Make your space, you belong here
Holly’s writing desk in Frenchie the caravan.
Understatement: the mental load we’re carrying is heavy. Moments of hope, connection, and the simple joys that still exist, despite everything, feel almost medicinal. One of those moments in the last week for me has been remembering the power of making space.
When writing feels especially hard, or, if I return to my desk after a long time away, I sometimes don’t know how to find my way in. Back to myself, or story. Over decades I’ve figured out it’s a similar devotion to how we care for someone we love. It’s an act of tending. An offering of tenderness. I find my way back by taking extra care when I show up to make my work space feel like a place I want to be. A place where I feel like I belong. There’s a lot right now that feels especially hard; I’m flying my Fuck Saving Things For As A Rainy Day flag, using favourite notebooks, best pens, brewing the decadent tea, stirring in spoonfuls of ‘special occasion’ honey. The day, time, occasion, as we are all so keenly aware, is now.
Frenchie is the peak of my writing space dreams. In the past, my spaces and resources have been different. Whether it was the pale green chiffon covering a desk made of crates in a share house, or a pink velour arm chair from Vinnie’s in another, or, in yet another share house, an office chair wedged into a corner with a view through the window that glimpsed a triangle of changing sky, there’s been at least one thing about every space I’ve made for writing that has been somehow welcoming, that has said, you belong here. It didn’t always mean I wrote or created anything, but it did mean that I knew that there was a space in the outside world that I’d made specifically for everything unwritten in my inside world.
Tending Frenchie this week during rainy days reminded me: creating dedicated physical space in our exterior lives for our mysterious, unmapped interior worlds is a sacred and powerful act. One that says, you belong here.
🍯 💫🌦
#OnYugambehLand #JoyIsAnActOfResistance #FrenchieTheCaravan #YouBelongHere #MakeYourSpace #EatTheHoney