Solitude.

Captured on this morning’s run. Learning to fully embrace this collective pause to think, create, and just BE.

““But your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances, and from it you will find all your paths.””
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Exactly one year I wrote in my journal, “There is no despair for one who creates.” Lately, making art (actually, making anything) has been a raft that I can rest upon to save me from the river of despair. And surprisingly enough, I’m realizing how much solitude I’ve needed to reconnect to my creativity in a new and profound way. Disconnecting from the world has given me the opportunity to connect with deeper parts of myself. Silence and solitude have been tools to retreat from the world of push notifications and incessant news and chatter. Solitude has honed my ability to listen, think, compost ideas, and plant new seeds of insight.

Thomas Merton wrote, “The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds and makes of all political and social life a mass illness. Without this housecleaning, we cannot begin to see. Unless we see, we cannot think.”

Solitude and silence are the towels wiping away the grime and grit from the windows of my life. I see things more clearly now that I have the space to reflect and think without distraction.

I’ve experimented with turning off my WiFi completely at night. Not just putting all my devices on airplane mode- I’ve completely taken it a step further from the advice of a friend, and unplugged the entire router and modem. It’s been a game changer. I’ve had the most restful nights of sleep (last night was day 3), and I’ve experienced multiple dreams per night in detail. I wake up without email or news and begin my day in a mindful, thoughtful way. It has transformed my morning routine and my overall sense of rest and recovery. ‘Unplugging’ has had both physical and mental benefits for me.

This collective pause of shelter in place has had its ups and downs. But I’ve experienced a newfound sense of creativity in the solitude which has kept despair at bay. With everything we’ve lost and are grieving at this time, it’s helpful to remember what we have agency over. We can choose to create. We can choose to make. Make art. Make love. Make meaning. Make memories. Make poems. Make nourishing meals. Make music. Make connections.

Rilke was right- let us build our support and our home from our solitude. And from there, build and cultivate our community and connections with our creativity. There is no room in our home for despair.

Writing as a Practice.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of being interviewed on Gravitude Chats, a podcast series that interviews women sharing their stories of grit, grace and gravitas. This was an organic conversation surrounding the current situation of COVID-19, but it soon unfolded into a bigger conversation about writing as a practice. For me, journaling as a daily habit has allowed me to see my life from a different perspective- one that is both close-up and detailed, as well as provide enough objective space (as a reader going back over old journal entries) to notice the broader themes of my life.

By paying attention to what we pay attention to, this allows us to direct the course of our sails towards the seas we really want to explore. Writing helps with that. To notice what we care about, what irks us, what we’re curious about, what we love.

I hope this conversation inspires you to begin a writing practice. To not be afraid of the blank page, but rather to see it as your friend. A welcome mat into the beautiful home that you are.

And, if you make it all the way to the end of our conversation in this video, I’d love to hear what your ‘sunflowers’ are in your life at this time.

Blessings,

Julianne

All of Them.

I’ve started to notice more of nature’s gifts and metaphors during my evening walks. There’s one lemon tree in particular that always catches my attention. Its branches longingly ache and reach over the fence on the street that I walk, and both juicy ripe lemons and rotting black ones dangle above me. It’s quite a sight, the mixture of both vitality and death on the same single tree.

This lemon tree illustrates how life offers us both experiences. It’s not always either/or. Sometimes it’s “Yes, I feel this, and I feel this” simultaneously. We can feel both suffering and joy. We can feel grief and hope. My pastor passed away on Good Friday and on Sunday, his wife created a beautiful video tribute thanking the church family for walking with them throughout the years of his cancer. Her message was one of gratitude and joy that he is no longer suffering from chemo and radiation, and yet mirrored in her words and voice was also a deep grief and sadness for the loss of someone we all loved and admired.

I’ve started to soften and appreciate the full spectrum of my emotions. It feels better not having to decide between one extreme or the other. We are allowed to feel them all simultaneously. Let them hang and grow and exist together because they all have lessons to teach us. Sadness and joy. Grief and hope. Our hearts are big enough to hold them all.

Enunciate.

I played piano on my church’s worship team throughout junior high and high school. We practiced together every Friday night and early Sunday mornings before the main service. One Easter Sunday before service we were practicing the song “He’s Alive” when Dwight, our guitarist and worship leader, stopped us.

“Enunciate. We all need to enunciate better when we sing,” he said.

It’s the difference between singing ‘He’s alive’ and ‘He’s a lie.’”

That lesson has always stayed with me. The importance of articulation. The importance of enunciation. It can make a world of difference. In some instances, life or death.

Happy Easter. He’s alive.

Finding the Melody.

There’s so much noise right now in the news. Being inundated with so much information can feel discombobulating and overwhelming.

The message I teased out in today’s blackout newspaper poetry.

Practice the art of distillation. Filter out the excess until only the essential remains. Learn how to sift through the cacophony and listen for the melody. Find it. And sing.

Balance.

The Plate model that I often refer to in my nutrition coaching sessions also doubles as a visual model for the ways to live a healthy and balanced life. Especially during this time. I illustrated this today as a tool to help you see the connections as well.

What are the ways you’re cultivating more balance on your plate or in your life?

Simple Growth.

I attended a retreat in February and one woman named Maia (who happens to be a gardener) generously gave each of us a packet of seeds as a parting gift. The seeds were either red lettuce, arugula, or poppies. Holding the small bags in our hands, we all felt mixed feelings of hope coupled with inadequacy. We were capable of running our own companies, speaking in front of hundreds of people, putting together spreadsheets and business plans, but could we grow something from a seed? Other retreat participants were equally grateful, but there was a common air of concern and caution in the questions that were asked. “How do I plant these?” “I don’t have a green thumb.” “How am I supposed to grow these? I can barely keep succulents alive.”

Maia smiled. Her response was gentle, full of empathy and understanding. “Just find some soil, plant them an inch deep, and make sure they get some sun and water.”

Day 3.

Day 7.

Day 15.

She made it sound so simple. Simple enough to try without being drowned by the overwhelming fear of failure. Maia gave us the gift of being a beginner again. She reminded us through the act of planting seeds how to surrender and trust the process. To stop overcomplicating things.

My nourish bowl that I made today- full of roasted veggies, miso-glazed brussel sprouts, garbanzo beans, avocado, and home-grown arugula.

Today I harvested some of the arugula and added it to my nourish bowl. There is something so satisfying about growing something from a seed.

But isn’t that the foundation of everything we know and do? It starts out with us rummaging around in the dark, feeling buried, but holding a seed of hope. Rooting ourselves in the fertile soil of our experience. Positioning ourselves to face the sun, soaking in water and love. Trusting the process and being patient enough for harvest day.

It really is that simple.

Isolation Creation.

Creativity thrives with constraints. This time, more than ever, we are dealing with constraints. There’s a hashtag on Instagram #isolationcreation which highlights the amount of creative projects that are being birthed in a time when we are forced to stay at home with everyday items, food, old board games, puzzles, and most of all, ourselves.

With all this time spent indoors, more people are walking and running and jogging outside to get some fresh air. People who look like they haven’t jogged in twenty years are out there, huffing and puffing with sweatpants and tennis shoes. It’s for our own sanity and desperation. We crave fresh air, and movement allows us to connect with our bodies, our breath, and nature.

In a letter to his brother Theo, Vincent Van Gough wrote, “Always continue walking a lot and loving nature, for that’s the real way to learn and understand art better and better.”

Lately with all the walks I’ve been taking, I’ve found this to be particularly true.

Found some flower pedals and included them in today’s art.

Today’s #isolationcreation art is dedicated to our healthcare workers who are working tirelessly around the clock on the front lines with a shortage of PPE and doing everything they can to save lives. You will (and always will be) our true heroes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.