Grateful

I am full this day. Full of gratitude. Full of love. I have known such love in the past few days and I wish for everyone to know this feeling because THIS feeling is what life is all about. Grateful and humbled, indeed, am I.

Identity

Well, my heavens, has it been a long time since I have visited this space! To be honest, I wasn't sure that I should continue blogging - I felt so detached from here. I feel that I am best in this space when I am pontificating about big ideas. Life ideas.

My life has EXPLODED in all the best possible ways over the past 6 months. I have truly experienced an embarrassment of riches. A course in life and entry into grad school. A new love. Loads of wonderful friends. The unceasing love and support of my incredible family, who helped me move from DC to Boston for school. I am truly the sum of the wondrous people in my life.

Which brings me to the notion of identity. I feel that in the course of the past 6 months I have negotiated and renegotiated a newer sense of self. It has been dizzying to say the least. For so long, I was very much the same with natural developments here and there.

And then I finally found a true professional course. And I was admitted in graduate school (someone else believed that I could do this too - someone besides my awesome mother). And I finally met someone who fit into my life the way no man had before. Who showed me such kindness, love, trust, intelligence, and humor. Who allowed me to express the love that I had so longed to give someone. I was made better by these things. These gifts. But I was also made different.

And now I am back in Boston and at school. Learning in an academic environment for the first time in 5 years. And it's all at once strange, hard, and wonderful. And we are constantly discussing our identities - our racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. I am here in this new/old place, closer to my family but farther from my love, and trying to navigate the next stages of my life (because I am not a true woman if I am not in super planning mode) and wondering how it will all play out.

There's the old Emily - so close to her awesome family and friends but perpetually single and looking for the one man who could be a kindred spirit. How can I mesh her with the new Emily - not only empowered by friends and family but also now career validations and an incredibly kind and loving man? It seems to be the ultimate decision that many of us face in this fast-paced, populated, multi-option, geographically diverse world. Hah, I am tired just typing this out, let alone making a decision. And the good thing is that I don't need to make one now. But it is coming down the pike. And I am not quite sure how it will all play out. How can I be the person I want to be and be with everyone I want to be? How can I have it all? The ultimate question of the modern woman. Of the modern human.

Update:  A very kind and wise friend read this post and wrote me the loveliest email about life. It meant a great deal but one of her best lines was that "we are all a work in progress." And that's the beautiful part. Thanks, C!

Photo credit: Emily Bowen

Crossing the Falls

I was venting to my mom tonight about all that I have going on right now.  All that there is to do.  That I was losing sight of how lucky I am right now.  And my mum, in all her wisdom, brought up the story she had heard on the news of the man who just walked a tightrope across Niagara Falls. Talk about perspective.

The thing is he just talked about how he didn't focus on the crossing. Only on the end. The result. The goal. What it was all - the angst, the worry, the nerves - for.  And she's so right. But of course she is. She's my mum. And I am so lucky these days. So lucky.

Photo credit: Reuters

Home

I wasn't able to be home for Father's Day. The above photo is my Papa in a nutshell and the overall scene is typical for my Maine home (notice Mae peaking out from the table looking warily at the camera).

It's been a while since I have been home to Maine and I miss my family a great deal. I took some photos when I was last home in February.

Miss Isabelle basking the warm rays of a winter sun 

Glasses of French wine during lunch

A lunch in anticipation of our French trip

Mum reading 

Seascapes at Potts Point

Mum at Potts Point on a frigid day

Photo credit:  Emily Bowen

Notre Dame + Ile Saint Louis

Sunday evening of our trip we metroed over to Ile de la Cite to attend mass at Notre Dame.  The weight of the history and all drama of the architecture was humbling and awe-inspiring. After mass, we walked through the little garden behind Notre Dame and across the bridge to Ile Saint Louis for a delicious dinner at Cafe St. Regis.  The light on Ile Saint Louis is magical. 

Provence (Avignon)

After roaming the streets of Paris for several days, I longed to breathe cleaner air and maintain a slower pace.  Lucky we had tickets booked on the fast train to Provence - Avignon.  It roared through the French countryside, speckled with tiny, old towns and herds of sheep, with the Rhone Alps in the distance.  We arrived and walked A LONG WAY to our inn, a small establishment tucked in one of the many winding streets of Avignon (most famous for the Pont D'Avignon and the Palais de Papes, where the Vatican ruled in the fourteenth century). We spent two nights there, enjoying the Provencal pace and gorgeous Spring sunshine.

View from below the Palais de Papes

Rhone Alps in the distance

Somebody is not paying attention

Sur le Pont D'Avignon...

Walking up to the Palais de Papes

My camera was snatched by my mum!

French dogs are tres chic

Reminded me of the Sound of Music

 

Palais de Papes

My favorite dinner of the whole trip at L'Epices and Love