Paths Through the Year: A Year-long Exploration into Place, Creativity, and Self, is available now! In celebration of the Summer Solstice, below are a few excerpts from the summer months of the book. Enjoy!
🍃June🍃
On a Sunday afternoon, before the rain and thunderstorms, I sneak outside to the hayfields behind our house and cut flowers for the kitchen windowsill, some tufted vetch and maiden pink.
With flowers in hand, I look down and say to myself, you are here. You're here. Living the way you want. Being the way you want. And then there's a moment of pure bliss in the recognition. My skirt swishes around me in the hazy sunshine, and the moment sticks with me like the humidity on my skin.
🌻July🌻
What I realize is that I haven't wanted to put any expectations on my writing, but maybe in being careful not to do so, I've held it at a distance. I haven't wanted to let myself get too close to embracing my writing life fully, because I'm scared. I've held it at arm’s length because it's something that I want, deeply, and I'm afraid that I am not up for the challenges that come with the writing life - the rejection, the work, the creativity, the problem-solving, all of it.
The definition of nurture, as a verb, is to care for and encourage the growth or development of.
What if my writing encouraged my growth and development as a writer and a person? Isn't that the way it works, naturally?
✨️August✨️
I can't help but think the months spent with daily walks in the woods, the quiet that comes with early mornings spent writing and thinking, lingering over words and dreams, all informs this way of being. Where in the past I may not have been willing to take the time to listen, spending more time listening to the music of the fields and forest has given way to a path towards myself.