Berkeley Botanical Garden, pic by Anna Cecilia Benzel
Hi friends,
In my first newsletter I wrote about the liminal, the in-between spaces that have the capacity to gifts us so much insight if we pay attention. Emerson wrote about the “enlarged powers” and “poetic creativeness” inherent in neither “staying at home nor yet in traveling, but in liminal space from one to the other.” Airports are a great example of liminal spaces, where you feel almost suspended in time. But the space Emerson talks about is where I have been for the past several days after spending a week on the West coast with my friend Kim (who is really brilliant, check out her Ted Talk on the LIMINAL! )We traveled to Berkeley to visit my oldest daughter, soak in the trees and coastlines of the East Bay and share some epic meals together (finally went to Chez Panisse).
This part of the country brings me much joy, and because I lived there as a kid it feels like a home away from home. I don’t know about you, but often the transition back from a trip, those days where you have not quite left the place you went and are not entirely grounded at home can really throw me off... I bet if you are reading this you also qualify as a “highly sensitive” person, meaning shifting gears is not always easy. I think giving ourselves permission to sit in the muck of the inbetweeness is golden, and fruitful. Before social media, before the over sharing and over posting (reader I am guilty of both) I remember gathering around with my extended family to look at SLIDES from my uncle’s travels, it was a communal share. Now we consume people’s photos from our phone and rarely sit long enough to exchange stories. But embracing a slowing down is part of what this year is all about for me. There is such pressure to have it all figured out, to constantly plan out what is next, to get the newest phone, the latest “style,” it is constant movement. No wonder everyone I know is freaking exhausted. That is why this quote about slowing time down via travel by writer Pico Iyer really resonates:
“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again- to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.”
― Pico Iyer
Upper Huckleberry Trail, Oakland, CA, pic by Anna Cecilia Benzel
On this trip I brought along a brilliant book called Real Estate by British writer Deborah Levy (***** five gold stars/a must read) In this semi-autobiographical book Levy is in a transitional space, one that so many of my friends are either headed towards or in the midst of: the “empty nest” phase. She addresses the theme of “home” not so much as a permanent physical space or “real estate” but as a divorced woman of two teen daughters (sounds really familiar to me) on a quest of self discovery. Levy describes her 50’s as “a sort of homecoming.” This description feels spacious and exciting. ON the contrary EMPTY (nest) is negative, it signals loss and a void. There is no doubt that having a house with no kids can feel disorientating, especially since the domestic caretaking role has been force fed to women since childhood (cue the opening scene of Barbie the movie when the little girls start smashing the hell out of their little dolls). I say shift the narrative and the language to something less dire than “empty.”
Motherhood is beautiful but why frame the start of our children’s lives as exciting while labeling it “empty” for the parents? I will stick with Levy’s notion of a homecoming, a chance to remember past versions of ourselves and invent new ones (PS I talked about in my first newsletter ). This chance to reclaim our creative selves, and to figure out what we want to be when we “grow up” is a good empty. As Levy says, “[y]ou never know what a woman really wants because she’s always being told what she wants.”
It is in the liminal places, the in between past and future selves where we can piece this together. That space is a… PORTAL to something new, it is an empty space but one to be reclaimed and filled up! Sometimes the in between looks like the end of high school and the start of college, or a move, or a death, or, as yogis say a breath, an exhale after a deep breath is a death, and then there is a space between the end of the exhale and the in breath. Pausing to reflect on all of this instead of rushing helps us make sense of it all. That’s why we are always told to “take a deep breath.” Putting out this weekly Substack does this for me, writing as Levy says, “is about seeing new things and investigating them. Sometimes it’s about seeing new things in old things.”
So thank you again for reading! And if you are enjoying it, please pass it along. And if you are new here, check out my fav writer on this platform Lisa Olivera.
Bonus: here is a pic with my daughter Anna from last week and some links to can’t miss Bay Area places to check out…
For dinner in San Francisco, I had one of the best meals in a long time at The Tailor’s Son on Filmore Street. The decor, the servers and the whole vibe is flawless!!! GO!
For a pitch perfect Oakland Sunday, hike scenic and serene Huckleberry trail and end with bagels at at Poppy followed by a leisurely stroll around the neighborhood where indie retail thrives, finally end with an afternoon beer at the adorable Rose’s Tap Room tavern.
P.S. HUGE thanks to the folks who have become paid subscribers, your belief in my writing are deeply appreciated. In the near future I will offer bonus material and workshops for paid subscribers! If becoming a patron is within your budget here is a link…
As always your writing seems to perfectly describe what I can’t quite put into words while also educating me! Thank you for your gift 🙏❤️