As Spring traipses on its merry way, there are a number of things that are making it a beautiful new season for me (besides all the colors, of course).

🌸1.) Cherry Blossom scented anything. I totally forgot to go to the local Japanese gardens for the sakura blooming, but I am fully in love with anything that smells like cherry blossoms. I love the way the clean laundry fragrances rooms when I use the Downy Light Cherry Blossom scent booster in the wash. I adore how sweet the Forever Cherry Blossom body spray and lotion from Bath & Body Works makes my skin. I am enamored of just how springy a scent it is. It is like what the color pink would smell like, and I love it!

💮2.) Cups of coffee on a lazy Saturday morning. I adore mornings where I can wake up on my own and then take my slow, sweet time with my coffee and a book while the rest of the household sleeps or hurkle-durkles. I love letting my mind rouse itself with a good story, waking up my spirt as well as my body.

🌸3.) Handwriting. I have been re-discovering some of my favorite types of pens (currently, the Uniball Air and Tombow Fudenosuke Brush Pens) and writing longhand (such as the first draft of this post). One of my colleagues took a page of notes that I had taken during a meeting and said that it was like I had written her a missive from the Civil War. 😊I love my handwriting, personally. I adore how elegant it looks, smooth and fluid, unique even, and how delicately it suits my personality. It is really rather beautiful, if I do say so myself, to see my thoughts pour out onto paper so prettily through my pen, like my own special form of art.

💮4.) Using my local library resources, primarily the Libby app for digital books and audiobooks. I am very much enjoying getting books and audiobooks through Libby and supporting the resources of our local library. I am grateful to all the amazing librarians who give of their expertise and passion to share knowledge and imagination with our communities.

I also love sharing book recommendations with friends and colleagues. We have our own little bookish community at my school, and we spent a whole late-start free-meeting time recently talking about books, sharing recommendations and (in my case) physical books, and enjoying time together. I was surprised, stunned, and delighted to see that there are indeed so many of us bookish people in our school, beyond the obvious culprits, of course. It made me very happy to put three books into the hands of colleagues that day for them to enjoy over Spring Break. I feel such joy and pride when someone enjoys my recommendations, like I did something good for their heart and mind. My first compulsive book recommendation was Erin Morgenstern’s debut novel The Night Circus. It is still a book that I try to put into as many hands as I can, always having an extra copy to lend out or give as a gift. Along with this at the top of my list are:

• Sue Monk Kidd’s The Book of Longings
• Evelyn Skye’s The Incredible Kindness of Paper
• Jaysea Lynn’s For Whom the Belle Tolls
• Hwang Bo-Reum’s Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop
• Ann Liang’s A Song to Drown Rivers
• Lisa See’s Lady Tan’s Circle of Women
• India Holton’s Dangerous Damsels and Love’s Academic series

🌸💮🌸💮 As Spring moves forward, I am trying to concentrate on these beautiful glimmers of life and how much they fill and sustain me. I want to continue to embrace softness and gentleness while remaining strong, remembering that I–as a woman, as a person, as a being–can, and do, hold infinite worlds within me.

And so, too, do you, dear heart. 🌸💮🌸💮