Framed In Space

The first anemone from the shop garden, picked at the beginning of July

“For it is only framed in space that beauty blooms” —Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I read this sentence on the last day of July and I realized all-at-once that it was what I needed to hear to be led gently into August.

Indeed, space is what I have had this past month.

From work, from social media, from screens and certain recurring stressors as a whole.

I wasn’t fully able to press *pause* on all of the things that usher a life from day to day of course and go full on Walden.

There were still bills to pay, grocery shopping and laundry to be done, family to visit, friends to see, appointments to be kept, cars to fix, corners to vacuum, flowers to water, lists to be crossed off…

But it was decidedly much less than what has been my usual daily fullness these last few years.

It often feels as though Folkling occupies 90% of my thoughts.

(Which has actually been hard won over the last year, as it has been a conscious effort to win back even just 10% from being all-consumed by work)

Such is the plight of a business owner.

But to be able to quietly usher it under the table and let other things come to the forefront for a while, was a kind of balm for my soul.

To not be *needed* in quite so many never-ending ways.

To not have to *do* so terribly much during every single set of 24 hours.

To remember who I am *outside* of this thing that I have created.

To have so many wide expansive exploratory do-whatever-you-want kind of days.

To be sure I had a terribly hard time with the latter, especially for the first two weeks of the month.

It was a kind of learning— to not measure each day by its productivity, but rather simply the things I observed within it.

There is a lot I am still unpacking from this month away, from this pause.

If I am being honest, I don’t quite feel ready to come back fully.

Though there is a space that is waiting for me to step into it, to neatly summarize all of the things I have learned in the past 31 days,

to bring you up-to-speed on all that I have thought, felt, done and learned.

And yet—

I don’t quite know what to say.

Admittedly, I feel interrupted, mid thought.

Not quite ready to speak to the experience of what this last month has been.

I resist the readily available phrases such as “Back to business as usual!” and “We are hitting the ground running this week!” and “The show must go on!”

For something else feels necessary.

I am looking at that space, that has been waiting for me, calling for me to fill it in the known, familiar, routine way.

But something in the center urges me to pause, to circle back to the beginning…

”For it is only framed in space…”