Recenter

Last night I went to the Fairfield bookstore to hear Julie Mughal read from her book Land Without Hats, titled after a widow discussed with her that her husband who had passed traveled to heaven where a man must remove his hat to meet God. Reflecting on losing her own husband in a plane crash in 1998, she was inspired to interview widows in many nations. Through work with the UN and Save The Children, she felt compelled to learn from women who lost their husbands and to tell their international stories.

Another presenter, Anna M. Linley, demonstrated her art work based off of soul mandalas, a practice of using colored pencils and shading to meditate and create pieces of art she described as healing.

I needed an evening of being inspired by others who have chosen to create and to reflect through therapeutic measures. Both shading and writing are art forms and I was interested in learning their stories and communicative processes. At the end, we were asked to participate in a soul mandala exercise (trust me, mine did not look anything like the one to the left) and it reminded me of the creative doodling my grandmother loved to do.

It was also a true pleasure to learn from the presenters and to hear from them on how they hope to make the world a better place.