The Expansiveness of Love

The layers that unfold when we allow them to may be the most beautiful thing about being human

I have been pretty quiet for a few weeks. It hasn’t been intentional. Life has been full in the best and hardest ways I have experienced in a while. Like the shifting weather that comes in extremes, from the 60s with sunshine to the 20s with whipping winds, I have felt the same in life the last few weeks.

In the last few weeks, I tied up my permaculture course (the first of a few), and though my books still have bookmarks showing me where I still have reading to complete, the pressure of learning it all and completing coursework subsided. I felt immense joy in seeing myself complete this, watching my knowledge grow and connect new things, and finding my true space I am meant to exist or move into at this point in my life. Evolution in all its forms has been felt.

In those weeks, though, I felt I saw love in new ways as I learned about permaculture. The way it showed me what it means to love the land, tend to it, and how when we do, everything grows (us included). I saw the way everything is so intricately designed to lend to reciprocation, growth, healing, and, most of all, connection. Our world can feel all the opposite of those words, but while studying Permaculture, I have learned that this is only a perception, not truth. I have felt this expansion of understanding life, love, and what it is to build connections with not just the land but ourselves and the community in new ways. A lesson and gift I didn’t plan to see or feel from readings about the way our climate is changing or the connection between a walnut tree and other plants around them, for instance. A love song exists in the very soil we wander over and call home, and though I knew that, I see it in the patterns, invisible lines between one thing and another, and the way we play a part in it all if we decide to do so. In fact much of what I saw and felt helped me see there is a larger ecosystem to the climate crisis we may be missing.

The work and readings have intensely filled my mind over the last few weeks, allowing me to explore and grow my vision of life, which I think I am only beginning to understand.

Along the way I started all the nitty gritty of Perma Studio and started the journey of officially working with clients for our first year of business. Though my visions are large for what Perma can do in our community, I have been extremely proud of how I am approaching this new business so mindfully and confidently. Something I have struggled with in the past. I always found ways to keep myself small in business and my work, but with Perma, there is something different in me that I haven’t had before. For that, I count myself as a joy in this process. I found that in all the ways I have dug into myself over the last year, there is a newfound confidence and acceptance of myself that I didn’t have before in my life.

But in all the highs and joys, or what I could equate to the warm days watching the trees begin to pop buds, I have also felt the depths of what love can manifest into, and that is deep and utter grief and mourning, too.

The last photo with my girl. Letting her go was both the hardest thing and what I knew to be the right thing.

This week, we made the hardest decision to let our golden girl, Nellie, pass over the bridge to her next chapter. I don’t think there is ever a right time. You either feel you let go too soon or too late, and either way, neither feel like you are ready, even if they clearly are. It’s immense in every sense of the word. Both the love you feel for them, the pain you have with letting them go, and what it is to watch their spirit leave them with their last breaths. I don’t suspect that the grief we feel will ever fully leave us. She was a chapter of life from the day Mike and I got engaged to every move and every celebration to every low point in our life. She was the constant, and that isn’t something you just move past. I believe the moment we felt her slip away in our arms will hold as one very deep moment in my life.

What I know, though, is that sweet soul of her’s taught us love in the most unconditional and beautiful form I can imagine. She was a companion in every definition of that word. The solid ground in our day-to-day life and home. She was all of it. She taught me that to love deeply also means to feel deep pain and how worth it is. Knowing that depth of love and connection is worth the risk of feeling the pain it brings when lost, too. I know that in time, the hole she is left will be sealed with gold, just as is the practice in Japan when a pot breaks. Not trying to eliminate the mark of change or shattering, but celebrating it for who it has detailed us as. I continue to find memories that surface and will for a long time I believe or maybe forever. Each one marked a little more filling of the wound of losing her. I don’t hope to forget it. It’s quite the opposite. She opened my heart in a way I want to feel and know because it has allowed me to see a new level of love and how it is a deep, beautiful, and endless well of being human. I want to remember how she showed us the edges of love in new ways.

In all the loss of her, we have also been slowly losing our hens to a predator, which we haven’t nailed down, but it is just a layer on it all. Lots of losses and handling of the ending of one cycle and the leading to another in the process.

If I reflect on winter in all the above ways and the other interpersonal experiences of the last few months, I only see that I have found new depths of what it is to love. Whether it be in friendships or close relationships, every where I look this winter, I am finding love as a theme, but not just in the romantic sense of the word. I have found myself exploring it in writing and connecting to the natural world as I see the interconnections and ways nature offers us dialogue for it. Love is a word that I think in modern English sits either in a lightly weighted term or an extremely heavy one, but this winter, I have seen the space between that goes horizontal and vertical, too.

I have found that we can deeply care for and love something or someone in so many ways. I have found that we need many things as we go through the process of healing our hearts. I have noted that the understanding of love expands as we heal and that the space we open in our healing allows us to connect new dots or have space to even find the lines between one thing and another.

I am thankful for a winter like that. I am thankful for all the ways the losses have taught me what it is to grieve, and it’s a sign of true and deep love and connection. I am thankful for the ways nature is our greatest teacher of what it is to love. Most of all, though, I am thankful for the growth, even if, at times, it is painful. To love deeply is a risk. Allowing someone to hold a part of you is scary, but it also gives the greatest reward: to be seen, held, and connected with. The things we long for usually offer the greatest emotional risk, but I believe more than ever that risk is where being fully part of the human experience lies.

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5 Ways to Prep for Spring

As we begin a new season, shifting our mindset is important. We can start to think of renewal, growth, and where we plan for it to go. I wanted to share some things I am thinking about as I write the final words of winter in my book and begin to open up what spring has in store now:

1. Reflect on what winter gave you:
   Winter has a way of restoring us or leaving us with many lessons. I like to reflect on the lessons I learned, what was lost, what was gained, and who I am on the other side that will carry me into the new season.

2. Set a mindset of new growth:

   No matter where you are in life, spring brings the opportunity for new growth and renewal of self. Thinking of ways you may feel that not as a goal but mindset to carry into the coming months will be what can build a current to carry you into the life ahead.

3. Identify where you are beginning this season:
   Who are you as you begin the chapter of this new season? What are you aching for? What are you desiring? How will you meet those needs or let them go if you believe they aren’t serving you?

4. What do you hope spring will hold for you?
   I am not a goal person anymore in my life, but I do like thinking about what I hope for in a season. This may happen or it may not, but I usually begin small like I hope to feel more of this in life or I hope to be gentler in this way.

5. Finally, reflect on what you don’t want to carry along with you anymore:
   Particularly in a season of growth, it is incredibly important to ask what you have on your shoulders that isn’t working anymore. What needs trimming to allow space for something new to grow? This is important in every season, mostly from winter to spring.

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What has brought me joy lately

In all the heaviness of the last few weeks, I wanted to share some things I have been loving the last few weeks and thinking about:

• Gilmore Girls: I know this one may be silly, but whenever I feel like my brain is heavy with a lot of thoughts and I need a break, this show somehow brings is the perfect thing to watch and enjoy. I love it, and it somehow never gets old. I enjoy the banter and whit. The writing is great, too. So, if you want something to enjoy that is light and funny, this is it…the old classic.

• My Spring 2024 Playlist: I make a playlist every season, so here is your quarterly one to enjoy. You can check my Spotify for more playlists.

• Julius Roberts’ Cookbook: I recently got this from a friend and if you don’t know about Julius, well you will want to. He is a London chef who moved to a farm to connect with the land. His cookbook celebrates the seasons, eating simply, and brings in immense knowledge about flavors etc.

• Natural Playgrounds: I dream of someday building and designing a natural playground in our community. I hate how much plastic, etc., is used in playgrounds. There is so many amazing things around that could be structured into a playground, particularly in a community like our’s I am surprised there isn’t one already.

• Growing things: Yeah the time is approaching. I held off starting seeds before I leave on my trip but you can bet I will be full on when I return. I actually cannot wait to get back to the projects upon our return from England (more on that below) but for now resting and letting my heart live in another world.

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I leave tomorrow for England. I will be there for 3 weeks. I will use this space to detail and track images, places we go, and more while away. These will be free posts, and I will share writings that come about as paid member things. I don’t plan to share on Instagram because I want to take a break from it and not document travel there exactly. When I do that, it feels too closely tied to how I used to work years ago. I want to share my travels intentionally; this feels like a better space.

We will be going to Surrey/London and spending a week in Cornwall and Devon/Somerset, and I cannot wait to share all the gardens and places we plan to see. I know it will be a balm for our souls after such a loss this winter. We are ready for a little shift of scene and taking time for our hearts to relax and heal before I kick into a lot of fun and exciting work this spring and summer.

I will be sharing the Spring stuff with members upon my return. I expected to complete it before I left, but after losing our pup and trying to make this decision, I did not have the space I needed to do it. I apologize, but life hit hard before I could get to it, and I know you all understand.

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I haven’t written a lot lately, but you can see some posts on the homepage if you want to dig into some things:

• How to Pay Attention This Week - Endings as Beginnings - This one feels very true right now

• The Radical Act of Rest - I wrote this a few weeks back but it all still holds very true.

• The Ecosystem of the Climate Crisis - A concept I concocted while in my class in the final weeks

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