This week

My life abroad is pretty relaxed right now, and the fun has been gaining a nice momentum with the new friends I recently made. However, sometimes I slip back to my life in Arizona and just inquired about renting a cottage at my friend's ranch when I return home in November. This may seem a little exaggerated, but my stomach is literally aching from enthusiasm. As you have already know, I dream and write about horses like a young girl and I'm a huge natural horsemanship fan, and so this is an opportunity to grow myself further in a free-spirited lifestyle. Keep your fingers crossed for me that her and I can work something out...

Back to Stockholm: I had fika with Anna. Fika is both a Swedish verb and noun that basically implies "drinking coffee" usually accompanied by something sweet. Walking down the middle of Drottninggatan on a slope we decided to try Kafé Esaisa (would have been easy to miss). And it was one of those hallelujah moments! The guy making the coffee put so much effort and love into our cups. My latté looked fantastic, it tasted fantastic and I fell in love with the place. They also had a nice selection of sweets, which I tried a cannelet, a very tiny French pastry with a tender sponge-like dough center and a dark, thick caramelized crust! and a soft boiled egg. Patrons at the outside tables had light lunches that looked like they are made with the same love.

Anna went on an errand and I continued to walk around window shopping, then finally stopping in at a Myrorna, a chain of second hand stores with clothes, dishes, housewares, you name it. Down the street, I met another gal in a design shop that her and her husband owned, and we chatted for about an hour (Swedes are so friendly) before having lunch at The Grand India, which is a great place for vegetarians, vegans and even meat eaters. The place smelled unbelievably good and that sold me. I had a simple, economic Cesar salad which had large pieces of curry chicken and the best dressing. Before getting back on the metro for home, I went to an up-scale gourmet market, Cajsa Warg, where I bought some carefully selected groceries, which included tonkabönor,(a forbidden vanilla bean) and muskotblomma (orange dried flower blooms from nutmeg), both are for the raw spa treats I'm been making in my kitchen.

Backing up a little bit: This past weekend I went to an event called, Konst Ringen, which consisted of artists and craftsmen on exhibition around the Mälaren Islands, an area which stretches to the west and slightly south of Bromma. I picked up a brochure that had a little map in it showing 21 different artist locations, all with ties to the islands. I only made it by bike to two of the stops which had cermanics (Raku), silver smithing & beaded jewelry and at the last one more Raku along with gorgeous knitted accessories. Then on Tuesday I went back by bike to the "royal" island Lovö to visit Drottningholms Palace and Kina Palace with more of a focus on the building details and wonderful box ivy gardens and took a good handful of pictures.

Sweet dreams, everyone, as the time follows I hope a beam of sun in the right location relaxes you too.

Love, Sharon

How's the ranch life?

This is the question I’ve been getting a lot lately. I’m not totally sure how to answer that question because I haven’t solidly wrapped my head around the fact that I’M WORKING AT A RANCH (and this has been a dream of mine since the urge to be with horses took hold in January). This is mostly my fault because I think my little stressed self had a hard time believing that someone would actually hire me. My life has not been the easiest for a lot of years so I just didn’t spend much time thinking about what life would be like after I started this job, just in case something happened to curtail it.

When I'm in a stall or paddock, I think about how much I’ve fought the waves of change. How I haven’t been as authentic as a could have been, and how I’ve been so timid with expressing who I am. I’m not very proud of this last year of my life, I feel like in many ways I’ve failed. There have been a few bright and shining moments where my head finally surfaced above the clouds and I actually got to SEE what I have and what I’m living, but many, many of them have been marked by fear.

So here’s what I’m learning now: the lesson that I have to learn over and over and over again. Surrender. I will never be able to control every aspect of my life. I may never know what the next six steps are. I may never know what’s next. But I am choosing to believe that whatever’s next, it will be OK. I have 50 years to tell me that whatever comes, I will BE OK. In the next month I will likely be sleeping out in the wildness with a herd of beloved horses or traveling to another country. I don’t know which pasture and if I for sure will be moving the herd, but I’m choosing to believe that whatever it is, that’s the place I'm suppose to be in. I’m choosing to remember that my life has always been orchestrated in ways more beautiful than I could ever have planned myself. I’m choosing to stop fighting the waves.

So anyway, how’s the ranch life? Right now I’m ENVELOPED IN THIS AWESOME ATMOSPHERE. I think it’s good. I keep looking at each horse I feed or water, across the stall, or across the paddock and I feel so incredibly thankful. I get to spend the rest of my life doing something like this. Most horses are incredibly patient with me and I think back to what I wished for, 4 years ago, when I was taking all of those blind steps forward, not knowing where I was going. I think back to those times when the hope of what could be in the future was all that got me through. And I realize that those things I hoped for, those things that I wanted deep in my bones, THOSE are the things I got. It’s like someone knew me and made it all happen. Love, Sharon

Celebrate

On a snowy Saturday afternoon, I ventured out a bit to the Chino Valley vineyards (just south of Prescott, Az) to attend my friends Ben and Juliette's wedding. From 3 until 3:30pm, I sat there among approximately 20 other friends and family happily shivering inside a rustic, Christmasy-decorated barn as they were married. I always cry at weddings, and this one was no exception: the goodness of happy tears ran down my face. I was honored to be there at this celebrating moment, but not quite expecting the amount of hope, love and joy that I carried home from that afternoon. I'm holding on to that feeling —and still holding— just as long as I can. All we need is to be loaded up with love, to be feeling it, to be chasing/falling into it, and in all manners be giving and receiving. It's so true when they say love is all you need. Enjoy ~Sharon Marzonie