by Sara Barry | Mar 18, 2015 | spring, writing
I love letters. I have a big box of them in my attic from my parents and grandparents, sisters and friends.
I remember the excitement of finding a personally addressed envelope in my mailbox at college and the joy of finding one in the perpetually locked mailbox at my apartment in Italy where we had to fish them out with a wire coat hanger. They came in thin red and blue edged air mail envelopes and business sized envelopes and homemade envelopes folded from magazine pages.
I don’t get many letters these days. I don’t write that many either. But recently, I’ve been reading letters for research, and it reminded me how much I love letters, how different they are from Facebook posts or even usually email. So I wrote a letter about the weather and memories and what I’m reading and dreams.
I wrote to a friend who shared some writing with me last fall during my Abundance retreat. I love what I learned about the texture of her days from that shared writing. I want to know and share that texture.
I want to know how you feel when you look at your brand new baby or at your big one who’s starting to drive. I want to know what the piles of snow (or the flowers starting to bloom) look like outside your window. I want to know I’m not alone (you aren’t either).
I want to swap the old stories and remember who we were (are we still those people?). I want to share new ones and see who we are now and what our lives look like—not the holiday card round up, but the day to day life.
As I wrote my letter, the sky was winter white. When I went out, I was excited to wear shoes instead of boots and surprised that I didn’t need a coat. As I drove home, though, snow spit and swirled. It’s a confused time of year.
That energy I talked about last week is flowing, but sometimes I can’t figure out the direction. But tonight for a moment, I didn’t need a direction. For a moment
, both my girls snuggled in beside me, clean and in jammies, and I read to them from Farmer Boy, a book I read over and over all through my childhood. They were cranky, we were running late for bed, but for that moment we were still and shared that story.
Write a Letter. Share a piece of your story. Take few minutes to write a letter to a friend. Share something about your life, your day to day, your dreams.
What’s going on in your life today?
You don’t have to write me a letter, but share in comments a moment or detail that stuck with you today.
And if you love connecting through writing and are ready to capture more of your story—the day to day, the big stuff—I’d love to have you join me in April for the Grow retreat.
by Sara Barry | Mar 11, 2015 | spring
We’re not quite here yet. There’s still a lot of snow covering the snowdrops, but it’s slowly melting and retreating. We’ll see them soon (I hope).
We’re in that messy middle season between winter and spring, when boots are necessary but sometimes you can skip a coat (and sometimes you can’t skip a coat but you do out of hope). The ground is still deeply blanketed with snow, but around the edges mud and dead grass are revealed, a little more each day.
Water flows down the driveway as ice and snow yield to the sun. And finally, it seems, the sap is running. I started going to sugar shacks two weeks ago, lured by pancakes and tradition, and the need for something to look forward to. We’ve visited three sugar shacks already, though I knew they weren’t boiling yet and any steam billowing was mere water.
But this week, it seems the sap is running, and I can feel the energy changing around me—and in me. I’m shaking off the sluggishness of winter. My body tells me to get moving, get running again. Ideas are flowing in a rush, and I’m trying to keep up, trying to collect and boil them down to their sweet essence.
Do you feel that shift too? Is spring flowing in you?
What are you doing with your spring energy?
by Sara Barry | Mar 4, 2015 | winter
I’m tired of snow and ice and school delays. 
I love reminders that spring is coming, but when they come in the form of pictures of rhubarb unfurling and peach blossoms and pretty much anything green, I get a little jealous too.
My friend Sarah posted a picture of the pool. Outside. Where she was going swimming. Her friend commented on the smell of freshly mowed grass.
And I remembered a March when I went to California to visit my friend Heather and meet her new baby. I went for a long walk, pushing the baby in a stroller, so that Heather could mow the lawn. What I remember isn’t the smell of cut grass, but rosemary, big hedges of it warm in the sun. I remember flowers and green and sun on my face, but mostly the rosemary.
For years, rosemary was the smell of jealousy for me. My rosemary plants are small. They fit easily in a pot, and they never last the winter. Even if I get them through the cold months, they suddenly shrivel and wither right about this time of year. Come March, I remember those fragrant shrubs and want that—the green, the resiny smell, the warmth bringing it out.
I cut rosemary from my plant tonight (it’s still hanging in there for now). I chopped the rosemary and rolled a pork tenderloin dotted with garlic in it. I poured a mustard-apple juice glaze over it all and roasted it. The smell of rosemary filled the house.
I can still smell it on my hands, and I’m dreaming of sunshine and short sleeves.
We’re not there yet. It was warm enough to go out without a coat today, so there’s that, and while I don’t have anything in my garden, I’ve got these inside:
It’ll get me through, but I’m still a little jealous.
What are you jealous of these days?
by Sara Barry | Feb 25, 2015 | garden, winter, writing
It’s the time of year when temps in the 30s feel gentle and you walk out in just a fleece
and smile at the sun and your neighbors.
It’s the time of year when the dripdripdrip of icicles in the sun is a joyful song
when the seeds and cups of dirt on the table at preschool look like hope.
It’s the time of year when my garden looks like this:
And I dream of this:
and start saving milk jugs for this:
It’s the time of year when I reread The Long Winter
and get grateful for piles of wood and deliveries of oil to keep us warm instead of twisted hay to keep us from freezing to death
and for a well stocked fridge and freezer instead of rationed potatoes and hand-ground wheat.
It’s the time of year when even my kids are sick of snow
but they’ll still shriek and whoop their way down the sledding hill.
It’s the time of year when I look forward to eating lots of pancakes
and hope the sap will be running so that moist, sweet steam will fill the air while we eat.
It’s the time of year when everything seems barren,
but you hear the birds singing, loud and clear through the cold air.
It’s the time of year when you are almost in despair,
but you look out the window just before supper and notice that it’s still light.
It’s the time of year when the light and melting
the maple syrup and the seeds
and the dreams of green
get you through
as you wait for more sunshine,
more warm
and mud.
Your Turn
Write with Me:
I’ve used this prompt last summer. I’m not recycling because I’m lazy, but because I’ve been thinking about this time of year, because I’m ready for change and it looks so far off.
Whether you tried this one before or not, grab a pen and finish this sentence:
It’s the time of year when . . .
What are the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of this time of year? What’s happening in this season, in your life right now?
Share It:
In the comments, tell me about about this time of year where you are or add a link to your blog where you write about this time of year.
by Sara Barry | Feb 18, 2015 | noticing, Uncategorized, writing
This morning we had waffles with blueberry-maple syrup for breakfast, and even as I added more wood to the fire and looked out over the more than knee-deep snow, I remembered the bright sunshine on my back and the rhythmic work of this day. One of the reasons I love canning is pulling out a little summer in the dead-cold of winter. What canning captures in a jar, writing can capture on the page if we really connect to our senses and our experience.
To get that kind of detail on the page, we need to start by really paying attention in the moment.
Last night I was reading a mindfulness activity from this book. In this simple activity you ask kids to pretend they are Martians seeing something from Earth for the first time. Hand them a familiar object, and remind them that they have never seen it before. Ask them to look, touch, smell, listen, and taste and describe their experience.
The example uses raisins and kids taste them, feel them, even listen to them. They really notice them for the first time in their lives. Are there things you see, eat, hear every day without really noticing?
I could tell you I looked out over the white snow, and yesterday in the blinding sunlight it looked that way. It’s white mostly, but yellow where the dog peed and a little dingy and speckled where the snowblower flung it early this week. It’s scattered with debris from trees and footprints that become violet-gray hollows as the light shifts. But sometimes I need to stop, look close, forget “snow is white” to notice that.
It’s new to you
Try this mindfulness exercise yourself. You can use any object: raisins, your morning coffee, a dirty sock from the floor, a handful of snow. Imagine you’ve never seen it before.
Forget what you know or how you feel about this object, and simply observe it. After experiencing the the object fully and without judgment, write about it if you choose.
What did you notice?
I love letters. I have a big box of them in my attic from my parents and grandparents, sisters and friends.
, both my girls snuggled in beside me, clean and in jammies, and I read to them from Farmer Boy, a book I read over and over all through my childhood. They were cranky, we were running late for bed, but for that moment we were still and shared that story.
