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The thing I'm most proud of from last year is that I made friends with a woman whose writing and style and heart I had been admiring from afar, through her words, for a couple years. Nici Cline. She writes Dig This Chick. I found her via Enjoying the Small Things, written by Kelle Hampton. I found Kelle through Momastery, written by Glennon. I can't remember how I found Glennon. Or how I found Dooce. Straight up and Dirty by Stephanie Klein was the first blog I got really into, unless you include Rockstar Mommy, written on a now forgotten platform and since disappeared, at least under that name. There are a few others included on my daily check out list, but none of them stuck with me. I appreciated the voices and learned some things and they passed the time.

Nici lives in Montana, homesteading with her love and her two soft, fierce, open daughters. She is a gardener, a cook, a maker, an artist. She finds ways to make her life rich--in color, with dirt, in fullness. Her written word moves me, every time. Every time she write an essay it changes me in some small, nudges a little spot open in my heart, makes me want to be better. I read her for over a year before commenting--I was never much of a commenter on blogs. I emailed her once for some reason that I now forget. She responded after a couple weeks and it was a nice response. I felt shy and awkward, like I didn't even know what I was asking for. That feeling you get when you listen to and watch a musician make magic and fall into imagining what a conversation with that person would be like, certain that if you could just take a moment to connect you would both realize how much was there to mine together. Is that love? It was something. I had her in a separate place, a place for artists and movers and people with voices. I wanted to communicate to her how much not just her writing but her way of seeing the world and her way of being in the world, of loving. of parenting mattered to me.

Last year she and one of her two college best friends put together a women's gathering in Petaluma called the Artful Homestead. In the days before announcing this news she posted a handful of images, a few sentences, breadcrumbs dropped leading us to the middle of the forest where the story would unfold. One photo show a pair of dirty, pale, child's feet next to a basket partially filled with frondy veggies in their god-assigned colors. It was spiritual. Bright. Hopeful. It beckoned.

When the announcement came that the event would focus on ritual and creating beauty and finding ways to connect to your artist, to cultivate the space to intentionally make what you needed to make, it was thrilling. Even more so, it would take place in Petaluma--not much more than an hour away from where I live.

Booked.

We would gather at a farm in Petaluma the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend and spend the day together. There was a group of 15 of us or so, all women. When I woke up early to start driving I got nervous, as I always do when I'm off to put myself amidst a group of strangers. I didn't almost cancel but I was in that mild dread that makes it so easy to change your mind at the last minute. I drove on, through the dry, golden fields, rolling hills, long fences, different world roads found so close to my own home.I pulled into a gravel drive, past a llama or two, parking next to a wooden outhouse with a moon carved above the door. Quiet voices fluttered over the wall from the courtyard and I walked in, full of anticipation. I did the thing I know to do now before walking into a group of women.Found myself in my own heart, centered,opened up for the many beauties and styles and plate offerings I was bound to find.Reminded myself how easy it would be to feel cowed, less, not pretty enough, not artistic enough, not stylish enough. I shook it off, my eyes long open to the truth that I bring those feelings up in other women too. That with intention and curiousity I can shift the energy, be open and not threatened, and enter into one of my favorite pockets of humanity I've ever found--a circle of women where we are listening and embracing, consoling, crying. I think it may be why people have believed in witches for so long. It's because we're real.

Nici and Paige created so much beauty. The land and the farm were rough and pretty. The food was how food should be--so full of juice and flavor and the essence of being fed and of feeding. Plates, silver, vases, tableclothes. Beauty everywhere you turned. During one free moment I wandered around the buildings, through gates into backyards, under trees and tall grass. Getting lost but having nowhere else to be. I walked by a corner with stacked farm tools, cobwebs, ceramic pots, some broken. I didn't notice it the first time I pass it. The second time I saw it, saw the dirt. But what I really saw is how our eyes make things beautiful. When I walk by piled up corners in my own house I cringe under the weight of things to do, of "Why doesn't all of that have a place to go?" Here, it was part of the welcoming heart that was sheltering me and it was beautiful to me.

We sat in a circle and talked. We journaled. We sat in pairs, interviewing one another and taking photos of one another. We walked the perimeter,. We sat on quilts under trees surrounded by lambs. We ate lunch on a long wooden table in a field and every single bite I took was exquisite. Then we went swimming in the black bottom pool. Icy water surrounded by hot flat rock. Different bodies, different suits, different approaches to the water. We told each other stories and swam or dipped feet. Nici was there and I was intimidated by her, because I felt like I knew her through her blog and because she designed the event and because she was gorgeous and plunging into the cold water in glee. It would have been easy to stay a few paces away, to observe like I like to do. To soak up the atmosphere. But I swam up and somehow made conversation. I felt shy the whole time. But I felt so clearly sure that I did not want to miss the opportunity to actually get to know this woman I'd been admiring for so long.

There were so many wonderful connections on that day. So many vibrant, powerful women. It was like drinking gallons of a life-giving draught that would last me for years. We talked about everything. At the end of the evening we ate another other-worldly meal in a field, the wreathes we'd wound of branches and flowers sitting at our feet. When the meal ended, one woman sang opera, her voice pulling up from the base of her feet and spilling into the darkening sky. It was a gift of a day.

Nici and I wrote back and forth a couple times after that and now we are friends. And it is so exciting for me to write that! Because I love her and I love getting to know her and also because I love me and I am proud of myself for not turning away, for not hiding and waiting to be asked, for stepping into the power I know I have but get scared of so often because I have feared being embarrassed or rejected or wrong. That is the gift I am giving to myself on this 40th birthday of mine--I'm going to wrap up those fears and put them somewhere for a while just in case I need them again. Fear of embarassment? We are all learning. We all make mistakes. What is there to be embarrassed about?