A Studio of Your Own

The work of art which I do not make, none other will ever make. 

--Simone Weil

"Artist of the Everyday" by Harrison Fisher (1877-1934) 

During my flush years, I enjoyed the great delight of being able to collect works of art which I discovered by casting a very wide net ranging from local high school art exhibitions to major auction house events, both here and in Europe.  This was an enormous source of pleasure for me; buying a young artist’s work always brought great joy to both the artist and myself and bidding on paintings that hadn’t seen the light of day for decades at Christies and Sotheby’s was a thrill.  I rarely attended the auctions in person, because I’m a stay in the background kind of gal and a novice art collector.  

I never really bought art and collectibles for investment, which was a good thing because my few “investment” purchases—those “sure things”—were eventually expensive losses which left me shocked and incredulous.  But the things I bought for love and beauty—the art, antiques and collectibles—still remain with me long after I needed to sell them, imparting in their fading traces valuable lessons and precious memories. 

One of the paintings I rescued from oblivion was “buried” in a Sotheby’s 1998 catalog for “Important European Paintings.”  These catalogs were usually filled with portraits of ancient Italian cardinals in their Roman Catholic red pomp, exotic looking women with long dark hair, rounded bellies, translucent Harmen pants and gold coin necklaces dripping between their abundant décolleté.  And let’s not forget the still life paintings of long tables displaying  mounds of dead animals, fish, birds, furs and antlers.  Just the type of cheery sight you’d love for the breakfast nook.  If you’ve ever wondered where many of the world’s cloying cultural clichés come from, look no further than the salons of European painters during the 18th and 19th centuries. 

There was one painting however, the memory of which still makes my heart flutter: an oil on canvas entitled A Studio of Their Own, painted in 1886 by a mysterious Elizabeth Pillard.  It depicts 9 Victorian women behind closed doors in an art studio painting a black man dressed as an African chieftain.  I had never seen anything like it—it was amazing and literally brought to life a slice of women’s history so vibrantly. The camaraderie of the women, the “buzz” of creating, the feeling of liberation and escape was exhilarating. It was a small picture in the catalog and I hadn’t learned yet to read “the fine print” such as the painting’s size before bidding, so imagine my surprise when it required three strapping men to carry it into my small suburban Maryland townhouse which I shared with my teenage daughter.  The canvas was five feet square and with its massive silver grey wood frame, the painting ended up being over 7 feet long and 7 feet high.  It was enormous and there was only one wall in the house that could display it, barely.

"A Studio Of Their Own" by Elizabeth Pillard

Still, I thoroughly enjoyed my daily sojourns with these ladies and I relished my feeble attempts to unravel the mystery of who exactly was Elizabeth Pillard? Was she English or French? Where, when and how did she paint this gigantic, fascinating studio portrait? It had to be in a woman’s art school; this wasn’t something you dashed off on the back porch after hanging the laundry, like the marvelous American Victorian painters Lilla Cabot Perry and Mary Cassatt, whose days consisted of “housekeeping, painting and oyster frying.” 

Well, I was on Elizabeth’s trail for several years, never finding out more about her than this one painting, until the trajectory of my life changed and Studio had to be  sold again. If any of you ever come upon the backstory of Elizabeth Pillard, please drop me a line and let me know.

Virginia Woolf was only four (1882-1941) when Elizabeth painted A Studio of Their Own, but artist studios were popular subjects during the decades of Virginia’s formative years and she was born into an English intellectual family. For many years the influential art magazine, The Studio, first published in London in 1898 (which championed the Arts and Crafts movement and Art Nouveau) carried pages of advertisements for studios for women artists. It always seemed to me that at some point Virginia Woolf might have seen Elizabeth Pillard’s painting in an exhibition and the seed of a title for her A Room of One’s Own lecture and essay published in 1929 could have found inspiration in Elizabeth’s brushstrokes or women artists like her.  The famous quote of Virginia Woolf’s that “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction” originated from that lecture.

Illustration by Cole Phillips (1880-1927) American artist and illustrator

Since time immemorial the essential ingredients for women to create seems to be private space and money and you won’t get a fierce argument from me, especially since for a few years I was blessed with both with Newton’s Chapel. The time and space to hear the end of your own thought is priceless. However,  I’ve learned that idyllic conditions come and then go in our lives in a spontaneous cycle of disruptive and dynamic change. Granted, once we enter Paradise, we hardly expect to be evicted, but nothing stays constant except change. And change has to be disruptive before it can be dynamic.  Lord have mercy I wish I had learned that lesson early on but I’m just making peace with accepting it as I write now. However, I think this insistence that we need all the perfect conditions before we can birth a dream, create art, a new business or more importantly a life we feel passionate about living is a subtle but sophisticated form of self-sabotage.

So is it lack of time, space, creative energy, emotion or money that you feel is holding you back today?  Bet you that there’s a least two out of three that has you rooted in discomfort and discouragement, because Babe, I know those days and those days know me.  

But if we’re completely honest, if I force myself to pull down the yellowed, muslin scrim of memory, to return once again to the most creative time of my life, when I was 44 and considered a failure in the eyes of the world, but a mother who didn’t want to be failure in the eyes of her magical 9-year-old daughter and began writing Simple Abundance out of a desperate need that I couldn’t even identify, never mind articulate; if I return to my side of the bed, the Washington Waldorf School parking lot, and my passion for women’s writing which had fallen through the cracks of social history—then I begin to understand the wisdom behind the English historian Dame Cicely Veronica Wedgewood’s confession that “Discontent and disorder [are] signs of energy and hope, not of despair.”

However, thank you God, that Heaven operates on a “need to know basis” and that when I began writing SA I didn’t need to know that there would be five years of showing up on the page, no publisher, thirty rejections, no money, no encouragement, just the Great Creator’s call to learn how to spin golden threads out of desperate need. What miracles could be wrought, Babe if we can just learn to give thanks first for the desperate need before the golden threads?  I think that is the secret of Life.

For truly, the space in which a woman needs to create is safeguarded within her imagination, to be hidden in the crevices of her heart and vouchsafed by her soul until she births her first or next dream into this world. I hate to be the one to break it to us both, but sometimes a woman finds her destiny in between sobs, staring at a blank wall, in the same bed she took to escape it.  So let’s have a lovely cup of tea before we begin again.

Blessings on your courage. 

XO SBB

Life's Unexpected Curtain Calls

May you respond to the call of your gift and find the
courage to go follow its path.

-John O’Donohue

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “spiritual journey”? Many people immediately think of difficult lessons, painful realizations, heartbreaking sacrifices or the frustrations and abject loneliness of unanswered prayers.  I call these my “intimate conversations with the ceiling.”  But difficult lessons and unanswered prayers are part of Life’s required course, so it’s easier for me to search for a tiny Divine hallmark in a challenge or difficulty, much as a jeweler might mark gold or silver.  

When something happens that hurts or throws me, particularly when I’ve prayed long and hard for a certain outcome and it doesn’t happen, after the sharp intake of breath, I’ve learned to say defiantly: I’m calling you a blessing. I’m calling you a blessing. I’ll repeat these words aloud for as long as it takes for me to slow down my racing heart and restore my balance. Then I’ll probably muffle a scream and not give a whit who hears me.  But since I’m always alone when I have these reactions, the only One who matters has heard.

This reframing and renaming of events and outcomes was taught to me by my beloved friend, the Irish mystic and poet John O’Donohue (1956-2008) and is so eloquently expressed in his last book To Bless the Space Between Us.  “The creation of the individual is a divine masterpiece.  We were dreamed for a long time before we were born.  Our souls, minds, and hearts [were] fashioned in the divine imagination…One of the fascinating questions is to decipher what one’s destiny is.  At the heart of each destiny is hidden a unique life calling. What is it you are called to do?” 

I was born into an Irish Catholic family which means I was born into a world of black and white and veils of one kind or another. Every Sunday, religiously, as one would say, we went to Mass. However, after the Latin Mass and frankincense were exchanged for American English and folk music in 1965, I felt as if I had been born into the wrong side of the aisle. I found peace in the mystery, wonder, beauty and awe of ritual; reverence in words that I might not understand, but responded to in my heart and soul on the deepest level.

Of course, I attended Catholic high school during the mid-sixties, when the word “vocation”—from the Latin vocare—meaning “to call”—was frequently heard and synonymous with entering a religious community; always suggested as the first choice for a life path.  This was extremely distressing because I really wanted to be an actress.  My life was to be in the theater or the movies.  Good gracious, I had a dozen stage names by the time I turned 12. Then, like most teenage girls at that time, I also knew that someday I would be swept off my feet by a handsome man, get married, have a big family and live happily ever after in Great Neck, N.Y.  

I must confess that although I was dead set on becoming an actress, I found the notion of being “chosen” by God very magnetic, even hypnotic.  I also thought the nuns' black-and-white habits incredibly romantic.  How much I was influenced by Audrey Hepburn in The Nun’s Story (1959), I can't really say, except that Sister Luke pushed every emotional button I had.  Hepburn was playing a young woman who enters the convent to become a missionary nursing sister in the Belgian Congo during the 1920s.  She is so certain of her path, until she isn’t and you just know what’s coming even when you don’t.  I just love watching favorite movies every decade or so, because it’s always a different film than the one your Younger Self remembers.  I wish one didn't have to grow older to become wiser, but there you have it.

Audrey Hepburn in "The Nun's Story" (1959)

Well, as I stated emphatically to my parents and Mother Superior, my life was going to be on the stage.  The way I figured it, the theater was about as far away from God as I could get.  Do you want to know how to make the angels laugh?  Tell Heaven your plans.

So I went to New York and discovered that there was The Actors' Chapel at St. Malachy’s Roman Catholic Church. Hmmn. Then I traveled to London seeking my fame and fortune and found The Actor’s Church at St. Paul’s Covent Garden (Anglican).  I also discovered that the theater and church share a passion for language. I love the language of the King James Bible (1769 version, please, I’m very modern), the services of Morning Prayer (Book of Common Prayer 1928, thank you) and Evensong. I love ending The Lord’s Prayer with “For Thine Is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory. Forever and Ever” and never forgetting that All Things Come from Thee, O Lord and of Thine Own have we given Thee.  I felt safe.  I also thought I stashed my spirituality into a box that I could handle.  I kept the Divine Mystery at bay. 

Obviously, I did not become an accomplished actress. Rejection, self-doubt, financial insecurity and public criticism are all part of an actress’s daily round. I briefly became a playwright and wrote a one woman show about Sarah Bernhardt which was panned so virulently I took to bed for a week. So I became a theatre critic but couldn’t do that for very long because editors don’t really want raves; flops inspire such creative turns of phrase.  It’s so much more colorful when you spew derision instead of encouragement. Break someone’s heart with your words?The poisoned pen really is sharper than the sword.  But all artists “spread their dreams under your feet” (thank you, W.B. Yeats) and I could not “trample” on another soul's dreams.

One of my first casting call photos circa 1972. So serious, so dramatic, so wide-eyed.

Then I stepped away from the footlights and was blessed with a beautiful baby girl I cherished and I got the role of a lifetime as her mother.  When she was about four, since I had never left her overnight, I asked her father if I could have a week-end away to collect my thoughts.  I really had visions of a hotel, sleep and room service but then someone told me of an Episcopal convent which conducted weekend silent retreats.  Perfect. The moment I drove into the convent grounds it seemed as if a spell came over me; by the time I walked down the hushed stone hallway to enter the chapel, I knew I was home.  It was very unsettling.

After a silent weekend spent praying and working besides the cloistered, contemplative women who had answered God’s call so dramatically, I felt compelled to finally try and reconcile the irreconcilable.  Yes, I confessed to God that I had been called and I turned away from Heaven’s request to serve.  But now I had an even greater calling, I was a mother.  I had been entrusted with a precious child to safeguard as best I could.

On Sunday, at the conclusion of that life-changing week-end, the guests were invited to speak to one nun in a confessor role about anything that was troubling our hearts. We were to unburden ourselves. A beautiful nun about my age sat with me in the convent garden bathed in the golden sunlight of an exquisite Indian summer day.  I shared with her that I believed I had been blessed with a spiritual calling and I had said “No” to God.  My sorrow was not that I had taken the path that I had, but that I did not possess the courage to even consider, never mind pray, about my true vocation.  Now it was too late because my path was resolute:  I was to be the best mother that I could be. Oh, yes and I wrote a bit, too.

Sister was silent for a few moments with her eyes closed and her hands together.  She sighed.  And then she asked me to look at the families greeting each other and coming together after a weekend apart.  Look at the smiles.  The hugs.  Hear the laughter.  Take in the bliss of their connection and communion.  She confided that there were some Sundays when she wondered if she could not have served God better in the world as a wife and a mother.  Then she asked me quietly:  “Why do you think that you have not already answered God’s call?  God needs mothers.  God needs writers.  There must be some special work that only you can bring forth into being.  Perhaps, my dear, your convent is the world.”  

“The notion of vocation is interesting and rich.  It suggests that there is a special form of life that one is called to; to follow this is the way to realize one’s destiny,” John O’Donohue reminds us. However, “the faces of the calling change” and so we must play many roles during our lifetime.  “To be born is to be chosen.” 

Clearly I've always been enamored with a certain kind of look. "The Authentic Self is the soul made visible."  (photo: Eric Van Den Brulle).

And who knows?  The role in Life’s drama that frightens us the most, may in turn lead to a gold star on the dressing room door and a dozen unexpected curtain calls, not to mention a favorite pew in the Actors’ Chapel. 

Blessings on your courage this week, darling readers.  

XO SBB 

ENQUIRE WITHIN UPON EVERYTHING: The Butler Did It

"Girl Scholars on Parade" by Harrison Fisher (1875-1934). Fisher was an American artist and magazine illustrator who captured the "Gibson Girl" American style of beauty.

Virginia Woolf once observed that the challenge of every writer or speaker was not to change the world but merely provide each reader or audience member with one provocative thought to write down, put upon their mantel and mull over. One life-changing thought is quite enough for any of us to take in on any given day.

As a true believer in bibliotherapy, audiotherapy and cinematherapy, I’m often asked who/what are some of my favorite writers, books, music, movies and so I’m delighted to send you to my favorite “Enquire Within” resource which seamlessly and artfully combines all my secret Rx for frazzled nerves—Jesse Kornbluth’s brilliant cultural concierge service known as HeadButler.com  (@headbutler).   

Full disclosure: Jesse’s been a friend for the last 20 years, but that doesn’t mean his writing doesn’t regularly dazzle me with peacock green admiration on a weekly basis, especially after all these years.  Reading Jesse’s blog is as close to having a private tutorial by an Oxford or Cambridge don as I’m ever going to get (“don” – an esteemed British university professor, preferably “Oxbridge” as over-the-pond academic insiders call their ivory towers.)  

But I’ve got Jesse K. and HeadButler and my personal professor/curator always sends fascinating new-to-me historical, social and cultural missives which I delight in following to coax the muse for a happy hour or two of homework. That’s because JK doesn’t just drop the whole story in my lap. I have to click.  I have to follow the clues to be creatively rewarded. What’s a writer’s favorite part of writing?  Research! Jesse encourages me to consider the wealth of usually overlooked “Great Old Stuff” books, films, music, history that I’ve forgotten or don’t know and wow! now I do and you will too, as well as thank me for sending you to a writer’s writer for the high-brow low down.

One of his recent posts was about the Victorian writer Anna Sewell’s masterpiece—Black Beauty—or “Black Beauty, his grooms and companions; the autobiography of a horse ‘Translated from the original equine’” published in 1877 and for the last 140 years, considered  a children’s book about horses, particularly for girls. 

However, Anna Sewell, who was invalid for most of her life, only began writing her one and only book at the age of 51, inspired by her love for her family’s pony “Bess” and passionately distressed over animal cruelty.  Anna dictated the story to her mother (the Victorian "juvenile" writer Mary Wright Sewell) from her bed over five years and died just five months after it was published. Black Beauty became an immediate publishing phenomenon and international bestseller (it’s now sold over 50 million copies in 50 different languages). While considered a children’s “classic”, Anna wrote it to reveal the truth about the inner life of animals—their loves, losses, joys and suffering—as well as their poignant, unbreakable connection to our own lives, particularly for the adults who were in charge of their destinies—the grooms, stable hands and the hansom cab drivers holding the reins and snapping the whips. Perhaps she did realize before she died that she’d written more than a successful book—Black Beauty—inspired an international animal welfare movement that changed the treatment of horses—but writers rarely understand the emotional impact of their words.  They just hope that somebody out there thinks one of their thoughts worth putting on the mantel for mulling over.

                                                               ANNA SEWELL 

Jesse also has included with this post the most beautiful clip of the best cinematic version of Black Beauty ever, the 1994 American version by the amazing Caroline Thompson in her directorial debut (her screenwriting credits include Edward Scissorhands, The Secret Garden, The Addams Family and Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey) with the compelling voice of Alan Cummings as “Black Beauty”.  (This is after all, an autobiography of a horse) and Head Butler included convenient links for both the book and movie. 

Spoiler alert:  I cried at the clip and then watched another 6 times. Then I cried some more and ordered the movie. But they were good tears, tears of relief, after the heightened emotional tension we’re all feeling again this week. Sometimes in the “new normal” in which we live, we just need to be reminded of an old-fashioned story with a happy ending.   That we are spiritually connected to one another and to the animals we share our lives with and this kingdom of Earth.  If you’ve ever loved an animal and been loved by them in return, then you know what real love, grown up love is supposed to be and feel like.   I certainly know what movie I’m watching this week and what book I’m eager to read again, especially since I’ve learned there is no such thing as a children’s book, only books for grown-ups old enough to be told the truth.  Also, I don’t believe in coincidences but I do believe in mystical chains of chance.  Those of you who have read last week’s blog about “Gleaning” will be able to read “Between the Lines” with me. 

And Ludwig Wittenstein? (1889-1951), the illustrious Austrian born, British intellectual's intellectual considered "arguably" one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, who spent his entire life pondering the connection between “logic” and metaphysics (yet still only published one book, one article, one book review and a children’s dictionary).  To discover that Ludwig Wittenstein was reading Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty as he was dying? This I did not know and it feels like a marvelous mystery waiting to be explored.

So here’s to a provocative connection worth mantel mulling as well as mystical connections worth pondering over a good bottle of wine. Be still my beating heart… And boundless thanks to Head Butler for, once again, putting me on the case. 

Blessings to you and yours and may you discover something wonderful this week that's new-to-you!  Please share it and let me know.

XO, SBB

A Bounty of Goodness: September’s Season of Gleaning, Gathering In And Letting Go

Autumn, season of earth’s maturing…asks
that we prepare for the future—that we be wise
in the ways of garnering and letting go.
                                                 
                                         — Bonaro W. Overstreet (1947)

As the daylight hours decrease and the air turns crisp, we’re reminded that it will soon be too cool to take leisurely strolls through our ordinary Edens, although I’m sure the original Paradise had four seasons!  Searching the back of the closet to unearth the scarf we bought on sale late last winter, we suddenly fast-forward to a few weeks from now, coat wrapped tightly around us, face muffled against the elements, already grumbling about winter.  In thirty seconds we’ve already tossed away the gift of these gorgeous autumn days without opening it.  Probably because Life’s true gifts always arrive at our door wrapped in brown paper and string.  

“Nature has been for me, for as long as I can remember, a source of solace, inspiration, adventure and delight: a home, a teacher, a companion,” Lorraine Anderson writes in Sisters of the Earth.  Finally, so it is for me, which is funny considering that I spent my teenage years trying to run away from a small rural New England town, and then when I could run anywhere in the world, I chose to settle for over a decade in an even smaller English hamlet because of my love for an ancient stone cottage, an apple tree and the miraculous turning of the year.

If you’re familiar with my work you know that the sixth Simple Abundance saving grace is “Joy” and that on the Simple Abundance path of Gratitude we are urged to be willing to let go of struggle in order to learn some of our life lessons through joy. I must confess that in the last few years, I’ve often wondered who in the world wrote this pink book, for when I take my backwards glance, if I’m honest, while the easiest spiritual lessons for me have been happy ones of delight, wonder and utter amazement, they’ve been too few and far between the ones learned on my knees and damp pillow. But I’m not alone.  Poets, philosophers, mystics and saints have been pointing the way towards joy for centuries, in spite of their own human disappointments. 

“I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering,” the glorious American poet and fourth Poet Laureate of the Library of Congress, Louise Bogan (1897-1970) insisted. “Surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy.”  And even in the depth of loss, anger and profound grief, the great Christian writer, C.S. Lewis titled his memoir of the soul’s longest dark night “Surprised by Joy” after the death of his new wife, wed late in his life.

One of my personal joys is collecting out-of-print country journals, especially from the twenties through fifties,  that track the seasons of our lives through observing Mother Nature’s and Mother Plenty’s journey through the year.  Today, when the Divine rhythm of life has been completely obscured by technology’s seasons of Silicon Valley, (although people have been complaining about “newfangled” since before the 19th century’s Industrial Revolution), I’m so grateful to have lived in the English back of the beyond where work began when the sun rose and finished towards the end of the afternoon, bookended by a pots of tea and other women’s thoughts on paper.   There was no more comforting ritual for me than coming home to the kitchen at day’s end, to the aroma of something delicious, slowly cooking in the Aga, then drawing the curtains and turning on the soft small lights. “Simmer down now Sugar,” the Great Mother would whisper, “simmer and settle down.  All will be well.  After all, tomorrow is another day.”  (When the Great Mother speaks she’s apt to sound like one of my favorite heroines. How about you?  Don’t you love it?  What wise woman do you hear in your head?)

Autumn October 1930 cover of Woman's Home Companion

We should have learned Heaven’s laws quickly from the seasons but it has taken us millennia and here we still are. “If the workings of cause and effect were everywhere as visible as in the world of seed and harvest, much human folly might reach a happy ending in wisdom,” Bonaro Overstreet observed in a little book of comfort, Meditations for Women: For Every Day in the Year A Day’s Worth of Spiritual Refreshment published in 1947 which is a compilation of twelve women writers’ monthly musings on the shape of the year. “A grocer, unlocking his store, exchanges a word with a passer-by, ‘Feels like winter’s coming and it’s going to be a tough one for a lot of folks—all over the world.”

I love the Old Testament’s story of Ruth, a young widow living with her mother-in-law Naomi, who was also a widow, which meant not just being poor, but destitute and homeless.  However, ancient spiritual law instructed land owners that any harvest which fell to the ground, as well as the four corners of each field were to be left for the poor and hungry to “glean” or pick up. Ruth would follow the harvests to gather up the bounty of goodness left behind as she worked for them both.   It’s a wonderful Biblical parable (Ruth 1 and 2) which reveals something new every time I read it.  

The subject of “gleaning” was an especially fertile source of inspiration for Victorian artists coming after the land was abandoned and families moved to the city to find work. One of the most famous paintings of this tradition is “Gleaning” which is often attributed to the Pre-Raphaelite English painter, Arthur Hughes (1832-1915), although recent art scholars believe it was another Hughes, either his son Arthur Foord Hughes, or nephew, Edward Robert Hughes.  But whoever captured the blessing of gleaning, it still speaks to us today. We need to pause and realize that our own hearts will always remain hungry, even if we are the honored guests at the world’s banquet, as long as we ignore our souls’ knowledge of any mother’s prayer and pleading to feed her children. 

 "Gleaning" often attributed to the Pre-Raphaeite English painter Arthur Hughes (1832-1915) but art scholars now believe was painted by his son Arthur Foord Hughes or nephew, Edward Robert Hughes.

But we also need to realize that “gleaning” is meant to be a blessing, however we may encounter it and all of us must in some way; whether we visit thrift shops, hunt for berries in an English bramble, refinish an rubbish bin table or depend on the kindness of strangers at a food bank because of unexpected circumstances.  There is no shame in the blessing of “gleaning”, sweetheart, only love, for if there is a Gift, then surely there must be a Giver and we are not alone.  As we reap and sow, we also learn to glean and then, give back.

This September I know that I must also glean in my private moments;  wandering through the golden fields of acceptance, grace and gratitude searching for my happy memories among the sheaves of wistfulness. Finally, time has done her perfect work and I am able to let go of regret and remorse, so that I can begin again. I leave yesterday’s English brambly apples for others. Today I choose to cherish my California dream of orange, lemon and lime trees, and hay, the fragrance of my future.  A citrus orchard next to a stable. There’s an apple in my pocket for the horse waiting for me to find her and bring her home to a new pasture. I do not know what tomorrow will bring, but I do know it includes a horse and where there’s a horse, there is a stall in a barn and a paddock and me.  Excited to be on my way again, and start a new life by cleaning up the barn. Oh yes, for if there is a Gift, then there must be the Giver eager to shower creatures both great and small with joy.  It makes me smile just to write these words.  Please believe with me and I will believe for you and we both know what happens when two women agree that something must be done.  
    
The world has always divided the kingdom of Earth between the haves and haves-not and it’s not going to stop anytime soon, so we must be willing and able to help each other. But the blessed Sisters of Mercy, the heavenly Saving Graces, and our Mothers Nature and Plenty, have been lavish with their hidden bounty left behind in our sad, lonely and abandoned places.  Still, it is up to us to distinguish between the bitter and the sweet, and to separate the wheat from the chaff, for all the goodness we can glean and gather in. 

Weeping may endure for even seasons of our lives, darling reader, but if we’re just willing to be open to receive, those clenched fists will unfurl and we can be surprised by joy.  My prayer for you this week is a new well-spent moment for your Gratitude Journal. Please share your joy with me and other kindred spirits by following the conversation here and on Twitter and Instagram. Blessings on your courage and sending my dearest love, 

XO Sarah Ban Breathnach

Back to the Future

Dearest Friends,

It’s good to catch-up with you after a longer than expected “time out.” I confess that I’ve been coaxed back by your enthusiasm and urgings for me to write more and take you with me, which has been a source of happy amazement for which I thank you profusely.  My prior reluctance to join in the whirl of social media up until now has also provided some unexpected amusement and benefits.  A few months ago my marvelous sister, Maureen O’Crean, asked you on the sly to send me surprise birthday greetings, safe in the knowledge that since I never visit Facebook or Twitter, I’d genuinely be surprised.  And surprise me you did, in wondrous ways.  With my birthday breakfast came a beautiful box filled to the brim with cards, long heartfelt letters and tokens of whimsy and deep affection, including a gorgeous “gratitude quilt” which made me smile and cry at the same time.  You’re simply the best!

You generously shared reflections of your own winding and rewarding Simple Abundance journey over these last twenty years; your life-changing discoveries with Something More a decade after I wrote it, and the sheer relief you felt having an honest, heartfelt, and private conversation without shame about a women’s complicated relationship with money in Peace and Plenty. Some of you wrote of the lovely bond that you and your grown daughters now share reading Simple Abundance together each day.  And I was thrilled by your absolute delight with my first children’s book The Best Part of the Day which introduces your precious grandchildren to the wondrous practice of daily gratitude (thank you to our glorious illustrator Wendy Edelson for her magic!)

Above all, you sent my favorite gift of all, prayers for my health and happiness. I truly believe that the gift of prayers by women for women is Heaven’s secret weapon because the spiritual electricity unleashed when we send and receive prayer literally separates the Light from the darkness. I still haven’t been able to read all your best wishes yet but I have felt them every day and so this past birthday has become a marvelous moveable feast, as I open one missive at a time and share the day with you in thought, thanks and prayers for your happiness. You are truly my Belle Lettres and the name of each one of you is engraved in my heart’s gratitude journal. Thank you my darling girl-friends, thank you!

What you shared with me privately and collectively has resonated deeply.  It seems that I’m not the only woman in the world needing to re-boot every aspect her life and wondering how and where to begin again.  It was a surprise, wasn’t it, to realize as we woke up from our Sleeping Beauty nap, that we were between the ages of 51 and 69 and with a lifetime’s expectations of how/and what we would be doing in our prime time abruptly cancelled.  Now that we’ve actually grown up to become “women of a certain age” we’re not quite sure of what we’re meant to do with our time, creative energy, passion and emotion. "Retirement" is what our parents did.  We don't know what the word means today, either because we're not ready or able to retire.  But with at least an additional twenty year active life span ahead of us (although I hope to convince you to see in a century with me) if it doesn’t include that adorable New England B&B or Napa Valley winery of our fortysomething daydreams, then what are we going to do?  

It's a question I've been asking myself, pondering upon and praying about.  How do I want to live my future?  I've started to call this opportunity our “sudden windfall” stage of life.  You see instead of feeling as if the rug was pulled out from under us, let's flip the unexplored and unexpected and become a domestic/literary explorer with me.  Let's believe we’ve all been blessed with an unexpected inheritance from an unknown Divine Great Aunt, who was/and still is, one Swell Dame: beautiful, bold, brave and a legend in her own time, who has a few important lessons to teach us. I’ve been rummaging through the attic of social history where Great Auntie’s mystical trunks have been stored. I’ve been compiling notes from her diaries and dispatches dashed off behind the front lines of the rapidly changing 20th century (along with those of her gal pals) as quickly as I can. And I’ve happily discovered there is amazing golden thread that runs through the tapestry of women I’ve long admired, from all walks of life; women who were flesh, bone and blood before they became icons and archetypes, both famous and forgotten. Their secret to not just surviving, but thriving, despite reversals of fortune was their inexhaustible courage and willingness to begin again.  They worked with change, they didn’t fight it. And they realized if change came once, it was coming around again. And this time they were going to be ready to catch the golden ring.  They learned to work with life’s cycles, changing even faster as a pre-emptive tactic to protect and preserve everything they cherished.  This Divine agent provocateur attitude comforts me enormously as I weave the woof and warp of our own “becoming” into a guide for this next, unexpected but glorious stage of our brilliant story.  As the incomparable Colette put it: “What a wonderful life I’ve had!  I only wish I’d realized it sooner.” 

Well, guess what, Babe? We do now.  

Being an Irish writer, I can’t really say much more at the moment but I do hope to have happy news for you soon.  In the meantime, while I’m trying to bridge the world of time travel as well as writing (both quill and digital), I need to ask your help.  Let me put it this way, I still have my training wheels on with the whole social media scene, and I’m only going as far as the driveway at the moment.  

But the people who love me (and that includes you!), tell me it’s time, and I’ve heard you, so here we go.  

Welcome to my new website – www.SarahBanBreathnach.com and my new blog “Between the Lines”--this is my first post. There’s also the announcement of my Swell Dames Club (which you’ll join when you sign up for my new mailing list).  My absolutely fabulous daughter, Kate Sharp, who has brought me into the 21st century, in such a beautiful and elegant way, has asked me to encourage you to follow me on Twitter (@simpleabundance), Instagram (@sarahbanbreathnach) and like my new author’s page on Facebook (@SBanBreathnach).

So thank you for spreading the good word and I’ll do my best to keep writing them.

Sending unbounded thanks for your love, support for my work in the world and those prayers! I return the hugs and blessings on your courage as we start a new adventure together.  As they say, let’s Follow, Tweet, Like and Share.

Dearest Love,

Sarah