I have been holed up in my writing cave for the past few weeks, barely coming up for air let alone those gorgeous meals I love to share. Today I sat down to write this post and I found myself kind of wordless. I know, hard to believe, right? I’m rarely at a loss for words.

Add to that, I have a program launching shortly. Not the best of times to run out of words. So, I decided to treat you to a visual display, a ‘slice’ of my own Luscious Legacy Project and how it has evolved.

This will be the only online version of LLP that I run in 2016 so if you have been ‘meaning to do this some day,’ be sure to grab your spot. It’s a lovely space to set an intention around your writing (or your art) and then be warmly supported by someone (that would be me!) who tends deeply and holds a very sacred space for both writers and artists who want the experience of creating something tangible in which to curate and hold a collection of stories (slices or snippets, past or present). And whatever else shows up!

Winter is the perfect time to ‘cosy in’ and create, don’t you think? Registration closes on Sunday night, January 31st, at midnight.

So here we are, a picture walk, with slices and snippets of my own personal journey through the Luscious Legacy Project … a warm and safe and luscious container where just about anything can happen. You may write a few slices and snippets like the ones below. You may create an ebook … or an iBook … or a gluebook. Or … no book.

You may even find that the writing you do here seeds the memoir you are hoping to write someday.

Enjoy.

… the house on 10th Street, chestnut trees, my grandmother’s devotion to her faith, the wafer-thin pages of her prayer book stuffed with holy cards, how she lit candles on her counter for loved ones and prayed the rosary in Italian every single night. What it must have been like for her to travel to the United States on a ship, a young woman with three small children, one of them just a babe. How she never again saw her parents. How she survived the Great Depression with Grandpa digging ditches for a living and so many children to feed yet no one remembers her ever complaining. And how sometimes in the wee hours of the morning when restless mind keeps me from slumber, I picture her sitting on her burgundy mohair couch, a pile of knitting warming her lap, rosary beads in hand. And, if I listen closely enough, her voice once again sings me to sleep.

Imagine this. It’s 1947. Salvatore walks through the doors of the Dellwood Ballroom. His buddies most likely pay his way because he doesn’t have two nickels to rub together (my mother’s description of him). He spots Assunta (Sue) and he’s smitten. He grabs the ticket stub and a pencil and he starts sketching her face. The band pauses; pages turn as they cue up their next number. Salvatore approaches this striking young woman but not with the confident swagger you might imagine. He’s rather shy. He hands her his ‘dance card.’ She sees her own face looking up at her. She accepts his hand and they dance. After the dance they go to Decos for coffee in his ’39 Buick. Assunta Sue has to pick up the tab because he’s a starving artist and he’s broke. Two months later, March 3rd (her birthday), they’re engaged. Eight months later they’re married.

A Sift of Lost Faces
Inspired by the poem: Where I’m From by George Ella Lyon

My Godmother Rose is there, a huge pot of tomato sauce simmering on her stove top. Her famous Sfinge flecked with tiny candy dots of red and yellow, purple and green sits on the counter beside it. Aunt Jenny is there, too, flipping wafer-thin crêpes in miniature cast iron skillets in a kitchen so tiny you could reach every cupboard and appliance without leaving the stove. And don’t forget Aunt Pauline: colossal cakes, the perfect apple pie, a dusting of flower on her apron, maybe even her nose. And then, there’s Grandma with her big old tarnished knife, chopping carrots, fennel, peppers and onions, chicken roasting in her garlic-infused kitchen. And me … savoring the mouthwatering flavors and aromas that remind me of my roots and what it really means to be fed.

He was a design draftsman/technical illustrator by day, constructing detailed schematic drawings of things like the innards of a radio or television set. Then, on the weekends, he would sketch or paint or create one of his infamous ‘spit drawings.’ That’s what he called them: spit drawings. He carried a little tray of watercolors in the glove compartment of his car and whenever he saw something interesting he would pull over to the side of the road and start painting. I’m sure as I child I would be rolling my eyes saying, “Not again!” But today … what I wouldn’t give to see him pull out those paints and create that magic right before my eyes.

I can’t wait to see what shows up next.

The ‘classroom’ opens Sunday, January 31st.
Kickoff call is Tuesday, February 2nd
You can register
right here.

I’ll provide the space, prompts, guidance and support for you to complete a personal legacy project that has meaning for YOU. Sometimes the form shows up immediately and you’ll know exactly what you want to create. More often, it’s the container, the generative process that arises when we create something like this in the kinship of community, that helps us decide what to create.

It’s almost as though we’re each making something that we need to create in this space and time. At least that’s been my experience and that of so many of the women who tell me why they keep coming back for more.

Okay, your turn. What stories do you hold dear? What would YOU create if you joined this gorgeous group of legacy crafters?