In a Room of My Own Tending My Mothers' Gardens: The Only Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart...

Broken hearts, burnout, and weary spirits are inevitable. Internal conflict changes us. External conflict may even rearrange our countenace for good or bad (the choice is our own). However, Alice Walker's autobiography says it all in the title The Only Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart.

The only forward motion I could make in the past year was in a circle as I dealt with so much uncertainty, self-doubt, indecision.

It's time to move forward broken heart and all.

TENDING MY MOTHERS' GARDENS IN A ROOM OF MY OWN



This lamp sold out quickly at Anthopologie but
 there are quite a few sites that offer
 DIY advice to create this
 lamp inexpensively.
As a memento, I may try my hand at this soon .

I had the blessing of having an overtly creative mother and grandmother.  Their talents were so influential to who I am now: how I dress, decorate, cook, and so on. My mother was a gifted interior stylist who had a keen eye for antiques.  As I mentioned in a previous post, she was most interested in the Victorian era and all of its flourishes, florals, lace, and rich wood accents.  One of my five siblings can correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm having a very difficult time remembering her ever drinking out of a mug.  She always took her tea in a delicate, sliver- rimmed cup and saucer with two sugars and a spot of cream. When I was little my older sister and I had a tea set as well (and it was not plastic). We often mimicked our mother's graceful morning ritual with our own tea parties.
Somewhere between the age of eight and now, I lost that treasured ease of preparing and properly enjoying tea.  One morning in one of my clumsy moments of haste, I reached for my reusable(ecochic) Starbuck's ceramic cup and cringed as it crashed into shards onto the floor. 
It was the end of an era. Somehow, I feel like I got some of my sanity back-- the sanity I lost during those treks down I-75 gulping enough Starbuck's coffee to keep me up for weeks on end.  I know there will still be some all nighters in my future as a PhD candidate after this hiatus, but I will no longer make it a lifestyle.

I have gardens to tend...