This week my vacuum cleaner had its final death, both frothers kicked the bucket, and a little while ago my fancy kettle nearly caught my kitchen on fire.
I’m not a big fan of throwing things away, but it seems like stuff is just clearing its way out of my life {fingers crossed the coffee grinder doesn’t die}!
My three month long memoir writing class ended this week, in a much more lovely way than the death of the electronics: compliments and wishes for each other. It was a good reminder that sometimes things ending isn’t a bad thing. These women heard the worst parts of me and the bits that broke me. Unlike the vacuum cleaner though, I don’t think I can just order a replacement battery, it’s more like kintsugi— adding gold to the cracks to build back stronger {and make it beautiful}.
After our final zoom call ends, I’m sad and grateful and wishing that I had found my story thread earlier in the class. It was my final piece {that I half ass put together} that I discovered what I really wanted to say. Not a story of triumph or how a marriage ended or even a love story. I think it’s the story I often share here: a woman allowing herself to be herself and how that can change everything.
This circle of writers, a circle of women is exactly what I want to be. These are the women I aspire to be more like, but my version. A version of a full and fed me.
“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
―Mary Oliver
{this Mary Oliver— can’t get away from her!!— quote was brought up to me in a conversation a couple weeks ago. And I think it sums up everything I want to embody.}
On one of my walks this week, I saw a hawk in a tree at the beginning of the trail. It called out to me multiple times and I sat with its beauty perched high in the branches of the tree. Can you spot it in the trees below?