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Hello lovely letter family!
Today’s letter is more like a note card of my Sunday reflections for you. I hope you enjoy where it may take you.
FYI this is week two of playing along with the Blogassaince with Carly Jacobs and Christina Butcher. Checkout their sites and posts to discover some beautiful writers of the internet leaving links to their posts in Carly and Christina’s comments.
If you are a writer on the internet, blogger or a Substack newsletter writer feel free to leave a link to yourself for us to discover in my comments.
I love that you are here Xx
You know, whenever I see a swarm of butterflies,’ whimsical instrumental music starts playing in my head as they flutter around like a kaleidoscope of colourful notes creating their own score.
It takes me back to my childhood on the farm where I’d run through the grass with my butterfly net while Mum gardened and the hum of Dad’s motorbike would float on the breeze from the paddocks below. Sometimes he’d return with feathers he’d found for me along the way or a discarded bird egg from a nest.
One time he excitedly bundled me into the Ute to show me a nest he’d found inside the top of a gate strainer post. In my mind they were the prettiest blue eggs I’d ever seen.
I imagined darling small birds would hatch and fly up to our home to sit on tree branches and sing to me like the bluebirds in Snow White. They were probably common starling eggs but to me they really were like something out of a fairytale.
I’m fairly certain my dearly departed dad was in the room that night when Mum died because who else would she have opened her eyes for after days of being unconscious before she turned to look at me at left us.
The above photo, taken by the talented Fraser Tull, immediately took me back to another place in time the second I saw it on his Instagram feed.
Isn’t it funny how a photo, a smell, the touch of something familiar or a noise can transport you to a moment in time in an instant and in that split second you have no control of being carried there or any control over how you are going to feel.
Sometimes those triggers can conjure not so pleasant memories and have you processing thoughts and feelings you’d rather wish you’d never have to process again. I’ve had my fair share of those over these last couple of years and particularly the last few months.
But when I come across this pic in my saved photo’s I find myself breathing deep, like someone has wrapped a warm blanket around my shoulders.
I make no secret of the fact that I struggle with the absence of my husband and my mother in my every day on a physical realm, given their recent passing to the other side.
Yet, there are glimmers throughout my days, like when I happen upon certain photos, that I feel so full of not only their presence but the presence of others gone before me too… and in those moments I smile knowing that our connection runs deeper than life itself and my relationship with them is never ending… it’s just different.
I've always thought butterflies are magic. You just have to think about the transformation they go through to become their beautiful fluttering magnificence and it's simply mind-blowing. I think if you can still see magic in nature and the simple things in life, you are one of the lucky ones. x