My dreams... come true.... When you do what you do . . .. .

One for you and one for me

House Crush: House Beautiful Done Right...

House Crush: House Beautiful Done Right...: Good stuff in this month's mag... a few of my favorite spaces... SO good, right?! See more: House Beautiful May ...

Kiss me hard before you go

An artist is reborn after crisis; separating him from who he once was into the artist crisis has reborn him to be.

I use my tips from the tip jar to buy red lipstick

The tips from the tip jar make music with my lips

An overflowing tip jar for every kiss One lip to skin kiss of my red lips I bought with my tips

brain-sick.

One lip to lip kiss of top to bottom lucious red lips

love-sick.

Don't kiss those lovesick lips. 

Lets make music with these lips

Another dollar another kiss?

An overflowing tip jar means a red kiss upon your lips

Im hopeless without your tips

Oh I wish.....

Kiss kiss.

How do you Break the cycle . . . . locate the weak spots

To say I have changed from who I was a year ago from today is an understatement. I am a completely different person. I notice it in the way i eat, the way I think, the things I say and the time i take to make my point, it's obvious to me watching the people I hang around and the locations and situations I put myself in, most of the time its safe to say Im all about success baby. But the way I react... but the way I react... wait.. now thats a tough one. I said I notice that when I have a point to make I take the time to stop and think, analyze and go through all the possible solutions or arguments to make my case and most of the time, day to day, this works out fine, not always being correct of course, agreeing to disagree with others is okay too... But this is only true up until emotions are involved.

     Whoa, I can feel the weather change and the unexpected clouds roll into my brain-mosphere on that one. Those damn emotions get the best of me 9 times out of 10 I kid you not, and it's something I am well aware of, but does that give me the ability to change? Dont give me wrong, after a day of riding the revolving emotional rollercoaster sleep is out of the question, and the list of apologies starts flowing out of my ears by 1 a.m and next thing I know I'm up and out of bed with my sneakers on and a sweater, earplugs in running out the door for a late night run in the middle of San Francisco. Suicidal much? So what the heck can I do?

     I call my mom this afternoon, she answers softly, " hello?" "Maa, are you avoiding me?" I gesture with a big smile after calling her for a third time in two days to ask if I am emotionally dependendent on others, and if i had always been this way. "No." she responds shortly. "Okkay, well what are you doin then?" She responds with a whirlwind of a problem about her ex husband, Dad, knowing I have absolutely no interest in hearing about it, its dead to me, a lost cause, and thats when I realize exactly where I inhabited such emotionally driven tendencies and think to myself, What the hell am i doing calling you, I chuckle outloud and take a few moments to remember I am only half of her and that half can be rewired and the fog clears a bit and the day seems to get a little bit brighter. All in fun, back to the issue at hand, How do we build strong emotional intelligence if we are wired shut to be think emotionally?

      Emotional decision makers I tell you, in myexperience, were terrible; I mean we tell the best jokes, were always around for a good cry and we are AMAZING in bed, but when it comes down to taking space or being told were too needy or not logical its like kicking a bull in the face after you've calmed it down enough to get close. BAD IDEA. So, since we cant exactly wear a sign around our neck that says, "Avoid any conflict with me I am emotional and may not know how to express myself to you if you dont have a lifetime of patience to listen," we research!

    So here we are a few google searches deep .....

"How to be emotionally intelligent"
"Am I codependent"
"Long distance relationships"
"Explanation behind neediness"
"How important is affection"
"Why thinking rationally is important"
"How to think and make decisions rationally"
"Am I too young to be famous..."

....Okay you get the idea here

And a couple chapters into
Emotional Intelligendce 2.0 by Travis Bradberry
Being logical: aguide to good thinking D.Q. McInerny
Chemistry for Dummies
etc....

What I have gathered thus far- and I haven't by any means made a large enough dent- is ....

1. H.A.L.T !

Meaning do not respond to a conflict or try to reason, express your ideas, or argue with someone when you are:
Hungry
Angry
Lonley
or Tired

Where I got it:

Al-Anon and AA use this one for people in recovery, people dealing with addictive, addicted family members of alcohol, drugs etc. But I am doing exatly what picasso said and STEALING the idea for people that may be a little more emotional then others; and any logical person would back me on this one in saying when you are in any of these states, you're not thinking right girlfreind, get some lunch, relax, call them back in an hour or two and the problems will be a hell of a lot more minute then when you were running on fumes; thus avoiding a lot of emotional crap.

Long distance relationships: having a love affair with their brain .....

Gone are the days when you are having an argument with your significant other and they do that one cute thing with their face or eyes that make you forget what you were saying. It is pretty much just having a love affair with their brain, and if you can’t handle that then you should reconsider your position. Read More http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/blogs/smitten/2012/10/5-things-nobody-tells-you-abou.html#ixzz28MrTnND4

 Communication and compromise.. .. will make all the difference in the world...

3. Make a future plan.

Ask your partner: Where do you see us in one year? How about five years? Talk about what each of you can do, in the context of living apart, that will make this future vision come true. Having shared goals is one of the keys to a happy relationship, and doing this activity subtly reminds each of you that you're working as a team. Living in separate homes does not mean you have to lead separate lives and have separate futures.

 

7. Be there for each other.

It's so very important for each of you to feel that the other one is there in the event of a family tragedy, a family celebration, or a personal crisis. Show her you care by flying home for her oral surgery, even though she says it's no big deal. Turn his cousin's wedding into an opportunity to relax together, even though he wasn't thinking he'd attend. Supporting each other through all those high and low points in life is reassuring to partners and strengthening for the relationship.

8. Keep reinventing the romance.

This is my favorite strategy, because it's the one that's the most fun and rewarding. Surprise your partner with a love letter or a gift. Send him a spontaneous email letting him know he's the sexiest man alive, or telling her you love her more now than the day you met her. Find creative -- and frequent -- ways to keep things spicy between you. Keep each other smiling!

The rest at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-terri-orbuch/long-distance-relationships_b_1071108.html

why being who you are isn't being normal, its brilliant

Romantic affection is not an autonomous aspect of life; it does not have a unique meaning. There is noguarantee that it will be redemptive (as idealizations of love may portray it as being).

Romantic affection is a unique avenue, qualitatively incomparable with other modes of experience. The opposite of love is not literal sequestration from other people; it is feeling alone in the middle of a crowd, or feeling ignored by a crowd.

You escape from isolation: not to a person who only duplicates you, but to one who intrigues and awes you. It's not a mirror for solipsism; it's the attraction of the unfathomable.

There are "relationships"--which may end in marriage--which reflect convenience and comfort. The pragmatic affair where you value the other for reliability and carrying their own weight and so forth (not the impossible dream).

The other person may have exactly those qualities which you feel incomplete for lacking. You may take the other person as a mentor in some aspect or aspects of life. So there is this complementarity. 

There is also the resonance, the mutual comprehension, the emotional support. The explosive emotional response.

Sex and sexual attraction are integral in this romantic affection. (When there is no sharing of perspectives, when the other is not fetching, then sex does not have the meaning it does in love.) Consenting sex need not be anything but a "reflex." Accompanying romantic love, it gains a meaning of acceptance, ecstasy, an abandonment of self to merge with another subjectivity. Real sex is overwhelmingly tactile. To touch the other person is "electric." Sex may offer a transfusion of vitality from the other person.

How another person's touch feels to you is a sign of how you feel about them.

Touching etc. as an expression of affection doesn't need a theoretical apology. It's the absence of such affection that requires an explanation.

Love means the richness of the encounter of another person, who echoes you, complements you. Who is a constant source of surprise. Who comprises an intent which you find fetching, which you admire, and yet which you do not circumscribe.

In life, one may become resigned to isolation and not experience the deficit as a vacancy. One is alone in a crowd, or is shouldered aside by the crowd. Then you meet someone whose comprehension resonates with yours, who has the same emotional dimensions, who accepts you, and at the same time may be different in a way which seems to complete you. Combined with the evocation of lust.

Love throws one in turmoil because of the shattering of one's isolation.Accompanying romantic love, it gains a meaning of acceptance, ecstasy, an abandonment of self to merge with another subjectivity. Real sex is overwhelmingly tactile. To touch the other person is "electric." Sex may offer a transfusion of vitality from the other person.

singing for dummies

help. I totally thought i had a somewhat listen-to-able voice..... photo booth, you have failed me.

When my thoughts arent clear and nothing seems sure...

I have just encountered the reality behind sex, and how women are screwed over, biologically...

    It was under my nose this entire time, and yet I still could not figure out why it was so easy for every guy I ever experienced sexually, to climax, and I - although committed to the moment- could not. What we know of sex today is pleasure, and reproduction, but the sole purpose for us humans to have sex, is to biologically reproduce offspring, not soley for pleasure. But why is it that men MUST climax while attempting to fertilize a womans eggs, ultimately making it a most pleasurable, desired experience, and woman do not? Shouldn't, in a most perfect world both men and women equally get off during sex BEFORE the sperms swim their way to the refuge of our awaiting eggs? There could easily have been the evolution of a pink door with a pulley, barn style, anything, that easily goes up, or swings open during an orgasm welcoming the tadpoles in, just like a mans penis does to send those sperms out to battle. So that all in all, without climax, reproduction is unwelcome for both partners....Who is in control of these matters here?

So then i think to myself, am I just seeing sex as a lustful thing and not acknowledging its depth?  Well maybe in someone's eyes who does not know me and of how deeply connected I look to be with the person I choose to experience nowadays, yet it is here that I realize my own issue with it: I've loved someone and understood them, but was unable to connect with them on this "connected" level until I stopped playing by the rules, and started to ask questions and think about my past experiences why I may have made the decisions in the past to experience certain people or to have been involved in such a dentrimentally social lifestyle but most of all things began to unravel when I started to reveal myself to myself. Its kind of like always knowing their was something weird about the way you thought, or what you thought about whenever you were thinking, which was always, and then meeting someone who thought the thoughts you so often thought perspectively and as periodically, who confirmed that your thoughts had meaning; and you didn't feel so alone in your own head anymore. 

And in those moments of connection during the late hours of the evening, or the early hours over half drinken non-fat white mochas in the day, my head clear and open, I began to realize how important it was for me to be honest and true to myself in allowing myself to have a true connection that I felt was deep enough before I could ever connect intamately and therefore sexually. 

Today I thought...

People are like papers:

First you have to build the purpose behind your thesis through reason and only then do you dress it up with words

It's all in the hip.... othalimus ......

    A little something about emotional intelligence

http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2012/07/24/using-science-based-strategies-for-successful-willpower/

The Divided Brain: What's left is what's right, two halves make a whole

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFs9WO2B8uI&feature=youtu.be

So happy

Let it fall let it fall I won't stop until my tears are Allll shed In this dark moment, I cry..... Oh how I love the way these tears, they suit my face .... I like it soft ... I like it wet... My make up is in a mess .... And I won't stop until my tears are all shed .....

Im hungry and I want it now. Not like before, I had no idea what I was fighting for.

“These young females don’t see the full circle of reconciliation,” she says. “If someone betrays them, then they are done with them. So, one of the things I’m trying to figure out is how to teach them that you can forgive and rebuild trust—that it is a process you go through.

“Most marriages they have watched have experienced broken trust and then divorce, so they haven’t seen the full circle,” she continues. “They are afraid of conflict and assume that if there is a problem, the relationship is over. I want to show them that you can have conflict and resolution—that the relationship can come back.”

As coaches, Baker and Haliday have access to one of the best vehicles of providing such instruction.

“Sports offer such good life lessons, “ says Baker. “There are so many things that you can apply to life.

the truth is ... true

Today’s female athlete has layers of past wounds that make up a protective emotional wall. There is a 50-percent chance she will come from a broken home, which alone provides its share of baggage. There also is the possibility that she has experienced abuse, either physical or verbal. Thus, it often takes more than just a friendly face for a young girl to open up and trust a coach.






WE want to see our coaches, professors authoritative figures...“as real, authentic, vulnerable people who are seeking to serve others out of their own brokenness, who don’t just value the product, but also the people and the relational process.” 

reaching inside female athletes

By Susie Magill

Today’s emerging female athlete is a new breed. Different than the generation before her, she’s noncommittal, untrusting and is far more likely to text message you than to interact personally. But this girl is also full of potential. STV investigates how—at both the college and high school levels—coaches today can draw out the phenomenal women in today’s generation.

PART 1:
College-Level Coaching
Coach Felisha Legette-Jack’s Syracuse psychology degree is paying off. The current head women’s basketball coach at Indiana University, Legette-Jack has spent 15 years coaching at the Division I level. During that time, she has come to understand the female athlete in ways that remain hidden to most in her field. And in the current generation, she sees a collection of women desperately in need of love and truth from their coaches.

STV: What is one of the biggest needs of today’s collegiate female athlete?
FLJ: We need to help our young women become phenomenal women. Young women today wait for permission to be great. By the time you can get it across to them that they are worthy, they’ve graduated. The whole goal of most of these girls is either to go into the WNBA or become a wife and mother. You don’t hear them saying they want to be a CEO or a doctor or even a coach who can empower other women. I hardly hear that.

“If women don’t trust each other, you don’t have a shot, because the game of basketball is all mental and all about trust.”

STV: What do you think keeps them from becoming phenomenal women and fulfilling their potential?
FLJ: Lack of knowledge. We have to pour in the knowledge of, “Yes, you can. I believe in you.” You want to hit them with the positive. Our goal at Indiana is to build our girls up and overwhelm them with positive words. And now our players are looking up, they are walking taller and speaking differently. It’s fun to see this growth, and that is my main reason for being in this business.

STV: Why is it so important to believe in your athletes?
FLJ: I’ve been told “You can’t” many times, but growing up I came home every day to a mom who said, ‘You can do anything you want to as long as you have faith, confidence and strength. You can do all things with [God].” I want to make sure each of my players gets all that I’ve received, because that made me who I am.

STV: Are there any other issues that you feel prevent female athletes from reaching their potential?
FLJ: I think their lack of voice. All the doubt about themselves and the feedback that comes with speaking. We encourage the voice. “Be right or wrong, but be something,” is what we say. Women are so emotional; they’d rather not speak because the wrath they get back from their words might be too much for them to deal with. So, we are encouraging the power of the voice.

We try to make them feel that this game of basketball is a microcosm of life. What you learn and become in these four years is going to influence who you are going to be out in the big world of work. We have some fantastic students on our team, but my fear is this: you can be an “A” student, but will you speak up and say, “I matter?” That is the challenge.

“I have noticed that in women, we don’t tell the truth, because the truth hurts. We are emotional, and if I hurt you, I also hurt me. So I would rather not tell you the whole truth...”

STV: Within this culture, what has influenced women to become less vocal?
FLJ: Technology has allowed us to become dormant in our thought process, in our voice. You don’t have to speak anymore; you can just text a person or send a message through a computer. You don’t have to pick up the phone.

STV: Team dynamics play a huge part in being successful. What hinders women from developing as a team?
FLJ: I have noticed that, in women, we don’t tell the truth, because the truth hurts. We are emotional, and if I hurt you, I also hurt me. So I would rather not tell you the whole truth, because I don’t want you to feel bad so that I don’t have to feel bad.

Now, if we tell them their game was just awful today, and that they are better players than that and that we expect greatness from them tomorrow, they learn to handle the truth. They can understand that you tell them this because you love them and think they are very talented. And tomorrow they are going to get better because each day you can begin again.

Felisha Legette-JackCoach Felisha Legette-Jack began her basketball coaching career at Westhill High School in Syracuse, New York, after graduating from Syracuse University. To this day, she remains the second-leading scorer and all-time leading rebounder in Syracuse history.Before being named head women’s basketball coach at Hofstra (N.Y.) in 2001, Legette-Jack served as an assistant coach for Boston College, Syracuse University and Michigan State. She also helped coach two U.S.A. basketball teams to FIBA world championships. In 2006, Coach Legette-Jack was named the eighth women’s basketball coach at Indiana University.

Also, you see doubt. “I won’t shoot because I don’t know if you will get the rebound.” It is a challenge. If women don’t trust each other, you don’t have a shot, because the game of basketball is all mental and all about trust.
STV: How does the Bible relate to this generation of female athletes?
FLJ: It is all they really have. This is a generation of privacy and technology. “Let me look cool because I have a phone in my ear and an iPod® on my left hip.” It creates this monster of a person when, really, they are empty inside. The only thing they can privately fill themselves up with is hope and the Word.

STV: What can high school coaches do to better prepare their athletes for college sports?

~~~~FLJ: Hug ‘em, love ‘em, and don’t judge ‘em. Don’t quit on them. Know that they have given a lot; and when you feel that you’ve pushed them too hard, push them a little more, because they are trying to find out when you are going to quit on them. And the day you quit on them is one day too soon. This would make our jobs at the college level that much more powerful.
I also hope coaches are sharing with young women that basketball will end one day; and while they are in that classroom called basketball, coaches are teaching our kids life lessons that will empower them at the end of the journey—not just as players or students, but as young women who are ready to tackle any obstacle.~~~~

PART 2:
High-School Coaching

From today’s developing culture, a new high school female athlete has merged—one that doesn’t always fit the mold of the wide-eyed young girl waiting to soak up instruction. This athlete is not sure her coach has her best interest at heart. She desires respect, but is not sure how to earn, much less give it to her teammates and coaches. She views relationships as transient—to be discarded when conflict arises—and she would rather spend time after practice texting friends than doing extra drills.

For this reason, many high school coaches stand frustrated. This generation differs so much from their own. Communication is challenging, relationships are rendered irreparable. What can coaches who truly want to make a difference in the lives of their female athletes do to change this standard?

“Coaches have to work harder to understand who their athletes are as individual girls and coach them accordingly,” says FCA’s Southern California Regional Camp Director Debbie Haliday, who has 24 years of experience coaching high school girls basketball.

“They are a lot more protective and guarded than they use to be. You have to figure out what they need, what will help them hear you.”

Not an easy task to accomplish.

Today’s female athlete has layers of past wounds that make up a protective emotional wall. There is a 50-percent chance she will come from a broken home, which alone provides its share of baggage. There also is the possibility that she has experienced abuse, either physical or verbal. Thus, it often takes more than just a friendly face for a young girl to open up and trust a coach.

Pastor John Burke of Gateway Community Church in Austin, Texas, writes in his article “From Taking Hills to Hanging Out” that when managing and leading the next generation, authority figures need to be seen “as real, authentic, vulnerable people who are seeking to serve others out of their own brokenness, who don’t just value the product, but also the people and the relational process.”

Haliday couldn’t agree more. “Coaches shouldn’t only go after performance, but also see that their girls are valued,” she says. “Show them that you want them to succeed and experience success, not that you want them to perform for you. I think they will trust you when they see that.”

“They are afraid of conflict and assume that if there is a problem, the relationship is over. I want to show them that you can have conflict and resolution—that the relationship can come back.”

After trust is established, female athletes become willing to play their best, give more effort and pull together as a  team. That is the mindset of Suzanne Baker, head girls basketball coach and FCA Huddle Coach at Capital Christian High School in Sacramento, Calif. “They might love the sport, but if they know that I care about them, they will want to play harder.”

Baker shows she cares by getting personal with her players. She takes them out for breakfast or dinner, spends one-on-one time with them, and gets real, asking questions about their family, friends and life at school. She makes it a priority to follow up with them daily. This reinforces just how important the girls are to her off the court.

But beyond developing personal relationships, coaches also must focus on creating opportunities for their athletes to get to know one another. To help generate team unity, both Haliday and Baker host team retreats, dinners and outings. Haliday also has instituted what she calls a “buddy system,” in which each underclassman is assigned a seasoned player as a mentor. This helps the younger athlete learn responsibility and also serves as an accountability system for both parties. For instance, if one buddy is late, both will run. Still, there is one issue of trust Haliday is still trying to figure out.

“These young females don’t see the full circle of reconciliation,” she says. “If someone betrays them, then they are done with them. So, one of the things I’m trying to figure out is how to teach them that you can forgive and rebuild trust—that it is a process you go through.

“Most marriages they have watched have experienced broken trust and then divorce, so they haven’t seen the full circle,” she continues. “They are afraid of conflict and assume that if there is a problem, the relationship is over. I want to show them that you can have conflict and resolution—that the relationship can come back.”

As coaches, Baker and Haliday have access to one of the best vehicles of providing such instruction.

“Sports offer such good life lessons, “ says Baker. “There are so many things that you can apply to life. They are teaching tools. And this is what God wants me to do for these girls—to use sports to help them figure out how to deal with adversity in their lives, not just on the court.”

“I think the biggest thing for coaches is to realize that God called them to coach, not that they happened to be a coach,” encourages Haliday. “So, if God called us, then He will equip us.

“And just as your team changes every season, you change what you are going to do. He wants us to coach the whole person, to teach them how to play the sport the way He wants them to and how to love each other as a team.” 

“Be right or wrong, but be something,”

Next level

Nothing is more sacred in sports than a level playing field. Too bad it doesn't exist

Updated: July 17, 2011, 12:38 PM ET

By Peter Keating | ESPN The Magazine

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THE WORLD OF SPORTS runs on merit, right?

If you're an athlete, your skills, ambition and work ethic are supposed to determine your career path, rather than nepotism or insider connections. Which means you can come from anywhere and succeed. Clint Dempsey grew up in a trailer park in South Texas, playing soccer with migrant kids from across the Mexican border. LeBron James shuttled among apartments in the worst neighborhoods of Akron as a child, with a teen mother and no father. Starting at age 7, Michael Oher of The Blind Side fame bounced from foster home to foster home to the Memphis streets. Their rise from humble beginnings, along with the triumphant tales of many other athletes, are core chapters of the great sports mythology. It's from competition, in fact, that we get the phrase "level playing field."

If only it were so. Yes, talent and grit drive sports success. But so does an athlete's background, and more than you might think. That's the lesson from research published recently in theInternational Review for the Sociology of Sport. Joshua Kjerulf Dubrow of the Polish Academy of Sciences and Jimi Adams of Arizona State University studied NBA players from 1994 to 2004. They found that among African-Americans, a child from a low-income family has 37 percent lower odds of making the NBA than a child from a middle- or upper-income family. Poor white athletes are 75 percent less likely to become NBA players than middle-class or well-off whites. Further, a black athlete from a family without two parents is 18 percent less likely to play in the NBA than a black athlete raised by two parents, while a white athlete from a non-two-parent family has 33 percent lower odds of making the pros. As Dubrow and Adams put it, "The intersection of race, class and family structure background presents unequal pathways into the league."

Contrary to popular perception, poverty and broken homes are underrepresented in the NBA, not overrepresented. For example, while 45 percent of black male children in the U.S. live in households earning no more than 150 percent of the poverty line ($22,050 for a family of four in 2010), just 34 percent of black athletes in the NBA grew up in that financial situation, according to Dubrow and Adams. Thirty percent of white American males come from below-average-income homes without two parents, but not one white NBA player had that background. Economics and family boost or drag an athlete, like in other professions.

The NBA of our imagination -- a league that functions as a conveyor of inner-city hoop dreams -- actually did exist at one point. In the 1960s and '70s, more than 90 percent of NBA players were from urban areas. But as the game grew more popular and attracted more corporate sponsors, pro teams and colleges expanded the search for talent, and suburban (and foreign) high schools began strengthening their programs. As a result, it now takes more resources -- a lot more -- to compete at the highest level. "You need facilities, equipment and transportation, not to mention coaches and volunteers," says Peter Roby, former director of the advocacy group Sport in Society and the athletic director at Northeastern University. "And what we've found is that kids in cities are now much less likely to participate in sports than kids in suburbs."

According to research conducted in 2009 by The Mag, NBA players come from hometowns with a median population of around 110,000, and that population is 59 percent white and as educated as the U.S. as a whole.

Pro basketball simply doesn't conform to many old stereotypes anymore. Just look at Kyrie Irving, the No. 1 overall pick in this year's draft: He was born in Melbourne, Australia, was raised by his international-hoops-playing dad and grew up in suburban West Orange, N.J.

Athletes and fans invest so much emotion into sports that we convince ourselves that they possess some kind of transformative power. We believe that skills always trump circumstances. But that's a myth. With funding for school athletic programs on chopping blocks across the country, it's important to understand what the numbers actually tell us. Yes, your talent is important. But your very first teams -- your family and your earliest support structures -- matter an awful lot too.

“You learn in athletics to never give up. The perseverance and determination it takes to succeed as an athlete is the same skill set it takes to overcome other challenges in life.” Moranda Hern

legend has it .....

http://espn.go.com/espnw/title-ix/top-40-female-athletes/_/num/41

Mia Hamm

She was born in 1972. Of course she was.

The best women's soccer player in history came into the world the same year as Title IX, and her career is a shining example of the law's lasting benefits: the power bestowed on young girls when they're given a chance, and the gifts those empowered girls can in turn bequeath to the world.

Mia Hamm's career was indeed a gift -- to her sport, to her country and to her causes.

She helped put women's soccer on the map, and became the first global icon in women's team sports. She was talented. She was beautiful. But mostly, she won. A lot. Part of the first golden generation of U.S. players, Hamm appeared in the first four Women's World Cups, winning two of them -- including the mythic 1999 tourney on home soil. She also reaped gold in the 1996 and 2004 Summer Olympics.

For a player who relied so much on speed, Hamm played a relative eternity: 18 years with the national team, or "10 years longer than I thought I would," she once said. A true prodigy, she was the youngest woman ever to don the jersey of the U.S. senior squad, at age 15.

And she produced the entire time she was on the field. It took her 17 matches to net her first goal, but after that, she scored like clockwork, accumulating 158 international goals, more than any player ever, male or female. The best goal-scorers on hot streaks slot the ball once every other game; Hamm notched her record total in 275 appearances. (That number of games is itself incredible, and second-most in U.S. history, behind Kristine Lilly's astounding 352.) In one stretch from 1997-98, Hamm poured in 38 goals in 37 games.

But Hamm was no hog. Her 144 career assists are the most ever by an American player. "She always played with the idea of what it meant to be on a team," says Abby Wambach, who would eventually receive the torch from Hamm as national team striker. "Nothing mattered more to her than the team environment."

Of course, most fans remember something else. Hamm became an international celebrity because she put points on the board in spectacular fashion. Or, as her college coach at North Carolina, Anson Dorrance, once said, "When she gets the ball, you hold your breath."

More often than not, Hamm would then take that breath away. She possessed astonishing acceleration and made fearless runs at defenders. She also had the smarts and skills to create, with a quick juke or cutback, enough space for her hair-trigger shots. And goodness, what shots they were: violently struck missiles, with either foot, from any distance, swerving and screaming into the netting.

On those occasions when the ball didn't find the back of the net, Wambach says, "She was talking to herself and trying to correct her swing. She was a brainiac about the way the game should be played."

Hamm applied that perfectionism to all aspects of the game, and she expected everyone to compete as fiercely as she did. Her intense drive came from her well-traveled childhood, as the daughter of an Air Force father, when she tagged along behind her older brother Garrett and played all manner of games with and against the boys. (She started on her middle-school's tackle football squad.) And she cultivated that fire in Dorrance's demanding North Carolina program and with the national team.

"On the soccer field, you see her passion," former U.S. coach Tony DiCicco once said. "Her essence is about letting all her emotions be displayed, coupled with her incredible athletic abilities and her talent."

Hamm's emotions could unleash hell on halftime locker rooms and, sometimes, teammates. "She did have some tough words," Wambach says of her early days with Hamm on the Washington Freedom and the national team. "But she knew I could handle any kind of criticism."

In fact, Hamm's teammates fed off her fire, because they knew she was as committed to the team as anyone. Which made her emergence as the face of women's soccer such a struggle. Hamm hated the limelight even as it was thrust upon her in the latter half of the 1990s. She did shampoo ads and shoe ads and had a building named after her on the Nike campus, but she always tried to shift the media spotlight to other players and keep her private life, and even her personality, limited to a small circle of friends. Although she was a sarcastic jokester who cracked up teammates for two decades, she rarely showed that side in public. (And when she was divorced in 2001 from her college sweetheart, Marine helicopter pilot Christian Corry, many fans didn't know she was married.)

Eventually, though, Hamm handled her fame as she did her game: skillfully and successfully. She began to use her status to promote not herself, but her sport. "My motivation is not about personal gains," she once said. "I want to do as much as I can to get the sport out there."

Closer to home, the death of her brother Garrett in 1997, from a rare blood disorder, inspired her to start a charity that has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for bone marrow transplant. And her marriage to Nomar Garciaparra in 2003 helped usher her into retirement the following year. But not before one more triumph: Hamm scored twice during the 2004 Athens Games, and her assist set up the winning overtime goal in the Olympic semifinal against Germany, setting the stage for a gold-medal exit from the sport.

In the end, she left the game not just a winner but a legend -- and a symbol of what women's sports can be.

-- Luke Cyphers, ESPN The Magazine

Semi Finals Euro Cup 2012

lured in a little ate in the game but im here now, and im not going anywhere

I feel so far from where I've been but where to go from here I haven't even an idea

 

women photographers and their eyes for beauty never cease to confirm my believing in their potential  

an i still love her thats how you know its real

Ollie

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We got company comin over would it kill you to put some pants on.....

How to believe you are, beautiful ....

 "Take the path less traveled.”

“Don't be afraid to be amazing.”

“You are Braver than you Believe, Smarter than you Seem, and Stronger than you Think.”

“Be yourself. There is something that you can

 do better than any other. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that.”

“You have to believe in yourself, that's the secret. Even when I was in the orphanage, when I was roaming the street trying to find enough to eat, even then I thought of myself as the greatest actor in the world. I had to feel the exuberance that comes from utter confidence in yourself. Without it, you go down to defeat.”

Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977);

“I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.”

Kurt Cobain (1967-1994);

Musician

“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience”

e. e. cummings (1894-1962);
Poet, Playwright, Painter, Essayist
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