Hello loves!
Happy March, almost-Spring, and Women’s History Month! Here’s to all the women and the people who love them. I love you queens. Stay royal.
I began this love letter with Mary Oliver’s poem on the gifts of spring: the rain, muddy earth, wet flowers, animals emerging. It can be a wet time, a messy time, a not-spring-enough-I-want-summer time. This poem reminded me that these emerging, uncertain seasonal beginnings are nuggets of the joys to come.
The spring equinox occurs on Saturday, March 20 early in the morning, when the length of the day and the night are equal.
This moment has always symbolized the regeneration of the earth after the dormant, dark winter.
As the ground thaws, water trickles down towards roots, mixing with starches and sugars that have been stored in the ground since fall. In deciduous trees, the roots absorb this mixture to create sap, which journeys through the tree in early spring to deliver energy for leaf creation. As the days continue to get longer, leaves use the sun’s energy to nourish themselves and grow (remember photosynthesis!?), shedding pollen and seeds that may become the gift of new trees.
It’s a time of change and new beginnings. Of seeds, creation.
Of hopeful growth.
On Love & Hope
The beginning of spring feels like hope to me, and that’s a tough one right now.
Hope feels a little dangerous, doesn’t it? We’re now a year into this thing, and there’s no clear end in sight. This is really hard. Harder for some, but still hard for us all.
And yet if we don’t hope, what’s left is despair.
But how do we hope? And why should we do it?
angel Kyodo williams shares simple answers to these heady, heavy questions in her 30 minute On Being interview with Krista Tippet, Living the Questions: Why 2020 hasn’t taken Rev. angel by surprise (shoutout to my teacher Cath for sharing!).
She talks about hope as potential, why America was ripe for this painful change, and how reconceptualizing time can make reality boundless.
Go ahead, give it a listen.
Her comments remind me of this excerpt of a Reverend Victoria Safford essay I found on Brain Pickings, writer Maria Popova’s one-woman labor of love. I think it speaks to our collective moment, right here, right now:
Once you have glimpsed the world as it might be, as it ought to be, as it’s going to be (however that vision appears to you), it is impossible to live compliant and complacent anymore in the world as it is… And so you come out and walk out and march, the way a flower comes out and blooms, because it has no other calling. It has no other work.
There is not only room for hope - it is natural.
So may we dare to hope, even if it’s just for the small things: another inhale, another rising and setting sun.
We are going to be okay.
And if you want more on hope, check out these other Brain Pickings pieces:
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Practice
Need a deep rest? Practice this 40 minute Savasana Sunday class I taught yesterday for our 300 hour teacher training final <3 thank you I love you all (Zoom passcode: 5!7hG0F*)
Need movement? Try this guided morning hip stretch class I taught to my work colleagues (hi all!).
Keep taking good care of yourselves, in whatever ways you’re able to right now. You may consider the first three wolf rules for living: Eat. Rest. Rove in between.
Loving Lately
That clip is called “Why do we read and write poetry? (Dead Poets Society)”. Inspired by the movie’s central call to action (CARPE DIEM BABY!!) and nudged by my #1 fan (HI MOM!), I’ve officially self-published my first poetry collection, Alias All, and it’s now available for order!
Alias All is a story of our lives. It was inspired not by all stories, just one - the story of Grace Marks, detailed in Margaret Atwood’s acclaimed historical fiction Alias Grace. This small but mighty collection of 40 poems is constructed as a never-ending circle, mirroring the circularity of nature. Using Atwood’s enigmatic Marks as fuel, each poem discovers the terrain of some of humanity’s most powerful themes: freedom, truth, power, fear, death, and birth. The collection illustrates with short, sharp language the universal experiences we each endure, the ways they affect our lives, and how what we share can bring us together.
I have 25 printed copies on their way from the publisher, which means they’re almost ready for YOU! Simply Venmo me (@Colby-Sheffer) $15 (per copy), respond to this email with your address, and get ready to enjoy some original poetry in no time! Don’t have Venmo? Shoot me a note and we’ll figure it out. Shipping and a personal love note included :)
Why should you bother? Because you are a member of the human race. Because poetry is good medicine.
I loved everything about this process, and can’t wait to publish another! I’m already working on a new collection - stay tuned!
What else I’m loving lately:
Watching: Would You Kill God Too? for Breonna Taylor, who was killed by police on March 13 last year; Nomadland featuring Francis McDormand & the wide open West; I Care A Lot for originality; and Better Things, one of the best portrayals of women & family I’ve seen.
Reading: Fariha Róisín’s personal essay On Retrieving My Body Back; Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman and latest collection of poems, Dearly; and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway - a stupefying masterclass on character and both the power and limitations of the English language.
Listening to: silence; Wild Geese read by Mary Oliver herself; and this Amber Mark remix track (stay tuned for my spring medicine playlist next month!).
Well that’s it for me (for now)!
I wish I could see you. I wish I could give you a hug. I want to know how you are, and what you need more of right now.
Chat me anytime - I’m on the other side of this email.
All love dears,
Colby