Self care at SLAM

Do you ever have those times in your life when you feel like you’re screaming into the wind?

Lately, in my professional life, it seems like I’m trying to stick my finger in a dam that has ten thousand leaks.

I find that if I’m not careful, I’ll take my work life too personally, and let it spill over into my much protected home life. When I’m short with my husband or son one too many times, it’s a red flag that I need to practice some self-care STAT.

To recharge, (self-aware introvert that I am) I generally needs two things to get back to center – quiet and beautiful spaces.

So, the St. Louis Art Museum in Forest Park is a natural oasis for me to pull my mind and spirit back together.

Its current exhibition, “Degas, Impressionism and the Millinery Trade” is fantastic! It focuses on not only Degas’ artwork featuring the Paris millinery trade, but also the women who populated this booming industry during the 19th century.

There’s something about this exhibition that cheered me to no end. Maybe it was subject matter, graceful ladies from a by-gone era working with delicate, feminine objects, or maybe it was the revelation that these women, who had a seemingly glamorous existence by working with pretty things, their lives, much like working women today, weren’t all that they seemed on the surface. These women didn’t seem so much different than me.

Nevertheless, it was wonderful to lose myself in a few hours worth of frippery and frills. I mean, honestly, look at these hats! The only thing that would have made seeing them better, would have been trying them on, but I don’t the think security guards in the exhibit would have appreciated me trying to open the glass case and dripping bits of my granola bar over those roses and feathers.

This young mademoiselle’s plumage is riveting!