Tag: slow living

Good

.Reading time 1 minute.

What if everything was okay.

What if we had plenty of money, plenty of love, plenty of safety and beauty and fun.

What if the way he wanted me was filling and trustworthy, and the way he loved my baby was pure.

What if this house made me weep with joy because it was just what I had always wanted.

What if just two years after everything fell apart, I found myself exactly where I had always dreamed I would be.

Not perfect, no. Plenty of exhaustion and bickering. Too much pet hair and laundry to fold. Home projects to complete and grass that is somehow always too tall.

Not perfect, just good. Really good and safe and real.

What if for the first time in my life, or in a very long while, I am safe.

Full and content and safe.

What if I stopped running and searching and working and longing just long enough to stop and see where I am.

The place I have been looking for.

The place I knew, then lost, then thought I had built, then lost again.

Home.

More soon,

Bonnie Rae xx

Home

.Reading time 3 minutes.

May your walls know joy;

may each room hold laughter,

and may every window open to great possibility.

Mary Ann Hershey

Lately, I have felt unwelcome in my own home. The harsh lines drawn between parties this election played out very close to us, neighbors with lines drawn in the sand.

Home is a difficult one for me.

In 2019 I let go of my home to survive my marriage ending and move forward with my baby and my life. I then moved in to the most welcoming home with my auntie, but yearned for my own apartment.

I found an apartment and six months later was an attempted break in. After, I settled in a beautiful, blue cottage but then the pandemic hit and I felt claustrophobic and caged in by our small space.

I moved us to the country in search of peace and wide open spaces, but then our neighbors made it clear where their values stood – in exact opposition to mine.

And now I search again.

I have been without a settled home from about the age of twelve. My mama became sick and so I moved back and forth from mom to dad. With mom when she was healthy, with dad when she was not.

What I’ve learned from being a forever traveler is this: to have a roof, heat, clean water, a washing machine, a safe place to lay your baby’s head – for that we are so lucky. I have never been without that. I have always had a safe place and space to land.

I am searching for a place to settle in and grow roots, but I am also reminded that nothing is constant but change. I know that I will find a place to call home, I also know that I make each place I land feel like home.

I have become excellent at creating spaces that feel beautiful and special, with whatever I have, wherever I am.

Maybe my draw to minimalism and simplicity comes from an understanding that we are not actually our surroundings. We are not our things. Home is something you carry within you, from place to place.

Home is turning sticks into swords, it is tickles and giggles. It’s good food and cozy blankets. It’s bedtime stories and looking for fairies in the old stumps out back.

I know, that in order to manifest and welcome something I want, I first need to fully appreciate what I already have.

I am all of the places I have been, I bring them with me on each new adventure.

I know one day we will find it, our home, until then we will make it wherever we land.

More soon,

Bonnie Rae xx

More:

Inspiration

Past

winter capsule 2021

.Reading time 1 minute.

What if I want to live simply? To drink coffee and watch the sunrise with no where to go.

In 2015 I started my minimalism journey. I began saying no to things I didn’t need, to people that weren’t meant to be in my life, and to anything that I didn’t want to do.

If it wasn’t a hell yes then it was a hell no.

I’ve grown and changed so much in the pat 5 years, creating habits and learning more about intentional and simple living than I ever thought I could.

To have continued these healthy habits for five years is no small feat, so I am celebrating myself and honoring how far I’ve come.

I’m a bit late in sharing my winter 2021 capsule wardrobe, I took much of December to rest and reset. These clothes will carry me from December through February. A combination of comfort and style, each piece chosen because it sparks joy when I hold it.

Gone is decision fatigue and “having nothing to wear.” Replaced with beauty and simplicity and far less clothing, each piece feels like me.

27 items including shoes for this capsule. Not pictured are two winter coats and a few pairs of earrings.

More soon,

Bonnie Rae xx

Inspiration

This Irish Fairy

This Gentle Soul

This Australian Wise Woman

One million different things

.Reading time 3 minutes.
Processed with VSCO with a6 presetProcessed with VSCO with a6 presetProcessed with VSCO with a6 preset
“It is a serious thing, just to be alive on this fresh morning in this broken world.” Mary Oliver
I am sitting down to write and I feel…. one million different things.
We are capable of feeling so many things at once. I think it’s why we’re able to post one thing to Instagram and then in a flash, be on the floor weeping about someone else’s pain. About the pain in the world. But then, I am holding my baby, breathing in his scent and reveling in his warmth.
I post about capsules, and plants, and love, and hope and it’s all real. It’s all true and beautiful and part of me. But it is not all of me.
I am also going to therapy. Learning to love and accept each and every part of myself. I am moving. Cleaning and decluttering and breathing through the stress and the joy of this new adventure.
I am donating. I am being an imperfect advocate, trying to share when I feel it’s needed, but not perform or share without doing.
We are too often boiled down to one thing. How are you today? Only captures one facet of us.
How am I today? I am alive. I am grateful, and angry, and exhausted, and hopeful. I am wicked and powerful, I am gentle and kind.
You contain multitudes, dear one. You are of earth and stars and your ancestor’s stories. You carry a whole world inside of you, yet you live in a world that wants you to be uncomplicated and okay.
You don’t have to be. You don’t have to be okay, or just one thing. You are more than that.
This week, I am planning my fall capsule. I am being a mommy to my beautiful boy. I am moving and working and thinking. I will laugh, I will cry, I will get mad and I will forgive. I will get mad and be forgiven.
There is no limit to what we can do and be, anyone that tells you otherwise is lying.
“And I say to my heart, rave on.” also, Mary Oliver
More soon,
Bonnie Rae xx