profile

Kathy Donchak

Sunday Letter: Composing a Life

Published 5 months ago • 1 min read

Composing a life has a metaphorical relation to many different arts, including architecture and dance and cooking. In the visual arts, a variety of disparate elements may be arranged to form a simultaneous whole, just as we combine our simultaneous commitments. In the temporal arts, like music, a sequential diversity may be brought into harmony over time. In still other arts, such as homemaking or gardening, choreography or administration, complexity is woven in both space and time. When the choices and rhythms of life change, as they have in our time, the study of life becomes an increasing preoccupation.
~ Mary Catherine Bateson, Composing a Life

The home we will leave this week ceased to be ours when I removed our personal mementos and created a space where others could see themselves living a new chapter of their lives here. This stage of saying farewell to the past is one of the few times in life you can actually see transitions.

Most transitions are silent and subtle. They create conflicts as we choose the elements of our life composition to be move forward.

You read something, consider it, meet someone new, and begin a creative editing process.

You look more critically at possessions, friendships, values, and the life you composed reflected in the place you called home.

We do this throughout our life, from our childhood bedrooms, dorm rooms, and first apartments. The presence or absence of the things we bring forward, in material and in spirit, becomes the canvas of this life season.

As I pass on the keys, I realize a home’s essence surpasses its physical form, living in shared memories and transformative moments. Letting go isn’t just relinquishing ownership, but an invitation for others to inscribe their stories while continuing our ongoing narrative of who we are and aspire to be.

Be well,

Kathy



Kathy Donchak

I write about nature, family, creativity, and wellbeing.

Read more from Kathy Donchak

A garden is a space I have always carved out for myself, from the smallest balcony to the potted flowers by my door. Every one reflects the season of my life. An expression of self in a constantly changing landscape. Looking out into our small backyard, I look at the native serviceberry trees I bought from a local landscaper who saved them. Their form is delicate and rhythmic, standing in their small pots like a lanky teenager learning to balance and move with their fresh growth. This week I...

6 days ago • 1 min read

Source One must work with the creative powers - for not to work with is to work against; in art as in spiritual life there is no neutral place.” ~ Mary Oliver, Blue Pastures Our garden is taking shape. Inspired by one of my favorite gardening books by Rebcca Cole, I am dreaming and choosing plants to create a small garden of evergreens and deciduous trees, espalier fruit trees, and flowers. My husband is working through plans for raised vegetable and herb beds to feed the body while I work to...

13 days ago • 1 min read

And here I build my platform, and live upon it, and think my thoughts and am high. To rise, I must have a field to rise from. To deepen, I must have a bedrock from which to descend. ~ Mary Oliver, Long Life I can hear the birds again. The rainy mornings have been flooded with sounds of so many frogs, you are sure you left a window open, but today, thanks to the early morning urging of our cat at the window, I began to hear them again. The geese honking overhead, woodland songbirds, even an...

27 days ago • 1 min read
Share this post