Tag: life

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Snow… #1

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I’m walking by the surprisingly calm sea on this beautiful, sunny, unseasonably warm Christmas day when I hear myself say something quite unexpected. I miss the cold. And it’s true. I haven’t moved to a warmer climate. I’m still living in a four season area where winters used to be cold, really cold… Emphasis on “used to be”…

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It’s not like I particularly like the cold, but I am used to it. It’s not like I’m not occasionally bothered by all its downsides, but I can handle them quite well. We haven’t had a real winter here by the sea for several years and yes, I do miss it. I never thought I would, but here I am, nostalgically reminiscing about white holidays, frozen lakes and snow fights.

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Continue reading “Snow… #1”

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What I Remembered While Doing My Nails For The Holidays

Well, since I’m here writing this and you’re reading it, one thing’s clear. We survived yet another December. Some of us may have even enjoyed it… or parts of it.

It’s a time of year that I love, that final month of the year… yet there are so many things about it that I loathe… and I have a feeling I’m not the only one. If you read my Christmas posts in the past, then you know that it’s a beautiful, yet also challenging time for me, and over the years I’ve come up with my own survival techniques. They help me not only preserve my mental health, but actually reach a state of contentment and appreciation while enjoying the holidays. Continue reading “What I Remembered While Doing My Nails For The Holidays”

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The Luxury of Snow

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Sleeping in on a late autumn Sunday… then lazily leaving that cosy cocoon to open the shutters only to see… snow! Beautiful, wonderful snow! A flurry of big fluffy snowflakes floating in the wind! Sometimes that’s all it takes to have a perfect day.

They said that it would snow… but I kept my expectations low; after all, they had been wrong about it so many times.

Truth be told, I have no words to tell you how much I’ve missed snow… we’ve been getting so little of it over the past few years, that I’m starting to forget what it feels like. That’s why I was so excited about what wasn’t even that impressive an amount of snow. It’s still better than nothing. And it’s still more than we had last winter.

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Three Things I Hate to Write

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I was recently sharing that writing generally comes easy to me… when I feel like writing. But even so, there are those moments when I’m tempted to close that word doc and focus on anything else, wondering how other people do it.

The Dreaded First Sentence

I’m fairly sure everyone knows how important that first sentence – even that first paragraph – can be, no matter what you’re writing. So much riding on a few words… After all, you want it to be good enough to draw in your potential readers, and no matter how great the rest of your work is, you don’t really want to muddle this part. Oh, the pressure… Continue reading “Three Things I Hate to Write”

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Bad Good Writing Habits Or The Writing Bubble

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My usually white and shiny kitchen cabinets are… shall we say, less than pristine. And apparently one or more spiders have moved in with me and building what looks like their version of a mansion in my bedroom. (Nope, that’s no leftover Halloween decoration, people…) And had it not been for this abnormally warm autumn, probably half of my plants would have met their demise, because cleaning them and their pots and bringing them inside required too much time. And let’s not even mention that fridge that could benefit from a thorough cleaning… and quite a few other things.

As I contemplate the aftermath of my latest writing project, I find myself almost regretting having finished my new book. And, no, it’s not that bittersweet feeling you get when you finally write “The End”, that relief mixed with regret. Continue reading “Bad Good Writing Habits Or The Writing Bubble”

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On ‘Thank You’s and Making Oneself Small (Part II)

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Part 1

Anger.

It was supposed to be shame, but I jumped straight to anger.

Men old enough to be my father or grandfather turned their heads after me on the street and if someone noticed it, I was the one expected to feel shame. Instead I was angry and didn’t bother to hide it.

My best friend wouldn’t speak to me for days because I weighed slightly less than she did. Meanwhile, all I could think of was that unlike mine, her body was perfect – after all, I wasn’t supposed to notice if I was pretty. Continue reading “On ‘Thank You’s and Making Oneself Small (Part II)”

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On ‘Thank You’s and Making Oneself Small

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“You look beautiful,” she stated matter-of-factly.

There must have been something about the way she said it, because I wasn’t sure how to react.

“Thank you,” I smiled almost coyly, which wasn’t really like me. I was about to pay her a compliment too when she cut me off abruptly.

“What are you thanking me for?”

What the hell… was she serious? Continue reading “On ‘Thank You’s and Making Oneself Small”

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What Is Dragonfly?

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I used to look at old photos of her and think, “Wow, she was so pretty when she was a teenager…” I was looking with the envious eyes of a child who had yet to look in the mirror and perceive herself as pretty.

Her sister – my mother – was pretty too, I thought to myself… but a different kind of pretty, the cold and unapproachable sort, with sculpted features and a ballerina’s body. She, however, simply looked beautiful… warm, friendly, kind, with a glimmer of mystery in those blue eyes. If somebody asked me what I wanted to look like when I grew up, I would have probably said, just like her. Continue reading “What Is Dragonfly?”

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This Is How We Grow

Painful as it may be, we need to share our stories and experience. This is how we grow.

This is how we help others grow.

We let them in… We endeavour to see past the walls of appearance everybody puts up, for some reason or another… and we learn… and we teach… because this is such a big part of how perspective is shaped.

Where am I going with all of these somewhat cliché statements? Well… an idea is at the base of any project; but this day and age, it’s often an email that gets it rolling. And sometimes we’re taken by surprise, both by the idea and by the end result.

This Is How We Grow was such a project for me. Yvette Prior’s flattering invitation to be one of the writers putting together a book on growth and perspective shaping came at an interesting time… the right time, as it turned out. I’ve said it before and I’m fairly sure I’ll say it again in the future – timing is crucial when it comes to sharing certain stories.

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So here I am, trying to find the right words to describe this project of ours. Apparently, writing my chapter was the easy part. Talking about it and the book containing it seems to be more of a challenge.

Several authors from various countries, with very different social and cultural backgrounds were brought together by the contributing editor, hoping that sharing their stories, under one form or another, might prove beneficial to their potential readers. Diverse voices with different styles share – both in verse and prose – about difficult moments, personal experience, lessons learned, as well as the social context that may have influenced the course of events.

The point – as far as I’m concerned – is to let people know they are not alone, but also to open them up to the possibility of a different point of view as an enriching new perspective. Understanding the mechanisms behind a person’s choices and behaviour is far more difficult than simply judging and labelling.

Personally, I’ve experienced this book both as a writer and a reader, and I was humbled, uplifted, charmed and even in awe of what the authors shared (I had no idea what the others were contributing). I had the “been there” moments, as well as the “wow… that’s so different from anything I’ve experienced” and the “I don’t think I could have handled that” ones.

My own chapter, Dragonfly, is about my aunt and her life-long struggles, trying to depict her from a variety of perspectives – the daughter, the mother, the sister, the wife, the aunt… the woman. I may or may not agree with her choices, but I have grown to understand them, to see the pain and pressure behind her actions, her addiction, her judgemental as well as her supportive ways. But I will share more in a future post.

Before I leave you with a couple of useful links in case you want to know more about the book, I’ll add one final consideration. Give other people’s stories a chance, listen to them, accept them, because you never know how they may change your life.

Check out Yvette Prior’s introductory post if you want to find out more about This Is How We Grow. You can purchase your own copy on Amazon.

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