What I Loved Origin Story
I came into this lifetime obsessed by two things, beauty and humans, and a deep desire to really know both.
To begin, let me tell you two little stories about myself as a child.
I grew up alone with a single mother in the Eighties, which meant for me, that I was often left to roam free. When I was eight years old we moved to a small village on the Hudson River, where I could easily walk the seven blocks to the center of town. For so many decades to come, I would yell, “I’m going into town.” I just LOVED going into town. As a child I would often go into town and explore the shops. The shops were not great back then, but mostly I just wanted to know about the world. I wanted to know what was for sale, but I really wanted to know about the people who worked there, who they were, what they felt.
And.
I only wanted to wear evening gowns. When my mother would take me into the city, I would beg her to go to Bloomingdales, and then I would beg her to buy me a gown. Absolutely beg, because I HAD to have them, all of them. My mother used to joke that I must be sneaking off to cocktail parties after she went to sleep, but it seemed obvious to me that all of life was meant to be lived in a gown.
The idea for What I Loved came in 2018, several months after the death of my mother, a couple of years after the death of my father. I have yet to string together the perfect words to truly express the disorientation that I felt in the world after losing both of my parents suddenly. I had grown up so sure of who I was, and when they were gone I realized that I had only felt sure of myself in context; I always thought I was brave, but without my tribe I began to experience debilitating anxiety about my existence and safety in the world; total, complete, disorientation. I did not know who I was in the world, in my own skin, without my mother.
In April 2018 I realized that I needed a break, that I could no longer hold the pieces of myself together; that I could no longer continue to play the role of myself in the world. I was fortunate in so many ways that I could travel, that I could ask the universe where I was meant to go and actually go there. I started off on Maui, an island that I’d sworn off a decade earlier, and I began to feel the outline of my own pulse again. This three month journey then led me home to The Hudson Valley to sort through generations of belongings, to Portugal where I had taken my first steps, where my grandmother had had a home, to Paris, where I began to remember who I wanted to be in this world and was convinced that my appendix would rupture at any moment, to Nantucket to see dearest friends and stand with ancestor air, and then to Santa Fe to meet my partner for the light and Cafe Pasqual breakfasts.
I was so happy traveling. I read an account of grief once that said something like… In traveling I could feel myself again. It was at home that I felt like a tourist in my own life. I related to this wholly. I travelled, I began to heal and then I came home and realized that I would still have to spend the rest of my life without my mother and I was destroyed. Because we live in an Eat Pray Love world we think that great adventure is the sole solution, but what if it’s just another escape, a beautiful postponement to having to be still and feel The Big Rip, the breaking open of a whole new universe within us. Everything is and/also, but I am getting distracted.
It was during this time, back in my life that no longer felt like my life, that the phrase I followed what I loved and I found my self waiting for me there arrived. It just came, like a life line, a heartbeat. I realized that what had been so healing and orienting during my travels was that I could feel my self, find my self in my love of beauty, of objects, of paintings and shells. I needed material, earthly objects. I binged on crystals and plumeria and perfumes and face oils. I needed to remember to stay on the earth. I needed to throw down earthly anchors. I began to make lists of what I loved. I began to ask others to really consider this question… What do you love? It’s a difficult question to answer, not because we don’t know, we know, we are just afraid of what it might do to our sense of stability, our responsibilities. I started off with pizza. I LOVE pizza. Start with pizza and go from there… What do you love?
I am being as honest as I know how to be, because I believe that the world needs more honesty. I am being as honest as I know how to be because I have asked these beautiful people to be honest with us. I designed these questions simply because I think that they are important questions to reflect on in these times. Answer them if you want. Send me the answers if you want. The world needs healing, more light and truth and we need each other more than ever.
Just start.
I love you so much.
xo Jenny
