Summer is magical and ripe with the sense of possibility. That about describes our June Guest Editor, Sophia Bush, as well, who, with little pretension and endless energy, seems to keep every room she enters lit up and stirred up. We’ve run into Sophia time and again this year in all our Chalkboard wanderings and knew she’d be a pitch perfect guest for you, our readers. Her down-to-earth, but sky’s-the-limit attitude is one hundred percent our jam.
Although most of us know Sophia from her years of blazing stardom, most recently as one cute cop on NBC’s breakout hit, Chicago PD, she’s truly caught our eye these past few years because of her committed work with so many of the charities we love. Pencils of Promise, I Am That Girl and Invisible Children – all of which we’ll be featuring this month – are causes close to Sophia’s heart. There are going to be a whole lot of good Chalkboardy vibes this June as we join together with Sophia to start our summer right!
Enjoy her Guest Editor letter below and then join us all month as we chat with Sophia about her favorite things, her keys to balanced living and so much more. We’ve even got a Sophia-inspired playlist ready for your listening ears. Here’s to summer!
Dear Chalkboard readers,
Well. I awoke this morning to greet the day with a real reminder of my flawed humanity. Having slept less than five hours before a big day of work, instead of clocking my aspirational eight, it was impossible to roll groggily out of bed without being aware of the acute irony of the situation. Here I am – guest hosting Chalkboard ahhhh! – writing for my favorite website on health and wellness, and I’ve begun the day by breaking a cardinal rule. I haven’t slept enough. I’m probably dehydrated. And not even for a fun reason. It wasn’t a pitcher of spicy margaritas with friends that put me here, it was a late cross-country flight for work that has my lips feeling chapped and my body feeling a little swollen. But you know something? It’s okay. This is the real part, isn’t it?
I’m getting much more passionate about my health – hello yoga! – but I am nowhere near having cracked the code. Are any of us, really? We all have aspirations to live a life worthy of gorgeous Pinterest imagery, with impossibly chic farmer’s market style and refrigerators stocked with oddly delicious yet nutritious snacks ranging from grass-fed meats to vegan and gluten-free delights, but we all have days where we wind up in ratty sweatpants and binge on an entire bag of tortilla chips or a pint of ice cream, standing like a flamingo in front of the fridge. Wait. Is it just me who does the whole standing-in-a-pseudo-yoga-pose-while-snacking thing? Well… that’s my quirk y’all. And to be honest, I sort of like it.
Which brings me to a point. I’m learning to love myself better. The superhero, badass, school-building, TV-show-making, great-advice-giving, yeah, I’ll say it, awesome me! And I am also learning to love the fearful, skips-yoga-even-though-I-know-I-should-go, sometimes-short-tempered, has-made-my-fair-share-of-big-mistakes, goes-for-a-bourbon-over-a-green-juice, and will-always-hit-the-snooze-button-one-more-time-than-I-know-I-should me. And why not? We are, after all, the sum total of our parts, beautyfull readers. Yes, beauty-FULL. Because isn’t that the goal? On this road to becoming our aspirational selves versus our practiced selves (thanks for those wonderful terms, Brené Brown
) we need to start filling up with goodness. Health. Vitality. Kindness. That’s where beauty comes from. A deep well within, full of love. And sometimes delicious cake. We can’t be perfect all the time. But with communities like this one we can embrace the perfection of our messy humanity more and more often. And hopefully, someday love that humanity, yes, all of the time.
Love,
Sophia
