Taking Time for Me
How one quiet hour of art-inspired writing brought back a red dress, a beloved book, and my granddaughter’s voice.
✨ A Reflection ✨
Personal stories and moments of quiet clarity from my own unfolding. I share them in hopes they might offer a small insight for your own path.
Yesterday I did something I’m always encouraging you to do. I took time for me.
I joined Wednesday Write-Togethers by Kate Poll. Kate describes these sessions as art-inspired writing for wellbeing. This week’s session was called The Pictures That Shape Us, and we were invited to get curious about the part art has played in our own story. Favorite images from childhood. Memories of making. The art that has stayed with us without us quite knowing why.
I’ll be honest with you. Some of the terminology felt foreign to me. Pantum? Say what??? I love learning new things, and I've also learned to go with the flow and trust the process. Isn't that the beauty of taking an hour like this one? You arrive with nothing in particular and leave with something straight from your heart. I left with a story and a word I had never heard before. More on that in a moment.
The story I found
As a child, Heidi was my favorite storybook. I don’t recall when she first entered my life. Perhaps she arrived as a gift, or as a book read aloud in my grandma’s kindergarten, or passed down from a friend. Maybe she was even shared around the coffee circle, those daily morning gatherings my mom and her friends held around the kitchen table. I can picture the women there, coffee cups in hand, passing books between them the way they passed everything else worth sharing.
I have always felt drawn to Switzerland, Heidi’s home. I don’t know why. Maybe I lived there in a past life. Maybe it was my grandma, who talked about her travels there and once brought me back a red dress. I wore that dress on my first day of grade one.
I loved the pictures that book painted in my mind. Cows wearing cowbell necklaces. The Swiss Alps rising above meadows of wildflowers. The peacefulness of that way of life. Those images have never left me.
Then, in my late fifties, I found a copy of Heidi at a yard sale. Of course I picked it up. Best twenty-five-cent purchase I have ever made.
And here is the part of the story my heart holds closest. When my oldest granddaughter was around eight, I shared with her my love of Heidi. She looked at me and asked, would you like me to read it to you?
My heart exploded. We cuddled, she read, I listened. A grandmother and her granddaughter, and a story that had waited more than fifty years to be read aloud to me.
That book still sits on my shelf. And I still feel destined to stand in a Swiss meadow someday.
A word I had never heard: pantum
Back to that word I’d never heard before. If you’re like me, you’ve never heard the word pantum either. If you’re curious, I’d love you to read Kate’s essay with more information about pantum, and the Western version, Pantoun, which you’ll find here.
Here are two pantum stanzas I wrote:
The mountains, the meadows full of wildflowers.
Feel like home, we’ll never part.
Beauty and peacefulness abound.
Always close to my heart.
A granddaughter’s question, would you like me to read it to you?
Cuddling, she read, I listened.
A moment I will never forget.
My heart exploded, even glistened.
What that hour gave me
I want to tell you what one hour of taking time for me actually opened up.
It introduced me to something new. I’ve always believed there is more to learn, and I stay curious about what is next. Yesterday proved me right, a whole poetry form I had never met, waiting inside an ordinary Wednesday. It gave me space to write a story from my past, a memory captured in my heart and now captured on the page. And it gave me one more story for the book that will someday become my legacy, another page my granddaughters can hold long after the telling.
That is what happens when we take an hour for ourselves. Not always. But often enough that the hour is always worth taking.
So here is my gentle nudge for you this week. Find your hour. You don’t need to know what you will find there. Heidi waited years for me. Whatever is waiting for you will be patient too.
Warmly,
Kathy
A little about me
Hi, I’m Kathy. A guide, a gatherer, a maker of sacred space, and a woman who found her way home to herself after years of putting everyone else first.
For years, I wore many hats at once. Single parent, community manager in a role I was promoted into before I believed I deserved it, event organizer. And later, a family caregiver. Learning all over again how to give without losing yourself in the giving. Caring for everyone, in every direction, all at the same time. What I had to learn, slowly and imperfectly, was that I mattered too. What I found on the other side of that, through stillness, creativity, and the women who gathered around my table, became everything I now offer.
There’s a place at the table with your name on it.
