by Kat | Apr 28, 2025 | General, Words
Greetings Fellow Word Guru’s!
I have written this post “earlier” (last week) as I am in Erie on vacation right now. April… our fourth month with our word and hopefully we are finding our feet firmly on the path with our word. Or, are you like me, struggling a bit this month? Either place is absolutely okay! If you’d like to share, you will find the link up at the bottom of this post!
Holding space is an act that is at once totally present and totally invisible… — Harrison Owen
There is a fine line for me about blogging… a duel between being real and crossing over to being too real.
And so the above quote fits my life perfectly this month as I am working through some health struggles I am struggling to stay present with myself and doing so “invisibly” for all intents and purposes.
And, sadly, it does not make for great blog fodder.
But one thing I found incredibly interesting was the idea of holding space for myself! I am sure I don’t need to tell you that most women are not good at doing this. We put ourselves last every day. Our focus is on everyone around us and if we have any time left, we might feel guilty about using it for ourselves.
FYI this tendency does not go away when your kids are grown and on their own! I am admitting here how uncomfortable it is to hold space for myself… to be focused on what is best for me first.
So, come along with me as I share with you my struggles with giving myself some extra space this month.
I decided after visiting the third doctor last month that I needed to take to heart their thoughts on slowing down. Pre-Frankie I spent a good bit of uninterrupted time most mornings practicing a “loose” meditation. Loose being the key component. I struggled with the eyes shut, focused on your breathing, being quiet kind of meditation. My meditation focused on writing some in my journal, reading some poetry… all with my eyes open and my focus was on what I was doing. Frankie has gotten a bit better about the length of time he can “be still” but me? Well, that is still a work in progress!
But I realized that in order to slow down, I needed to, you know, actually slow down. So I have been doing some focused, eyes closed, think about breaths in and breaths out meditation. Whew, even with a guided meditation those times during 7-10 minutes feel like an eternity! And I am not sure I am achieving a “zen-like” calm, but I am going to stay the course.
I also have “rewatched” the Suzan Colón’s medKNITation class several times. Suzan’s voice is the most soothing thing on the planet… I have also started reading her book, MedKNITation, slowly. I am doing some knitting while I allow her to direct my focus so I am doing something, but right now it feels a bit “calmer” that my struggle with other types of meditation.
Is this a “sudden” fix? No… or perhaps the better response is… not yet. But I am persevering… and giving myself the space to find comfort in the process.
I see the idea of holding space for myself to be an ongoing “project” for myself this year. I think this is the foundation of Yutori… “the conscious act of slowing down…” and I am going to keep at it until it feels natural.
Thanks for joining me today as we support each other as we work through our year! I will be back here next Monday, May 5th!
Header photo by Pixabay
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
by Kat | Apr 24, 2025 | General, Poetry
Greetings everyone and Happy Thursday!
Today is the last Thursday of National Poetry Month, sigh. It is truly my favorite month of the year and I so enjoy the influx of poetry that appears all over during the month!
Today we are all sharing a poem from a very prolific poet, Adrienne Rich, and I was fortunate that my library had a copy of her Collected Poems: 1950-2012… yes, sixty-two years of poetry! The book quickly filled up with “tags” on poems that resonated with me and I wondered how I had never read any of her poetry before Kym had suggested her to be our focus poet.
Despite dozens of poems I really loved, one poem kept calling to me… and I have read it so many times since I first read it. Perhaps I took note of it because in another lifetime, I had the amazing opportunity to learn how to use a planetary projector when I was in middle school. Yes, my middle school (which had a different name in 1972) had a planetarium in it! I know… it astonishes me even today! I have always been fascinated by the night sky… I mean there is nothing like being able to find the North Star and the Big Dipper, and the comfort of Orion spread across the night sky watching over my late night meander with Frankie for his “last trip out” before bed. But after reading this poem, I realized I needed to add Cassiopeia, Andromeda, and the Pleiades to my repertoire!
Today I am sharing Adrienne Rich’s Planetarium, which was originally published in 1971.
Planetarium
by Adrienne Rich
Thinking of Caroline Herschel, 1750–1848,
astronomer,
sister of William; and others.
A woman in the shape of a monster
a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of them
a woman ‘in the snow
among the Clocks and instruments
or measuring the ground with poles’
in her 98 years to discover
8 comets
she whom the moon ruled
like us
levitating into the night sky
riding the polished lenses
Galaxies of women, there
doing penance for impetuousness
ribs chilled
in those spaces of the mind
An eye,
‘virile, precise and absolutely certain’
from the mad webs of Uranusborg
encountering the NOVA
every impulse of light exploding
from the core
as life flies out of us
Tycho whispering at last
‘Let me not seem to have lived in vain’
What we see, we see
and seeing is changing
the light that shrivels a mountain
and leaves a man alive
Heartbeat of the pulsar
heart sweating through my body
The radio impulse
pouring in from Taurus
I am bombarded yet I stand
I have been standing all my life in the
direct path of a battery of signals
the most accurately transmitted most
untranslatable language in the universe
I am a galactic cloud so deep so involuted
that a light wave could take 15
years to travel through me. And has
taken I am an instrument in the shape
of a woman trying to translate pulsations
into images for the relief of the body
and the reconstruction of the mind.
1968
Planetarium © Adrienne Rich. Originally published in The Will to Change, 1971. Republished in Collected Poems: 1950–2012.
You can find more information about Adrienne Rich here.
Thank you so much for “coming along” with us for National Poetry Month! Stop by Bonny’s blog and see what Kym, Sarah, and Vera have shared today!
Now for a bit of housekeeping. Today is a “get away” day for me. As I said Monday, there will be a post to collect us all together to share our word updates, but I won’t be posting until we get back from Erie. See you all back here in May!
Header photo by Eren Arıcı
by Kat | Apr 23, 2025 | General, Unraveled Wednesday
Greetings dear Unraveler’s and Happy Wednesday to you all!
I don’t know about you, but this has been the most delightful spring I can remember in some time! Yes, we have had up and down temperatures, but (fingers crossed) no freezing rain or snow have mucked things up here in the Pittsburgh area! Temperatures, most days, just need a long sleeved shirt and maybe a sweater for my early morning walks with Frankie! That being said, I am taking my winter jacket, hat, and mittens to Erie when we head out tomorrow afternoon!
I do indeed have two completely finished pairs of pants! My “go to” pattern is Sew House Seven’s Free Range Slacks. For an incredibly “easy” pattern, it has some lovely details. I now have a black linen pair and a “beige” pair to add to my wardrobe! However, sewing with Frankie is a bit of a challenge! He can’t settle with the constant “up and down” of sewing and pressing and pinning and more sewing. So that means I have a little “shadow” who follows me from the sewing machine to the ironing board to the bed pinning table. So after a couple of hours of sewing he is “done” and ready for me to settle in one spot so he can get a nap in!
A “sunflower” and my back page completed.
Yesterday, I started my final page for my 100 days of stitching. I finished up the “back page” on Monday and I am very happy with how it turned out. I am thinking about how I want to join the pages together and I am thinking about doing a “riff” on a coptic binding to join the pages together. I just need to determine if I want “raw” edges or seam them all up…
What has not happened much this week is knitting of any kind! So my poor gnome is still at the “stuff me please” stage and though my “swirly vest” has been divided… I have not done any knitting since achieving that feat!
I have, however, been reading… sewing and listening to a good audio book are delightful companions. I spent a bit of time with Hisham Matar and A Month in Sienna. He went to Sienna with his wife after he finished The Return. A Month in Sienna is a love letter to a city and, though it is short, I savored every word. I highly recommend!
I also finished The History of Sound and loved it tremendously! Once I would have told you that I did not like short stories at all… silly, silly me… there is nothing so sweet as the perfectly crafted short story, and when the short stories are interconnected… well, my friends, that makes for some amazing reading! Thank you to those who have read this book before me, inspiring me to pick it up! I highly recommend!
With my eyes, I am almost finished with the second book in the DS Logan McRae series. I like DS McRae very much and think that his imperfections make him very realistic and utterly likable! The books also have more than one “crime” going on… making them feel more realistic than a book where a team is working on just one case. I will absolutely continue with this series!
Now for a bit of housekeeping… there will be no Unraveled post next week. (There will be a post on Monday for those of you who are spending a year focused on a word though!)
I will be back with an Unraveled post on May 7th!
As always, if you wrote a post to share please leave your link below and thank you!
by Kat | Apr 21, 2025 | General, In This Moment
I am happy to report that I almost have two pairs of pants complete… they are each just a bit of elastic and a hem away from completion!
In fact, I am nearing completion on several things… tomorrow I begin the last page of my 100 Day Stitch Book. I am nearing the end of the Mystery Gnome. I am at the point of “stuffing” which means there is not much knitting left to do! I am also at the point of the Great Divide on the Swirly Vest!
Completions make room for new beginnings and I love that excitement… starting something new!
And that is all I have for today! I will see you all back here on Wednesday with some Unraveling!
Now, for all of you who are contemplating a word this year… Next Monday is our April Check In! Yes, April 28 the link up will go live and be open for the entire week.
by Kat | Apr 17, 2025 | General, Poetry
Welcome to the Third Thursday of National Poetry Month and I am again joining Bonny, Kym, Sarah, and Vera! Today is all about aging! Which for me has some days with lots of reminders and others with hardly any at all… but I think my most worrisome part of aging is memory!
And yes, it is a thing that I am noting as I repeat what my beloved Nana did regularly… run through a list of names before settling on the “right” one. Sigh. I am thankful that Billy Collins has written a poem about this phenomena because he makes me feel seen and even find a bit of humor in the situation!
Forgetfulness
by Billy Collins
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
“Forgetfulness” from Questions about Angels, by Billy Collins, © 1999.
If you want to learn more about Billy Collins, you can find information here and his website here.
I hope this poem brought a smile to your face as, perhaps, you nodded along with it. And please stop by and see all the poems Bonny has gathered today!
Header Photo by Pixabay
