by tashmcgill | Jun 24, 2017 | Opinion, Travel
There are some people and some places that have a certain magic to them. If you are lucky enough to encounter the magic people in the magic places, then things get turned around, upside down and put back to centre inside you – in a way that means you cannot leave unchanged. Bruichladdich is like that for me, a distillery on the edge of Islay looking across Loch Indaal.
“As I step, I see feather after feather along my way. There is an old legend that says when you see those small white feathers appearing around you, it’s a sign that someone is watching over you, thinking of you. I have found those feathers in the back country of Kentucky, the suburbs of Tennessee, the steps of St Pauls in London and here, in Islay – in the hallway of the Port Charlotte Hotel, on the foreshore of the Singing Seas and on the steps of Bruichladdich Distillery. Perhaps my Scottish ancestors are smiling that I’ve returned to the land of my forefathers and to this island of most famous malts. It’s remarkable that one small island of eight remaining distilleries can have such an impact on the world whisky stage. Islay malt is a thing of legend.”
This excerpt from my story The Sun Came Out on Islay gives you a glimpse of the magic.
This gorgeous print is from Kate McLelland and you can view more of her work here.
Look to the centre of the map and you’ll see Bowmore, settled in the apex of Loch Indaal. Directly opposite to the left or thereabouts, sits Bruichladdich and the distillery village that has been built around her. One or two stores and two roads, one leading around the coast and the inland to farmland.
It pays to know the ‘ch’ in Bruichladdich is silent. If you’re clever, you’ll ask which ‘ch’.. it’s the one at the end, the first is said in that Scottish brogue that sounds like the earth rolling over itself.
If you’ve spent anytime on the Bourbon Trail in Kentucky or even in some of the larger Scottish distilleries, you might be under the impression that a distillery is all nameless and faceless until they roll the big guns out for annual festivities, but it’s not like that at all on Islay, let alone at Bruichladdich. There’s no such email address as store – at – bruichladdich dot com. It’s Mary you’ll meet most days and so it’s Mary you can email to arrange your distillery tour.
And it’s worth visiting, just like I did, in the slightly off-season before the hub-bub and madness of Fèis Ìle. In the gentle Spring sun, Mary took me on a more personal tour – albeit, I was the only one hanging around. Her immediate ancestors built and worked in the distillery, so it’s in her blood. It was a little of the magic of people and place I talked about. Here’s a glimpse of Bruichladdich as I saw her.
There are plenty of distilleries who talk about and deliver on experimental finishes and trying new things – certainly there are many who have bigger marketing budgets and personalities like Dr. Bill Lumsden. But there is something wonderfully understated in how Bruichladdich have been going about proving their brand as Progressive Hebridean Distillers; more than the vibrant teal and distinctly modern typography on their bottles alone.
The oldest history, old history and the new history
You can read more about the beginnings of Bruichladdich (practice it with me… brew-achk – lahdee) here. Bruichladdich started as a family business thanks to the Harvey brothers in 1881 and by the time Mark Reynier and his investors completed purchase of the distillery in 2000, the distillery found itself in the hands of an owner who prized the Victorian equipment and the family-owned and run mentality of distilling. Careful restoration meant almost all of the original equipment in still in use for production today, although the distillery is closed in June 2017 for annual repairs and maintenance. Even the grainhopper is nearly 150 years old!
Let’s skip ahead to when I first tasted Bruichladdich in 2006. The iconic squat bottle and bright teal caught my eye, almost as much as the discovery of Bruichladdich as Islay’s unpeated malt. This was in fact older malt that was being released from stock but by the time they released their first ‘new make’ spirit in 2011, there were already moves afoot to purchase Bruichladdich from Reynier by French giant Rémy Cointreau. Part of Bruichladdich’s success was the migration of Jim McEwan from Bowmore to Bruichladdich, where he took up the role of distillery manager and influenced the evolution of Bruichladdich’s ‘progressive approach’. The sale went ahead in the summer of 2012 but since then, Mary and others will tell you they’ve been able to maintain a family-run approach. When Jim retired in 2015, it was Adam Hannett who stepped into the role of Head Distiller, having learned from Jim. And outside of a few changes to production rates and the backing and resources of a global giant to hand, not too much has changed.
Geography and tasting
Bruichladdich takes water directly from the spring so it doesn’t run through the peat beds as it does at Ardbeg, Lagavulin or many of the other southern distilleries. This limited peat contact and the use of un-peated barley the resulting whisky is much milder and lighter than what people traditionally think of as an Islay malt. In general terms, the flavour profile is appropriately opposite to Speyside whiskies (opposite coasts!). Think dry finishes and spice notes that sit behind the smoke. These gentler Islay spirits are greener moss and grass influenced (rather than peat) with a touch of seaweed, tending towards a roundness of nuts and a dry finish. In the case of Bruichladdich, the unpeated malt is floral and complex. It’s a lighter spirit but it’s not simple. The flagship bottling (The Classic Laddie Ten) was first released in 2011, exactly ten years from when the restored stills first ran through to the spirit safe on September 9, 2001.
Progressive means what?
In their own words, Bruichladdich ‘respects the past but doesn’t live in its shadow’. When you visit the distillery, you’ll see cask explorations that are only available there as the head distiller picks and chooses casks from Rémy Cointreau’s stocks around the globe. That day at the distillery, Cask Exploration No.7 is classic Bruichladdich spirit finished in a Rivesaltes wine cask. Rivesaltes is a little-known wine appellation in French Catalonia – a sweet wine. In this expression, the balance of the classic malt profile is sweetened and rounded by the wine finish. Bruichladdich release Black Art (now in it’s 5.1 edition which is solely Adam’s profile and on his own admittance, he’s changed McEwan’s recipe quite drastically) semi-regularly, a more general release of these wine cask explorations.
But there’s more to it than wine finishes. Bruichladdich leapt into making malt using barley grown from the Octomore farm behind the site of Port Charlotte. From these threads of history, Bruichladdich created both the Port Charlotte, a peated version of their spirit, a 100% Scottish version and the Octomore, the most heavily peated of all the Islay whiskies.
| DISTILLERY |
MALT PHENOLS (ppm) |
NEW MAKE PHENOLS (ppm) |
MIDDLE CUT ABV |
| Ardbeg |
54 (42-70) |
24-26 |
73-62.5 |
| Bowmore |
20-25 |
8-10 |
74-61.5 |
| Bruichladdich |
3-4 |
|
76-64 |
| Port Charlotte |
40 |
20-25 |
|
| Octomore |
129 (in 2003) |
46 (in 2003) |
|
| Brora |
7-40 |
|
|
| Bunnahabhain |
1-2 (peated malt 38) |
|
72-64
|
| Caol Ila |
30-35 |
12-13 |
75-65 |
| Highland Park |
35-40 (and unpeated malt used together) |
2 |
70 and then 2h40min |
| Lagavulin |
35-40 |
16-18 |
72-59 |
| Laphroaig |
40-45 |
25 |
72-60.5 |
Phenol-levels of malts and new-makes in different distilleries and the ABV of the middle cut.
(modified from Misako Udo: The Scottish Whisky Distilleries)
It’s this ability to play at all ends of the spectrum that I most love about Bruichladdich and then there is the spirit of the place when you arrive. More likely to be greeted like family because, in many respects they are just that. A slightly-extended, whisky-making, award-winning family.
While you may not make it to the shores of Bruichladdich anytime soon, can I highly recommend you take a tastebud journey?
Start with the Laddie Ten and then try it alongside the Port Charlotte to really get a sense of this wonderful place.
by tashmcgill | Apr 7, 2016 | Culture & Ideas
I’m trying to make space in my life right now – space to have moments with people and in places, to have moments at home, because space demands to be filled. And I’ve learned where there is space demanding to be filled, something will come along to fill it. Space is what allows us to be open and to encounter the new in the everyday.
People. Ideas. Thoughts. Perceptions and patterns. Stories. Characters. Relationship and connection.
And this is why I always find new ideas or new perspectives while travelling. I’m open because travelling strips away the responsibility and burdens of everyday life, creating vast openness. I don’t have to decide anything but what to watch or when to sleep or where to explore in my rental car. The same principle works in retreating: an escape from the noise and clutter. A filtering and rebirth into wide open spaces.
It is universal; the artist will tell you without space, creativity cannot happen. And by creativity, I don’t mean the abstract state or the manner of being – I mean the gritty, raw practice of making. Making of words and songs, poems, ideas, new intentions, new ways of thinking and seeing the world. All of that is the product of making.
When I travel, the space clears for me. I am one of those clichéd writers that can produce great work on a plane or a train. I think and then I write, and thinking happens well in those metal tubes. I dictate story lines and sing melody lines into my phone, saving every drop of making that is in me. I have a habit of falling in love with fascinating ideas (and occasionally people) right before I travel anywhere. There’s something about leaving a place that makes me want to hold on to it, even if my return is imminent. A fragment of home that I can carry with me. What I’ve learned is that every journey leaves a mark on me this way, it carries its own theme and everything I see or touch or taste while I am travelling carries that mark on it.
So space happens in the movement, in the between, in the transitions between train stations on the way, on highways or in airport lounges. It is peace, to a busy mind. I retreat inward and while my smiles remain gracious, my words become few. The interior dialogue between alter-egos dominates all and ideas pour forth. Space happens on the long, twisting back roads of a foreign land and in days spent in silence because you do not have the language of the place.
Space, because the clutter of what you are used to seeing is stripped away. Your mind can wander freely and your eyes see things – new.
For example, there is a man in a well-cut suit drinking coffee at the cheap café in the center court of the transit lounge. He has status privileges but he hasn’t taken advantage of them. I can tell why. He has the look of a man who is thinking of home, his eyes fastened on the handbag store across the hall. He is thinking about how his wife, whose blue eyes look particularly weary and love-worn lately, might like the one in peach. It’s a practical but fashionable design and it would go with the dress she was wearing the last time he was home; which might have been last week or maybe last month. Maybe it was the second to last time he was home.
Either way, I wish I could tell him, yes – she would love the handbag but he should just send her a letter. A letter to tell her he is sitting in an airport on his way home and he is not thinking about how the meeting went or whether he thinks Rob will close the deal. No, he is simply thinking of her and whether he has done enough to keep her love this month, because he worries so that his absence is too much and too often. He fears becoming one of those men whose love fades away before his eyes because of inattention. He could simply write that and send it to her. Sign it ‘much love from Changi Airport, Singapore.’ And he could do it from the next airport too.
‘Dear Grace, I am thinking of you and that orange dress you were wearing. I like how you wear that dress and I am coming home soon. Please be there, because you are home to me. I am doing my best and I think you are doing yours; let’s carry on.’
There’s a story in that and some truth about how we relate to one another, how we long for one another. How we try and how we fear failure even in the midst of circumstances that should provide us with security and hope.
Or the young man in well-worn denim and faded t-shirt but brand new shoes. Shoes so pristine they must still be giving him blisters. He looks nervously at his travel wallet for the third time, lifting his phone to the horizon a couple of times and checking his watch. He is all coiled energy, anticipation and anxiety. His eyes are unable to stay in one place too long because his thoughts are stretched between here and there, wherever he’s headed to. His carry-on looks uncomfortably full and he has not one, but two hoodies wrapped around his waist. Ah, I see it now. He is travelling from home for the first time and doesn’t intend to return home anytime soon. He’s not just travelling, he’s planning on landing somewhere for a while. These shoes were one last splurge before he has to face the challenge of finding a job or making new friends and becoming accustomed to life away. Sure as the sun rising, he’s wondering if it’s too soon to let his parents know he’s made it this far.
The man sitting in the café, thinking about his wife.
The young man moving to a new country, alone for the first time.
The girl travelling to her sister’s wedding, feeling alone.
The child gazing out the airport window, beginning the first inkling of a dream to be a pilot.
The woman who hosts travellers every day, but has never left her island home.
Without distraction, the mind falls to thought more intentionally than you realise. If you pay attention, it is a wonderful way to discover what matters to you. First your happy thoughts will come to you, followed by your fears and then whatever is making you hopeful. Once you have worked through all of those things, then you might discover what sadness you are carrying. Go even further and you will find yourself at the deep, deep happiness, where you are completely yourself.
I discover myself, at the end of the silent-not silence and the travelling spaces; still myself. A storyteller. A poetry-lover, wanderer and mystical romantic. A hopeful idealist, pragmatic optimist. I am home; in my skin and my places. I have space now; I have made space for the new and whatever stories that will give me to tell. You live with yourself at the end of the day, no matter where you are. So be brave enough to be yourself – complex, simple, passionate, chilled out … Whoever you are, be unapologetically yourself. Be yourself as a friend, yourself as a lover. Be a fighter for that which you care about. Be a giver of whatever you have. Be you. Please. The world is better that way.
I have travelled all the way to here – home where I began, to begin again. Life is after all, beginning after beginning overlapping and colliding with each other.
by tashmcgill | Mar 31, 2016 | Prose & Poetry
Distance, figuratively through a lens or over physical miles, brings a focus and perspective to the human experience; particularly in my case to a sense of connection and disconnection. When I am away, in those first few moments and days of separation, whether I am leaving behind home or returning to it – I feel this tension of being pulled apart. My voice here is that between lovers, but really, it’s the cry of what feels like home anytime you are separate from those who welcome you, who bring you back to yourself.
So here, a series of poems at a distance and what it is like to feel that connection and disconnection over miles or through a lens, from that which we love and which calls us home.
i.
Kiss me one thousand kisses
A single drop at a time
Kiss me under moonlight, rain and sky
Kiss me sweetly in the morning
Graze my cheek as you come and go
I will count each one as offering
I will learn it we go
Kiss me to finish an argument then end it anyway
Your thoughts are as fierce as your lips sometimes
I am learning you best this way
Let me taste the kindness on you
Let me taste til I’ve drunk you in
When I am drunk enough on you at last, one thousand kisses done –
Then give me one thousand more,
Til kisses are breathing and words and knowing
Til you can’t take them back.
Kisses like water when they are true
Healing the dust and the ash of you
Kiss me with your mind in the morning, touch me with thought all day
I am yours one thousand times over, in each single turn through space.
ii.
There is a curve of you
Where the light rests and if I could
touch you there, quietly
just a caress of atoms and
feel you breathe, life within you
I would rest complete.
But though your body rests
beside my body during conversation
You are beyond reach just now
holding yourself together
just where I want to hold you.
Release yourself, I demand
But it is whispered like a prayer.
Oh, how I long to touch the light in you.
iii.
In my dream I am half of nothing
And whole of a whole
I am the tree and the bud
One round curve kissed by light
Another curve in shadow
Half of nothing is the difference
And the whole of a whole is complete.
It is a sweet dream to be touched by the moon and caressed by darkness
When one is your hand and the other is also yours.
iv.
Touch me again with your eyes
Let me soak in your voice
A little longer, a little closer
The timbre of your pitch humming in the air
Whisper closely and touch me with a word or two
But do not touch me
I do not want to touch you more than a whisper
Not yet, not today
Today is the long, slow luxury of not touching what I want to touch
After tomorrow, I will have only to remember what it was like to wait on you, fingers, hands, lips
The hidden corner between your shoulder and neck
I should like to live there a while
Resting on your pulse, rising on your breath
So, just – there.
Yes, your fingers are gentle and go no further
Touch me but do not touch me yet.
v.
This is the view of my weary heart
Another hotel room with crisp sheets
Only one side of the bed will warm
and I reach endlessly into white blindness in the night
It matters not that you do not share my bed when I am home
My mind is warm with the thought of you so the bed is emptier while I am away
My thoughts return to you, no doubt sleeping on the other side of the earth.
You are all imagination to me now, too far away to be real, a phantom in the night when I long for home;
I chide myself now home is something, someone I do not know.
I cannot claim to know how you would lie beneath these sheets
Or occupy this space with me
But you do occupy it, softly, insistently.
I push back against your presence in my mind and wonder if you feel me occupying your spaces or feel me in your dreams.
I still myself against this ocean of pristine cotton; think only what is real.
I will pass this day and the next one too; I have lived long not knowing you –
I can sleep alone.
vi.
I am sleeping under the stars in the Czech Republic
Which has known so many names
for one small piece of earth.
I too, have many names.
Long, short, punctuated and sentimental.
Soft names and hard names made of history’s sad stories.
Like this land I breathe and walk on, I cannot direct you north or south on it or point you to clear winds.
Like this body, I cannot whisper how to map your way through me, my great city of Names.
Perhaps do what no other has, carve me a map of myself using only your name; the name you choose for me.
vii.
Sleep, love but do not sleep –
instead dream.
Dream hard and long and wild, no pretend
that dreams are mild or mannered things.
No, a dream is a phoenix of the day passed
and dragon of the day to come.
A dream is what carries you to me in the dark
between oceans and thoughts.
More than an imagining now, you’ve left some
thread of yourself on me
now in the dark, my mind can paint you in a dream
one thousand times over.
I need never be lonely but to
dream and remember you.
Sleep, love but do not sleep
dream of me instead in whatever colour
I have left upon your chest
or written in your mind.
Dream hard and long and wild
and meet me there in the long dusky cloud.
Sleep so I can reach you in my sleep.
by tashmcgill | Mar 24, 2016 | Travel
It has rained on Islay for 105 days in a row. But today is the 106th day, and the sun has arrived back to Islay after a long, damp, dark winter. I too, have arrived. Whether I brought the sun, or the sun brought me is moot; although sometimes I like to believe I have magical powers, it is enough to know there is magic in the place.
Islay is soft earth; like many islands. Heaving with moss and peat, the hills and landscape of the island is a vessel for water that lands up high from the rain and makes its way into the lochs, then into the rivers and streams and back out to the sea. The sea itself encroaches on the island at every opportunity. The moss and grass grows down between the jagged rocks at the shoreline and the rockpools are sometimes hard to discern from the land. Soft earth, that moves under your feet but is teeming with life.
Islay is soft earth; like many islands. Heaving with moss and peat, the hills and landscape of the island is a vessel for water.
There is magic in this place, I’m sure of it. As I walk over shorelines and climb jutting peaks for views of the Atlantic on one side and the Lochs on the other, seals appear, head bobbing and looking straight at me. We stare at each other; the occasional head tilt from side to side. I smile and the silkie disappears below the sea crest once more in a dive, his back slick like oil and inky black against the blue of the tide.
As I step, I see feather after feather along my way. There is an old legend that says when you see those small white feathers appearing around you, it’s a sign that someone is watching over you, thinking of you. I have found those feathers in the back country of Kentucky, the suburbs of Tennessee, the steps of St Pauls in London and here, in Islay – in the hallway of the Port Charlotte Hotel, on the foreshore of the Singing Seas and on the steps of Bruichladdich Distillery. Perhaps my Scottish ancestors are smiling that I’ve returned to the land of my forefathers and to this island of most famous malts. It’s remarkable that one small island of eight remaining distilleries can have such an impact on the world whisky stage. Islay malt is a thing of legend.
The island is sweet to smell with her salty air, endless vegetation, and the Port Ellen maltings running from early morning til night, the warm, malty smell hovering over the bay. In Bowmore, the distillery sits in the heart of the administrative capital of Islay, just tucked into a side street. Kilchoman is a farm distillery – no distinctive stacked hats, just stone buildings tucked into pasture. Life is built around whisky here, in more ways than one but life is also more than whisky. It is people, farmland and the weather.
I’ve come to Islay for the whisky, yes but more than that. To explore this tiny island of single lane roads and step back in time for a moment, going as far as I can to this edge of the world and breathing deeply. And I’m glad of it; glad for the way each passing driver lifts their hand in greeting, glad of the easy manner of suggestion and introduction. There is a hospitality here that flows easily between people and you can feel it from the moment your feet hit that soft earth. You could cover the main roads of this island in a day and still have time to spare. Villages might be as small as six houses, but there are coves and hills, lochs and lighthouses to see as well as 8 distilleries in operation, running tours and tastings. The best way to stay on Islay is at one of the local hotels or in the myriad of guesthouses and B&Bs. They are all over the island, in every crevice.
Beyond the long road that runs past Laphroaig, Lagavulin and Ardbeg, I reach the Kindalton Cross. Amongst this graveyard there are stones are carvings that seem to predate words, ancient Celtic carvings alongside burials as recent at 1903. The gravesites are littered inside and outside of the ruin of a church and outside it, the Kindalton Cross. There is an old spirit in this place for certain, echoed in more than just the ruins that scatter the shoreline. At Lagavulin, the church used to be beside the distillery but it was moved to make room for a carpark, only to have the church bell returned to the hilltop overlooking the old malthouse. It’s bad luck to move a church bell, they say. There is old magic here.
At the Mull of Oa, there is a square lighthouse that marks the entrance to the channel. Behind that lighthouse, a flock of wild goats that have free run of their hill and the coastline there. A colossal bull with ivory horns turns to stare me down as I walk past him. I can’t resist the urge to poke my tongue out at him and he, unimpressed I assume, turns away again. I laugh out loud and he looks back, but it’s impossible to be here and not feel connected to the land and all that lives on it here.
Islands, and island people have much in common no matter where you find them. They make life from what the island gives them. In this instance, the farms are full of fat cattle and sheep and the whisky makers are happy; very happy. I have eaten salmon from local Loch Fyne, venison from the central hills and fennel grown wild with homemade bread that yearns for Scottish butter. I oblige happily; and indulge in Botanist gin, made with 22 botanicals foraged from the island. There is a married couple, botanists, who were enlisted by Bruichladdich to help them create an Islay dry gin. It’s delicious and comes in a bottle the shape of the square monument.
Bruichladdich has become my favourite of the Islay malts, by nature of their people. The warmest and kindest of all the whisky people I have met. Mary is a kinswoman as soon as we meet and the hour or so I spend wandering the distillery with her will stay in my mind a long while. A family-style business despite having lost their independent status, what they haven’t lost is their progressive approach to single malt.
Late at night once my exploring is done, I venture onto the top of the hill that heads out to Kilchoman Farm Distillery. Word is that the Northern Lights will be making an appearance in the clear skies overhead and what few town lights exist on Islay disappear up here. I sit out in the dark, nothing but the wind and the stars beside me. I can smell the peaty residue in the air from a fire burning on the west side of the island. I saw it earlier and because there is no wind, it hangs in the air. Somewhere to the east of me, there is a riverlet running, I can hear it gently trickling down the bank. That water is likely clear as glass but inky brown, like all the water that runs through the peat banks.
While technically spring, the earth will need a few more days of sunshine before the islanders can start cutting the peat. Too soft, it won’t burn but too dry it will crumble. It’s impossible for me to think of Islay without thinking of peat, but the truth is you can only smell the smoky, iodine nature of it once it’s burning or faintly in the water.
The water runs gently, the faint smell of smoke is in the air and then, just a hint of green glow starts dancing on the horizon. It’s not as dramatic as I was expecting or hoping for, but as my eyes adjust, I see it stretching up and then rolling, listing slightly to the left. In an unexpected turn, not only has Islay given me sunshine but she’s also given me the lights. There is magic running in this place.
I have tasted whisky straight from the cask here, roamed on hills and rugged coastlines, breathing deeply of this rich, island air. As I drive out to meet the early morning ferry back to mainland, I see great flocks of birds dancing in the morning light. The dawn is slow here, taking from just before six in the morning to half-eight. Their graceful dance against the indigo sky is mesmerizing. Even the skies above this soft and fertile earth are alive.
The two hour ferry crossing back to mainland sees me leave the sunshine behind, a gentle grey blanket resting over Kintyre. The sun is trying to push through with the same urgency that the boat pushes through the current. I came to Islay for whisky but I found magic and I leave, hoping I have breathed some of that magic into my bones and blood.
by tashmcgill | Nov 25, 2014 | Family, Friendship, Relationships, Travel
I need another suitcase. This beauty has accompanied me more than 100,000 miles and she’s starting to show her age. She’s been the perfect size though – an ample fit for a two week journey that’s not overly cumbersome to deal with. She’s modern, sleek but not flashy. Practical but with a splash of colour and a curve here or there. I’ve packed her this morning in Tennessee to realize that she’s on her last run home, while I’m leaving again from a place I’d like to stay. Time to talk tough to myself and start the next leg of my journey home. Here goes.
Dear Heart,
You will be ok. I want to remind you not to wear your heart on your sleeve but we both know it’s too late for that. You’ve dug yourself a hole you can’t get out of now, invested so deep in a place that’s far too many miles away from where your life is everyday. You’re a bit of a fool, really – but a sweet one.
You should own up to the fact, you could have stopped this years ago. Put your foot down and refused to get involved but people have this way of crawling inside of you and taking up space. The ones that are making a home for themselves in there now are too good to throw away and you know it. But you could have pulled the plug before it got this hard.
So you need to toughen up. You’ve got a couple of hours til your next flight and it pays to remember there’s a whole other family of people you love waiting there, not to mention your family back home. If you wouldn’t spread yourself out so much, maybe you wouldn’t have this problem.
Just acknowledge that every hello comes with a poignant goodbye. Every goodbye is easier when you’ve planned the next hello. And this is a cycle you’ll probably be in for life now. So toughen up, Heart, get on the plane and then you can let your tears swell.
Every year you hope and pray that this year will be the one you travel one way. Every year you find a little more home here and find it a little harder to re-engage back there. Every year when leaving, you say – next year, I’ll unpack for good.
And if we’re honest, you suspect that time is a clock still ticking on things working out the way you suspect they might. You think you might have stumbled on the best of the best but it’s not something you’re brave enough to admit yet.
Here’s the truth of it, Heart. You’re lucky to have found something that is so hard to say goodbye to. Lucky to have people to return to. If you will keep expanding the boundaries and letting more of them in, you’ll always be travelling somewhere. Maybe there’s no unpacking for you anymore. Maybe you’ll always be travelling between here and there.
Maybe it’s time to accept, Heart, that home is the people and life will be a series of journeys between those you love – unless you’re prepared to give one of them up? No, I didn’t think so.
Dear Heart, you are a brave little soul. You throw yourself into loving people with everything you have and wonder while leaving feels so much like being torn apart. But without this pain, you wouldn’t have the joy of coming home. You, Heart, are at home here with these people. Truthfully though, your next stop is home too, and the next. Enjoy the travelling. Tonight, you’ll land somewhere new and begin it all again.
Good luck – you will be ok.
Self.
