This is so beautiful and raw, and echoes so many emotions that have been bubbling at the surface lately, that keen sense of love and loss and a growing awareness of the grief that comes when you realize that a relationship that once seemed foundational is no longer there and your world feels a bit shifty. Thank you for adding shape and definition to my experience by sharing your own. I long to see your garden and this life you’ve created for yourselves in France. Not if but when.❤️
Thank you so much, Mindy! I wonder how common this experience of friendship shift in middle age is. It’s a club I don’t wish on anyone and I’m sorry you’ve been inducted into it, too.
I actually find the end of a longstanding friendship sadder and more upsetting than the end of a romantic partnership or a marriage. My sympathy to you!
Dear Garden Priestess, your words found my heart this evening, as I navigate the swirl of unflexible visitors from abroad, drinking the dregs of a bottle of cheap rosé and reading your piece about The Grand Scheme. Life's rich pageant, no?
Also, I think my inlaws gave me covid's 40th iteration or whatever we're on now. Have you ever considered ordination to the temple of your choice? I also have garden envy now. Closet gardener. Someday again I'll have a fertile patch to tend.
O how I miss my volcanic strip of Icelandic poppies the size of café au lait bowls, glowing translucent in the northern twilight.
Thank you again for this piece. It gives me hope in / faith in / love for The Process.
Your Icelandic poppies live in my imagination, every time I look at my poor little potted ones barely clinging to life on either side of our front door, battered by the unreasonably hot days that rise up from the cool ones to lay waste to what's left of spring.
NOT COVID AGAIN!!!!!! I am so dreadfully sorry to hear that. I have friends on vacation in Italy currently, and they have "a cold" and I cannot bring myself to ask if they have bothered with a COVID test yet. I mean, what's the point anymore, really?
Ordination to the temple! As a staunch atheist, it would have to be something like a pagan temple. Maybe if there was a temple to Demeter. I do feel such an affinity to her.
I hope you rally from this ague, and quickly. Summer is no time to be sick. Although if you're not too far gone, it can be a good excuse for sequestering with a good book and some alone time. Alas. If I'm sick enough to be in bed, I probably want to be sleeping.
You're tending the fertile patch of literary endeavor at the moment, which might be less volatile and fraught, if we're honest.
I had a friendship end so abruptly two years ago, I still feel the pain of it. And there was nothing I could do, the other person was apparently just done, having never given me the chance to address concerns she had. Such a strange way to conduct life’s business, and something that had never happened to me before.
But at the same time, losing that friendship also made me bolder about taking a bigger leap (job opportunity, and a feeling that we didn’t have roots worth digger deeper where we were with few great friendships), and we ended up moving across the country. Our friendships are so much better here already, and we’ve lived here a third of the time as the last place. I can garden 9 months of the year here, now, instead of just 4. Funny how life works out. Thank you for your beautiful words!
That was beautiful . Thank you.
Thank YOU for being here, Brandon!
This is so beautiful and raw, and echoes so many emotions that have been bubbling at the surface lately, that keen sense of love and loss and a growing awareness of the grief that comes when you realize that a relationship that once seemed foundational is no longer there and your world feels a bit shifty. Thank you for adding shape and definition to my experience by sharing your own. I long to see your garden and this life you’ve created for yourselves in France. Not if but when.❤️
Thank you so much, Mindy! I wonder how common this experience of friendship shift in middle age is. It’s a club I don’t wish on anyone and I’m sorry you’ve been inducted into it, too.
I will be thrilled to see you here one day!
I actually find the end of a longstanding friendship sadder and more upsetting than the end of a romantic partnership or a marriage. My sympathy to you!
You aren't wrong. The hole left in my life is unmistakable. It was and is an incalculable loss, and I appreciate your sympathy.
Dear Garden Priestess, your words found my heart this evening, as I navigate the swirl of unflexible visitors from abroad, drinking the dregs of a bottle of cheap rosé and reading your piece about The Grand Scheme. Life's rich pageant, no?
Also, I think my inlaws gave me covid's 40th iteration or whatever we're on now. Have you ever considered ordination to the temple of your choice? I also have garden envy now. Closet gardener. Someday again I'll have a fertile patch to tend.
O how I miss my volcanic strip of Icelandic poppies the size of café au lait bowls, glowing translucent in the northern twilight.
Thank you again for this piece. It gives me hope in / faith in / love for The Process.
Your Icelandic poppies live in my imagination, every time I look at my poor little potted ones barely clinging to life on either side of our front door, battered by the unreasonably hot days that rise up from the cool ones to lay waste to what's left of spring.
NOT COVID AGAIN!!!!!! I am so dreadfully sorry to hear that. I have friends on vacation in Italy currently, and they have "a cold" and I cannot bring myself to ask if they have bothered with a COVID test yet. I mean, what's the point anymore, really?
Ordination to the temple! As a staunch atheist, it would have to be something like a pagan temple. Maybe if there was a temple to Demeter. I do feel such an affinity to her.
I hope you rally from this ague, and quickly. Summer is no time to be sick. Although if you're not too far gone, it can be a good excuse for sequestering with a good book and some alone time. Alas. If I'm sick enough to be in bed, I probably want to be sleeping.
You're tending the fertile patch of literary endeavor at the moment, which might be less volatile and fraught, if we're honest.
I had a friendship end so abruptly two years ago, I still feel the pain of it. And there was nothing I could do, the other person was apparently just done, having never given me the chance to address concerns she had. Such a strange way to conduct life’s business, and something that had never happened to me before.
But at the same time, losing that friendship also made me bolder about taking a bigger leap (job opportunity, and a feeling that we didn’t have roots worth digger deeper where we were with few great friendships), and we ended up moving across the country. Our friendships are so much better here already, and we’ve lived here a third of the time as the last place. I can garden 9 months of the year here, now, instead of just 4. Funny how life works out. Thank you for your beautiful words!