twice.”

Why so much clamor over a movie? Why miss out on a good story by insisting on accuracy and perfection? Goddess knows more pedestrian productions based on the good old formula of sex and violence have made billions in box office revenues. Why not appreciate this film for the relevance of its story line: the human portrait of a woman as a prisoner of her (royal) circumstances, striving to find her own way in the world as she reconciles her needs with those of her family and her man like this Powerful Goddess?

Casting Nicole as Grace is perfect with her regal air and elegant restraint. As a woman, I admire her for shining as her own person, delighting in her own talents, and breaking free from the shadow of her famous ex-husband. I applaud the creators and artists who put their best foot forward with their best intentions in making this film. While critics may have their place in helping us do better, no movie, no art, no life would ever be created or lived if we were to constantly consider their opinion. We must do what we need to do just as critics must do what they do–if they didn’t, we would have to call them fans! Like Grace, we can choose to be kind to ourselves, be our own best friend and supporter especially when venturing to distant lands and new adventures far from the approval of family and friends. And please do so in great style! I personally relish the thought of never having to wear the same outfit twice.

Click on “Leave a Comment” to share how you silence your inner critic.

xoxox

201 697 1947

Sharon@PowerfulGoddess.com

Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Wife & Mother

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Water Is Life

23 Apr 2014 2 Comments

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Boudoir Photography, Charitable Giving, Glamour Portraits, Women's Empowerment Tags: Earth Day, green dress, NYC Central Park Lake, save the planet, Water Is Life

There are only three things

women need in life:

food, water and compliments.

Chris Rock

On Earth Day, this Powerful Goddess dances with gratitude for Mother Earth’s generosity, paying homage to the source of all life: Water.

FIT’s Niki Lars turned me on to the youtube video First World Problems Read by Third World People for the charity organization WaterIsLife.com. Haitian adults and children mouth the minor gripes and irritations that first world citizens post on Twitter–a witty role reversal calling our attention to the blessings we take for granted while many parts of world do without the most basic yet very critical comfort like clean drinking water.

Having been to places where running water is not 24/7, I still cringe when my husband runs the tap while shaving or brushing teeth, when my teen stands under the shower full blast for a half hour, when I hear about an entire reservoir being emptied of millions of gallons because a surveillance video spied a kid peeing into it. A few decades back, who would have bet money that tap water might become captive to bottled commerce? Maybe this is how we can begin to value what nature intended for all her creatures to freely enjoy.

Click on “Leave a Comment” (above left) to share how you’re a guardian of Mother Nature’s abundance.

Ask me for a portrait session with your loved ones when you donate to WaterIsLife.com

Niki Lars is a founding father of the Morning Salon, a sustainability forum open to the NYC community hosted by the Fashion Institute of Technology for companies who seek earth friendly solutions to their products and processes.

xoxox

201 697 1947

PowerfulGoddess@me.com

Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Woman

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Glamour Portraits, International Travel, Women's Empowerment, Womon's Health and Wellness Tags: All-Clad pots and pans, Cordon Bleu, Japan What to See and Do, Molly O'Neill cookbook, New York Magazine Food Column

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Warm Memories in Dishes

16 Apr 2014 3 Comments

If it’s so beautifully arranged on the plate,

you know someone’s fingers have been all over it.

Julia Child

Today I’m thinking of a dear friend whom I have not seen in a long while. We met almost two decades ago as wives of expats in Tokyo. She was the dedicated mother of two young children with a Cordon Bleu degree tucked under her apron. I was a new bride who was a virgin in the kitchen. Motherhood has since led me to settle in suburbia, to give my children the roots I never had. She continues to live the free life of a very stylish gypsy, moving to a new country every couple of years when she and her husband feel like it.

Like sunbeams in cupboards and closets, gifts and mementos around my home bring warm memories of our friendship. When I cook, I’m grateful she tipped me off on All Clad stainless steel cookware, they last forever and have spared me the clueless journey through aisles of the cheap and the non-stick. Pretty dishes remind me of our foray into Kappabashi Dori, Tokyo’s restaurant supply district, where she helped me bring home heavy blue and white ceramics up and down the subway stairs. When it came time for my family to move on from Japan, she hosted a sayonara lunch with the international group of ladies we had gotten to know in our brief time together.

In my closet is a bouquet of colorful pashmina shawls from her stint in Singapore. In my memory are recipes she taught me like the sweet sticky rice dessert when I visited her in Florida. Her favorite classic A Well-Seasoned Appetite by New York Magazine‘s Molly O’Neill is the only photo-less cookbook allowed on my bookshelf. She would casually toss quick recipes into our conversation then I’d report with dismay that my results turned out far from hers. She immediately knew to ask “Did you add salt and pepper?” because sure enough, the newbie needed every little ingredient specified.

Her invitation to visit them in Monaco was what opened my eyes to the joys of solo travel, a more life affirming version of gambling and living dangerously I say! It gave me the “Aha! I can do this every year…” revelation, and since then maybe twice a year and why not more?!

Countless more adventures to us, Powerful Goddess Ana! And count me among those who have been very blessed by your loving kindness and generosity. Anyone who can soothe her nerves by whipping up a multi-course gourmet meal for the person who annoys her is worthy of a custom pedestal at every city she lives in. Domo Aregato for the many happy and delicious memories, the wisdom of adding salt and pepper to my life no matter what–without having to be told.

Click on “Leave a Comment” (above left) to share your appetite.

xoxox

201 697 1947

Sharon@PowerfulGoddess.com

Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Wife & Mother

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Best Books for Women, Glamour Portraits, Relationships, Women's Empowerment Tags: Divorce and Remarriage, Story of a Happy Marriage Ann Patchett, Unique and Personalized Wedding Anniversary Gift

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The Story of a Happy Marriage

10 Apr 2014 2 Comments

I love being married.

It’s so great to find that one special person

you want to annoy for the rest of your life.

Rita Rudner

“Five decades and five children ago…” is how my parent’s love story would begin to be told. Today, as they celebrate their almost half a century together, I wonder what requires greater strength and courage: keeping it together or walking away?

Novelist Ann Patchett was a child of divorce and suffered through an early divorce of her own. In the midst of the turmoil of her first marriage, she recounts (in her collection of essays This is The Story of a Happy Marriage):

Standing waist deep in the swimming pool, I received a gift–it was the first decent piece of instruction about marriage I had ever been given in my 25 years of life. “Does your husband make you a better person?” Edra asked.

There I was in that sky-blue pool beneath a bright blue sky, my fingers breaking apart the light on the water, and I had no idea what she was talking about.

“Are you a smarter, kinder, more generous, more compassionate, a better writer?” she said, running down her list. “Does he make you better?”

“That’s not the question,” I said. “It’s so much more complicated than that.”

“It’s not more complicated than that,” she said. “That’s all there is: Does he make you better and do you make him better?”

This conversation cleared Ann’s resolve to leave her husband. She vowed never to remarry to save herself from any more pain, not even after she met a wonderful man whom she dated for 11 years. Until the day he suddenly fell terminally ill and she realized her logic could not save her from losing him in other ways:

The fact that we came so close to missing out, missing out because of my own fear of failing, makes me think I avoided a mortal accident by the thickness of a coat of paint. We are, on this earth, so incredibly small, in the history of time, in the crowd of the world, we are practically invisible, not even a dot, and yet we have each other to hold on to. When we do things differently, and very often we do, I remind myself that it is early a matter of right and wrong. We are simply two adults who grew up in different houses.

I continue to think back to Edra, standing in that swimming pool on a bright day in summer. “Does he make you a better person?” was what she asked me, and I want to tell her, Yes, with the full force of his life, with the example of his kindness and vigilance, his good sense and equanimity, he makes me a better person. And that is what I aspire to be, better, and no, it really isn’t any more complicated than that.

Ann’s reply is exactly how this lucky Powerful Goddess describes her own gem of a husband. And he’s tall and handsome, too!

Click on “Leave a comment” (above left) to describe what you love best about yours.

xoxox

201 697 1947

Sharon@PowerfulGoddess.com

Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Wife & Mother

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Glamour Portraits, Women's Empowerment, Womon's Health and Wellness Tags: Body Image Heroes, Huffington Post, Lily Myers Shrinking Women, plus size glamour portraits, Shailene Woodley Divergent, Sheila Pree Bright Plastic Bodies, yoga and weight loss

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Shrinking Women

02 Apr 2014 2 Comments

I have great faith in fools–

self-confidence, my friends call it.

Edgar Allan Poe

“Shrinking Women” by Lily Myers

Happy April Fools, Everyone! These Huffington Post beauty image heroes remind us there are other ways of getting a good laugh without making fools of ourselves–even when it’s not April:

Shailene Woodley, star of the movie “Divergent.” refuses to wear makeup at events after seeing how her photographs published in magazines show bigger boobs, flawless skin, a flatter stomach that she doesn’t have. “I realized that, growing up and looking at magazines, I was comparing myself to images like that — and most of it isn’t real.”

Artist Nikolay Lamm used CDC measurements of an average 19-year-old woman to create a 3-D model which he then Photoshopped to look like a Barbie doll. There is quite a gap between a “normal” Barbie next to the doll sold in stores. (Never mind that my neighbor’s brunette daughter asked for a blonde doll, firmly believing she will grow up to be just as blonde one day.)

Plus size model Jennie Runk says, “I remember often feeling like I should be unhappy with my body, but it was confusing, because I never thought there was anything wrong with it until people started talking about it.” H&M won raves for featuring her in their May 2013 swimwear campaign. In a piece for the BBC, Runk wrote of her newfound media attention: “This is exactly the kind of thing I’ve always wanted to accomplish, showing women that it’s ok to be confident even if you’re not the popular notion of ‘perfect.’… There’s no need to glamorise one body type and slam another.”

Trina Hall, a Dallas-based yoga instructor, abandoned all diets last year to see how her body changed and how people in her life reacted. The results of her project were not what she expected. She gained 40 pounds but, “The people who didn’t know, who were just with me in my life — there was no difference in the way that they treated me. The difference came in my own perceptions of myself. I became very judgmental. Instead of looking at the whole of my body, I would look at different parts and analyze what’s wrong with them. My most shocking discovery through the process is that I’m afraid of not being loved. I noticed the self-talk was that my beauty is only on the surface.”

Sheila Pree Bright’s photo series “Plastic Bodies” examines how beauty ideals affect women, especially women of color. Her striking images combine doll parts with segments of human bodies, and the discord between the two is startling. She told HuffPost in an email:

American concepts of the “perfect female body” are clearly exemplified through commercialism, portraying “image as everything” and introducing trends that many spend hundreds of dollars to imitate. It is more common than ever that women are enlarging breasts with silicone, making short hair longer with synthetic hair weaves, covering natural nails with acrylic fill-ins, or perhaps replacing natural eyes with contacts.

Even on magazine covers, graphic artists are airbrushing and manipulating photographs in software programs, making the image of a small waist and clear skin flawless. As a result, the female body becomes a replica of a doll, and the essence of natural beauty in popular American culture is replaced by fantasy.

Click on “Leave a Comment” (above left) to share a foolish fantasy.

xoxox

Sharon Birke

201 697 1947

PowerfulGoddess@me.com

Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Wife & Mother

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Gloria Steinem and The Better Woman

26 Mar 2014 2 Comments

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Empowerment, Glamour Portraits, Women's Empowerment Tags: feminist icon HBO documentary, feminist quotes, Gloria Steinem 80th birthday

We are becoming

the men we wanted to marry.

Gloria Steinem

Yale Joel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

The poster goddess of feminism, Gloria Steinem, is 80! She, who popularized Australian Irina Dunn’s quip “Women need men like fish need bicycles,” married for the first time at the age of 66 claiming, “I hope this proves what feminists have always said — that feminism is about the ability to choose what’s right at each time of our lives.”

Other nuggets of wisdom from this icon who has inspired many to expand their world view:

A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after.

If women could sleep their way to the top, there’d be a lot more women at the top.

Women are not going to be equal outside the home until men are equal in it.

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small, confined space.

For women… bras, panties, bathing suits, and other stereotypical gear are visual reminders of a commercial, idealized feminine image that our real and diverse female bodies can’t possibly fit. Without these visual references, each individual woman’s body demands to be accepted on its own terms. We stop being comparatives. We begin to be unique.

The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.

Power can be taken, but not given. The process of the taking is empowerment in itself.

Once we give up searching for approval we often find it easier to earn respect.

If the shoe doesn’t fit, must we change the foot?

Whatever you want to do, just do it…Making a damn fool of yourself is absolutely essential.

A new documentary Gloria: In Her Own Words airs this month on HBO, celebrating the life and work of this feminist icon. Click on “Leave a comment” (above left) to share what feminism means to you.

xoxox

Undercover research as Playboy bunny

A writer never sits too far from her typewriter

Marianne Barcellona—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image

Aging gracefully with none of that botox stuff

xoxox

Thanks to Getty and Google archive for these images!

Sharon Birke

201 697 1947

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Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Wife & Mother

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Best Books for Women, Europe Travel, Glamour Portraits, Women's Empowerment Tags: 50th birthday celebration, Fear of Fifty Erica Jong book, International Women's Day, Venice Carnival Period Costume

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Fearless at Fifty

12 Mar 2014 2 Comments

You don’t stop laughing when you grow old.

You grow old when you stop laughing.

George Bernard Shaw

Before Fifty Shades of Grey and Sex and the City, there was Fear of Flying (1973) by Erica Jong. I have yet to read this novel that introduced a notorious phrase to the English language through the heroine’s honest and exuberant retelling of her sexual (mis)adventures. What I’ve read is Erica’s midlife memoir Fear of Fifty (first released in 1994 when she turned 50) that continued to provoke, inspire, and stand as an icon of self-discovery, liberation, and womanhood.

This classic came to mind because last Saturday was International Women’s Day and I remember reading Erica’s chapter on her writing sabbatical in a Venetian palazzo. I thought, “Every woman should have such freedom!” I also recall sharing her impression of Venice as a dead and dying city–but that was obviously before I heard about Carnival!

Fear of Fifty looks back and ahead, assessing the costs, rewards, the meaning of one woman’s journey. Erica’s memoir “goes right to the jugular of woman who lived wildly and vicariously through Fear of Flying” with entertaining stories and provocative insights on a woman’s identity, love and loss, sex, marriage, aging, feminism, and motherhood.

And how far have women really come since the golden age of petticoats? We gave up the corset and dutifully bind ourselves to the gym and diets. We join the workforce to make our own money and the right to be eternally exhausted, never quite sure where the end of the rainbow is in doing and having it all. After all, we must look forever young and fabulous while still running the home and feeling guilty about our (neglected) relationships. We boldly proclaim women can do what men do while our daughters are lulled by the same fairytales of the one ideal man, the notion of that elusive union of money, sex, love, romance and fidelity leaving many in a state of dubious singlehood or perpetual marital discontent. Will the day ever come when we’d drop the farce of calling unpaid housework “mother’s love”? Will we live to see the pegs of hierarchy buried and affirm the disparate choices every woman makes to be the best for herself?

As fifty beckons in my own horizon, I am honored to witness tired and wilted women transform into radiant blooms when they decide to give themselves the appreciation and sense of purpose they’ve been waiting to be given. To see the great power in surrendering the fight of “I’m every woman” and letting the chips fall where they may. To perceive our wrinkles as trophies of a life full of laughs and tame serious adult business with more fun, play, and dress up. To allow disappointments to clarify who matters and the possibilities that lie beyond the pain. To see the beauty aging offers with the wisdom and courage to say “To hell with it!” If the Social Indicators Research (2010) is right about women being happiest at age 74, how different would the rest of our lives be if we laughed in the face of fear much, much sooner?

Click on “Leave a Comment” (above left) to share old fears that make you chuckle today.

xoxox

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xoxox

201 697 1947

Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Wife & Mother

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Stole N Moments

15 Jan 2014 5 Comments

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Boudoir Photography, Glamour Portraits, Women's Empowerment Tags: black thigh high stockings, Dolce & Gabbana look, flower dress, Fur Stole

A garden to walk in and

immensity to dream in–

what more could a woman ask?

A few flowers at her feet and above her the stars.

Victor Hugo

This Powerful Goddess tells me she’s been catching her forehead wrinkled too often lately: short tempered and tired from keeping up with the never ending shoulds of work and home, nagging kids who turn deaf when plugged into their computers, unseen by a husband happy in his cocoon of all work and no play. Her oft repeated stories of discontent have finally bored her–never mind her friends and family. She declared, “Enough of the blues!”

“But wait!” I asked, “What if we let the blues help tell your whole story?” Aren’t our joys made greater by the distance we rise from our depths? The fire inside her refuses to be dulled by the gray of routine and obligation. So there! A passionate pop of orange with a warm furry stole thrown in.

“Do I really look this good?” she wanted to know. Only if you take a moment to remember all the parts of who you are!

It is always humbling to witness the Goddess in a woman come out to play and shine through a life affirming lens. Oh, how she blooms with praise, how she looks infinitely younger as she enjoys herself fully in the moment! I feel so blessed to give a woman a glimpse of the fabulousness she takes for granted in her day to day.

No matter how gray the winter, this gardener of her own soul digs deep and blooms in her own garden of delight.

Click on “Leave a Comment” (above left) to share what helps you through your winters of discontent.

xoxox

Sharon Birke

201 697 1947

PowerfulGoddess@me.com

Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Woman

http://www.gutsywomentravel.com

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No Miles? Still Travel

20 Nov 2013 3 Comments

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Glamour Portraits, International Travel, Women's Empowerment Tags: Gutsy Women Travel, Wild Women Expeditions, Women careers, Women travel groups

There is something unexplored about woman

that only a woman can explore.

Georgia O’Keefe

“Where are you going with that?” critics ask, eager to snuff out a woman’s enthusiasms in her journey of self-discovery. As if anyone can see where every road leads at all times? Thanks to her thirst for adventure and possibility, a woman eventually finds the courage to follow her disparate joys and passions, shrugging off naysayers along the way who can’t make sense of her choices. This Powerful Goddess has been true inspiration in persisting to lay down tracks for a variety of learning experiences until they finally came together like puzzle pieces.

And what about the rest of us? What can we do until we get our own eureka moment? How about keeping one foot moving in front of the other, pursuing what thrills us even when it does not make sense to anyone? Excitement generated by our desire to learn, experience and create feeds our souls, pulls us forward to new revelations and insights. Even when we are not particularly good at what we choose, doing what makes us happy has intrinsic value in feeding our health with a sense of purpose and wild doses of inspiration, the fuel that sees us through the bumps of life. For what price won’t you pay to discover what gives you personal fulfillment?

Heeding our instincts for variety and change are as vital as eating or sleeping. It could begin with making new friends by learning new skills and hobbies, exploring a new city or vacation destination, camping in the backyard at first, peering through a microscope, trying an exotic cuisine, taking a new route to/from work or school.

To heed your nomadic instincts literally, you can begin by making peace with the unknown or the “irresponsibility” of leaving the husband and kids to fend for themselves. There are women travel groups that assuage the fear of solo travel, providing a ready made bunch of friends who share your predilection for adventure, shopping and taking the time to smell the roses:

The Women’s Travel Group

http://www.women-traveling.com

Amazing Outdoor Adventures for All Women

In our life journey after all, every road leads us back home to ourselves. Click on “Leave a Comment” (above left) to tell us what new path you’re excited to explore.

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by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Best Books for Women, Glamour Portraits, Women's Empowerment Tags: How to help Haiyan survivors, Pema Chodron When Things Fall Apart, Typhoon Haiyan disaster in Philippines

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When Things Fall Apart

12 Nov 2013 6 Comments

There are two tragedies in life.

One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.

George Bernard Shaw

Photo by Philippe Lopez, Getty-AFP, Nov. 11, 2013

Many thanks to the survivors and heroes of the families in the wake of typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. Because no one is exempt from personal disasters in our lifetime, Pema Chodron shares her insights on dealing with tragedy in When Things Fall Apart. Far from a quick fix, life-is-a-bowl-of-cherries self-help manual, this book is an experience laced with sadness, relief, and a kind of temperate joy. What to do when the rug, the roof, and the walls are all swept off you at once?

How do you embrace fear, sorrow, groundlessness? Why sit through pain, confusion, disorder? How do we keep one foot moving in front of the other until we get to a place where the pain does not seem so big or so deep, where we can see beyond to its good purpose? Tough times keep us fully present to who and what is in front of us, sharing loving kindness, generosity and compassion, a mandatory break from our compulsion to zone out in front of the TV/computer, the constant busy-ness of getting and spending. Dark times sift through the fluff and clarify what and who matter in the joy of living.

Things falling apart requires us to change, take action that we would otherwise delay or not consider an option. The familiar is no longer there and it is only by surrendering our resistance to change despite the fear that we allow an opening to solutions and a new way. We suffer more when we cling to what we know and insist on, giving us the illusion of control in a world where impermanence is the inevitable human experience.

We owe much to survivors and heroes. They remind us that the human spirit is invincible, that difficulty is eased by helping hands–our own and that of others. As Pema puts it, “To stay with that shakiness — to stay wth a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge– that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic– that is the spiritual path.”

Click on “Leave a Comment” (above left) to share what you once considered a personal tragedy that has turned out to be a great blessing in your life.

How can I help Haiyan survivors?

To donate to Philippine-based organizations who know the local needs and how best to respond, contact the Community and Family Services International and the Philippine Red Cross as recommended by Jessica Alexander, the author of Chasing Chaos: My Decade In and Out of Humanitarian Aid. She is an adjunct professor at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service. This is the link to her article:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2013/11/how_to_help_typhoon_haiyan_survivors_in_the_philippines_the_only_donation.html

Photo by Ted Aljibe, Getty-AFP , Nov. 11, 2013

Photo by Francis R. Malasig, EPA, Nov. 9, 2013

Photo from BBC UK

Photo from CNN

xoxox

TEDx at the Met

15 Oct 2013 2 Comments

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Glamour Portraits, NYC Events, Women's Empowerment Tags: Negin Farsad, NYC Metropolitan Museum, TED

I am my own experiment.

I am my own work of art.

Madonna

I’m a nerd who loves a good laugh. I keep post-its and color markers handy as I inch my way through mostly non-fiction books while my teens deride my library, rolling their eyes with “Oh, Mom!” When it comes to videos, I love TED’s archive of overachievers who share what they know with a sprinkling of humor to cushion a serious message. This Saturday, October 19, 2013, I’ll be watching the live stream of TEDx at the Metropolitan Museum, the first art museum to get a TED license.

Because laughter and creative expression are among my big loves, I’ll be looking out for these divinely inspiring speakers:

Photo from ColorLines.com

Negin Farsad, named one of the 50 Funniest Women by the Hufﬁngton Post and a 2013 TED Fellow, has been a comedienne and producer for over ten years. Her off-Broadway run of The Dirty Immigrant Collective led to her nomination at the Emerging Comics of New York Awards. She wrote and performed the solo show, Bootleg Islam, and the short film Hot Bread Kitchen which won the Lifetime Women Filmmaker Award.

A video by Farsad was one of a series commissioned by Queen Rania of Jordan to combat Middle Eastern stereotypes–this series later won the ﬁrst-ever YouTube Visionary Award. Her latest ﬁlm, The Muslims are Coming!, opened in September.

Lorna Simpson is known for her large-scale photograph-and-text works that confront and challenge conventional views of gender, identity, culture, history, and memory. Her most recent project is an archive of photographs from the 1950s that she has been creating replicas, posing herself to mimic the originals.

Maira Kalman is an author and illustrator for adults and children. Her work tells of her travels and personal observations. She contributes to publications like the New Yorker and The New York Times. Kalman’s children’s books include Next Stop, Grand Central; What Pete Ate; and Looking at Lincoln. She has also created an illustrated edition of Strunk and White’s Elements of Style and Michael Pollan’s Food Rules.

Click on “Leave a Comment” (above left) to add your favorites from the featured speakers of TEDxMet: Icons.

xoxox

Sharon Birke

201 697 1947

Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Wife & Mother

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On The Piano

10 Jul 2013 2 Comments

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Boudoir Photography, Glamour Portraits, Women's Empowerment Tags: Grand Piano, NYC NJ Piano Lessons

When you play,

never mind who listens to you.

Robert Schumann

“Why don’t you take piano lessons?” a friend inquired. I had confessed I’ve been wanting to step up my self-taught oido repertoire but shudder at the dreary chore of classical training. While I enjoy listening to the elegant classics, I’m more Ella Fitzgerald than Mozart with piano playing. And would my kids let me get away with “illiterate” lessons when they have been required to read flats and sharps? I’m not telling them.

I texted their piano teacher, “Would you like a summer student who wants to play like a pro without reading sheet music?” She’s the hippie improv type despite her classical education so I knew she’d be up for the challenge. Still, I held my breath waiting for her response the next day. “That would be fun!” she said. Whew!

Last week, I sat on her bench and we began, “Show me what you know…” She taught me how to run my fingers so they don’t stumble all over each other as they discovered nooks among the black and white keys they’ve never been before. She tells me to strengthen the little used pinkie and 4th fingers, as well as my ear, by doing the tedious scales. I told her the direction I want to take and she tells me to practice, practice, practice–way before the morning of our next lesson if possible. I notice days slipping by with no time to touch the keys. There’s always one more thing on my To Do list, there’s someone sleeping so “Ssshhh!,” and I can already see the men in the house signing a petition to ban my clunky repetitious tune.

No matter, I’ll persist and be my #1 fan. I could even give procrastinating a break today. I’ll finish this blog and head straight to the keys (not Florida.) And guess what’s my beginner piece? “Summertime,” naturally.

Click on “Leave a Comment” (above left) to share what new tricks you’re never too old to start learning.

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Mask of Perfection

19 Jun 2013 2 Comments

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Beauty and Fashion, Glamour Portraits, Women's Empowerment Tags: black and white protraits, Leica cameras, plastic surgery

A serious Leica collector I love forwarded an article from their blog that makes you think. It features these beautiful black and white portraits of young gorgeous women with pre-operative marks on their faces before procedures they’ve undergone in the pursuit of “perfection.” They are subjects of a photo exhibit Mask of Perfection by Marc Erwin Babej, with Maria M. LoTempio, MD. From the Artist’s Statement:

Mask of Perfection focuses on the complex and ambivalent relationship between the beauty we perceive subjectively on the one hand, and the plastic surgeon’s scientific, geometry- based standard of beauty on the other.

The currently emerging ideal of beauty is unprecedented in that it is actionable, and that conformity to it has become widely available. Lips like Angelina Jolie; breasts like Scarlett Johansson; a butt like Kim Kardashian; less slanted eyes like a white woman; a wrinkle-free complexion like a cosmetics model? Available at a plastic surgeon near you. In other words, the emerging beauty ideal not only reflects changing taste, but represents a radical shift in the understanding of beauty itself. Conformity to an ideal of beauty used to be a daydream; now, it has become a line item on a shopping list. Whether this development is liberating or cheapens the concept of human beauty (or both at the same time) is a matter of individual judgment.

Click on “Leave a Comment” to share who decides what’s perfect for you.

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Great Gatsby

22 May 2013 2 Comments

by Powerful Goddess Portraits by Sharon Birke of DoubleSmart LLC in Best Movies for Women, Glamour Portraits, Women's Empowerment Tags: Great Gatsby movie, Paris Belle Epoque, Real Housewives of New Jersey

I thank God everyday for my life

and you would, too.

Alexis Bellino, Real Housewife of Orange County

Can’t wait to see The Great Gatsby movie as I love the high style and ebullience of the flapper era. If I had a dedicated suitor who woos me with lavish parties and treats, my husband beware! 😉

As an observer of human nature like Nick Carraway, I am impressed to hear about a plain and plump mother of four (obviously not this Powerful Goddess here) who lives in a creaky old house with one bathroom. I asked, “Is she happy?”– thinking that for all my optimism, I need certain comforts. I was assured she glows from being adored by her affectionate children and husband, holding hands even when they watch TV and still spooning as they sleep after 30 years together. I think of how some women with greater material wealth live with far less contentment and I’m reminded of what I call “The Great Leveler”–our tendency to compare and make ourselves miserable dwelling on what isn’t, what we don’t have, what can’t be. And we’re not just comparing ourselves with next door neighbors these days. Reality TV raises the bar each week, fueling our discontent with indulgent husbands and the fairytale lifestyles of “Real Housewives.”

Great Leveler or not, there is some comfort in knowing that we actually hold the key to our bliss. In every moment, we have the power to choose gratitude and seek the gifts of what is, what we have, and what can be regardless of what life brings.

Click on “Leave a Comment” (above left) to share your greatest blessing.

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Glamour Portraits of the Goddess in Every Wife & Mother