…or more truly…can I get the words out ?
I’ve been promising to get back to regular posting many times over the past few years, but my posts have been few and far between. Photographs have been easier, but even those aren’t coming so easily these days.
When I look back on some of what I’ve shared in the past, here and at Wisteria & Sunshine, I am surprised by my sometime-eloquence. Words and thoughts used to flow, in my own small channels, where they now get quickly blocked by the twigs that build up and leave only a quiet pool to sit by, usually alone. If it were clear, that might make my reflections easier to see…but it is often muddy.
The last few times I remember being able to bare my soul in public (not that my blog needs to be always that!), were at the women’s retreats I traveled to in 2013. In May, at the herbal retreat in North Carolina, words and tears and joy rose up and spilled over many times, in the cupped hands of that small green valley where women were drawn together.
And again in October, in another valley, within the sheltering walls of an old monastery and another circle of women, it was simple to talk of all that was on my heart. It has been harder here, in the online webby world, on these glass pages (as a dear friend calls them).
Why?
Hmmm….even in this moment, when I’ve decided to get the words out, it is hard. What is it that stops me from writing like this more often? When there isn’t a unexpected, provoking event as there was that day? Is it because I know that one of the reasons you visit here is to find peace and beauty? But I know those can still be found in the midst of the truth and confusion and seeking…I find it everyday. It is not that.
Is it because it is difficult to pull my thoughts up and out of the murky, swirling pool and present them to you in ways that are helpful and gladly received? This is closer to the conflict, I know. I wish my pool was clear and sparkling and that my hands and arms were strong with righteous passion or uncomplicated purpose. Clarity would be so welcome.
I do feel passion at times…and anguish…and curiosity…and hope. When I called my representative a few days ago to ask him to vote against a freedom-curtailling, Monsanto-protecting bill, I wanted to share it here and urge each of you to do the same.
When I photograph a lovely corner of our home or garden and wonder how to also share the dilemmas and overwhelm that come with trying to live a life less chemical and store-bought without sounding either preachy or complaining?
When, in my research as I dream and design my longed for planner/organizer into being, I come up against all of the evidence of (dare I say this?) a world of paper-loving women (like me) spending their powerful dollars in ways that seem to not understand the connection between the spending and the fate of the earth. Does that sound dramatic…or harsh? I had to ask Doug for help in figuring out how to say it and it took several tries for the both of us.
Yes. This is what keeps me from speaking. Because it is so hard to speak from my heart without worrying that I might offend. I cherish the idea of each of us “being the change we wish to see in the world” and I’ve been trying to do just that for decades now. But it doesn’t feel like enough any longer.
It feels like I need to stop being afraid of sharing my vision…because it isn’t perfectly thought out…because I am not perfectly living it…because my feelings might hurt someone else’s feelings. I don’t want to distress or annoy, I just want to help open eyes and hearts, in the small ways that my eyes and heart have been opened.
I want to be able to say that I hope that places like Michael’s will either one day go out of business, or better yet, fill their aisles with thoughtfully sourced and packaged items that take into consideration the people making them and the earth and trees, creatures and substances that provide the raw materials. I know how bewildering and challenging it is to try to shop and live this way, I fail in living out my vision every day. But it is important to try and to keep trying. And when more of us do so, it won’t be so challenging.
Before I was ready to write this post, I put up the words and picture that grace the top of this page…dipping my toe in, I suppose, before I was ready to take the plunge. I do believe those words. Sometimes I want to start a revolution-a gentle, ardent, womanly one-to help save the earth and ourselves, one household at a time. But I am really not a revolutionary.
Part of the Rosehip’s journey is to hone in on finding out both what we are and what we are not. I wonder if it is the Monarch in its chrysalis that is sheltering in our morning room at this moment (whispering to me of transformation) that compels me to finally speak…and closing one chapter of creating and beginning another as I made and sold the last of the designs from Small Meadow Press days…and find a new footing in this ever-shifting online realm as I soon enter my second decade of blogging?
So it won’t be a revolution, and perhaps this post isn’t really a revelation…just making it possible to continue on in a way that is most natural to me, the sharing of the “everyday deep” (and not so deep!), without the restraints I’ve put upon myself…trusting that if I take a misstep or falter along the way, or even simply say something with which you disagree, that you will take it kindly, without umbrage…for that is how it is given. I will imagine you sitting across the little,wild pool from me, on the moss-soft bank…receiving the ripples from my finger as it makes circles on the water’s surface and I try to see into the depths…and me receiving yours in return…and all of them rippling out into the greater pools and ponds and rivers and…seas.
I have one bundle of Small Meadow Press things left in my studio from the sale I had earlier in the month. It is truly the last of the last! And I have one Summer Diary, which will represent the New. I would like to send these to along to someone, and will choose the recipient with the drawing of a name from the comments to this post. Please share your own heart about…being a rosehip…the shifts in the online world…a women’s power to bring change to the world…your own murky pools and confusion…your hopes and dreams…whatever it brings up in you.
And I shall be back here next Saturday to announce the recipient, and to get some words out again.
xo
