handwriting

What is Saving My Spring Life 2026🌸💮🌸💮

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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

I love sharing the joy of reading with others and showing them how amazing, enchanting, and soul-soothing and life-saving stories can be. It fills my soul as much as I hope it does theirs.

🌸💮🌸💮 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. 🌸💮🌸💮

Joys in a Little Jar

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Last year for Mother’s Day, my darling kiddo made a gift for me in their class at school. They made a “jar of love”. Inside this little plastic jar are notes full of love and care from my child. I adore and treasure this little gift, in part because it reminds me of the notes that my own mother would give me as a kid and teenager. She would write them on calenders, in devotionals, on lunch notes, and daily prayer cards so I could always have them with me. Always have a reminder that she loves me deeply and dearly.

A few mornings ago, the little jar on my desk caught my eye, and I reached for it. I could use some love this morning, I felt. So I reached in and drew out one of the lovingly written-on scraps of paper and smiled as I opened it. It was doing its work even before I read it. I love this jar; I love the written evidence of love.

My husband endeavors to find meaningful, beautiful cards for me on special days or occasions. I love him for his effort in agonizing over “just the right one”.

My heart flutters excitedly when I get letters in the mail because I love seeing people’s souls in their handwriting.

Writing takes effort and effort translates into love for me. Even signing your own name with a pen these days takes extra effort in this digital society. I don’t care what your handwriting looks like (I teach grade school, don’t forget). The fact that you sat down and put pen to paper for me means more than can adequately express. It’s your mind and soul living on paper. Shimmering in glittery gel ink, swirling dramatically in chromatic fountain pigments, or calmly sitting in rounded ballpoint — your words live there, you are there, speaking to me from the page.

This little jar holds joy beyond compare for me, not only in the loving notes it holds but in the reminder of so many other notes, letters, and cards that have preceded them. Writings that have made my life full and memorable and made me feel remembered, seen, and loved.

On Fountain Pens

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I love fountain pens! Absolutely adore them! When I write with fountain pens, I find that my words seems prettier, more stately. They were made for letters, notes, calling cards. I could easily see myself sitting at a secretary of a morning, replying to bits of mail. A few acceptances here, a few regretful declinations there, a congratulatory note to a friend. It’s why I am working to get back into letter- and note-writing to my friends and family. It’s a beautiful skill and habit to cultivate. I very much much enjoy what I see and feel when I write. I also love receiving letters in the mail that are not bills or something of that sort of dire importance to be taken care of. I also know that I am remembered and cared about.

Part of me – a large part – loves to see my mind poured out on paper. I love the evidence of my thoughts. I have told some that, a great deal of the time, I feel less than adequate mentally because my brain doesn’t move at the same pace as others’. It often takes me a long time to consider concepts and ideas before I can reach a conclusion or opinion about them, and there is no physical evidence of that process. So I fear that people often think I am not thinking or that I won’t think about things. When I write, the evidence of cognitive thought is there on paper. Proof that I do actually think!

I have been keeping journals since I was 17 years old and entering college. Most of them are leather-bound, golden-edged books that evoke thoughts of libraries and drawing rooms, of sunny parlors and crackling fires. I love to look back at them and see how my handwriting has evolved over the years and to take joy in the pages and pages that I have written about my life over the years. It also makes me realize just how much I need to invest in more notebooks to carry around with me. Always need something to write in, after all. Pen without paper isn’t quite as useful, you know?