Category: Solitude - A Cottage by the Sea

Tapping into solitude--walking

6/9/2020

Taking a walk has always been one of the most satisfying ways I have tapped into solitude. My intention is to stay present to what I am seeing and keep my mind clear of mental distractions (such as rehashing the past or planning for the future).
I developed this mindset during those five winters at the cottage when I walked every morning. It became the way I stepped into solitude while wandering the streets of Florence or strolling the grassy terrain of Iona.
These days, as I try to maintain a similar clarity of mind, I realize that walking is my go-to entry into solitude. Memories go with me.

Remembering Iona and Florence

Remembering last week's walk

Solitude v.v. being alone

5/4/2020

I love solitude, I love lots of time alone, days and days of it. That’s why I went to my cottage by the sea for five consecutive winters, spending the week days there alone. But I knew back then, and I know it now, that I loved that solitude because I had friends and family, and a husband, who kept the home fires burning, to return to each weekend.
Recently I have had contact with someone is desperately lonely during this pandemic. She told me that since she’d lived alone for so many years, she thought this isolation would be easy. But not so. All her ‘communities’ have been taken away--committees, professional clubs, church, luncheon gatherings, you name it. Her family lives far away, and they have busy lives, and don’t contact her as much as she’d like. She is alone with herself.
For me, being alone is not same as solitude. Being alone can connote loneliness in the midst of physical and emotional isolation. Solitude is a way of being with one’s self and with God.

A blog about solitude

2/7/2020

A blog for those who are looking for silence, solitude, and simplicity, and who sometimes want to be alone.
That’s what I wrote over ten years ago on the home page of this blog, and the focus still stands. In fact, the home page hasn’t changed much except for biographical update (which I ought to again), the cover of Very Grateful: The Story of My Hundred Year Old Mother and Me, and the addition of three topics: A Solitary Traveler, Secrets of an Old Woman, and Compassionate Reading.
I began this blog when I began going to the cottage by the sea. It was there, for those five winters that I settled into solitude. My life now has a different rhythm with less extended days of solitude. I miss that, but I still have hours of solitude in each day, and I still travel alone for two weeks time.

No place like home for solitude~

4/23/2019

I’m home. Spring is here. The garden is bursting forth, especially after last night’s rain. In the tree outside my window, a goldfinch and redpoll wait to swoop down to my kitchen window bird feeder. Life was good in Italy; life is good back home. In fact, I feel I have more solitude here than when I travel. Although I search for solitude in different physical location, I know that it is wherever I let it in. That being said, I feel like Dorothy returning from Oz knowing that there’s no place like home.

Alone and silent among the icons

2/2/2019

I posted the following on ‘A Solitary Traveler,’ but I want to say a little more about the silence and solitude I experienced. Being the only person among the second floor icons was awesome. If I had come with a friend, that wouldn’t have happened; silence and solitude would have been compromised.
I understand that not everyone desires to travel alone the way I do, but if you long for silence, solitude, and simplicity, I suggest that you spend a morning by yourself at a museum. You may not have the floor to yourself, but you can wander about silently in your own little world.

Today I took a solitary trip to the Museum of Russian Icons, in Clinton, eighteen miles and thirty-five minutes from my house. I had planned to take pictures, but upon arriving I discovered I had left my phone at home. What good news that turned out to be; no distractions. I was free to look. And since I was alone, it was just me and the icons.
More good news: I had the entire second floor of the museum to myself for the entire visit.

Snow day in retirement

1/21/2019

Cold here: 12 degrees at mid-day. Our driveway is icy, although it was plowed. I’m enjoying my second snow day, recalling such respites when I was a teacher. Admittedly these current ones are more satisfying because I don’t need to make them up during the last, hot days in June. And, I was paid for them—no furlough.
In retirement I fill these snow days like any other day when I stay home in the winter. I read, cook, write, work on a jigsaw puzzle, and sit in the silence, solitude and simplicity. I stay in the house; taking is walk is not safe option.
Lately solitude has been taking center stage for me, pushing silence and simplicity to the role supporting cast. I prefer to do things alone—travel, go to museums, shop, eat, do a puzzle, walk. Perhaps I prefer solitude because I have family and friends as a balance. When I’m not alone, I visit people, which I certainly can’t do in solitude. Hmm, just thinking—the yin and yang of life.

Alone but not lonely in Florence~

12/3/2018

It is misty and cloudy this morning so I ought to be a little down, for that is what ‘they’ say is supposed to be one’s mood on such a day. But here I am, wandering about alone, feeling peaceful and very grateful that I made the trip.
     My usual café is packed with American students; not a seat in the place; so different from when I was here in 1959. I was one of the first of the junior year abroad students to walk the untried territory. How do I know this? Because I had no American friends the entire year I was here. My college and I were making it up as we went along.
    As a result, I learned to be on my own, to be independent, to not be lonely. Solitude became my preferred way of being, which may surprise those of you who know me because I can be extremely social and gregarious. Meyers-Briggs tells me I am right in the middle on the introvert-extrovert continuum.
     From time to time, especially when I come back to Florence, I ponder what effect that year so long ago had on me. Maybe that’s why I keep returning. I want the answer incised in my mind/body/spirit just as dates are chiseled into the stones of Florence.
    My answer on this misty, cloudy morning is the gift of being at peace with myself and very grateful for my life.

Evening stroll~

9/16/2018

Solitude at its best.

Solitude and community in Vermont

8/15/2018

Today I want to talk about solitude (not politics). To do this, however, I also must mention family and friends. You see, I can’t have my solitude unless I have other loving humans in my life. Without them, I would be lonely and loneliness isn’t included in my definition of solitude.
We spent last weekend with family at Lake Dunmore in Vermont—a flow of community was solitude. Take a look.

A Thin Space at Lake Winnipesaukee

7/28/2018

Here is a ‘no words necessary’ slide show of my visit to Lake Winnipesaukee. A thin space where concerns and mental chatter float away. Be still and know that I am God.