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Jen at Red Leaf

@jen_at_red_leaf

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Waiting for a breakfast table - Seattle edition. by @jen_at_red_leaf

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7 days ago

All my life, the incredulous voice from the other side of the door, “are you STILL in the bath?!”

Yes. I am still in the bath, and not the least bit sorry for it.

#blackandwhitephotography #toes #bath #water #leicalens by @jen_at_red_leaf

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11 days ago

That Vermont fall foliage though. by @jen_at_red_leaf

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11 days ago

We had big rains in the desert because of Hurricane Polo. Hours on end, days in a row. Streets became small rivers. Dips in the road became small ponds. Albie whined at the door for a walk. The sun is back. Walks are back. The trees are happy.
#newmexico #hurricanepolo #riorancho by @jen_at_red_leaf

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14 days ago

Albuquerque big sky, lanced through by a tatty motel sign. The motel is now an empty lot.

#albuquerque #newmexico #newmexicophotography #bigsky #midwest by @jen_at_red_leaf

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a month ago

The morning yard check. Albie’s favorite. Having never lived with a dog before, I am struck by just how participatory this little creature is. He loves nothing more than “checking” things with me. Better still if our heads are at the same level and our gaze is pointed at the same curiosity. Yesterday evening, Albie’s puppy brain got the better of him. He was jumping and putting his mouth all over my arm. The experts agree this should immediately end all play. So indeed, I clipped his house lead on and said, “all done”. He laid on the floor for a while while I took some space. After 15-20 min, I quietly called him over to me and gently talked to him. As I spoke, he rested his head in the nook between my knees, just standing like that for a long time. I think this was his way of apologizing. It worked. I think it’s safe to say my heart is forever changed by being in relation with Albie. He turned one last week if you’d like to wish him a happy birthday. 😉🥳

#standardpoodle #tricolorpoodle #dogsofinstagram by @jen_at_red_leaf

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2 months ago

Ink, pen, paper. My forever loves.

Pen holder handmade by @awlayna, inks by @tomsstudio, and nib holders and brass nib (bloody works of art!) by @kakimori_japan

Everything about working with fountain and dip pens is ritual to me. by @jen_at_red_leaf

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3 months ago

How utterly strange the passage of time is. In my mind, this moment is nearer to me than the actual timeline of 26 long years passed. And it also feels another lifetime. Another storyline utterly. A parallel universe. Yet one that repeated eerily. A timeline where illness and trauma coincided to cut me down at the knees and find me knocking on gilded cage doors. A timeline repeat. A generational repeat. So many women in my line whose choices were too narrow so they worked hard and accepted too little for it.

I come from lines of fierce, practical women with narrow choices. And I’ve undertaken the work of widening that field of choices, as one part of a much bigger work.

As I’ve been stepping into new work in this season of my life, work I’ve been doing my whole life but couldn’t put a name to, the single, biggest terror haunting my heels is that my illness will take me out again before this work provides the cushion I need to never again have to bury my own perceptions underneath my survival needs. That terror of dependence, which flings open the doors to exploitation, betrayal of self, and all the gremlins that come with it, is a shadow I’m working. As I commented yesterday on @cosmogyny ‘s post, illness has been teacher, journey, and crucible.

#fiercerites #sovereignwoman #woundedhealer #riteofpassage #2010 by @jen_at_red_leaf

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3 months ago

Rituals help rewire what we pay attention to and how. My grandmother passed earlier this year, and I keep her memory present in my mind through an offering ritual. On hot days like today, she would always have a glass of sweet iced tea in reach of her hand. So I make her a glass of iced tea. As I stir in the sugar, I speak intentions over the water such as qualities of hers I want to deepen into, generational wounds I want to heal.

Our brains are deeply wired for ritual, and I find working with a practice is more beautiful and gentle than working with mind through thought alone.

My whole life I’ve been bending toward this work. Ask me anything. #Ritual #griefwork #griefritual #secular #healinggenerationalwounds by @jen_at_red_leaf

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3 months ago

I’m not a morning person, but Albie is a morning dog. So we tend the garden before the sun’s angle is too high. #newmexico #standardpoodle #partipoodle #gardening #puppy by @jen_at_red_leaf

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3 months ago

Albie lifted his head once, maybe twice, at the distant thunder of an incoming storm. By the time the rain came and the thunder was overhead, he was fast asleep. We don’t get days like this often in the desert, and lord knows the Rio Grande needs it.

#newmexico #standardpoodle #partipoodle #thunderstorm by @jen_at_red_leaf

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3 months ago

Tea for Mimi

When we think about the legacy we might leave behind, we tend to think in grand declaration, not the daily, unremarkable rituals that hook in and pass down. The small absurdities, the organic comforts, the persistent habits that, perhaps, are a person's truest signature.

For my Mimi, one of these was tea. Plain old Lipton tea with a spoonful of sugar (or two), but only from a proper delicate china cup. Wherever you found Mimi, there was a cup of tea within her reach. In the height of summer, she drank it iced. But the rest of the year, she was perpetually cold, bundled in a sweater of her signature pink, blue, or red, a cup of scorching hot tea at her lips. A year or so before she died, she passed onto me a set of 4 white teacups and saucers.

The night she lay in the hospital dying, I was beset with helplessness. I was too far away to get to her. I knew the distance was going to eat me alive. I needed to do something. "Make tea," is what came to me. Make tea and sit. Light a candle. Let everything else clear out of the mind, and hold the thinning thread tethering my grandmother to this world in my heart.

Yesterday I started a new ritual as part of something else, but "make tea for Mimi" showed up again. I didn't have any Lipton on hand in my tea cupboard, so I chose one I think she would love if she were here, clucking over the selection. The pink wrapper would catch her eye. Then the ingredients, a blend of many of her favorite things: black tea, pink rose petals, and citrus.

I set it out and send her a little love. I hope you like it Mimi. #griefritual #grief by @jen_at_red_leaf

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4 months ago