New Articles & Interviews
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The following Article appeared in Woman’s World magazine on December 29, 2008
How do YOU handle stress?
Barbara Boukal’s financial problems were leaving her feeling humiliated, depressed and ashamed. Then an amazing gift helped her relieve stress and see just how beautiful life could be!
Sometimes, with our chaotic lives, it’s easy to let the little things pass us by. Then we look out the window to see snowflakes shimmering in the moonlight or try on a gorgeous new shade of lipstick . . . and can’t help but smile.
>Everyone knows that beauty can give us a lift. And it can do more than that. Just ask Barbara Boukal . . .
Looking back, the Prior Lake, Minnesota, mom of three grown kids wasn’t sure how it had happened. But somehow everything had changed.
After Barbara’s marriage ended in divorce she always managed to make ends meet. But then she lost her job – and found herself forced to put all her expenses on credit cards.
Money got so tight, in fact, Barbara ended up moving in with her twin sister.
“Your being here brings me back to when we were kids,” Her sister said. “Stay as long as you’d like!” But Barbara felt humiliated.
By the time she’s found a new job at an insurance company, Barbara’s debt had spiraled so out of control, she could barely make minimum payments on her credit cards. Reeling with shame, she’d wake up in the middle of the night, feeling as if she had made a mess out of her life.
I don’t want to live like this anymore! She cried.
A Beautiful Solution
Then one day, Barbara’s friend gave her Life in Beauty, a little book packaged inside a gold- and jade-colored box.
As I continue down this journey of life, I know one thing: It’s the beauty that sustains and nourishes me, the author, English professor and jewelry designer Kate Porter, wrote after an intensely painful period in her own life that included the end of her 24-year marriage, followed by the loss of her father and caring for her aging mother. It’s the morning sunrise, the delicate flower, the child’s smile that makes me strong. It sounded, well, beautiful, Barbara thought. But who has time for such things when you are so overwhelmed you can hardly think straight?
Actually, the book answered that. Beauty, it explained, is an action. We have to choose to see it, create it, be part of it. And the book offered real examples of how to recognize and appreciate moments of beauty with just a few minutes each day – like by collecting treasures in the keepsake box the book came in. Barbara shrugged. But it couldn’t hurt to try . . .
A Box of Hope
With the help of the book, Barbara discovered three main places to search for beauty in her life: Nature. Others around her. And within herself.
The tips were tiny things, really. Adorn yourself, one said. So on a dreary Monday morning, Barbara reached for earrings – something she usually only wore on special occasions. Listen to the sounds of nature, another suggested – and as geese flew overhead in their V-formation, Barbara found herself smiling at their honks.
This is a beauty moment! Barbara soon realized when she chuckled at a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon in an e-mail. And just like that, her spirits were buoyed. Because of the kindness of her co-worker who’d sent it so she’d start her day with a laugh.
Because the comic strip reminded her of her children when they were young, and how lucky she was to be their mom. And because the moment took her out of herself, away from worrying about finances or choices she’s made – and instead helped her appreciate what she had instead of worrying about what she didn’t.
It even helped when, driving to work, Barbara had to stop short – and spilled coffee on her lap. I’m so stupid! She berated herself at first. But then, recalling a suggestion from the book, she decided to try and see the situation as others would. And spilled coffee, wet slacks and all, Barbara began cracking up instead!
Of course, it wasn’t a magic potion. There still wasn’t always enough to pay her bills. But whenever Barbara felt anxious, she’s look at some of the treasures she’s stowed in the keepsake box: a small Buddha pendant representing yoga, something else that brought her peace. A miniature rubber duckie, a symbol of not taking herself too seriously. And a smooth quartz stone to signify the healing power of nature.
Today, just a few months after discovering Life in Beauty, Barbara’s making strides toward paying down her debt and finds herself excited to see what each day holds.
“Now I know that no matter what our problems are, there is still so much beauty surrounding us. We just have to pay attention!”
- Kriston Higson-Hughes
Listen to recorded live CBC Radio Interview with Kate Porter which aired on October 28 on the show “A New Day”
Author encourages others to discover beauty
By Alex Browne - Peace Arch News
Published: July 08, 2008 1:00 PM
White Rock author Kate Porter has written a how-to volume on the concept in beauty called Life in Beauty. – Alex Browne photo
White Rock author Kate Porter didn’t have a plan to write a book – she had a vision.
As she relates in Life In Beauty, the inspiration came to her as she was attending a seminar.
As she was walking along the back of the room to find her seat, she glanced up at the stage and had a vision of herself up there, talking to people about beauty.
It was a compelling image, and one that hasn’t dimmed in the intervening two years.
“Blake said once that the difference between a dream and a vision is that a vision never leaves you,” she noted.
“I said, ‘OK, my source is giving me this; this must be what I’m meant to do.’”
Life In Beauty is a simply – and directly – written small book that is not just a meditation on the concept of beauty and its importance in our lives, but also a how-to volume offering pragmatic steps to increase its presence in our day-to-day existence.
Beauty is, of course, a highly subjective concept, but Porter encourages us to pursue it how we may – in nature, in the person and actions of others, in the aesthetic qualities of art and music– just about anywhere and in anything we can perceive it.
And to help us crystallize and define our own notions of beauty, she has packaged the book with its own decorative keepsake box – suitable for keeping everything from photos, artworks, cards, letters, clippings and small objects that fulfill our personal definitions.
“I always wanted the book to be practical,” she said, noting that other treatises on the subject tend to be cerebral and intellectualized. “I see beauty as what we do – if I didn’t give suggestions, it wouldn’t be real,” she said.
In this pursuit of beauty, Porter is not recommending that we abandon the more mundane aspects of our tightly scheduled lives, but rather restore a balance in which beauty for beauty’s sake is given equal time.
In this, Porter, whose great-grandmother was Cree, has drawn inspiration from the First Nations’ Medicine Wheel, the east-west axis of which symbolizes everything from concepts of past and future, plus suffering, fear and innovation to anger and judgement, while the north-south axis symbolizes everything from concept of the present, magic and joy to creativity, love, forgiveness and gratitude. As the wheel implies, and Porter agrees, there is no bad side of the Medicine Wheel – all are necessary components of a balanced life.
The former professor of English, gallery owner and jewellery manufacturer had anything but balance when she began the project.
The week after she received her vision, the bottom dropped out of her life – she was forced to face the fact that her marriage of 24 years was over.
Her process of recovery is detailed in the book, but also the natural, evolutionary process through which she put her ideas on beauty together.
But she doesn’t recognize any sense of pre-ordination in the timing of the book or the way it developed, she said.
“I think we are essentially creators and we create our life. Sometimes early circumstances are more challenging for some than for others – decisions are made early about what is possible, and these constraints remain for a lifetime. But I think we make this up – it’s how we respond to circumstances and how we create circumstances that determines how our lives will be.”
Porter found her experience as a teacher stood her in good stead when expressing her ideas with simplicity and clarity.
She credits that with the way the book has connected with people since it was published earlier this year.
But there have been a few surprises – not the least of which has been the resonance that the concept of appreciating beauty has struck with male audiences.
“I’d assumed I was writing primarily for a female audience, but I was wrong,” she said.
“I think men experience beauty deeply and frequently but they have been conditioned into not expressing that.”
Porter has also been heartened by the positive reaction from young people, she added. “I’m very happy people have responded so well – it isn’t something I’d thought about very much,” she said.
“The thing I’d love to see happen – my big dream – would be that everybody in the world would make the promise to do one conscious act of beauty every day. We would have a different world.”