Quilt, books, love

And re-wilding ourselves

My adopted Mom's quilt has been framed and hung on our wall - below is a photo of it.

Here's a link with more photos and a quilt related short fictional story Mom and Dad told while they worked on it.

My adopted Mom’s quilt and a searcher

So I’ve been thinking about love this week during my breakfast sketchbook time.

Here's another morning sketchbook page.

Since this week is also banned books week I’ve been thinking of the diversity of books as a form of love, books can be a way of meeting people where they are, which is a practical kind of love.

Here's my new “banned and other wild books” booklist https://bookshop.org/lists/banned-and-other-wild-books - if you follow that link to see my list of 30 books 😮 you may recognize the sketchbook drawing at the top of my book list. It's this one…

My adopted Mom and Dad were avid readers and I learned to be a better reader from both of them. Knowing how to follow your own interests when choosing what books to read is a skill development they encouraged. This quote that I have thumbtacked to my studio wall is related to what I learned.

The term “re-wilding” typically refers to ecological conservation, a way of letting the land be naturally whatever it is as a way of restoring the ecosystem.

I think we can do this with our minds too, we can re-wild ourselves and our own natural mental landscape, allowing ourselves a more expansive diverse habitat of the mind, to sidestep habits, group-think, expectations and presumptions. By allowing ourselves off-leash now and then we can reconnect and restore ourselves.

Here's a page from my published sketchbook titled Another Sketchbook and this book contains several of re-wilding methods, ways to pursue our natural interests, that I began learning from my adopted Mom and Dad. I reproduced my original handmade sketchbook at just a slightly larger size as you can see in this link: https://sueclancy.com/portfolio/another-sketchbook/ Anyway, here's one of the pages that explains why re-wilding ourselves matters.

May you have many enjoyable walks this week through your own wild mental terrain.