Category Archives: lifestyle

Sep1

summer camp for adults

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I’ve watched this real estate video more times than I can count. It’s been on YT for over 6 years now, and I return to it every so often, just to get re-inspired.

Deep down inside, don’t we all want to live at “summer camp for adults?” Where the living is slow and easy. I’ve only been to Nantucket once. I instantly felt completely at home, as though I’d always been there. One night waiting to eat dinner at a bar, I met a young woman resident who made her living as a decorative painter. It’s a good thing a table became available quickly – I was just about to ask her for a job…never to return to America, as the locals call the mainland. I could just as easily have stayed and never looked back.

That is where all of my fantasy novels start. As a child the books I wrote (literally, on folded used paper that I sewed together) were all about horses and farms and life at the lake and solving mysteries. But all of the novels I’ve written as an adult still remain in my head. And they all begin with a woman disappearing from her life and beginning anew in a strange place. Like Anne Tyler’s Breathing Lessons, or Silvio Soldoni”s Bread and Tulips, the protagonist woman has become invisible to her family and friends. It’s depicted perfectly in the series The Marlow Murder Club, but this time Becks Starling finds a new life when she discovers a new calling as a sleuth.

New calling or new location, every woman who has ever been responsible to and for anyone else- in other words, every woman – soon discovers that she is invisible to those she cares for. Innocently most of the time, they have slipped into being dependent on her. The more responsibility she handles, the more responsibility they lay at her feet. She becomes the invisible cog that keeps the machine running smoothly. And she begins to fantasize about a different life, one where she is free...

Believe me, I’ve planned my escape to the nth degree. I’d be far less happenstance about it than any fictional character. No one would ever find me. I know myself just well enough to know how to disappear from here and reappear elsewhere unrecognizable.

But here’s a big clue: as far as location is concerned, I’m right at home where I am living now. A small village on the west coast of Michigan is as close to the NE coast of the country as I’m likely to get in this life. And other than those 2 places, I might feel at home in Great Britain or Ireland. Give me vast deep water, a cold, damp climate and pine trees. You can have the rest of the planet.

And to further dispel any mystery about me: my dream life is single and my dream home is shingled. An old Cape with wide pine floorboards. Collections of dishes and colorful artwork. I entertain friends and family at Sunday brunch while the dog and cat sleep on the hearth. As I’ve always been fascinated with architecture and the fine art of interior design, there are inspirational stacks of design books in every room for spontaneous perusal. And I almost forgot – every bathroom has a window, for Heaven’s sake! Who thought it was okay to omit windows from bathrooms?! Same plonker who thinks open floor plans are acceptable for humans, maybe. One more detail: there will always be rock and roll. Okay, that’s it for today. Carry on…

Aug21

bugger

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“People without a sense of humor will never forgive you for being funny.” – Joyce, The Thursday Murder Club

In my fantasy life I host a writer’s group once a month. Or maybe we pretend to be a book group or a writer’s group but we really solve murders. We gather around my gorgeous little antique dining table in the upholstered rattan chairs and talk and ponder all afternoon. We have tea, coffee, perhaps a sip of prosecco. We open little party gifts we’ve made or collected for each other, and we eat cucumber sandwiches and scones with lots of cream…someone falls asleep out on the veranda in the chaise lounge. It’s just a little nap. Some drooling might occur, but no one will hold it against you.

They love coming to my home, because, well, let’s face it – I know how to entertain. And put together a list of suspects. No one leaves hungry, and everyone leaves excited and hopeful and full of new ideas. It will be hard to sleep tonight.

In my actual life, a dear friend is moving into a new apartment in a retirement community, as did another friend not long ago. I’m experiencing pangs of jealousy. First of all, I love being old. Helen Mirren said “the best part of being over 70 is being over 70.” So hanging out with peers is ever so appealing. Young people just don’t get it. I want no-holds-barred brutally honest communication – and I also want to be home in my pajamas by 8.

All of my adult life I’ve wanted for nothing more than a big, raucous house full of family and friends. Kids and grandkids, constant coming and going. Music playing and spontaneous dancing and laughter and laughter and laughter. And a private office off my bedroom with a door that locks when “I vant to be left alone.“

That was my childhood home, and I spent the last 50 years of my life trying to recreate it. But it wasn’t real. It was a sham. My childhood home was also hiding terrible neglect and abuse and dysfunction. The big loud happy home was just for show. My parents wanted the happy home, too; they also didn’t know how to make it happen. They didn’t know how to face the addiction demons. Neither was I going to be able to create the life I wanted; I had not a clue how to go about it. And so shame tends to creep into my dreams and cloud my sleep. When I wake I feel entirely like a failure. Where did I go wrong?

That’s where the deep sense of failure stems from: I’m smart…but not smart enough to have figured this out when I was younger. To have stopped trying to please everyone else and keep everyone else safe; to have known that survival mode will never get you where you want to go. I was slow to understand that love is not transactional, nor negotiable. I wasn’t just quite smart enough to know that we really cannot earn our way to health and happiness…to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that I AM already everything I could possibly dream. My loyalty and devotion were misplaced outside myself.

And now I have lived long enough to know the privilege of looking myself in the mirror and asking, “IS that what you really wanted? Or perhaps, is there something far more valuable to be gleaned here?” And now I can let myself fall apart at the seems. I grieve the life I spent trying to fulfill a fantasy that, in fact, I would not choose now. Now that I belong to myself.

“Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it, at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.” – Barbara Kingsolver

Dec14

Gloria!

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“If we are lucky not to be displaced by war or poverty, the places we live are like bird’s nests.” – Gloria Steinem

I have long since lost count of how many times I have moved. Here’s a confession few know about me: I have been married four times. Three husbands, four marriages. All four ended in divorce. My first husband was a high school boyfriend. My parents had agreed to send me to boarding school after I threatened to run away – and I did so one summer. I managed to hide out for a couple of weeks in friend’s basements before a friend’s mother agreed to intervene on my behalf. By the age of 15 I couldn’t live at home any longer. I instinctively knew the situation was abusive, although it would be decades before I even began to unravel that situation.

I was 18 the first time I got married, and it only took a few months to figure out that my husband had a drug problem, and a few more months to realize there was nothing I could do about it. So I went “back home” to my parents, but only for a few awful days before finding a girlfriend I could rent a room from. And I never looked back, although I did go back again and again to pack up my younger siblings one by one and move them out. Not soon enough, of course, as the damage was done. Scrambling for survival myself, a safe place to sleep was all I had to offer.

By the third time I got married in my forties, I was no longer enduring physical or sexual abuse. That marriage would also prove intolerable, and not once, but twice. To this day we are still friends, and to this day he yet fails to comprehend any responsibility in it’s failing. As he so often said, we didn’t have a problem. I had a problem. As it happened, he was right, and my problem had a name.

The first fifty years of childhood are the hardest. I survived them by being scrappy. For the first 3 decades of living on my own I was able to find decent work, and when an emergency or large expense threatened my housing and independence, I would supplement my meager income by selling off family heirlooms, primarily beautiful antique furniture. I wish I could have kept it. Only a few small momentos still exist.

But this way of life (which I am only grateful for) leaves it’s scars. One of mine seems to be a deep, simmering grief for the home – THE home – that I have never known. It is truly all I’ve ever wanted for. A home of my own. Safe. Clean. Beautiful. A nest. Perhaps that is why I have always been fascinated by bird nests?!

In October of 1990, House and Garden magazine published an article by Gloria Steinem about her newly decorated NYC apartment, ‘Ms. Steinem on the Home Front.’ I still have that magazine. Somehow weird items have survived all the relocations…but in truth, this article made my heart sing. It has continued to inspire me all these years.

This morning, the 12th of December, 2024, I opened my YouTube feed and found this story. Gloria Steinem talking about her home of 58 years. I am watching through tears. If I had no other inspiration at all, Gloria would be enough.

Sep5

in the wee small hours

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HI! PLEASE click the blog title to update the page as I published before I finished typing or did any edit!

Still stuck in that 80’s opposite sketch…I’m fall cleaning. I know, I know, most people spring clean. I do some of that, but I’m much more prone to deep clean in the fall. I know what’s coming: six months of long, dark winter days with the house sealed up as tightly as possible. I won’t want to go out (even less than I don’t want to go out all summer) and the furnace will run almost constantly. All the outdoor potted plants have to come in and find floor space, along with the windowsills being pressed into service to house any herbs or kitchen plants we might want to nurse along…I prepare myself as best I can.

There are some very welcome adjustments, too. My writing desk can go back in the eastern bedroom window after the air conditioner comes out. I have hot water heat and that means radiators. Unlike forced air heating, there is no fan blowing around the cat hair and dust mites to aggravate my allergies. It’s clean, consistent, and radiant. However central air is not an option (no ductwork), so we sacrifice the use of two windows for the summer to accommodate big window units, and I am grateful to have them.

The end of September the professional window washer will come and wipe away the summer dust and grime so my view is clear. I can watch the heavy wet snow in the hurricane force wind as it splats and sticks to the windows like gigantic white moths on a speeding windshield…who has more fun, I ask you?! I can sit, warm and comfy, and observe the large picture glass ripple in the wind like the surface of the lake in summer…and practice praying.

And although that is not an exaggeration, my little house sits high on a hill, just inland of the bluffs along the western shore of Michigan. It is equipped with hurricane windows and has held it’s own against the elements for near as many years as I have been alive. I do feel safe here. Once the leaves are blown off the deciduous trees I catch glimpses of light off the water when the sky allows. Most days I feel like I’m living in a shoe box and God forgot to take the lid off. Like much of the midwest in winter, the ground and the sky are the same cloudless flat grey, day in and day out and day in and day out, week after week for months on end. The sun is a rare sight. So I prepare myself as best I can.

Yes, I dust off the daylight lamps, the “happy lights,” as therapists call them. Make sure I’m stocked up on light bulbs and candles and firewood and all the blankets and fuzzy slippers are at the ready. Each of my three doors will have a container of snow melt pellets and a snow shovel within arms reach at all times. You never know when you might have to shovel your way out. I live within a mile of the grocery store, library and post office, and there will be days that trek is not possible.

All that said, I choose to live here. There are small things I would certainly do differently were I house hunting today, but it is a fabulous place to live. The views are beautiful. The quiet of a snowy winters’ day is as peaceful as it gets. It is an environment entirely suited to an introverted writer and artist. In truth, I don’t understand why anyone would live anywhere else. One of the best things about winter is that most of the tourists leave and my town becomes a sleepy hamlet again. Not as traffical.

My favorite view is toward the east, which is the direction the front of my house faces. My favorite time of day is early morning. My favorite drink is coffee. These three factors alone lend themselves to a lifestyle that I love. Just thinking about it now makes me warm and fuzzy inside…

Aug5

for under a tenner

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Scottish artist Jane Lindsay exemplifies what I have talked about in recent posts – making your home uniquely yours, and that it doesn’t need to cost much at all. Look at her beautiful things that delight and amuse her, even when broken and glued together. Maybe moreso broken and glued together, because as she says, she loves things that mean something.

Never mind Jane obviously won the lottery in heaven when they were passing out good skin. She talks about when she turned 50 during her children’s teen years, and now they’re grown…she defies age. Does living the life of an artist in the Scottish countryside have something to do with that? As I’ve been following her for a few short months now, I know that she, too, lives with chronic disease. She sure doesn’t show it. She is gracious and delightful.

Her home is chock full of creative ideas. I’m going to steal some of her quirky sign ideas and make my own. And yes, Jane…we will “s’cuse the mess.”

I went to Amazon and was able to custom order a vintage-style metal sign like the one on her wall. Link here: https://amzn.to/3A91liS Remember that as an affiliate I may earn a small commission on anything you purchase through my blog, and thank you. Here is the book Jane references, The Not So Big House: https://amzn.to/3YueVax If you’re nearby, I’d be glad to lend you my copy. I’ve referenced it for years. I love the bright yellow reading lamp she has in her alcove. I couldn’t find us a yellow one, but I did find a great one with coppery accents, here: https://amzn.to/4d4KhZL. And last but not least, how about those stick on letters under paint with a favorite song or poem line?! https://amzn.to/46ve7UQ Thanks for the inspiration, Jane!

Jul5

can you come out to play?

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Yesterday I confessed the sadness I am suffering through right now. I am grieving. And it doesn’t seem to ever completely leave me. I guess that is the truth of grief. It peels away in layers. It’s the onion of life. The brief visit with my former husband, less than 90 minutes over an awful breakfast at a greasy spoon, really triggered me. The triggers remind me that there is still hurt hiding deep in the bone and sinew, needing to be coaxed out and witnessed through the eyes of love until it flows out with the tears. With MERCY. Oh, mercy.

My adulthood has been rife with the grief of loss and dysfunction. I remember going to see a therapist after a breakup in my late twenties. The counselor told me not to come back until I had been to a few ACOA meetings (Adult Children Of Alcoholics.) So I found a meeting to attend in a local church. I remember the first time I went vividly. It changed my life. I walked in timidly and picked up the handout on the seat. And read the first line: Adult children of alcoholics guess at what normal behavior looks like. Well shit.

At that point in time I was already divorced from one alcoholic. Today at the age of 70 I am still dealing with the effects of alcoholism, despite the fact that I don’t drink – and I always will be. It’s affected every aspect of my families’ mental and physical health.

But yesterday was an especially difficult day for me because of the memories raised by Tuesday morning’s visit. I am acutely lonely. I say acutely because I am chronically lonely, and I suspect most of us are. We all feel like we are missing something much of our waking hours and throughout our dreams. Because we are missing something. We are missing the connection of truly being seen, of being witnessed within the nurturing boundary of acceptance, of mercy. So when I say acutely lonely, I just mean I am consciously remembering people and events and actively feeling the loss. As in crying my eyes out all day. If we’ve gotta feel it to heal it, bring it on.

I was actually missing a friend of 20 years who I went no contact with around the same time my marriage was ending. Both she and my husband were alcoholics who were unwilling to face their demons and I was sick (literally) and tired of cleaning up their messes. So it happens that I practiced going no contact decades before it was a thing. Before anybody talked about it. And I have been on the other side of that, of course. Had people I thought were the best of friends cancel me, block me, refuse to talk. I can be a mean, ornery mother. Usually it’s because I see that beloved putting up with abuse and I speak up, out of turn, in a state of rage. I was born with an internal Justice switch. I am ugly when it gets flipped. There is no weapon on earth that’s a match for my vocabulary or fortitude when my psyche declares war. And then I behave poorly, if it is with the best of intentions. You might like having me in your corner…if only I would wait to be asked…

I had a dear friend come to me in earnest seeking advise about whether or not to force their spouse into therapy. Exasperated when faced with her codependency yet again, and after decades of gentle coaching, I lost my shit. I told her that her husband did not need a therapist – he needed an exorcist. And I believe that to this day. But she dropped our friendship like a hot potato. That has happened more than once I must confess. It doesn’t mean I don’t grieve the loss. Codependency rears it’s ugly head in many ways on a daily basis. It’s a monster of an addiction to wrestle. Believe me, I get it. But I am not playing with it. I am serious when I say that it will kill you. It is a far more dangerous dis-ease than cancer will ever be.

In many ways, it seems the older I get the less I know. But what I do know, I know for sure. Denial would be futile. I’m not playing anymore. Life is not a game. No one is getting out of here alive. Your death may or may not be negotiable, in terms of the timing or the method – that is one of those things I do not know. The quality of your life experience is knowable. That is the ONLY THING you have any control over. And as I was told almost 50 years ago by my therapist Jo – the quality of your life experience is directly determined by YOUR ABILITY TO COMMUNICATE. And you can tell the truth or you can lie. There is no gray area in between. I am never going to lie to you because I’m afraid of losing you. It’s a compromise that inevitably injures us both. Codependency is straightforward. It’s an attempt at denial. It’s a self betrayal. AND IT IS A SET UP. It is a flagrant criminal act against the laws of nature and your soul will not tolerate it. Not for one minute.

Dear God how I would love to have a friend or friends nearby to do stuff with. How I miss going to the garden center early in the morning for our annuals, sitting in shallow water in our foldable beach chairs, laughing on the sofa with popcorn and a movie, meeting halfway for coffee. And decorating our homes together. You bring me a new picture you happened across at a garage sale and I’ll get out the hammer. I’ll come help you pack for that move and bring lunch. May the exchange ever even itself along as our mutual interests deepen.

I absolutely treasure the friends I have now. They are far more present mentally and emotionally, but they are not available physically. They are still working full time or no longer live nearby. This often happens with age, after retirement. The husband wants to move to a warmer climate; the adult children need us more than we imagined they would. Health concerns take precedent; finances are different. The balance of life has become trickier and harder to manage. No one is to blame for my current loneliness. I moved 2 hours south after the divorce to make a fresh start, and five years later moved back north to a resort town on the edge of nowhere. I missed my son. It’s beautiful here. And remote. That has it’s advantages (it’s not in the “drop by zone” for one thing) and disadvantages.

But today is a good day. I am far more curious than scared. There is a new paradigm coming into awareness, and it brings exciting energy. I am healing. You are healing. Our culture, our mutual reality, is healing. I am ever expanding and becoming more and more willing to live from my cracked-open heart. Can you come out to play?

Jun26

Fortune Sides With She Who Dares

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Decades ago I bought a cheap cuff at a sidewalk fair. I simply loved the inscription: Fortune Sides With She Who Dares. The inside of the bracelet also has an inscription: I Will Make My Optimism Come True.

This thing is made of some cheap alloy and is worn thin, tarnished and bent out of shape. I treasure it. I will make my optimism come true, it says. Long before the concept of “toxic positivity” came into being I was busy re-inventing myself for the umpteenth time. Turns out, it’s a way of life. As they say, it beats the alternative. But I’ve never been toxically positive. Those who know me will attest that I’m barely positive at all. I lean towards the cynical view of life, but really only in the short term. I am eternally optimistic. And only ever momentarily deterred.

My seventh decade is proving a daunting challenge. Perhaps most of my generation have this in common. We grew up with a lot of cultural expectations about what our old age would look like and those are all proving to be untrue. Health concerns aside, my retirement income doesn’t cut it any more. Retirement was great while it lasted; it’s no longer practical. For starters, the appliances are mocking me. The dishwasher’s heating element is burnt out (a metaphor?) and last night’s lightning turned the clothes dryer into R2D2. It’s blinking frenetically and won’t quit talking jibberish.

So I am having to learn new skills. The work I did to support myself in the past isn’t a viable option as I can no longer spend hours on my feet. I’m learning technical skills now and looking forward to expanding my earning potential, reinventing myself still and again. My lifelong curiosity serves me well. And I do have some wisdom to share, and hopefully a modicum of inspiration.

My Mother was the epitome of optimism and determination. On those days when I can barely get out of bed, or I’m really feeling down and defeated, I remember to “channel my inner Doris…” She never lost her sense of humor. Upon hearing us children complain she would often quip drolly, “other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?” She was a master of perspective.

I have lost small fortunes in my life. I have joked when people asked me what I do for a living, “I’m a career researcher…” while wishing I had stuck with something, anything, been more consistent and made wiser investments. Exercised my intellect more and emotions less, perhaps loved myself a little more. I suppose if I’m paying attention, I fall in and out of love with myself a dozen times a day. In truth, I’ve never understood the tenet “love yourself.” That sounds rather airy-fairy to me. But I do know how to love my life. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: you just have to be a fraction more curious than scared. Some days a fraction is all I can muster.

So by measure of risk taking, I can only say that I wish I’d done more of that – taken bigger risks on myself. Trusted myself more deeply, invested in my own creativity. I wish I’d learned earlier that boundaries are the property lines by which we proclaim ownership of ourselves and keep out the thieves who would steal our souls.

Georgia O’Keeffe said “I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life, and I never let it keep me from a single thing that I wanted to do.” She Who Dares. Turns out there are a lot of people in this boat with me. We will show up every day – making our optimism come true. How will YOU show up brave today?

Personalized Cuff Bracelet, affiliate link may result in paid commission; https://amzn.to/3xqOtUp

Jun14

‘Caol Ait…the thin place

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When I was house hunting several years ago I had become quite discouraged. The first house I made an offer on I was over-the-moon smitten with. It really was my dream house. I didn’t get it. I offered $5K over asking price within 24 hours of it being listed. I was the second offer, and not the highest. But I was devastated. It still feels like a loss. Some days when I’m on an errand nearby I cannot resist the urge to drive past. Add house stalker to the list of my guilty pleasures.

Once I had a purchase agreement on the home I actually bought, moving toward closing, the process stalled twice. The seller was not complying with terms of my lender, or not fixing the things the inspection tagged. Again I became discouraged, so twice I threatened to call off the deal. It did motivate the seller. Each time when I became frustrated I did what I always do – asked for guidance in meditation. Both times I clearly heard: “you are being placed.” Because I was grieving the loss of the first house, I frustratingly replied to God, “whatever…”

The first neighbors I had next door were psycho neighbors from hell. I have never dealt with anyone like them in my life. They were threatening me and I was afraid in my own home. I suspect drugs were involved, but come to find out they had caused trouble with the other neighbors for years. I learned that the man I bought the house from had sued them apparently. Their dog had attacked his fiance’. The first summer I was here their cat attacked me – as in ran across the yard and flew 5 feet through the air at my face. The arm I used to block the attack required stitches and I was given a course of antibiotics.

A year or so later I received a letter from the township informing me that they had applied for a zoning variance. They wanted to open a day care facility, and a public hearing would be held at the next township meeting to decide that. There were already 4 adults, 2 teenagers and a few children living there in the small house. They regularly parked on my lawn. There was constant traffic around the clock, along with regular all night parties. Their dogs, cats, and chickens ran all over my property, including inside my gated back fence. And they often left my gates open as my yard was a shortcut for them to the side street – where 15 or 20 of their party guests would park once my lawn was full. They walked by my bedroom window all night with flash lights yelling to one another.

My daily life was untenable this way, and I concluded that I would have to move. But now my other neighbors came knocking on my door imploring me to action; they had received the same letter from the township and were in a panic. Further away and not in site, they had no idea what I was dealing with. They had endured their own altercations. That day in my living room we prepared letters to protest the zoning variance and attended the meeting en force. We took an attorney along (a family member of mine) to show we meant business. The application was denied, but I feared repercussions.

Early one morning before dawn I opened the front door to out my elderly beagle Odie. I was face-to-face with the neighbor woman immediately outside my front door, carrying a milk jug with brown liquid in it. Startled, I asked her what she was doing and she said, “killing these dandelions for you.” I said no, thank you, and asked her to leave my property, to which she narrowed her eyes and grumbled, “we were here first.” I don’t even know what that meant, but I didn’t ask. Don’t try to reason with insanity.

During this process I was meditating (when I wasn’t shaking and crying) asking for guidance. And I distinctly heard, “They are being re-placed.” I had no idea what the heck that meant either, but soon a For Sale sign went up in their front yard. I actually fell to my knees and burst into tears. No one should ever have to live like this.

Their house sold within 24 hours and $5K over asking price. That house, and the one behind me, have since been sold as holiday retreats to young families from Detroit and Chicago. Not only do I rarely see or hear anyone around me, but they are so very pleasant when they are here on the occasional weekend. They know I am keeping an eye. I will gladly take their weekend trash to set out, and they will often mow my “back 40” as a gesture of appreciation. They leave baked treats outside my door. I couldn’t want for better neighbors.

My house still needs work. In the 7 years I have been here I have done some, but not all, of the finishing work. Built in 1955 it is solid. It needs to be; it is usually buffeted by high winds off Lake Michigan. About a quarter mile inland, with wintertime glints of sun off the water, I look out from treetop level across valleys in three directions. Southeast I see pine-forested hilltops miles in the distance. Hawthorn Cottage is now a quiet little sanctuary, my very own thin place. So as it turns out, I have been placed.

Author and designer Ted Watson Kennedy has a summer home also named Hawthorne Cottage:

Jun10

a thin place

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New to me, this concept of the thin place, where the veil between heaven and earth is thin…”this is what it must be like to be in heaven,” says Sarah Louise. So, like Michigan in the spring. Surely there is no place more wonderful on earth. Misty sunrises feel like a warm blanket. Suddenly everything is lush and green and aromatic and yummy and all the birds arrive at once.

The hawthorn tree out front is blossoming and it is magnificent. It’s old swooping branches whisper to the soft grass and curtain my bedroom window. I look out through it eastward to a valley across the road. Hawthorns are considered sacred in Celtic mythology. They are purported to be the portal between worlds, where the magical creatures like leprechaun and fae travel back and forth. I haven’t seen them, but the Cedar Waxwings fill this tree each May to gorge on it’s berries, and that’s magic enough for me.

Can thin places be as close as this? Can they also be indoors, perhaps in the form of altars? I’ve always thought of my entire home as an altar. Isn’t it all sacred as it shelters my body and my life? How could it not be? I believe our homes do, in fact, provide a thin place. Alone and with our closest loved ones, we are safe here to grieve and to dream. Be it ever so humble.

“Now I become myself. It’s taken time, many years and places…” – May Sarton

Jun3

the only egg in the room…

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…besides my head. Pardon me, I couldn’t resist. If God is in the details, Fiona de Lys is an angel incarnate. Here I am, still in wonder. Join me in my rabbit hole this morning? What do fashion, storytelling and rest have in common? Let’s visit Fiona and have a look ’round and see what we can learn about living a creative life…a deep, soul quenching life of peace.

Her home tells a story, a “narrative” as she calls it. She is telling us her personal story – about what she loves about her home, color, and her work. She can’t separate those out, nor should she. Let’s face it, our homes are at once metaphor and expression. Fiona was being restored as the space was being restored. When life’s changes (whether chosen or forced) require a move we must slow down and listen.

When she talks about the home needing to breathe she is describing a physical characteristic of many European and northern African houses. The lime finish on the walls is an organic material, a kind of chalky plaster. The climate is not friendly to gypsum, or what we call drywall. In her stairwell you see it’s natural state before any color is added. It’s a soft, mottled finish. And it does contract and expand with the temperature and humidity.

She likely added solid flooring. That is a fairly new addition there. Many old English country houses are open to the ground underneath the floorboards or bricks. Most of them do not have central heating systems. That is why you see doors on every room; they closed the heat of the fire in to stay warm. If they are listed (on the historic registry) they were built long before these amenities had been invented. Having a “cooker”, or Aga, later became the only source of heat other than open fires. Notice the desk in her dining room is almost as old as the U.S. How is it that we are not humbled by how much we have to learn and how much we take for granted? I’m convinced that if we possess any emotional intelligence at all it came from our ancestors through our genes. But I digress…

This home is full of interesting details and ideas. I’d love to hear what you noticed and liked. Fancy trying any of them?

I am new to the Amazon Affiliate program, and have yet to figure out the technology of adding a section to the blog. Any link from inside the YouTube video is from the sponsor, in this case, Homeworthy. The links following here provide me with a small commission should you make a purchase. Let’s start with the shoes. I have these! They look just like the Amazon essentials I love, found here: https://amzn.to/3X7y3e0 They’re comfortable and I wear them often. William Morris coffee table book for inspiration: https://amzn.to/4c2om4B, Green Kimono: https://amzn.to/4aEln1a