Twilight

Soft glowing light lingers in a late evening sky

A scattering of the sun's rays before she sleeps

And gathers her light again at the dawn

Tomorrow Has Become Yesterday is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life. 

 

The Happiest Flower on Earth

Zinnias are the happiest flower on Earth. 

I planted them in my garden every year when the kids were little. They brightened my entire summer and gave me vases filled with beautiful color year after year. They are hardy, easy to grow, and prolific. 

When my daughter was four, she had her own beautiful zinnia garden in an old tire that was sunk into the ground in the backyard of the parsonage. That year, we also put in a huge vegetable garden, and an L-shaped flower garden that had cosmos, nicotiana, globe amaranth, and three heights of zinnias. I was pregnant with my son that year and it felt like the garden had been inspired by my womb. Lush and fecund. I loved to watch the cosmos move on the air and the fragrance of the nicotiana carried on the breeze. Loved to cut and arrange all the colorful zinnias.

When I moved here, ground hogs ate every zinnia and cosmos I planted. I haven't planted them since. But while running errands with my mom a few months ago, we found gorgeous zinnia plants at a local hardware store. I think that we both remembered the zinnias of my childhood and happier times that were punctuated by vases of the colorful blossoms. They are such a simple pleasure. We bought several plants and put them into a garden box she has in the backyard. They've been blooming ever since, profusely, and every time I visit they welcome me and make me smile.

As we've been talking about it, Mom has said that her sweet and cheerful zinnias make her happy. Really bring her joy. She's been cutting them and filling vases, little colorful touches around the house. I love that we share an affinity for these flowers, and I suppose she was the one who introduced us and encouraged the love affair. 

They've become my happy flower again. 

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life. 

 

Ides of July

Hurry, before the screen freezes again.

Ides of July? Is there such a thing?

Et tu, Blogger?

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Chasing My Happy Place

It's about time we got around to it. Of course, often it's fleeting and something I only can point to. Sometimes it's as elusive as it is obvious.

I spent a few minutes there this morning, as I ambled through the Princeton Farmers Market from stall to stall looking for the makings of nourishment. Lacinato kale, arugula, blueberries, early peaches and a tomato. Italian parsley. A good black tea. A charred loaf from a Fishtown bread maker. Local, pastured ground pork. 

But I think it was the handful of freshly cut lavender that made me the happiest. Everywhere I walked the fragrance preceded me. And flowers fell. 

The tea merchant told me I was leaving pixie dust in my wake.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

 

Simple, Everyday Pleasures

I look around my house, and it is filled with simple, everyday pleasures.

The thought strikes me as I get up from the kitchen table to brew more tea. Everywhere my eye falls, there's something that brings me joy. Two small dishes on a wooden board on the stove - one has a few shrimp thawing and the other has a few pieces of frozen mango thawing. They're for today's installment of taco week. The half jar of freshly made strawberry jam I pick up from the fridge to put on a piece of toast. A small piece of a good gouda cheese that I'll have with the toast and jam and tea. The succulent garden given by a friend last month that is growing wild on my kitchen table. 

I pause thoughts around taming it.

Piles of paper everywhere, chaos that mirrors my inner world of thoughts, ideas, writing projects. The sprawl of work into my kitchen as the pandemic invited me to reshape my working practice. My kitchen became a library, writing room, video studio, office, classroom, meeting space, place of dreaming.

My kitchen's always been a place of dreaming.

On the window of my back door, there's a suction cup with a small piece of glass hanging there. It's what's left of my son's Eagle Scout project. He renovated a courtyard space in our church to create a reflection garden. One of the scout moms found two or three inexpensive wind chimes to put in the space, and the scoutmaster brought a plaster eagle in flight that they painted gold and hung in the space. When the church building was being renovated and the courtyard garden became part the re-design as a large, indoor solarium, someone wrapped up several items and returned them to me after the demolition - two wind chimes, and the gold-painted eagle. I gave the eagle to my son. He told me to keep the wind chimes. They were old and well-weathered. One of them had a swallowtail butterfly painted on the glass. I transformed it into something I could hang in the east to filter morning light just by cutting it away from the original and adding fishing line and a suction cup hook. I gave the other away.

As I look around, I notice many of the things that bring me joy are transformed pieces of what once had been beautiful and useful but eventually let go. Essence pieces of something once loved and somehow brought into a newer expression. What am I trying to say here? That I am surrounded with little pieces of beauty that take me back or drive me forward? That also express something about my present? There's something here. I know what it is in my bones,  but to put it into words? I have language in my preaching vernacular - little expressions of death and resurrection, death and rebirth, destruction and creation, new form emerging from the old. 

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

Moonlight on the Water

I drove down to the beach today to watch the full moon rise. 

It was a gorgeous day - clear and sunny, cool and breezy for a June afternoon. Today's full moon is close enough to perigee that it's appearing as a "super moon," and I thought it would be beautiful and breathtaking to behold, rising over the Atlantic Ocean off the Jersey shore. 

Everything set up beautifully. As the sun was sinking in the west, the eastern sky over the ocean took on color - pink, lavender, periwinkle. And then . . . clouds began to roll in from the south east, just where the moon would be rising. 

I waited.

The sky inland was clear. The sky north, up the coast was clear. The moon rose behind clouds that were so thick that I could not see the light or glow behind them. So, I drove home and as I was coming over the bridge from New Jersey into Pennsylvania, a gorgeous silvery white super moon had risen high into the sky and was shining its light down onto the dark waters of the Delaware River. 

The movement of light on the water was breathtaking.

The Delaware River is a dynamic body of water with fast-moving currents, and the light seemed to dance on the waters, highlighting the movement. It reminded me of moonlight shining on the ocean. I drove slowly across the bridge, savoring the beauty. I had driven to the shore to see the moonlight on the water and had to wait to come home before that beauty revealed itself.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

The featured photo is one I took on July 31, 2015, another time when I drove to the shore to watch the moon rise. . 

   

A Good Kind of Tired

I drove down to my mom's yesterday to make a meal. 

One of those old family recipes that's a lot of work to do well, but is so worth it. 

I went shopping yesterday for ingredients and spent the day today cooking after an early morning Zoom meeting for work. I cut flowers from my mother's garden. Mom and I set a beautiful table, chilled a nice bottle of wine, and waited for my uncle and cousin to arrive. The four of us sat around the table, enjoying conversation and good food.

My cousin is also a good friend. We've hiked the desert together and have sat on a bluff far above the Pacific Ocean at a beautiful spa, watching the movement of ocean, sky, and clouds. This is the first time we've seen each other since before Covid began, so another reunion this week like the one I had with my daughter last week. 

She moved to California six years ago, and the distance has made us more intentional about seeing each other and planning adventures. Getting together today got us thinking about more adventures.

I'm not quite ready to start flying around yet. I'm thinking about the next wave of variant-related Covid spikes and the resulting effects on life that seem inevitable with low vaccination rates and exuberant efforts to return to normal. I continue to step carefully through the changing landscape.

And now, I'm relaxing after a day well spent before having to drive home again tomorrow. I'm so tired I could cry, but it's a good kind of tired and they'd be happy tears.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and every year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

     

 

The Sound of Water

I hear birdsong through the rain.

But the relentless sound of falling rain drowns most of the songs. I'm not sure that I've yet noticed how green everything is. The trees hang heavy with leaf. And the wind that comes with today's rain showers moves the boughs with a long, slow, deep pull. I am still, and listen and watch for the beauty. 

The lilacs, rhododendron, and peonies sit spent on the stem and we wait for the next show of blossom. Probably the hydrangea. Already they are budding. They're my favorite flowers to cut and bring indoors. They don't stay on the shrub for long around here. I love the way the abundant flowers sit in the vase and fill the room with beauty. I love that the property here has about six shrubs and they seem to bloom forever. I love the way you can cut a stem or three and feel like you've got a full bouquet. But I also love a full bouquet. My place is small, so less is more. And a little more than that is extravagant.

I love visiting my mother in summer during the hydrangea bloom and seeing her shrubs heavy with deep purple flowers. I've never seen their equal. I usually cut the top off a water bottle and bring some home. They sit in the cup holder in my car and keep me company on the ride back and then gift my space once I arrive. Right now I'm waiting for some buds to open in a succulent garden my friend Sarah gave me last week. From the looks of it, the flowers will be a deep pink. The planter sits on my kitchen table, a chaotic profusion of succulence. I hear the sound of water swell within the leaves.

Cacti, bromeliads, and succulents are all succulents, as botanists characterize things. Horticulturalists have different criteria. Of course, not all succulents are bromeliads or cacti. I love to imagine the invisible ecosystem within. The superhighways upon which water travels and pools. They thrive in circumstances that undo others because of how they are adapted to hold and distribute their resources. And they are no less beautiful or diverse. There are six in this succulent garden. 

The transition team in my last congregation gave me a gorgeous succulent garden when I left. There are four cacti and four succulents in that dish and some of the plants have begun to grow and expand. The cacti are slow growing, but the four other succulents are growing in ways I did not expect. I look at that community of plants and wonder how they will all live together as so many of the plants begin to take up more space. I used succulents as a teaching tool in their process. They felt challenged by resources, even though they had the largest endowment of any church I've worked with so far. But even large endowments can empty like lakes in the desert when the waters are siphoned off to feed drought in other areas. 

A friend in Arizona posted a photo the other day of one of two natural lakes there that has dried up. I wonder what new wonders will grow there now.

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that invites a landscape of discovery into my own human experience.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012 and every year brings new wonder. She asks big questions of the small things in life. 

  

 

 

Ode to the Chairs I Long to Build

There's a chair in pieces in my living room.

I thought it was a good idea to order them. Yes, there are two. One is still in the box in another room. The description online said that partial assembly is required. From the looks of it, complete assembly is required. I used to have a husband who did these things for me. Since I got divorced, I've been learning to do some of these things myself. At least anything I want to have happen. About four years ago I repainted my chest of drawers and changed the drawer pulls, and two years ago I painted a nightstand that has glass doors and a drawer. That was a nightmare. Painting in a tiny apartment is also a nightmare. The only floor space for something like this is in my bedroom. I slept with the windows open but I hate to think about the fumes I was breathing. 

I'm stalling.

The unassembled chair waits on my living room floor. It was delivered about a month ago. I've been looking at the boxes and trying to screw up my courage. There's the back, the seat, two arm/leg pieces, something called a stretcher, a lot of hardware, and an Allen wrench. I thought if I pulled one of them out of the box, some kind of magic would happen and I'd suddenly be able to do it. I'm laughing at myself as I'm writing this. I've already tried to screw the back to the seat. The space is tight and the way the directions say to do it is impossible, but I'll figure it out. I have to, right?

My approach to trying something new is to imagine a positive result and to see myself doing it. I've done that with kayaking, with hiking the desert, with various household projects, in my career, giving birth and raising children. And probably with other things that aren't coming to mind. I'm meeting a friend for tea later and, until then, I'll be working on the chair. It's probably a negotiation - between me and the chair. Or between me and myself. Either way, I'm looking forward to being one step closer to my vision of an eclectic mid-century design scheme in my living room. 

A Hundred Days of Happiness is a daily writing practice that opens a landscape of discovery into my own human experience. 

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012 and every year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.

The Thing Is

On the road again and typing one-fingered on my phone. The new format promised an improved experience, especially for mobile users, and I must (grudgingly) admit it is better. Still, I’ll appreciate the return to my laptop tomorrow when I’m home. 

It’s not often that I apply the word “curmudgeon” to myself, but here I am. It’s the second time I’m using it in about a week. About myself. 

The thing is - I find tech challenging. The more I learn, the more I discover how much I don’t know.

Days of Accidental Beauty: 40 Days of Noticing is a daily writing practice that invites discovery.

Grief, Denial, and the Time Spiral

Why does it feel like it's been 500 years since I last opened this page to write? Or since I last opened the book I'm reading? Or since I last made a meal or a cup of tea? Spoken with someone on the phone?

It's that strange perception of time in the time of Corona. Corona time.

I've noted in my journal, almost daily, these odd perceptions as they've come up. I've also noted what has been most sustaining for me. Copious cups of tea and occasional human contact. 

I notice the rhythm of my moods. Today it took about seven hours for me to feel good after waking. Or even to feel fully awake. I am stunned that I was able to get so much work done in spite of it. From where does the will or energy come?

Honestly, I am doing pretty well, all things considered. I continue to have meaningful work and an income. Health insurance. A home. My health is good. And, yet, there's this strange feeling that my health and well being are not exactly in sync these days. I am probably not alone in this. This is another strange element of Corona perception that I'm noticing in my own experience and with what others have been sharing.

Two years ago my summer blogging project was themed around self love, and I find myself craving that orientation right about now. How do we keep that in front of ourselves, when so much seems to be collapsing around us? I think part of the answer is to remember that it's during times of stress and collapse that it's crucial to be gentle with ourselves, to care for ourselves, to ease back on the expectations we have for ourselves.  

There's a tendency to self-coach around how well we're doing. I have mixed feelings about it. How do we do this in life-giving ways, and not fall into shaming ourselves or piling on layers of guilt when we're not able to live well? And how are we defining "well" these days as it relates to our efforts? 

I'm thinking back to the time a few months ago when people were realizing that the Class of 2020 would not be able to do the usual milestones that have characterized senior year for the last few decades. When some people expressed their grief and disappointment, others compared their experience to the young people who went to war in WWI and II in an effort to shame and shut this conversation down. That was not helpful.

I've heard similar dynamics in more recent conversations when people express their grief and disappointment around how life is different now than it has been. It is. And it's hard and sometimes painful, often challenging. It's disappointing and difficult. 

Denying the reality does not heal the hurt or calm the fear or inspire a different attitude.

But what do we do after we express the effects of the new reality and notice our experience without judgment?

I think the impulse is to jump over the grief and to leap headlong into discovering what comes next. Or creating what comes next. That may work for some, for awhile. But I suspect, knowing grief as I do, that this will simply compound the challenges and lead to more suffering and paralysis. Grief must have its day, and grief knows what it needs in order for our lives to transform and for the next unfolding to begin. Our job is to listen, without judgement, and to allow what is needed. New beginnings spring from what is ending. 

Days of Accidental Beauty: 40 Days of Noticing is a daily writing practice that invites discovery.  

Hello Storm — Good-Bye Electricity

There’s a symphony of chainsaws and generators out there. They follow a prologue of howling winds that brought the trees down before a drop of rain fell. Thunder and lightning so close, I thought it might strike inside. 

The sun behind the clouds has gone down and it is suddenly dark. And sweltering from the heatwave that clothes my neighborhood even now.

The Great Summer Writing Retreat continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.


Note - writing again with one finger and a mobile phone. 

Digging In

A beautiful Friday afternoon.

I am tired from a long week of work and am still trying to figure out how to incorporate daily writing into my schedule, but I am doing it. I've raised the bar this summer since I'm also working on a short fiction collection and, so far, I've read through some material I wrote a few years ago that I'd like to work into a new piece of short fiction. I haven't decided yet whether it will be part of the collection I'm creating or whether it will need to stand alone. I'm hoping it will work for the collection because that means I will need only to create one story to complete it.

Now, that might sound like I've got an easy summer in front of me. I don't. The other three stories are in various stages of completion. They're all at least at the second draft stage. The problem is, once I start ripping apart stories I write, they seem to become confused and I don't know what to do with them.

A few years ago I participated in a year-long fiction workshop to workshop a long short story I wrote. I like the original better. So, when I get to that one, I'll need to put all the versions side by side and really think about what it needs. And what it wants. Two of the stories are complete and about as good as they can get. One of them needs a new title, but I can't think of something better than I've got - and I don't like it.

I'm beginning with the new material. Then I'll go back through the other three stories. Finally, I'll write the new one. I think I have the subject, but I am still discerning the direction I'd like to go. 

These stories are past their time to be collected and given to the world. And there's something exciting about settling in and completing this.  

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 begins. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion. 

Dust Storm

I stood on the mesa and watched the wind lift the desert floor and dance.

It took two weeks of reflection to come to this interpretation. To see my experience differently. Were you to peer into my journaling of that day, you would read about stark and sterile landscape, about dust and grit and sand. 

I certainly recognized the beauty. How could I not? But the recognition may have been fleeting in the face of overwhelming challenge.

The challenge that day was to find a place to stand where I could breathe the air.

The next day, I developed an illness that flattened me on an afternoon I'd intended to take a long hike deep into the desert. Instead, I found myself reclining in an antigrav chair with my hat over my face, neck, and chest all afternoon soaking in sunbeams and softer winds. 

Occasionally looking at the sweeping views of mountains. 

Listening to horses chuff. And to whistling winds.

Resting into the silence that surrounded all that. 

A different kind of wilderness descent.

Into the Beams is an approximately 40 day wilderness writing journey during the 2018 Venus retrograde period. There is no agenda other than to show up and discover the treasure buried there.

Photo (c) 2015 Katherine Cartwright. View of Anza-Borrego Badlands toward the east and Salton Sea. Moonrise, a Hunters Moon. 

Taking a Bite from the Apple

I had my first honeycrisp apple today.

I found it at the farmers' market, just down the table from the peaches and nectarines. I don't know what possessed me to buy it, with the profusion of summer fruits that are still around. And my passion for peaches.  

It was a little sign that the seasons are changing.

One thing is passing away and another is on the horizon. And I've given you two cliches for the price of one. But there is wisdom in those cliches. Hard won from generations of people watching the seasons come and go.

 

I'm feeling reflective this evening. Tomorrow is the last day of this writing project and there are so many thoughts going through my mind, so many threads I'd like to explore. 

But they all return to the apple I picked up at the farmers' market today. 

One apple. 

And I've eaten already it. 

It was good. Not as good as a ripe peach, of course, or a handful of Rainier cherries. There's something amazing about what we can eat fresh and local in the summer here. It's like a burst of wonder. 

For me, fall feels cozy and comfortable. Winter? Well, if I'm talking about what I like about winter it has to be the freshness of the air. And spring for me is the feeling of sheer renewal. 

Summer is my burst of wonder. The flowers, the blue skies, puffy white clouds, soft breezes, and the deep greens of a fertile, producing, abundant Earth. Long days that stretch into cool evenings. A season that feels endless. Deep restoration.

This time of daily writing has been deeply restorative and I am grateful for it. As I think about what's next, I understand that writing will continue to be primary. There is much to think about after spending three months doing something regularly and with intention, and I imagine I'll be reflecting on this experience to unearth my discoveries. 

For now, I smile as I think about taking a bite out of the apple and understanding that I know something now that I didn't know before.

The Summer of Self-Love is a daily writing practice created to harness three months for thriving. The goal at the end is to host a dinner party. Sounds like an odd Hero's Journey, doesn't it. Most of them usually are.

 

Softening Sunday

Ah, Sundays.

I've learned to give myself a break - around writing and a great many other things. 

Sundays are usually very long days for me at work. They start around 5 am, and I really put myself out there. Today it was two worship services, teaching a class, an hour-long reception, and then a three-hour meeting with generative conversations. I'm beginning my work with the transition team of this congregation and the beginning is always a lot of work. It's great work. And it's intensive. Today was the second meeting. Our synod promised this congregation an abbreviated process, and so there is more pressure. We're planning the first transformational event for late in September.

When I get home there are usually a few hours of rest. I don't even think about it any more. I simply sink into the chaise and allow myself to rest - body, mind, and spirit. I perk up around 7 or 8 pm and start thinking about dinner. Tonight I'm making a shrimp and sweet potato curry masala. I get wonderful home-made sauces from an Indian woman at the farmers market. It's my version of fast food. And it is fantastic. 

So, I've got rice cooking and the sauce simmering. 

I have to motivate to take out the trash. Both collection days follow very long days at work. I got things set up yesterday so I just had to take the bag outside. I spent a few minutes looking longingly at Mars. He is shining brightly in the night sky. An orange point of light. Simply beautiful. 

I've got a list of things I'd like to accomplish this week in one of my journals. At some point I'm going to look at it. Probably not tonight. Maybe tonight. I'd love to simply discipline myself to trust that I've set myself up well for the week and let myself simply rest tonight. I meditated this morning so all I really need to do tonight is go to bed when I want to. 

In the meantime, I'm watching Star Trek. We've got a station that has all the series one after the other every evening. I've slipped into the stream with Deep Space Nine. Voyager will follow, but hopefully I'll be headed to bed before it starts. I'm in the flow of the book I'm reading, Mary  Shelley's Frankenstein, and I'd like to spend some time reading before I go to sleep. It's a bit of a strange choice before bedtime. Not because it is particularly violent or scary, but because there are some very difficult emotions and situations that are explored. Fortunately, the way she wrote it is so dramatic as to be almost humorous, but the suffering of everyone involved can be disturbing.

 I think the hardest part of reading the book is having to be the compassionate witness and wanting to get the characters to make different choices. 

The timer has gone off and I've returned with my dinner. I don't like to eat in front of the TV, but the episode is a good one and I'm going to do it. So time to sign off and enjoy the amazing tastes and textures.

Life is good. 

The Summer of Self-Love is a daily writing practice created to harness three months for thriving. The goal at the end is to host a dinner party. Sounds like an odd Hero's Journey, doesn't it? Most of them usually are.

The Wisdom in the Dandelion We Hold in Our Hand

The energies are rising toward mid-day.

I have just finished meditating. It's been a busy and topsy-turvy morning. My mastermind circle met via Zoom meeting on an unexpected day because of a change in the facilitator's schedule. I went to prepare some materials for a meeting later today and the site I use to prepare a form I need for this is doing server maintenance and the site is unavailable. I woke early today and had tea and wrote my morning pages. They wrote slowly and I felt pressure to tie things up before I was ready in order to be on time for my 8 am meeting. I have another meeting at 1 pm, and it is likely that I will be unprepared if the website I need for the form does not move into a space of availability.

The energy of the day feels dissolving and disseminating, like the seeds of a dandelion blowing away on the wind.

As I reflect on this surprising image, I feel the energy of choice emerging.

The first image I get is of a child, holding an empty stem in her hand, the joy of the experience dissipates as she notices that all that is left of it is an empty stem. Her perspective is close and focused on what she is holding, rather than on what she has unleashed. 

What might happen if she were to look beyond the empty thing she holds in her hand to what is being carried away because of the simple act of her breath having released it?

How we see things. 

What we choose to focus on. 

How we interpret our experience.

All of this shapes every moment.

In the midst of a harried morning, I pause for a time of stillness and my perspective changes. 

So what does the child do once the moment with the dandelion ends? When the seeds have flown and she can no longer see them riding the winds? When they have passed out of sight and all that is left of the experience, truly, is the empty stem in her hand?

For there is a time when that is the truth of the experience.

Does she hold on to the empty stem? For a time? Forever? 

Does she let it go, cast it away to become compost that will nurture ground for dandelions? And in doing so, does she look around and notice what next captures her attention?

Yes.    

The Summer of Self-Love is a daily writing practice created to harness three months for thriving. The goal at the end is to host a dinner party. Sounds like an odd Hero's Journey, doesn't it? Most of them usually are.

Joy Comes With the Morning

Joy comes in the morning.

The thought comes to me this morning as I get out of bed and begin to move through my house opening everything up for the day. The shades. The windows. The fans in the windows. The water in the kettle. 

I keep saying to myself, "I know this quote. Where does it come from? It is a quote, right?"  I promise myself that I will look it up as soon as I finish with all my morning practices and connect with the outside world. 

I open my morning journal and begin to write.

Joy comes in the morning.

Could it be the fragrance of peaches in my kitchen? Or the vivid pink hydrangea blooms in the vase on my kitchen counter that remind me of the time I spent recently in my mother's garden? Or my still clear kitchen table? 

Or the trimmed parsley plant that is standing proud and tall in the sunshine on the windowsill next to my kitchen sink? Hadn't it seemed to be dying just a few days before, when I transplanted it from the vegetable garden at Mom's, where it was not doing well for lack of light? The tomato plants had overgrown it and it was failing to thrive. But here, after some pruning and time, everything has changed. 

Or the sunshine we are so fortunate to have? Or the birdsong? The early morning with no trace of power tools? The cherries waiting to be washed and held by my new pottery berry bowl? The sound of the painted glass chime hanging in the window? The one with the silver spirals and the tiny mirrors that reflect the light? 

Yes. All of it. 

Joy comes when we invite it. When we open to it. When we decide it's our choice. When we cultivate it. And maybe this all sounds a bit cheesy, but it is true. 

I find myself this morning writing again about joy. And there is a whole day ahead to cultivate it. It's free and open before me. What will it look like?

I hear the whisper of the water in the kettle, just before it boils. I feel the breeze from the fan in the window, cool because it is still early in the day.

I smell the fragrance of peaches and want to feel the juice running all over my hands before I taste the sweetness. I see the comfortable artifacts of home as I look around me.

Joy comes in the morning.

In the space between waking and the day's motion, I settle in to myself - my hair is loose and wild, the robe I wear is loose and open. It catches the breeze and lifts. Yes, there's breeze in my kitchen today.

The tea is steeping and I'm thinking about fruit. It's so abundant this time of year. And flowers - I'm thinking about flowers also. Fruit and flowers bring me joy. Walking through the desert brings me joy. Looking out my window at night to see the planet Mars shining orange and brilliant in the Eastern sky brings me joy. 

So much joy fills me up when I loose my eyes to see it and my voice to name it and my heart to embrace it. 

Yes. Loose. For in joy I am unbound.







The Summer of Self-Love is a daily writing practice created to harness three months for thriving. The goal at the end is to host a dinner party. Sounds like an odd Hero's Journey, doesn't it? Most of them usually are.


And that quote - it is actually "Joy comes with the morning," from Psalm 30. "Weeping may linger through the night, but joy comes with the morning." For me, though, there is a sense of joy being part of the fabric of the morning. It is IN it as well as coming WITH it. Perhaps it is the same thing. Perhaps not. Doesn't matter, really. Joy is. 

Cutting Flowers in My Mother's Garden

It's so interesting, the way I notice the flowers dying as I write about the memories of this place.

It brings me a curious peace as I go about my mother's rituals in her home. Especially the flowers.

She welcomed me with hydrangea, a profusion of flowers in crystal vases, and today I will cut hydrangea and roses. They caught my eye the day I arrived. The 'bump out" rose bushes look like they're having a bumper crop. I'd also like to see the morning glories on the fence. They are the wild vine with white blossoms. 

Why didn't I think to plant moon flowers along the fence when I was here in May?

My mother keeps the house filled with fresh flowers. It's one of her rituals. I've watched her watching them. She notices when they are starting to fade and rearranges the blossoms in vases, plucking out the spent blooms. At times, she gathers all the vases into the kitchen and begins again. I thought I would be doing that today, but so many of the vases just had a stem or two that was spent. So I rearranged the vases in the living room and took away two small vases to the kitchen before going into the garden.

The sun is hot. The house is cool. The garden carries the fragrance of roses on the breeze. I move through the space being with the abundant green and growing things. The hydrangea bushes swelter with blooms. The soil must be alkaline because the blooms are pink. All manner of pink, from very pale to a deep raspberry color. There are some curious deep purple blossoms as well. I take my time as I decide which stems to cut and bring into the house, pausing to notice and to be with the beauty.

The roses are a bit disappointing. I've waited too long to bring them inside. Still, I manage three stems covered in blossoms and buds and an armful of several shades of pink and purple hydrangea. I put those in the dining room where I am writing. The roses go into the living room. There aren't quite enough to fill the vase, so I think I may get up and make a change there. I'll give the roses to my father. I gave him roses also when I was here just before Memorial Day and we decorated the graves. Roses and laurel.

My mother has other rituals I follow when I step into her space. Cleaning the kitchen and the dishes after every use. I tend to wait and wash the few dishes I use at the end of the day or at the end of a cooking project. But I am finding here that I keep the kitchen always tidy, as my mother does. I'm not quite as tidy as she, not at all. It's interesting to see that I can do it if I want to. Maybe I'll take some of these rituals home with me.

I had my own rituals once. When I had a home and a family I was caring for. Divorce was jarring to my rituals. A new space, boxes of the dregs of a life and the precious things of a life that is no more, are difficult to go through and process. Six years after I moved out of my house I am still wrestling with them. 

Or perhaps I am wrestling with myself.

I think there is some truth to that because I've had to stop writing so that I can cry. And I've let the tears come. I'm in a safe space, infused with love that holds me while my grief breaks through like waters dammed for years. I'm sitting at the table where I was standing as a small girl on her birthday, surrounded by so much love. I can feel them all standing behind me now, as I release a grief I did not realize could feel so fresh again. 

I look up and see the chandelier that has become living art created by my grandmother and my mother and my daughter, and I wonder where I am in that art. Of course, I am the observer, the weaver of words and stories who becomes a living museum to hold and exhibit its beauty. And I come to understand something I never have before. I don't have the words for it yet but it is here, deep in my body, my cells, my DNA. 

And in the ancestors that stand behind me, dreaming me still. 




The Summer of Self-Love is a daily writing practice created to harness three months for thriving. The goal at the end is to host a dinner party. Sounds like an odd Hero's Journey, doesn't it? Most of them usually are.

Monday, Monday

I can't say for sure yet, but I think this week is going to be about detoxing.

I woke up this morning able to do what I could not do last Monday morning, which was to cut sugar and gluten from my diet. Lunch was a salad with chicken sausage, the kind that is Whole 30 compliant, and dinner will be haddock with asparagus fresh from the field and more salad. I just had a snack of smoked trout and an arugula salad with a few shaves of a good Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. I dressed it with a good Extra Virgin olive oil, fig balsamic vinegar, and Dijon mustard whisked together with a fork. I had some tea this morning and some La Croix water this afternoon. I usually buy myself some of that to feel like I'm having a treat when my usual treats are verboten. I've got beef bones in the crock pot to make some broth and, come to think of it, I had some broth this morning before I had my tea. I keep it frozen in cubes for just such occasions. It makes for a great sipping breakfast. Broth is also delicious and comforting.

The detoxing started almost immediately, as if it was the decision and not the action that was important. I'm feeling flat in the affect and low energy. I'm being gentle with myself and not pushing too hard. I've been doing some reading. Some light tasks. Talked to a good friend. 

But to tell the truth, I don't feel much like doing anything.

My dreams are crazy and I'm having mad insights. Strange happenings abound.

Things like looking in my closet, where there is lots to choose from but nothing to wear, and experiencing deep insights that suddenly come unbidden. Things like the realization that I've bought most of my clothes for a woman who does not exist.

And down the rabbit hole we go. 

So it usually goes something like this. I find something I like and want to buy, but I want a different body to wear it, one that is at least one size smaller. So I buy the item one size smaller, especially if it's expensive, and tell myself that I'll get to wear it when I've lost the weight. 

I have a lot of clothes in my closet that would fit me if I would lose one size. 

That's simple enough. Lose one size. It's sounds really stupid when I write it out like this, but when it's knocking around my head it takes on a different kind of power. The kind of power that is fueled by self talk which is not always so kind and by other voices throughout my life that always seemed to express how disappointed they were with me.

Yeesh. The things we say to people. 

And the things they say to us.

The tragedy here, though, is that every time I do this I am telling myself that there is something wrong with me just as I am. 

Remember that wonderful line in Bridget Jones' Diary, when Mark Darcy tells her that he likes her just as she is?  Everyone loves that moment so much because we don't usually hear it in real life. 

That we are lovable just as we are.

It's about at this point that I feel like I want to jump up and run as far from this writing as I can get. 

But I think I'll stay.

A noteworthy time I bought a wardrobe for a woman who doesn't exist was when I first separated from my husband. I called them my "divorce clothes" because they were going to be the clothes I would wear when I started my new life. If you have to get divorced, at least you should make yourself over in the process, I reasoned. And, actually, that is true. 

I bought some great tops and a little black dress, or at least my version of it, an off-white suede jacket with a faux bobcat lining, some drop dead sand colored suede ankle boots that are the sexiest shoes I've ever worn, a pair of bronze sparkly pumps, and a pair of red patent leather pumps. A black pencil skirt with black leather-like side panels. Some of what I bought was just a little bit too small for me. I had been between sizes at the time and needed to decide what direction I would go. 

I went down, of course. And, actually, it was the right choice.

There were some other items in that wardrobe, and I suppose you could call it a capsule wardrobe because it was about 33 pieces and self-contained, could be put together in a lot of different ways, and made me feel lighter. I actually did get into the clothes and some of them I even wore, but the woman who I dreamed would wear those clothes and do the things I dreamed she would, never really completely materialized because the divorce turned out to be a little more contentious than I thought it would be. 

And it took all my energy just to stay present and to get through it with myself intact.

I look at sections of my closet and think about the memories or hopes or dreams attached to the clothes and realize that sometimes I buy clothes as a kind of vision board. I think about the woman who might wear those clothes and how much I'd like to be her. I think about the life a woman like that might have. The truth of the matter is most of the time I dress very casually, choosing from a handful of items, and right now my favorite piece of clothing is a hat I wear when I tromp around the desert. 

I have a note on my to do list today that says, "Get real about my closet."

And what that means, really, is to get real about the woman who wears the clothes.

Who is she? What does she love? Who has she become since all those life changes initiated six years ago?

What I can't ask myself is where the hell all that time has gone. 

On the hook on the back of my closet door I have a very special jacket. I got it at the Borrego-Springs Outfitter. It was on sale for a ridiculously low price. Felt more like a gift than a purchase. I saw it from across the store when I was there over New Year's in 2017. They had my size. The size I want to be in one day. I was not far from it then, a little farther from it now. But it's definitely doable. It's the perfect jacket for hiking in the desert in winter or for hiking in the mountains at other times. I look at it and my heart leaps. I want to wear it hiking. I can see myself doing that. 

I think instead of using paper and pictures from magazines, I'll make my vision board for this year, what's left of it, from clothes in my closet. Then I'll set a couple of goals and create some action steps to get there. This is actually an interesting idea that captures my imagination.

I think I'll also get rid of a few things. Might take me a while. We'll see. 

For now, I won't force anything. It's the loving thing to do. 

    
The Summer of Self-Love is a daily writing practice birthed June 1, 2018 as a container for harnessing three months for thriving. The goal at the end is to host a dinner party. Sound's like an odd Hero's Journey, doesn't it? Most of them usually are.