This is a life imagined.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives – Annie Dillard

With days filled to the brim being our professional selves, mother selves or partner selves… it is easy to lose track of our-selves. 

I started this blog as a commitment to myself: to do more of what brings me joy, lights me up inside and feels like a true expression of who I am. Because somewhere along the way life got busy, the demands piled up and I lost track. 

For most of my adult life I have looked outside myself to better understand who I am. I stopped paying attention to the little girl inside of me who felt the freedom to act on her creative impulses and express herself in whatever way she pleased (such as wearing a pink tutu to school). I stopped believing in her. 

I was born in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia — a child of back to the land non-conformists. My older sister and I had free reign of a 52 acre farm, home to forestland, wildflower meadows, berry patches and a spring-fed pond where we went ice skating in the winter and swimming in the summer. 

On my 4th birthday my father planted a willow tree for me. I used to host tea parties for my dolls and stuffed animals under the shade of its budding branches. These were some of my happiest memories, outside listening to the birds sing and the frogs croak — alone in my imagination. 

My sister and I were joined at the hip, and with her around I was able to keep quiet, which is just how I liked it. She would do the answering for me and I would just smile. 

It was a magical childhood, but it was hard work for my mother — she made most of our clothes, canned our vegetables, and helped with my father’s tree business. She tired of this shortly after my sister and I were born and wanted to go back to work. But my father disagreed and did everything he could to stand in the way of her having a life outside the home. 

When I was 6 my mother piled my sister and I into our Toyota pickup for a trip to the grocery store. Only we weren’t going to the grocery store — we were moving to Kansas. I asked my mother if we would go to the grocery store when we got to Kansas and she broke down into tears.  

I often wonder who I would have become if I had grown up on the farm. Doubtless I would not be where I am today, a place I am grateful for and that has provided me enviable opportunities. But I long to be back on the farm, to hear the sound of the screen door slamming, to dip my toes in the cool water of the pond, to huddle by the wood fire stove while a winter snow falls outside.  

With #alifeimagined I hope to bring back to life the parts of myself that have gone missing. But more importantly — and this is why I chose a blog as the format, I hope to share this with a community who also find joy in these things. Together, I hope to inspire, encourage, teach, and motivate one another. 

I believe that when we finally get the courage to honor who we are that magical things can happen. This is a life imagined.