Living a life that is yours alone (and not for show). This has been circling around in my mind for weeks and months, and if I am honest, for decades.

Years ago, in my time of being an Alaskan Woman, I owned a sweet old house with a little back yard.  The yard was packed with garden boxes, and these were packed with growing food.  There were two clotheslines accessed by the back door, and they hung out over the gardens.  I remember the years of cloth diapers, these beautiful colorful symbols of a life I loved, blowing in the breeze over my beloved garden.  I remember when my baby and then toddler lived blissful moments in the sunshine of our yard, in our garden, feet bare, hands in the earth. Delighting in all that I delighted in…

How are you doing? There is so much illness going around.  We are back to the land of illness, and sometimes the layered kind where we have more than one at a time.  How have you been feeling during this season? How are your people? I am home on the couch (a favorite place of mine).  The sun is pouring in, my son is in my lap, and our sweet kitty is curled up in her spot next to us.  School is cancelled from snow, and I am healing from sickness. Yesterday I was flat out sick, with school cancelled. So, we stopped everything and rested. We spent hours…

I am home, in my favorite writing spot:  curled up on the couch, a long bank of windows overlooking our gardens and meadow and forest to my left. The lights are off, the woodstove is cranking out heat.  Our kitty is seated right in front of the fire, heating her black fur.  It feels super quiet and still right now. And. Our house is a lived-in mess.  New ice skates on the floor, my bookkeeping on the coffee table.  Dishes to wash by the sink. Bits and pieces of our lives are strewn here and there.  The floor seriously needs to be vacuumed. My phone keeps pinging with texts. Not long ago, this would have seriously unnerved me.  I get overwhelmed in messes and chaos and busyness. Perpetual tidying is…

 Just prior to writing today, I stepped outside.  I’d been inside, working away at my computer.  I needed a break.  My body was fidgeting. I needed to get outside.  So I bundled up and out I went.  It’s maybe 18 degrees, really big cold winds, and snowy.  I first shoveled the walkways. Then I went to the woodshed and hauled load after load of firewood to our house, remembering the hours of splitting this wood not so long ago.  Then I took kitchen scraps to the compost pile. (The compost pile where I recently lovingly tucked a little ermine that our fierce kitty hunted. I thought of that beautiful creature as I was out there). With no further outdoor tasks, I just stood in it all.  The fierce winds, the swaying and creaking forest of trees, the incredible cold on my face, and the glitter of snow blowing up into the air, lit up into diamonds by the sun. “Why would I go inside?” I asked myself.  It was just too good to miss, and so I stayed, feeling and listening and seeing. I just stayed so that I could be a part of it all…

Every year I write about winter, the concept of “wintering”, and about rest.  As polar opposite of summer, winter is THE time of going inward.  (Summer is big, expansive, outward movement and gestures, winter is a “going inward” and “becoming quiet” gesture). I think I write about this every year because I personally need a reminder every year.  Maybe you do too. We live in a culture that rewards us for doing. “Just keep going, keep doing, keep pushing…

We are now in the darkest part of the year.  Mere days from the Winter Solstice on 12.21.24.  I am so excited.  I am a sun-worshipper.  I always feel that sunlight is an essential nutrient for my vitality. When I haven’t seen the sun in a day, sometimes even an hour, it has a powerful impact on my body and psyche.  So, with this being said, I am joyfully anticipating the celebration of the solstice. I am excited to be in the longest night of the year, and then to release into the days in which more and more daylight returns. Last night…

It’s been quite a week.  A week of profound emotions, and a week of incredible insight and learning. Our first wildfire popped up, burning in a mountain in the heart of our community.  Wildfires of this magnitude are new in our land.  We are unprepared.  The terror I have felt, and have noted in our community, has been something to behold.  First, I must tell you: We are safe.  As far as I know, no one has been injured, no homes lost. The much-needed rains finally came…

Yesterday, I sat in contemplation.  I have decided that my daily tea ritual is in fact a ritual of contemplation. My favorite part of sitting outside in a chair, now all bundled up in the cold, with steaming tea in hand is the opportunity to be still, silent, and inspect my own thinking. Often this leads to writing, and the writing leads to greater clarity…

Today I am slowing down, sinking into rest. I have been home with a sick child all week, working hard to tend him well. Today is the first day of truly resting my body. I have a busy day of work ahead (in a bit), and there is no school tomorrow. I am literally taking time to just bask in the warm sunshine that is the perfect gift today. (I restore myself in sunshine. It is an essential nutrient for my body.) And so, today I offer something different to you, so that I can spend time investing in myself. A dear friend sent this to me…

In our home, we’ve been talking about what the animals are doing outside: preparing for winter.  The animals have been collecting soft fibers for making cozy homes, and gathering food to fill hungry bellies throughout the winter. They have been busy for some time now, preparing for their own wellbeing. As we talk about this at home, I realize that we are actually just the same, at least those of us who live in climates with winter. We are wired to gather, to collect, to tidy and organize… all in preparation for the cold and dark months ahead. We are wired to tend ourselves, our kin…

I ran off on an apple-cidering adventure last week.  And what an adventure it was!  We visited with dear friends.  We saw beautiful blue skies and the colors of autumn in New England. We ate seafood along the Maine coast. We met tons of nice people. And we hand-pressed apples with a 102-year-old cider press… and then of course we drank that delicious cider.  It was a wonderful long weekend. I want to share with you a moment in time within this weekend, one that struck me so deeply…

Thursdays are my writing days, and yesterday was Rosh Hashanah. School was closed, and my son was home with me. There was no writing. Instead there was big living. What I mean is, we had a day full of just flowing with whatever felt right, and ended up spending the entire afternoon working outside together. We pulled down the cucumber and bean trellises, snipped off the vines, rolled up the trellises, stowed the stakes in the barn... and then gently took the twine that held the trellises together and wound them into...

Years ago, I studied Italian, and then spent a semester of college in Siena (a tiny city in Tuscany).  I lived with an Italian family out in the country, and studied in the city during the day.  Life was really good.  I have stories upon stories from that time. The one thing that I’ve returned to repeatedly in my mind is a concept I learned there: La Dolce Vita.  This literally means The Sweetness of Life.  It’s a concept, lifestyle and method of ...

Today I am home, resting.  It’s been a really big week, and I’m stewing.  There is swirling angst inside of me.  I couldn’t sleep last night. The full moon was too bright, the crickets too loud. Then our cat brought a mouse in and was chasing it everywhere.  Rough night. In the midst of it all, I wanted to fling myself into the car and drive out to the ocean.  My motherland. Cape Cod. The place that always holds and soothes me. This inner stewing tells me something is up. As I sit with it...

I’ve been catching myself in “survival mode” more than “savoring mode”  lately. It’s been so incredibly hot and humid out here, there’s no comfortable place to be, to work, to rest.  I’ve noticed how much I’m NOT savoring this season, and it has upset me. In an effort to return to savoring, I brought myself back to my list of favorite summertime activities (posted on my fridge). When I read and re-read it, all I have been able to say to myself is…

Years ago, I remember sitting with a patient in my medical clinic. She was telling me that she’d shifted into a new phase in her life and was practicing Radical Self Care. I’d never heard of it and was intrigued. She went on to describe it to me. I can’t recall any of the specific things she was doing, but I remember with my being what it all meant: Deeply prioritizing herself. She was a mama, a wife, a very busy professional, and a community activist. She had such a busy life. And the day came that she had to stand firmly in tending herself before…

I am writing today from my deck, seated in blissful sunlight. I am listening to the songbirds, the wind, and our windchimes. I thought I’d really dig into the idea of patience today. It’s been coming up for me again and again and again lately. Let’s just lay this on the table. I once created a belief about myself that I am impatient. My identity has been that I am a fierce yet impatient powerhouse. I have an idea, I envision it, then I make it happen (as soon as humanly possible)….

We are now on the cusp of summer. Maybe where you are, you are already deep in it. Out here, we went from a few delicious weeks of high spring immediately into deep summer. It happened overnight. With this seasonal change, we all are invited into taking stock and fine-tuning the way we live. Let’s be honest: every season offers this invitation, actually. Again and again and again. Now is the time to really check in with your chosen lifestyle, and notice what you love, notice what is…

Today I came home from my weekly handwork time with mothers and grandmothers.   I was out in the lush springtime in our yard, delighting in it all, and then stepped into my home and everything came to a screeching halt.  It was a mess. Mess everywhere, actually. Breakfast dishes that I hadn’t been able to wash before heading out. Yesterday’s clothes  all over the bathroom floor.  Stacks of files to put away. Clean laundry in a jumbled pile in a basket.   Ants that have invaded our refrigerator, jumping in and…

We are in sun again today, and as I hung out our laundry to dry in the sunshine (one of my very favorite activities!), some words came to me: Living by Feel. Since childhood, this idea of Living by Feel has marked my life. We never called it this, but it was a significant undertone in how I was taught to do everything. Before I say more, how about I define it for you? To me, Living by Feel means sensing with one’s hands, as we take on any task in life. And- it may be more than just sensing with hands. Perhaps it is more about…