Unfurling

I am honing skills at aligning my time and energy with what I want to see flourish. It’s such a continual practice! Whether it be plants, friendships, family bonds, community service, or something else, it is evident that what I give my attention to grows. There is much to be learned from internet scrolling, books, online courses and the like, but when I am working-playing with the land, I am unfurled directly from earth mother herself. My own personal experience becomes the knowledge :: I’m not getting it from someone/somewhere else. I am grown by the soil, just like a plant. Or a fern, like this Ostrich Fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris,) unfurling with the spring rains.

I’ve considered myself a writer since elementary school, when I kept journals of the day, the weather, my family dynamics, and to do lists. I had a penpal in second grade and each time her letter arrived, I would go though it with a red pen and make edits. In college, I studied journalism with dreams of becoming a photojournalist. Margaret Bourke White was my heroine.

But I got sidetracked with husbands, raising children, earning income through various part-time jobs, stewarding land, managing property and a whole lot of other stuff you don’t even want to hear about, and have not written the way my soul longs for—that inner voice that won’t shut up even though you continue to not live it out fully. Like a painter not making the space to paint- it eats at your soul, ya know what I’m talking about? I can’t take it anymore, but to change my habits to make writing a priority is like moving a ton of bricks. Im honing it, I’m working it, it’s happening! It is never too late as long as you are alive. If I had my druthers, I’d hole away with the garden and a typewriter and emerge a few years from now with a mile-long manuscript.  But I do like the husband, children, friends, land steward thing, too.