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Kathy Donchak

I write about nature, family, creativity, and wellbeing.

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Sunday Letter: Working with the Creative Powers

Source One must work with the creative powers - for not to work with is to work against; in art as in spiritual life there is no neutral place.” ~ Mary Oliver, Blue Pastures Our garden is taking shape. Inspired by one of my favorite gardening books by Rebcca Cole, I am dreaming and choosing plants to create a small garden of evergreens and deciduous trees, espalier fruit trees, and flowers. My husband is working through plans for raised vegetable and herb beds to feed the body while I work to...

4 days ago • 1 min read
One Notebook

The more I journal, the more people in my life show up in its pages. This morning, Chris Brogan wrote about what happens when I tell them about it. I started writing in a journal years ago, but it wasn’t in one book. It was all over the place. My journal became so cluttered with to-do lists and work projects, I grew frustrated that I couldn’t keep my thoughts organized. During the pandemic, I tried something new. I gave myself permission to let all of my thinking show up in my pages, with...

about 1 month ago • 1 min read

I am learning Telugu. /ˈtel.ə.ɡuː/. I met a beautiful, bright, and curious seven-year-old girl that lives across the street, who was bursting at the seams to tell me all the words she knows from her native language. She shared how hard it was to move away from friends, and why she cannot write in Telugu yet, by swirling her finger through the air. I asked her how to say neighbor in Telugu, but she didn’t know that word yet, so I looked it up when I came inside. Hopefully one of my readers can...

about 1 month ago • 1 min read

“Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye... it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.” ~ Edvard Munch Being immersed in a forest for the past few weeks has me thinking about the connection between biodiversity and neurodiversity. We have been noticing things. The colonies of trees and the soft carpet of mosses, from far away, look the same, but getting closer reveals an understory. A diverse ecosystem of plants living harmoniously, supporting the growth of one another. For...

3 months ago • 1 min read

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. ~ John Muir We moved to the woods, while our house in town is being built. Surrounded by forested wetlands, it feels as though we are living in a treehouse in this feast for the senses. Limbs and trunks blanketed by thick mosses capture your attention in a way few other things can. The ambient sounds of rain, sleet, and snow falling on the skylight replace the birdsong of Texas. The first weeks in this soft, lush forest,...

3 months ago • 1 min read

Composing a life has a metaphorical relation to many different arts, including architecture and dance and cooking. In the visual arts, a variety of disparate elements may be arranged to form a simultaneous whole, just as we combine our simultaneous commitments. In the temporal arts, like music, a sequential diversity may be brought into harmony over time. In still other arts, such as homemaking or gardening, choreography or administration, complexity is woven in both space and time. When the...

4 months ago • 1 min read

Image Source The world sheds, in the energetic way of an open and communal place, its many greetings, as a world should. What quarrel can there be with that? But that the self can interrupt the self — and does — is a darker and more curious matter. ~ Mary Oliver, Upstream This week has been full of distractions, but seems to have come to a tipping point for me. I employed the remedies I have in my toolbox. A session with a coach, reconnecting with myself in nature, and reading other writers...

5 months ago • 1 min read

We're all just walking each other home. ~ Ram Dass The Thanksgiving holiday is a chance to gather with loved ones to celebrate autumn. The fruits of the harvest are laid out on tables. The mirroring of fall color accompanied by savory scents as we attempt to create an atmosphere of presence and thoughtfulness. We gather with loved ones, in person or in memory, through the images in our minds and memories in our hearts. Looking back on this weekend, I am reminded how much there is to be...

5 months ago • 1 min read

"Neither are these writings of event or of periods of time exactly, but created out of mood, of reaction to various happenings in the world, and of my own searchings and findings in, if you will allow it, the fields of the spirit.” “Consider what is written rather as parts of a conversation, or a long and slowly arriving letter—somewhat disorderly, natural in expression, and happily unfinished." ~ Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems by Mary Oliver Over the last couple of days, I have...

5 months ago • 1 min read

"O sacred season of Autumn, be my teacher, for I wish to learn the virtue of contentment. As I gaze upon your full-colored beauty, I sense all about you an at-homeness with your amber riches. You are the season of retirement, of full barns and harvested fields. The cycle of growth has ceased, and the busy work of giving life is now completed. I sense in you no regrets: you’ve lived a full life. I live in a society that is ever-restless, always eager for more mountains to climb, seeking...

5 months ago • 2 min read
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