Petals in the sun

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Everything is reaching now – reaching for the light, the rain, the air. Me too. Today I finally felt like I woke up from my winter coma. Maybe it’s my thyroid meds that are working, maybe it’s the sun, but just like these flowers I feel rejuvenated and bright.

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I was at a press conference today for a radio show that I’m participating in this summer. I’m filling my slot with the tale of my PhD and a truckload of good music.

And when I sat there among all those accomplished people, I had this feeling: that I’d finally arrived, or at least got somewhere in my life. I listed the things I am, the things I can do, and I realized that it’s starting to become quite the list. Just as long as I don’t step back into the shadow and downplay it all. As long as I keep on reaching.

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(The above pictures are total rip-offs of this image, by the way. Tip of the hat to Pete Hillman for the idea to angle the camera so as to capture the sunlight pooling in the actual flower.)

Anyway, I can tell you that it was extremely liberating to suddenly feel that I was someone. You don’t really feel that when you shuffle around in a narrow, dark brick corridor from the sixties that smells of sweat and old wood. (I’m talking about my place of work.) But today was sunny, warm, and windy, and I wore a dress that fluttered around me as I walked, and – not to stretch the simile – I felt like a flower dancing in the breeze.

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Speaking of flowers, next week is Midsummer’s Eve, when local legend has it that if you pick seven flowers and put under your pillow, you’ll dream of the one you will marry. I’m already married, of course, so I don’t need to – but Christer and Henrik in The Seventh Flower, my Dreamspinner World of Love novella, definitely do!