Your Soul Mate*

(from a family photo shoot I did yesterday, check out the photo blog!)

*alternate title for this post would be "Your Soul Mate, Who Doesn't Exist, But Whom we Will Use as an Exercise in Creative Writing"


The best thing that I got from reading I Am America, And So Can You, was a letter from my soul mate. Right there, in the book. He was speaking just to me and made it so clear about why I haven't found him yet. I have been doing everything all wrong. But thanks to Stephen, I think I know how to find him. That's right, you heard me, my soul mate--Stephen Colbert style. While my last blog post was a bit on the heavy side, I have decided to lighten things up and talk about soul mates (save your ooohs and aaaahs for paragraph 4!) Colbert writes poetically, but more importantly, he writes truthfully on just what it takes to find your soul mate. He even has a letter written by your very own soul mate, yep, just for you (and me)!


Hey there. I am your soul mate, the one person on this earth who's perfect for you in every way. Yes, I exist, and yes, everyone else you've been with is a pale subsitute. We're meant to be together, but we've never met.

You see, there are 6 billion people in the world and you encounter at most about 1,000 people per day, so statistically our paths would cross only once every 16,500 years. if we're going to beat those odds you need to work harder, because so far you've done a spectacular job of messing this up.

Remember when you bought that pack of gum and the clerk asked if you wanted a bag, but you were in a rush so you said no? If you'd waited that extra three seconds you would have missed the next train, making you late for the play, so they wouldn't have let you in the theater until the first scene was over, and I would have entered the lobby--also late--and we'd have gotten to talking. We probably would have just skipped the play and gotten coffee and then...Pow! Fifty years of golden summers at the lake house.

Another example: Remember when you signed up for yoga class? You should have signed up for pottery class. I was taking a pottery class!! How hard is that to figure out? And don't just sign up for a pottery class next time, because I might have moved on to hip-hop cardio. I can't tell you exactly where I'll be because if you're really my soul mate you'll just know. Please just get it right!

I guess what I am saying is, next time you think about going to the museum today instead of tomorrow when I'll be there, ask yourself: Do you really want to spend the rest of your life alone? Are you going to take the bus or are you going to walk? If you do walk and it's raining, how are you going to see me under my umbrella, unless I don't have one and you share yours, or I share mine and that's how we meet? So remember: Never leave the house without an umbrella...or with one. It's your choice. I think I explained pretty clearly what's at stake.

Are you reading this at a book store? I'm right behind you. Turn around!

Am I still there?

Gosh, you're a slow reader.

Point is, hanging over every decision you make, however small, is the sword of our loneliness. I am out there. Find me. But please hurry. I know we're meant to be together for eternity, but I can't wait forever.



So do you believe in Soul Mates??? (I want at least one yes, please, someone unjaded and unhurt by love find this blog and give me a good story that will restore all my faith in love and heal all the wounds that have been inflicted upon me!!! I am counting on YOU!)

How did you meet your husband or wife.... or soul mate--if they didn't fit into the first two categories? (Please, someone say they offered their umbrella in the rain, in England, and you both locked eyes and then you ended up talking for hours, and then you went and got coffee served to you by a British lady named Tilley!!! I am in a romantic mood, feed my poetic soul! Make it up if you have to...that's right, I said make up your soul mate and make up how you met. ***)



***I claim all rights and privileges to any and all stories posted and if I end up using one in a novel I am writing and I become rich you can in no way take me to court. I have approved this statement with my lawyer.




So, come on---any good stories out there?

Traditional Marriage is Dead (and it's a good thing too)

I have taken the following from a blog that I love called Feminist Mormon Housewives, it's where many liberal LDS women get together and talk about ideas. And while I am currently not practicing any religion but kindness...these words echo thoughts on marriage I have had for a long time. I've never thought the government should have a right to say who can and who cannot marry...I know that in my Christian circle of comrades that makes me a little too far out in left field, but, it's how I feel.

Over and over I read comments about how ‘traditional marriage’ is under attack. How gays and lesbians marrying will ‘destroy marriage.’ How we have to fight to defend ‘traditional marriage’ and the family from variously, the homosexual agenda, the evils of the world, the forces of Satan, etc. etc. etc. But the sad (glad) news is that Traditional marriage is dying or dead in much of the world and has been for a long time. And its demise has nothing to do with gays or lesbians. It was us women who killed it, forced its reinvention and started us down this ’slippery slope’ to where we are today.

What we call marriage in this country is a very recent invention. Throughout the millennia marriage has been, not about two people who love each other and want to share a life together, but rather about power, property and paternity. About male control of women’s work, women’s lives and women’s fertility. The importance of virginity, the stigma of bastardy, the ‘head of the household’ status, coverture, and in some cultures arranged marriages, bride price, dowries, honor killings, and the right of husbands but not wives to divorce at will — all of this was (or shamefully still is) part of the effects of traditional marriage.

These basic underpinnings of traditional marriage cross cultural boundaries. Yes, the monogamous found the polygamous found the polyandrous to be barbaric and uncivilized and just plain wrong. Not too much tolerance there. Nevertheless, things like monogamy vs. polygamy were differences of degree, not type. Traditional marriage began it’s decline the day women became autonomous people. The day our status became human, not property.

So we (our culture and our religion) had to redefine marriage to be relevant to 21st century life. We now talk about love and sharing our lives and being equal partners and mutual respect. Because of this, the world and the church have had to reinvent marriage. Society has reinvented it through laws. Many decry no-fault divorce, but once marriage became a joining of two loving, devoted and equal partners, it’s hard to force one to stay when he or she no longer wants to. Others decry same-sex marriage, but once society redefined marriage from a chattel arrangement to one between equals you need more reasons than unshared religious values or the ‘ick’ factor to prevent them from marrying the one they love.

People today are constantly working to redefine marriage to fit their religions and their lives. The battle now isn’t over whether ‘traditional marriage’ will survive but rather over who gets to have their redefinition accepted by the rest society.



And as a side note, Jim, I love you and I think your 14 year marriage to Christopher is beautiful and breathtaking. The evident love you have for each other has taught me so much, as well as your sense of humor about everything! Thank you!

A Decade Ago

OK, forget the bad perm (I never permed again!!), forget the ugly, ill-fitting jeans, forget the extra twenty-five pounds (alright, it was probably thirty!) I packed on while living there, forget those terrible white tennis shoes I had to buy on the air base in Ramstein, Germany....forget the fact that I NEVER wore make-up or did my hair much and let's just take a look at where I was a decade ago.

Do you have that one place in the world that no matter where you go or what you see, you just never tire of returning there? For me that place, as cliche as it may sound, is Paris. I don't know if I can explain in words just what the City of Lights means for me. I think it holds a lot of childhood dreams, it's the place of romance, it's the place of possibilities.

Ten years ago I boarded my first plane, yes my very first plane, and I flew to Paris. I was moving there. I was going to live there, I was going to speak the language, I was going to get out of Utah, I was going to explore every nook and cranny of Europe and I was going to do it for a whole year.

I left everything behind...three days after my 20th birthday, I just packed a bag and moved. My parents had never had a kid like me, they weren't sure what to do, but they trusted me and they let me leave the nest and fly....and from that one year, from that one year of making my big dream come true, I knew that no matter what I put my mind to, I could make it happen.

For me Paris was the catalyst to everything great I have since accomplished in my life.

So, I took out the old photo album, all weathered and worn and thought I would give you guys a little peak....

Again, sorry about the jeans, they really are bad! Also, the photos tend to be a bit fuzzy, if you click on them to enlarge a bit, they are better.

The Musee Rodin was one of my most favorite places to go and...well, you guessed it: think.
My best friend Holly came to spend the June month with me, this is us, almost exactly ten years ago to the date. We are over by St. Eustache (near Chatelet les Halles, for those of you who know the city). She now has been married for 9 years and has her fifth child on the way! What a decade can bring...
My first day in Italy, I had heard rumor that these little fountains along the road were safe to drink from, so I did. Right to my left was the place where Caesar was murdered...oh Brutus!!
This is the group of au pairs, Anna and Amber along with the sister of the family I nannied for. We stayed with her in Ramstein. Here we are eating fresh apple strudel after visiting the schloss at Heidelberg.
Anna and myself, along with our major crush, Tim. He was from Italy, his family owned olive groves in Pisa, he spoke fluent Italian, French, English and bits and pieces of other languages. Plus he was a fashionable 28 years old, a grown man to all of us then. He used to hang out with us quite often, I think because all four of us completely adored him....he was one of my very first major crushes! Thank goodness you always got to greet people in France with a kiss on both cheeks.
Holly, myself, Anna, and Amber taking in the view along the Seine. You can see the full 80s Rocker effect of my perm when you compare it to the picture below, which was pre-perm.
Our first midnight ferry to England, you can see the white cliffs of Dover just behind us....well, you can't because it was three o'clock in the morning, but they were there.
Emily and I taking the two boys (Andrew and Zachary) that I nannied to the Chateau Chantilly (as seen in James Bond). Chantilly is also the French word for whip cream, it is very fitting for this frothy, creamy palace. We flew kites quite often and took packed lunches everywhere we went!
How I would usually eat my baguettes! --OK, not really, I put them on a plate and added tomatoes and cheese like a good French girl should. This picture was just for dramatic emphasis on how much I LOVE baguettes!! Those extra pounds were WORTH it.
My forest, the French, they know how to use an apostrophe!!


AND THE BEST NEWS? I GET TO GO BACK IN NOVEMBER. HUZZAH!!!!

The Moustache

Ok, serious disclaimer needed, I know. First of all, it's summer. Second, it's the Benincosa Family Reunion, and us group of close cousins like to have a good time. We like to live it up. We like to throw something at our parents and our grandma every year that's maybe just a little different.

This year, it was a set of fake stick on moustaches. Each moustache had it's own name. there was The Hollywood, The Sheriff (the one I am sporting), the Grandpa, the Bruiser, the Toothbrush, the Handlebar (aka, the Hulk Hogan) and a few select others. We also used some of them for eyebrows and unibrows as the evenings wore on.

Honestly, there is really no comment you could make on this post, so I am just putting it out there to rub it in Val Jr's face that he missed the greatest reunion EVER!!

So, if any of you are on the planning committee of your next reunion, you're having a book club meeting soon, or you just want to spice up a regular Monday night dinner with your spouse, I can't recommend these staches highly enough. Just sitting across the table from someone sporting The Hollywood is enough to laugh until milk comes out of your nose.

So much for all my deep posts lately? eh?

Gina looks like she is embracing Fascism here, the power of the stache went to her head rather quickly.

I'm sporting The Sheriff...no one would dare shoot such a stache.

Granny was the best sport of them all as we made her wear The Hollywood throughout dinner yesterday.

There was even a red one just for ruby haired Tracey
We forced the younger generations to join us.
Dearest Ashley, the buyer of the staches.
Hollie and Ash...

The Best Thing About Family Reunions

Is that I get to snap photos of my beautiful cousins, even if they don't know it. You can see continuous coverage of the next few days at my photo blog.

Seeing With Eyes of Love

How do you see yourself? How do you love yourself? How do you feel about your body? Did you know that the relationship between you and your body can become one of the most beautiful relationships of your life? Our minds can be so cruel to our bodies, can't they? The mind usually says things like, "No, I don't like this part of my body. Look at my nose; I don't like my nose. My ears--they are too large. My legs are too short, or too long, or too whatever. But the secret is, your body is perfect the way it is. We all have some crazy misconceptions about what is right and wrong, what is good or bad, what is beautiful and ugly. They are just concepts, but we believe them, and we judge ourselves by them. We have an image of perfection in our mind and we expect our bodies to somehow try to meet this image and be a certain way...if it is not that way, then we think we are ugly and imperfect.

Look at what you think about your own body, do you love it and accept it, or do you hate it and reject it? If you accept your own body, than I think you can accept almost everyone, almost everything. If you reject your own body, what can people expect from you? Do you inwardly criticize others to make yourself feel better? I think accepting your own body is very important in your relationships with others. If you reject your own body, when you are sharing your love with your partner, you become shy. You think, "Look at my body. how can he love me when I have a body like this?" And in the process, you kind of reject yourself, and you assume that everyone else will reject you too for the same reasons.

To create a relationship that stands happily on solid ground, you have to love your body. You have to respect your body. You have to let your body be free to give, free to receive, without being shy, because shyness is nothing but fear.

You know, there is really no problem with being gorgeous. With thinking that you are the cat's meow. If you walk through a crowd of people (especially a crowd of Italian men in Florence) and they tell you, "Oh, you are beautiful!" and you can say, "Thank you, I know," and keep going- (which sounds really arrogant, but I am thinking more about the thoughts you have in your head when someone compliments you). Their compliments don't really make a difference in how you see yourself. However, it will make a difference if you don't believe that you are special and beautiful and wonderful. If you don't believe that and someone tells you you are beautiful, then you are going to say, "Am I really?" Their opinions can impress you, and draw you to them, and yes, in a street full of Italians, make you easy prey. You feel that you get worth from their words, instead of finding the worth inside yourself. You are going to believe that they are responsible for making you happy, which is a big-BIG relationship no-no.

What is important are not all those opinions from others, but your own opinions. You are beautiful no matter what your mind tells you. That is a fact. You don't have to do anything because you already have the beauty you need. To be beautiful you don't have any obligation to anyone. Others are free to see what they want to see. If others see you and judge you beautiful or not, if you are aware of your own beauty and accept your own beauty, their opinion doesn't affect you at all.

Beauty is really nothing but a concept, nothing but a belief. It can get to the point, which I sadly think that it is in our plastic-beauty-world, where you may base your power on that beauty. Time passes, and you see yourself getting old. Perhaps you are not as beautiful as you were from your point of view, and a younger woman comes along who is now the one who is "beautiful". Time for plastic surgery, to try and keep the power because we believe that our beauty is our power. Our own aging starts to hurt us. "My beauty is going away!! Will my man still love me if I am not as attractive? Now he can see other women who are more attractive than me."

We resist aging; we believe that because someone is old, it means she is not beautiful. This belief is so wrong. If you see a newborn baby, it is beautiful, perfect. An old person is also beautiful, every stage of life is precious and beautiful. The problem is the emotion we have in our eyes to perceive what is and what is not beautiful. We have all these judgments, all these programs that put limits on our own happiness, that push us to self-rejection and to reject other people also. Can you see how we play the drama? How we kind of set ourselves up for failure with all these beliefs?


Aging is something beautiful. Growing up is beautiful. You are what you believe you are. You are beautiful.

Do We Hoard Our Words?

Wedding season is upon me, I took these engagement pics on Saturday, see my photo blog for full, fun coverage.

I adore you, you're amazing, you delight me, I can't get enough of your company, wow, you are wearing those specs, your smile is radiant, you're hot, I cherish your friendship, I wish we could talk all night long, and most importantly.....I love you.


When was the last time you said these words without expecting anything in return?

When was the first time you told someone you loved them?

When was the last time you told someone you loved them?

When you say, "I love you" do you expect something in return? Can you love someone without them loving you back? And without feeling bad about it? (and not in the teenage, unrequited love idea, because you are ALWAYS expecting something back...one day) If you are secure enough in your love for yourself, should you shout it to the world when you love someone? But we don't, at least, I don't. Not at all. I have NEVER told someone who I felt romantic feelings of love for that I "loved" them.....the closest I came was "liked"...and that's lame, because I did love him.

Here's a story:

I want you to imagine that you live on a planet where everyone has a skin disease. For two or three thousand years, the people on your planet have suffered the same disease: Their entire bodies are covered by wounds that are infected, and those wounds really hurt when you touch them. Of course, they believe this is a normal physiology of the skin. Even the medical books describe this disease as a normal condition. When the people are born, their skin is healthy, but around three or four years of age, the first wounds start to appear. By the time they are teenagers, there are wounds all over their bodies.

Can you imagine how these people are going to treat each other? In order to relate with one another, they have to protect their wounds. They hardly ever touch each other's skin because it is too painful. If by accident you touch someone's skin, it is so painful that right away she gets angry and touches your skin, just to get even. Still, the instinct to love is so strong that you pay a high price to have relationships with others.

Well, imagine that a miracle occurs one day. You awake and your skin is completely healed. There are no wounds anymore, and it doesn't hurt to be touched. Healthy skin you can touch feels wonderful because the skin was made for perception. Can you imagine yourself with healthy skin in a world where everyone has a skin disease? You cannot touch others because it hurts them, and no one touches you because they make the assumption that it will hurt you.

If you can imagine this, perhaps you can understand that someone from another planet who came to visit us would have a similar experience with humans. But it isn't our skin that is full of wounds. What the visitor would discover is that the human mind is sick with a disease called fear. Just like the description of the infected skin, the emotional body is full of wounds. The manifestation of the disease of fear is anger, hate, sadness, envy, and hypocrisy.

Humans live in a continuous fear of being hurt. Even saying "I love you" can be frightening. WHY???



Discussion on Love Number One (Steph, I am sorry all my post are about love, it can get icky, I get it!)

LOVE HAS NO EXPECTATIONS--FEAR IS FULL OF EXPECTATIONS

With fear we do things because we expect that we have to, and we expect that others are going to do the same. That is why fear hurts and love doesn't hurt. We expect something and if it doesn't happen, we feel hurt--it isn't fair. We blame others for not fulfilling our expectations. When we love, we don't have expectations; we do it because we want to. When we don't expect something to happen, if nothing happens, it's not important. We don't feel hurt, because whatever happens is okay. That is why hardly anything hurts us when we are in love; we aren't expecting that our lover will do something, and we have no obligations.

This is where I have always run into trouble, I think, when I start to fall in love with someone, and they present a certain side to me, I create other things that naturally would go with that person, and I almost create that person a little bit to fit my needs. Then I expect that person to meet the expectations that I have created, when it is not in that person at all to meet those needs.

That's why it is so important to be authentic with people. That's why it is so important to be responsible for your own happiness, your own self-love, and not need to search anywhere else to find it.

However, that being said, it is totally unexpected and delightful and amazing and hot and radiant when you are completely happy on your own, and you aren't needing someone else to fulfill your needs or adore you, but they do anyway.