When we first heard about Sardegna, Italy, we were not interested in the luxury hotels, mega-yachts, and billionaire hideaways of the Costa Smerelda. I didn’t know of this bombastic side of the Mediterranean’s second-largest island (after Sicily,) where
Hello from writing workshops past! I find myself looking forward to your words and am endlessly inspired by them. Thank you for putting your writing out into the world and for being that spark when my pilot light is dim!
I’m (somewhat selfishly) VERY much looking forward to reading about your time in the Isle of Skye. A few years ago I discovered—thanks, Ancestry.com—that my dad is not my bio dad and, therefore, I am not in fact Czech but Scottish! The shores the seaweed the slow seasons the selkies the mist have long called—now I know why ✨
Wishing you peace, love, health, and adventure until our next workshop together. May your words continue to flow 🤍
Thanks for reading, Megan, and for your kind comments about my work here.
This is a stunning coincidence regarding your Scots ancestry. Part of what I'm writing about is exactly this discovery that led us to Scotland. Through a DNA test, my husband discovered that the father he thought was his wasn't. Then he went out on ancestry.com and found his birth family. Who are Scottish. (Not Austrian/Mexican as his assumed father was...) I'll say more in the piece, Richard and I will likely co-write an essay on how this moved us toward these lands, and what we learned there. Thanks for sharing this transformation of your history.
My last trip was 20 days split between Romania and Bulgaria, best described as the more jam-packed style of travelling with all the highs and hotspots, though in low season). I reflected a lot on how travel shifts me into a new way of being and relating to the world around me. I find myself feeling more conscious of my presence in these new places, my relationship to what I'm seeing - perhaps because it's all so unfamiliar. Lately, I feel like I prefer the travel version of me. It offered me such a stark contrast to the routined/at home/habituated Meghan - even as someone who is constantly observing these routines and wondering how I can live in more alignment. Constant travel wouldn't have much appeal, either - unless I adopted a different mindset about what it means to wander long-term. I suppose it's just not feasible with running businesses and raising small kids. But a part of me came home feeling like I just wanted to uproot my whole life. This is where my curiosities are right now.
That's a fascinating intuition though, the uprooting. I relate. Though I find myself leaning more toward having a home base and building community these days, part of what I resonate with in your note here are the great curiosity that emerges with the unfamiliar. I feel so much more adaptable to change as a result of having to hold everything loosely when we traveled. Thanks for sharing, Meg. Would be great to have a deep conversation about this one day.
“Home had become our bodies” and the notion of the radical present are timely gifts as our world faces the tragedy of clinging to land/excluding people from land. Thank you for not only being and living the experiment of turning oneself into a personal diaspora but also writing about it so eloquently for the rest of us. Love to you and appreciation for your leadership and clarity through vulnerability.
Thanks, Heather. These comments impacted me because of the more recent return to Gaelic lands of our ancestors, which I have yet to write about, and I hope to soon. There's immense privilege in having the resources to go, and then to pay the additional costs of not taking one's things along. We felt so grateful to be able to do this, it was a lifelong dream since we had children so young. We saved and then sold our home to go out longer. And everywhere we went I was aware of people who may not ever have the luxury to travel. The exclusion from land is another form of supremacy, and I hope to enter into more organizing and conversation with artists and others doing this kind of thinking. I love that your art is still moving so voraciously.
Hello from writing workshops past! I find myself looking forward to your words and am endlessly inspired by them. Thank you for putting your writing out into the world and for being that spark when my pilot light is dim!
I’m (somewhat selfishly) VERY much looking forward to reading about your time in the Isle of Skye. A few years ago I discovered—thanks, Ancestry.com—that my dad is not my bio dad and, therefore, I am not in fact Czech but Scottish! The shores the seaweed the slow seasons the selkies the mist have long called—now I know why ✨
Wishing you peace, love, health, and adventure until our next workshop together. May your words continue to flow 🤍
Thanks for reading, Megan, and for your kind comments about my work here.
This is a stunning coincidence regarding your Scots ancestry. Part of what I'm writing about is exactly this discovery that led us to Scotland. Through a DNA test, my husband discovered that the father he thought was his wasn't. Then he went out on ancestry.com and found his birth family. Who are Scottish. (Not Austrian/Mexican as his assumed father was...) I'll say more in the piece, Richard and I will likely co-write an essay on how this moved us toward these lands, and what we learned there. Thanks for sharing this transformation of your history.
Wishing you terrific writing and discovery.
My last trip was 20 days split between Romania and Bulgaria, best described as the more jam-packed style of travelling with all the highs and hotspots, though in low season). I reflected a lot on how travel shifts me into a new way of being and relating to the world around me. I find myself feeling more conscious of my presence in these new places, my relationship to what I'm seeing - perhaps because it's all so unfamiliar. Lately, I feel like I prefer the travel version of me. It offered me such a stark contrast to the routined/at home/habituated Meghan - even as someone who is constantly observing these routines and wondering how I can live in more alignment. Constant travel wouldn't have much appeal, either - unless I adopted a different mindset about what it means to wander long-term. I suppose it's just not feasible with running businesses and raising small kids. But a part of me came home feeling like I just wanted to uproot my whole life. This is where my curiosities are right now.
That's a fascinating intuition though, the uprooting. I relate. Though I find myself leaning more toward having a home base and building community these days, part of what I resonate with in your note here are the great curiosity that emerges with the unfamiliar. I feel so much more adaptable to change as a result of having to hold everything loosely when we traveled. Thanks for sharing, Meg. Would be great to have a deep conversation about this one day.
Photos of sky, such a perfect medium to express the inexpressible in wandering.
Thanks, Carole. That one shot reminded me a bit of the dreamy clouds in some of your terrific photos. I aspire anyway.
“Home had become our bodies” and the notion of the radical present are timely gifts as our world faces the tragedy of clinging to land/excluding people from land. Thank you for not only being and living the experiment of turning oneself into a personal diaspora but also writing about it so eloquently for the rest of us. Love to you and appreciation for your leadership and clarity through vulnerability.
Thanks, Heather. These comments impacted me because of the more recent return to Gaelic lands of our ancestors, which I have yet to write about, and I hope to soon. There's immense privilege in having the resources to go, and then to pay the additional costs of not taking one's things along. We felt so grateful to be able to do this, it was a lifelong dream since we had children so young. We saved and then sold our home to go out longer. And everywhere we went I was aware of people who may not ever have the luxury to travel. The exclusion from land is another form of supremacy, and I hope to enter into more organizing and conversation with artists and others doing this kind of thinking. I love that your art is still moving so voraciously.