I love to blog.  And I love my readers! Some of them bravely post their wonderful comments below. Others contact me directly via email and write beautiful responses that way.  And, some make comments when they see me in class.  When I write, I feel as if I am talking to my readers.
How did it all start? The first person who suggested I blog was Linda Talley.   After a private yoga session, she said to me, “You really should start a blog!” And I thought to myself, “But what would I ever write about? And who would want to read it?”

Not long after that suggestion, on a very cold winter evening, I was doing a power  walk with my friend and neighbor, Mary Lear.  We forgot to bring our flashlights and were trying to be careful not to trip on uneven sidewalks and not to slip on patches of ice!  I asked her to tell me about what she had been reading because I get the best book ideas from my friends!  She told me  she was doing a lot of blog reading.  She went on to tell me about a blog she was particularly impressed by called SouleMama .  She explained to me that SouleMama was written by a woman named Amanda Soule who is living in rural Vermont, homeschooling and raising her 5 young children.  Quite frankly, I was surprised.  Mostly I was surprised because Mary is a single woman living in a city, an engineer with a wonderful career, and she does not have children.  I wondered how the blog SouleMama  could captivate her attention!  After our power walk,  I looked up the blog site, SouleMama, found it incredibly fascinating, and was immediately hooked!   Amanda Soule, mother of five, homeschooler, craftswoman, homemaker,  living in rural Vermont, really knows how to live life and how to capture it in words and photos! Trust me, you don’t have to have sew all of your children’s clothing to love what she writes.

Through Amanda Soule’s blog site, I learned that blogging can be about finding something beautiful and exquisite in everyday life and capturing it in words and photographs.  In her blog, Amanda Soule’s days become magical.  Her words allow us to see a piece of her delightful life:  her children become exquisite,  the eggs her chickens produce become extraordinary, the apples that grow on her trees become the sweetest of the sweet, and the chocolate messes on her children’s faces become everyday miracles!

The draft of this blog

That is what I want to do: to capture those everyday miracles and precious moments that can sometimes go by unnoticed, or under-appreciated.  And so my blog was born.  I sometimes laugh out loud, and have also cried mountains of tears while writing some of my blog entries. I have fretted and have felt concern that perhaps a blog entry may be found to be boring, or that a certain something I have written is inappropriate or in some way offensive (I know, I can be very paranoid and overly analytical. For example, I am wondering if I should  delete these last sentences?) Sometimes, late at night,  I can barely keep my eyes open as I blog.  I have written under extreme heat and chaos (as in India) and under severe time constraints.  But always,  little pieces of my life emerge as I blog. It is another one of those labors of love for me!  It can be time consuming, but  is incredibly rewarding.  Little by little, I am creating one big fat mosaic and sharing it for the world to see.

Thank you, thank you for reading my blog!!