A little hibernation

Hello friends,

I've been missing you! And I've been enjoying some quiet time offline. If you follow me on Instagram, you've had a peak at my adventures in Hawaii. I'll share more about that here in the coming days perhaps, but for now I wanted to say that I'll be back soon. I'm taking this month--the first month of the new year, which also happens to be my birthday month, to dwell and reflect and hibernate a bit.

xo / Christina

Holding quiet in my heart

I have so much to say. And yet so little. Words don't measure up. They take flight, like birds lifting off a wire; the score of their song like a smudge of ink, a blur of notes across the treble clef of lines.   Here is what I know: I was deeply, personally affected by the tragedy in Sandy Hook. I was affected in ways I can hardly put words around. As I heard the news, I was there, body memory replaying detail (look back through the archives; it's all there). And also: I interviewed at Sandy Hook the year I graduated from college. It was my first job offer in fact, though I passed it up, eager to work in a charter school with inner city kids. Still, I remember the art on the walls. The freckled face of a red-headed boy; the blonde pigtails of a small girl.

And then I found that one of my friends (one of the first of my friends to have children after I did) lost her nephew in the tragedy. A chubby, bright-faced boy with a smile so infectious I'd catch myself often grinning back at him, in the photos she would post on Facebook, of her son and his cousin: arm wrestling, jumping in the pool, tucking in to candy on Easter, or sitting together on the back stoop.

It's been so personal, so utterly heartbreaking, that I've been unable to gather words in any adequate way. I've been moved by so many posts flitting around the Internt. And I have so much compassion, and so much simultaneous rage. Mental health. Hours of brutal video games. Gun control. There are dots, like terrible constellations to connect.

I saw first hand the way the system fails: the way the boys (and sometimes the girls too) who need the most help, are almost always met with isolation and medication and discipline that is reactive and restrictive instead of healing and supportive. Families fragment. Things fall apart. The center doesn't hold.

Here we are.

+++

I am breathing. I am looking out at the rain soaked grass and letting the raindrops and the grass blades and the dozens of wind-tossed birds be my prayer. I am letting my prayer be the familiarity of ordinary things, and the way these things reclaim us, every one: pulling on socks, fart jokes, the dishes, sticky lollypops. The prayer of ordinary things. That is what I am holding in the quiet of my heart for the families who lost their loved ones; their children, their sweet babes, their mentors, teachers, friends, lovers, daughters, wives.

+++

I've been gathering this quiet, and holding it, while trying to still hold close my commitment to self care: to cultivating habits that hold, even when things fall apart.

I've been running daily, and writing morning pages scribbled in script with a ball point pen.

On Self Care and Reclaiming Creative Habits

Oh hello there... I'm sorry I've been so incommunicado of late.

It's just... it's gradually hitting me: how cumulatively exhausted I am after finishing my book, and finishing graduate school, and starting my new job, all in the span of ten months or so. Followed by juggling new schedules, and preK for Sprout, and long daily commutes, and book promotion stuff (which while totally wonderful, has also been completely draining.)   {{ In case you missed it, this week I was featured on Balancing the Tide. And on Lesley Riley's Art & Soul Radio Show. }}

  And so, the year winds down, I've been feeling compelled to really listen to the whispers at the back of my heart that are telling me to explore what self care means.

And what I'm learning is that while I know how to put myself first--career and work-wise, I'm not nearly so good at at putting my soul first... and what my soul and body crave isn't always in line what my mind pushes for, compelled by self-discipline and productivity inspired momentum.

What I'm learning is that I'm not so great at saying no. Or disappointing. Or redrawing boundaries to give space for the tender, soft, quiet parts of my soul to flourish again.

So I've been trying to do a little bit of that over the past handful of days. I've been...

- unsubscribing from e-newsletters - deleting rss feeds I no longer follow or find joy in - tying up loose ends and threads for various projects - dancing in the kitchen with T. - saying no more that I'm saying yes - Going to bed earlier and trying consistently to get more sleep - spending a lot of time giggling on the couch with my boys - relishing the little rituals that preparing for the holidays offer

I've also been focusing on returning to the two things I know always balance me: Running and morning pages. Waking up early and bleary eyed, and curling in a robe in the big white chair in my studio as the sky turns to pink. I'm still not in the habit of either, but already things feel closer to balance.

I'm curious: how do you nurture yourself when your reserves are over-drawn?

A glimpse at right now:

 

California was rain. At turns soft and steady and other times torrential, filling the concave places curbside with wide lakes the color of coffee, to be splashed at unsuspecting passer-by as cars churned passed.California was palm trees and bougainvilleas and trumpet flowers and a wild abundance of deciduous trees still with golden leaves even in early December, the sidewalks strewn with flecks of yellow like so many fallen stars. It was a trip on the tail-end of the stomach flu; it was dizziness at the airports and sleeping in uncomfortable positions on the plane, and all of it was worth it to see my dearest friends with new babies, and to do a reading in a beautiful loft, celebrating my book with the people who knew me when I was who I was then: a California girl, back in high school, with windy hair and a crooked-toothed smile.   I hadn't seen some of them in 16 years, but seeing them again felt familiar in the way riding a bike is familiar after not riding for years. You just know. You remember. There is body memory to the hugs; and a timber and depth to the laughter. It was the first time, really, that I felt myself reveling, a little bit, in the accomplishment of writing a book. It was a lovely way to wind the season down: seeing my book in the hands of friends and loved ones.   And now I'm back, with rain here too at the end of this dirt road. The warmest winter we've had here in my memory; the ground still soft and the air sweet with decomposing leaves and ozone as the wind blows in and the clouds lift, revealing the cerulean bowl above. In the morning, the boys run down the hall to find what the Advent Fairy has brought. She slips into our house on fairy wings, bringing special notes and tiny gifts; and after dinner the boys write loving notes to her: Bean, with uneven printing and phonetically spelling and a zillion questions about her wings and adventures and magical names; and Sprout, who has just learned to write the letters of his name, practices them gleefully on snippets of colored construction paper that he carefully cuts.   There are just a handful of days really; two weeks exactly before we slip away again for a holiday adventure as a family. And between now and then a hundred things, the least of which is laundry--though it's taking over our lives. I can't remember the last time it was all folded and put away; still every night we have dinner together and over shrimp tacos with lime and mango, T and I laugh and listen and map our future--here, and then somewhere beyond here--and then the laundry doesn't really matter at all. Instead what matters is going to bed early, the warm coffee-colored fur of the dog against my hand, silverware standing like soldiers in tidy rows in the dishwasher to be cleaned, and plotting creative collaborations with friends. Here's a peak at some new work. Nothing makes me happier lately than having a brush in my hand.   How have you been? What does this time of year look like for you?

All kinds of fun & crazy

The past four days have been wild, in that snow-flurry, family-intensive way that only Thanksgiving vacation can produce. Pomegranate seeds in salad. Cousins chasing each other around the house. Fooseball between brothers. Red wine. Sleeping late. Snow flurries. A fractured foot. And vomit.

See how I snuck those in at the end?

That part goes something like this: The day before Thanksgiving Bean wound up at the hospital for x-rays. The night before in a moment of pure giddy flail he'd leaped (and fallen) over the space heater in his bedroom ("I should have listened to you, Mommy" he said with regret later) and still wincing and hopping about in the morning T brought him to the doctor's while I was at work. Of course, Sprout went along too, and the three of them spent much of their day in one waiting room or another while Bean was x-rayed and fitted for a boot/brase with the prognoses of a "buckle fracture." And then... wait for it... just as T was leaving the hospital, Sprout suddenly declared his stomach hurt, and then proved it, in a vibrant display in the parking lot.

Determined to get the ingredients he'd set out to get for the stuffing he was on the line to bring for Thanksgiving dinner the next day, he hauled both boys into town, arriving an hour before I usually leave work with two ashen boys and a very fragrant car. Needless to say, I left work early and drove them home, and we spent the rest of the night on the couch, Sprout clutching a bowl, and Bean muttering about his foot, while I read to both of them.

Thanksgiving day we awoke to milky sunlight, having slept late, and to the sounds of two very chipper boys playing contentedly in their room. Neither seemed the worse for the wear and Thanksgiving day passed serenely with all the usual delights of family and feasting. Friday was a blur. We cut a tree that recently fell across our driveway. We had dinner at the inlaws. There was even a nap. And then Saturday brought round two of vomit, that occured shortly after the most acrobatic lunch of the weekend, with inlaws and twin nephews at a noodle house. Roadside noodles for Bean. Sigh.

Sunday Bean was bright-eyed and bushy tailed as is his usual manner, and both boys painted for a while in my studio, where I holed up for most of the day--painting four canvases all told, and making this video for the Squam Art Workshops blog--which is the most fun I've ever had doing an interview with someone remotely.

Sunday was also the day my dear friend Jessica had her baby boy--and that news set me to wondering (at the fact that when Jessica has an an almost 8 year old, like my Bean is now, I'll have an ALMOST 16 YEAR OLD, and holy moly, that is pure craziness) and also to remembering the birth stories of both my boys.

I am exited beyond words to be heading out to California this weekend see her, and Willow and, fingers crossed, a stop at Teahouse and a peak at my gorgeous Pacific ocean too. Oh California. I'll never stop loving you.

So, there you have it. The most rambling of updates. It's been far too long. I keep waiting for the perfect opportunity to slip back in and get all caught up, but the perfect opportunity is never, and so here you are. Rambling. Update.

How was your Thanksgiving? What are you looking forward to this December?

Caption this photo:

An outtake for a super awesome + secret photo project from the weekend. Best caption wins... the right to ask me 5 questions.

Read, set, go!

What love looks like today

  We've known eachother since we were 21.   I still remember how shortly after we started dating we agreed that we were each allowed to cull a few "deal breaker" items from each other's closet. He insisted a pair of my very awkward and proper pointy-toed lace-up shoes needed to go; and I swore that if he ever wore the glasses with frames that went below his cheekbones again, I'd have to break up with him.   Still, we were complete dorks. I wore sneakers all the time, and sweatshirts that were perpetually 3 sizes too big. He wore khaki pants with pleats and suspenders. We both wore a lot of spandex (mountain and road riding.)   Once he grew a goatee at my request (don't ask.) Then I accidentally dyed my hair carrot red the weekend he proposed. We were both still baby-faced: whatever all-nighters we pulled they didn't amount to anything near the cumulative tired that would come with little ones, marking our eyes with raccoon rings and crows feet.   The years in between then and now have flown by in a blur, and many of them are recorded here in the archives. How we moved here with a 6 month old. How we made our own rituals. The way we fought. The way we laughed. How we adored watching our first kid discover his world. Buying our house here and gutting it. Creating this home from scratch. Navigating depression. Being tossed headlong into financial uncertainty. Finding out I was pregnant. Having our second baby. Quitting. Starting. A book. Graduate school. A new job. Graduating. Another new job. Finding purpose. Co-piloting. Always becoming.   And now here we are on the other side of those pell-mell early years suddenly, with kids big enough now to leave behind for long enough to reclaim the spark and delight that caused us to flirt, and say yes, and make babies in the first place. Mmm-hmmm.   New Orleans was exactly that. Sun drenched, with enough time for a nap on Friday, and then music and shrimp and grits, and daiquiris after running (because that's the recovery drink of champions, right?) and lots of laughing and hand holding and ducking into doorways and kissing and people watching and all that good stuff that happens when the "Do Not Disturb" sign goes up and doesn't come down until 11AM the next day. Mmmm. Yes.   Then of course, there was the flight back--three legs in all that took us to Minnesota and then Illinois. But still, even that was fun, sitting in cramped seats side by side and talking and talking like we'd just met. If having kids does anything to people who are in love, it makes them appreciate what a boon uninterrupted hours are--because on an average day around here to finish a sentence feels miraculous, let alone to have a conversation about poetry and possibility. Several uninterrupted hours? Amazing. And so worth it. Even though reality hit the minute we touched down in Vermont, and all the work we'd left behind had apparently mated and produced more work.   Since autumn this has been our commitment--to ourselves and each other. To nourish, to sustain, and to rediscover.   Tell me, how do you nourish your relationship with the one you love?

Uneven tempo

It was magical to be away, and upon return everything collides: parent-teacher conferences, busy schedules, and everyone in the house sick with one form or another of a nasty virus that's been going around. Now, trying to catch up. That's what vacation always does for me, like the few seconds of pause between fast-tempoed songs on an album. I'm looking forward to the weekend. To sharing about New Orleans, to getting artwork ready for my studio sale, and to making a bonfire. Right now though, I still need to make it through today and tomorrow.

Music always helps, and I'm dying for some new tunes.

What are you loving right now?

Off on an adventure + some inspiration for the weekend:

  T and I are off on another adventure this weekend. Actually, T has been away all week on a business trip, and I'm slipping off to join him in New Orleans--a city neither of us has ever been to. There will be a pool, and a verandah (I've always loved that word) and enough shrimp and grits and jazz to fill both belly and soul. I'm so excited.

While I'm away, here's a little inspiration for your weekend:

With the weather suddenly growing cold, I want to make these Instant Wristies. Plus, if you don't know Maya's beautiful little corner of the blogosphere, spend some time there. It's lovely.   This project is brilliant. I can't wait to get my copy.   These thought-provoking questions about motherhood and art.   This series of mama and baby (self) portraits by the incredibly talented photographer Nirrimi.   This post from my blog archives: "On Motherhood and Messes, Creative Process and Apple Pie"   And this post from Marthe: "Scenes From a Life: When Nothing Is Certain, Everything Is Possible"   Also, this is so smart and silly, I actually want one.

xoxo, Christina

PS: I'll be posting heaps of photos on Instagram.

A Field Guide To Now: What this book is about

It's a crazy, amazing, surreal thing: to hold your first book in your hands, the book you've spent months writing, and say simply, this is a book about ______________. In this case that fill-in-the blank can be filled with so many things: wonder, heartache, sweetness, jammy little-boy hands, longing, painting, making messes, spilling open, laughter, learning to fly, navigating uncertainty, nurturing a creative practice, growing big within small moments, finding solace, baking bread, living intentionally, and praising the simple utter glory of each singular day.

But simply, truly, I wrote this book you.

Yes you.   It's for...   Anyone who is hungry to be an apprentice to their own abundant life.   Creative, adventurous souls who know the simultaneous tug of wanderlust, and the desire to put down roots and claim a place as home.   Anyone with the desire to discover or reclaim your creative pulse — amidst the overwhelm and distractions and responsibilities in their daily life.   Mamas (and dads) who want to re-locate themselves beyond the boundaries of perpetual giving and neediness and messes and wonderment that raising young children demand.   Anyone with a dream of a creative project or bold undertaking (this book is proof: it's possible.)

* * *

And as we head into the holiday season that is inevitably filled with busyness and rushing about, family and friends, days filled to the brim with making and doing, I hope this book can be a gift for you: of rest and wonder, and also a guide book of sorts, for being in the small ordinary moments, documenting them, and discovering yourself through them anew.

The smallest big things + A Giveaway!

  I keep circling back to this: Every day I need to write, to paint, to read, to share. Yet every day there are innumerable other things that fill the hours: building lego cars after dinner with Sprout, reading long chapters from my favorite classics to Bean, bedtime snuggles, morning time bustle, the day awash with movement and doing.

Navigating motherhood and creativity is something that I'm always trying to do, and today I'm excited to share Renee Touga's e-book, Nurturing Creativity: A Guide For Busy Moms, that will prompt, and motivate, and inspire you to make the most of your busy moments with little ones.

Renee has generously offered me 2 copies of Nurturing Creativity: A Guide For Busy Moms, to give away to my readers!

Leave a comment to enter, and I'll pick the winner's at random tonight. Enjoy!

xoxo, Christina

UPDATED: And the winners are: Emily and Sandy!

Soon and now

Soon. I keep saying that word. I like the way it rhymes with moon, the way it has a a softness in the middle--that holds the milky belly of a promise of time to come. Soon, like a an elastic band: the hope of it expanding and contracting with each passing day, the target always moving. Soon, like pebbles look under water: the way they appear closer from the surface, than they do from beneath it. Soon snow. Soon lovemaking. Soon holidays. Soon sudden laughter. Soon time off. Soon air travel. Soon the streets of unfamiliar cities. Soon a feeling finishing. Soon starting other things. Soon running. Soon paint. Soon night.

It's a word that belies the present. It's a word that moves like a mirage. It's a word that's full of home. It's a word that makes the skeletons and sweet bread of dreams.

I'm here, at the cusp of soon now, feeling how that word is an excuse, a target, an arrow, a pair of wings.

* * *

  You tell me: Soon __________________________________________________. What?  

Studio Update: A Field Guide To Now Blog Tour

One of the best things about having made a book to share with the world, is that it has connected, or reconnected me some incredibly wonderful kindred creatives. It's made me feel lucky and grateful beyond words to have their support, grace, and insight. I hope you'll enjoy exploring their sites and worlds as much as I do:

A few posts you might have missed last week:

The Habit of Being

Tara Bradford

The Long Meander

And many coming up guest posts, reviews + giveaways*:

Renee Tougas at Fun In My Back Yard :: November 7th

Amy Bowers at Mama Scout :: November 7th

Michelle at A Way Of Being :: November 8th

Anna + Ian at Life On The Green Line :: November 12th

Meghan Davidson at Life Refocused :: November 13th Jessica Brogan at In Search Of Dessert :: November 14th

Veronica Armstrong :: November 15th

Art & Soul Radio with Lesley Reily :: December 4th   *Many others to come as well!

Also, this is a must read:
"How To Support The Work Of Someone You Respect" by Dan Blank

How it is:

The Decision

There is a moment before a shape hardens, a color sets. Before the fixative heat of kiln. The letter might still be taken from the mailbox. The hand held back by the elbow, the word kept between the larynx pulse and the amplifying drum-skin of the room's air. The thorax of an ant is not as narrow. The green coat on old copper weighs more. Yet something slips through it-- looks around, sets out in the new direction, for other lands. Not into exile, not into hope. Simply changed. As a sandy track-rut changes when called a Silk Road: it cannot be after turned back from.

-- Jane Hirshfield

A Studio Update: Guest Posts + A Soonish Art Tag Sale

I'm guest posting over at Maven Circle today ~ about self image, and that terrain between being and doing. It felt so good to have the creative constraints of a topic to write to, and to explore something that feels very fresh and true to where I'm at right now. I hope you go take a peak.

Also, I wanted to give you a quick heads up in case you've missed a few other recent guest posts and reviews about Field Guide To Now:   An Interview With Thea Coughlin   A Warrior Woman Interview on Forest Of Stories   A review over at Scoutie Girl   Many more glimpses, guest posts and giveaways to come super soon!

Also stay tuned for my second ever Studio Tag Sale. It's happening. Very soonish. Be among the first to know when it goes live--and get other goodness and inspiration by subscribing to my newsletter (on my sidebar for those of you who are reading via RSS.)

xoxo, Christina

Almost enough

Almost enough time to recalibrate. Almost enough time to remember who I am when I feel like I am enough. When the hours stop racing. When wet leaves become amber gems under foot and umbrellas become hideouts for kisses. Almost enough time, across the boarder and far up north, falling asleep on hotel pillows with French vowels in my mouth.

Almost enough to catch my breath, remember what it feels like to be carefree. Almost. Still. I wish it could have been longer. I wish there were days, back to back. A week, maybe. Time slowing to honey.

Instead, it was brief and golden, and then back to the pell-mell of too-full days.

It's that time of year, when I'm wishing for extra hours. When I'm feeling the way that as the days grow darker earlier, and the time veritably speeds up; the hours become more compressed and even more things call for my attention.   * * * Do you feel that with the season's shift? The way the rush hits? The way there suddenly is so much to do before the year ends? It feels somehow unnatural doesn't it? This pace. It goes against every fiber and sinew of being, to rush as the world prepares for the stillness of a gathering winter.

On the cusp of a new month, I want to find a different syncopation; a truer tempo between stillness and motion. I'd also like to show up here daily, even just with photos, as evidence: of being enough. And of the moments. One after the next. Golden. Passing.

A reminder:

Whatever you decide will be the right choice.

Whatever path you choose will be another beginning.

Another opportunity to offer something wild and truthful and fragile to the world.

-- From A Field Guide To Now

A few highlights from the weekend

Roasted potatoes + eggs in the bonfire. Wine in mason jars and wood smoke. Falling in love all over again. Mowing the fields in preparation for winter. Slow dancing in the kitchen with my littlest held in my arms. Nearly finishing a new tree fort for the boys. Reading poems before bed together aloud.   How was your weekend?

Today, like any other day

Today is like any other day: a hurdy-gurdy collision of who we are and who we want to be. Two boys, not enough sleep, too many things on the to-do list. The same ordinary fears and falterings and hurdles that always find me, find me still.

And yet, I have this inexplicable gratitude: That I am alive. That this body moves. That each morning when I wake up I find one or two emails in my inbox from complete strangers telling me that my book has made a difference in their lives.

For the way T wakes up, and after showering finds my feet and rubs them, one and then the other, while I'm still trailing dreams.

For good espresso and the way the leaves have been a display of splendor: every shade of vermillion, every hue of gold. For running with T at lunchtime. Three miles next to the blue, blue lake.

For seeing my dear friend, even for only a handful of moments, her new hair cut slanting bangs and layers across her gorgeous cheekbones.

That my boys run to me when I get home. That first one, and then the other clamber into my arms, covering my cheeks with kisses. For the way we all gather around the kitchen counter then; T making curry and chicken, and me kneading and frying chapattis with Sprout, while Bean flips through the latest issue of a food magazine, pointing out recipes and reading the titles of things he's curious about or wants to make.

For reading Secret Garden with Bean at bedtime, which is, hands down my favorite book from when I was a kid.

For the way the air smells under the nighttime stars; like snow soon, and decomposing leaves and woodsmoke. And for the way T's skin feels, warm and salty and supple beside me as I crawl into bed for the night.

A day, this one, in it's entirety: a handful of moments.

What holds your attention? What small things overtake you with the feeling of gratitude? (I love to read your lists!)

Grow your wonder

It’s easy to forget, with all the potential of our complex technologies and science how little we actually really know. It’s easy to grow complacent with google at our finger tips, data always at the ready, answers as cheap and fast as rain. It’s easy to forget about wonder, and how it dwells in us as a vital force. Yet to wonder is to explore the anatomy of creativity.

To wonder, is to remember your smallness among the universe of things: galaxies and breath and sudden dying stars, first chances, and last encounters; and to take note of the minutia that matters--an individual flick of the wrist; the subtlety of gesture, the complexity of synapses, the nuances of code, or laughter, or pronunciation. And beneath that to ask: what is your heart saying when you listen?


To wonder is to look up into the night sky, or at the Fibonacci spiral unfolding in the petals of a flower, and be filled with utter awe. Wonder is why children are profusely, almost unstoppably creative. They imagine everything is possible, and bow down before that possibility with their imagination in their palms as an offering.

When was the last time you were overcome with wonder?