It’s hard for me to say yes, and I want to start saying yes to more things.
My older son and I are watching Curb Your Enthusiasm right now. He’s almost 19. It’s always fun to have something to do with your children that offers an opportunity for connection at a time when they’re pulling away, growing in the ways that they should be growing. An activity.
I do love lying on the couch.
One of the things I remember most about growing up in Burnaby [in British Columbia] was being excited about the idea of leaving one day.
I thanked my mother for every car ride she ever gave me. Every. Single. Car ride. “Thank you, Mom.” I drive my kids so much, and, I mean, they occasionally say thank you.
All the things being marketed to us as children on television in Canada were American products. So you’d see a commercial for—let’s say a chocolate bar. I couldn’t go to my corner store and buy that chocolate bar. It’s over there. In the United States of America.
I’m grateful for hard times—times when I wasn’t working, times when I didn’t know how I was going to make the rent, times when the competition was so intense that you have to find something within yourself or your nervous system is just going to get fried. It pushed me.
If you’re lonely, you’re going to be lonely. Just because it’s a beautiful hotel and they’ve got great sheets and a great bed and you have room service, it isn’t going to fill the hole, if you have that hole.
I can make a good situation out of pretty much anything because the common denominator is me.
My parenting in the beginning was: “My children are just watching me. Am I worthy of imitation?”
One of my dearest friends is Meredith Brooks, the musician—she sang that song “Bitch,” back in the day. I was just asking for her advice because one of my kids is quite musically gifted, so I said, “What do I do?“ And she said, “Just have her listen to the Beatles right now. Don’t get singing lessons or anything like that. Just listen to the Beatles.”
I like to see the sun come up. My dogs and I go outside, and I have a little collapsible lawn chair and I just sit there and listen to the birds. And it’s not like I have some romantic idea of what I’m doing. It’s just three minutes before I start my day.
At the end of each day, I like to spend some time outside to see the moon, to see the stars, just to remember and to listen to the sounds of nature that are happening around me. I find them medicinal. We had frogs going at one point. I mean, it was so loud.
Where I do the dishes, I have a picture of my family from a winter solstice fire that we had, a candle, and a beautiful crystal. I light that candle when I do the dishes. Life is filled with mundane things. And I want to enjoy the mundane, because it’s most of my life, to be honest. I do a lot of dishes.
Making the bed makes me feel happy because I know I’m going to love the benefits at the other end, when I get back into it at night and it feels so good.
When we can consciously understand a connection to our breath, we can consciously affect the direction of our life.
I don’t eat a lot of bread, but if I’m going to eat bread, it’s going to be homemade. There is nothing like a hot loaf of bread that’s just come out of the oven, with butter and jelly slathered on it. I think it connects you back to something from generations ago.
I love to put my bare feet on the ground.
Our breath affects all the systems of the body—your health, your moods, your thoughts—and only if we can understand that can we really know how to breathe. Doing something that you don’t understand, it’s like, Why am I doing this?
My daughter’s doing a spelling lesson right now, and as part of learning to spell, she’s learning what the word means. It’s the same as if I’m doing a scene in acting: I’ve got to understand what it’s about. Why am I saying these words? Otherwise it’s really hard to memorize.
I hate dogma.
Last night I was having this incredible conversation with a dear friend outside, and I had a summer drink in my hand. And then I had this feeling I remembered from when my children were little, if they were sleeping and I wanted to make sure they’re okay—that feeling that your heart is somewhere else. I realized it was because I didn’t have my phone on me. That’s how deeply we are hooked on technology.
I traveled all over Europe as a 19-, 20-year-old. Never had a phone. Never had a credit card. How on earth? How did I book the ticket?
We live in a little, rural town. I get all my books from a bookstore here, because I don’t want that place not to be there. And it won’t be there. Nothing will be there. If we outsource everything to one entity, then nothing will be there.
We have these plates that are kind of dinged up, but I have this one beautiful handmade bowl that I got at a farmer’s market. And that’s my bowl. Every night, everyone’s got a plate, I have a bowl. It makes me happy to eat out of that bowl. I get to claim that. I’ve decided that that means something to me.
People have said to me, “Why do you write only to women?” That’s just who I write to. But what I do know is that by writing that way, by meeting women in this way, it impacts the men in their lives.
If we really want to be the kind of lighthouses in the world, beacons of good energy, we have to think: How do we treat the person at the grocery store?
As soon as you think somebody else holds the key to your happiness, you give your power away.
I want to start watching old movies.
In addition to her starring roles in The Matrix and Jessica Jones, Carrie-Anne Moss is also the founder of Annapurna Living.
