+ Her Barefoot Heart
News of The 70273 Project with a side of Jeanne’s Barefoot Heart
for my friend
karen sharp
and other women
who find themselves in need
of gentle hugs
and heart balm:
an altar.
pansies
for thought,
blue bird
for happiness,
a clock to say
“all in good time,”
and a sparkly, boro’ed bird
to remind us that
there’s art in mending.
~~ :: ~~
today’s altar: mending
yesterday
Mother Nature and I
pitched a hissy fit.
in perfect harmony.
today we are
cleansed.
refreshed.
hoarse.
~~ :: ~~
today’s altar: weathering
each tear
an altar
to things
unspoken
and unseen
and yet still
Known.
~~ :: ~~
today’s altar (cloth): Knowing
they were productive,
these women.
cooking
cleaning
planning
preserving
sewing
planting
teaching
cutting
picking
tending
and more.
and sometimes,
sometimes for days on end,
they cried.
they cried silently and
without attracting attention
because to explain
in words
what every teardrop held
seemed an insurmountable task.
~~ :: ~~
today’s altar (cloth): determination
stitching.
battening down,
i call it.
riding the thread
to places
unknown
and known but forgotten
and known . . . but maybe not really.
rhythm
soothing
surprising
and still
relaxing in its predictability.
up and down
space for pondering things like
being taken care of
and
self reliance
and
my children
and
my female ancestors
who spent a goodly
part of each day
stitching.
thinking
about fine lines
distinguishing
humility from self-deprecating humor,
for example
and how easy it is for us
to believe the worst in ourselves
instead of the best.
why is that, anyway?
back and forth
thinking backwards about what was,
forward about what if,
and right now
about what is.
or what i sense
is
is.
in and out
thoughts flying.
captured
then released.
remembered
then forgotten,
marked
then erased.
stitches
knots
woven
frayed.
I’d like to add his initial to my monogram
Tell me, where is the shepherd for this lost lamb?
There’s a somebody I’m longin’ to see
I hope that he, turns out to be
Someone who’ll watch over me.
i’ve been a feminist all my life, and yet . . . these lyrics to the george gershwin song always bring tears to my eyes.
always.
do i strive for self-reliance because of feminism or is it borne of disappointment and enough experience to know the truth behind the old saying “if you want something done right, do it yourself”? does it matter? and even though most days i want to be a self-reliant woman, i am not ashamed to tell you that way down deep, i want to be taken care of.
at least sometimes.
“can a woman be self-reliant and still feel betrayal and abandonment at the hands of another?” i recently asked a friend of mine who enjoys these chewy conversations as much as i do. of course one question begets another then another, such as: is self-reliance really the goal, and if so, what does desirable/healthy self-reliance look like? and: how has the journey to self-reliance hurt women? helped women? and last (for now) but definitely not least: say we want to be held, to be seen, to be taken care of (at least on occasion). is that possible to go hand-in-hand with being self-reliant? which, of course, leads us to still more questions about asking for help, vulnerability, worthiness . . .
you get the gist.
join in if you want. share your thoughts, your questions, your stories. the more the merrier . . .
~~ ::: ~~
today’s altar is dedicated to cutting through it – whatever “it” is, staying with “it” as long as it takes.
when i hatched the idea for 365 altars, it was on the fly – an impromptu project that appealed to me in many ways and for many reasons. (we’ll talk later.) but then i began to think too darn much, and before long, i’d thought myself right into the sideline bleachers. but here i am, back today with renewed commitment to persevering, even in the throes of uncertainty.
and to mark this occasion, i choose this particular cloth-in-progress. i’ve been working on it a good little while – in fits of starts and stops. i get to a place of blankness and stop, laying it down to work on something else a while, then like magic, i see what to do next with this cloth, so back into my hands it flies until the next blankness.
such is the nature of creativity, me thinks, ephemeral cauldrons swirling with alternating bouts of certainty and uncertainty, stitched together with a commitment to “simply” stay with it until the blankness is a certainty that you’ve reached the finish line and you raise your head to see a path, a doorway, breadcrumbs leading to what’s next . . .
~~ :: ~~
from In Real Life‘s post on facebook today,
an adorable photo
and this caption:
“Why are you trying so hard to fit in
when you were born to stand out?”
and this good question from sandi faviell amorim of deva coaching:
“Question, play, challenge, inspire, nudge, shine => that’s me.
How do you express your greatness?”
let’s just call this
all the encouragement
i need . . .
i am tired of
being told
to be a cookie cutter
woman
by governments
and schools
and cultures
and religions.
i don’t flock
and i don’t herd.
not any more.
(don’t say i didn’t warn you.)
:: ~ ::
Today’s altar is this little altar cloth,
dedicated to the precious,
refreshing,
one-of-a-kind,
unstoppable
irrepressible
one-of-a-kind
individuals
we all are.
sometimes when you just keep going
when you just keep grappling
when you just flatout refuse to stop,
beautiful shiny
colorful jewels
spill forth
from the very epicenter
of the chaotic
tumult.
the chaotic tumult
is ragged,
rough,
it is seldom
mistaken for
pretty.
or comfortable.
and the shiny treasures
that spew –
they’re nondescript
and indecipherable,
at least at first,
but still
they shine on,
beacons.
:: ~ ::
Today’s altar is this altar cloth,
dedicated to the treasures that
sometimes spring from
tenacious tumult.
i am agog
with images,
and i want to stitch
most of them
but sometimes
(more often than not)
when i pick up cloth
and thread a needle,
i see blank.
it’s neither white
or black
just the color
of nothing.
and then i worry
if i ever really
saw any images
in the first place
or if this is a sign
that i’m not to stitch
the images.
maybe i’m just
going crazy,
overestimating
my creative capability.
things swirl
and grow.
who do i think i am,
anyway.
(there’s no question mark
because that is no question.)
i refuse to live
in nothingness,
so i turn my hands loose
to grapple.
to gather
and join
fabrics.
and to give
my hands
space
without interference,
i set my brain
aside in a playpen
and turn it loose.
or do i?
is that even possible?
i remember the delightful
conversation i had with my son’s
girlfriend this past
sunday morning.
she regaled me with
the overlay
of her undergraduate
humanities studies.
at the essential core
was identity
and from there,
each year was
spent reading about
and pondering
identity in
specific contexts.
i want a copy of her
syllabi
(is this how you say
“more than one syllabus”?)
(i’m fluent only in
english and southern,
you know.)
when she can dig it
out of storage
so i can forge
down that same
trail.
will i find myself
there in the books
she read
so many years ago?
will i finally know
who i am
and
why i’m here
and what i am
supposed to do
on my stay?
do i make too much of this?
where “this” is
my self,
my life?
why can’t i just be satisfied
to be here,
to take one day
at a time,
living it
wherever it takes me?
am i too big for
my britches
in even considering
that i’m here for a
particular purpose?
is that too high falutin’?
who do i think i am?
is that the voice of
my big, bad
you-ought-to-be-ashamed-of
ego?
and as if that isn’t enough,
i’m on the verge
of a new identity,
one that has me
swirling
and pinging
and tumbling
in emotional
and existential
angst.
:: ~ ::
my mother loves irises,
and they are beginning to
fill her backyard
with color.
seen through my macro lens,
they appear as
an entryway.
perhaps not a yellow brick road,
but a road nevetheless.
a road leading into
the unknown.
into possibility.
into Mystery.
an altar
of the finest
most inviting
(if not the most unsettling)
kind.
This work by Jeanne Hewell-Chambers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://www.TheBarefootHeart.com.
© 2026 Jeanne Hewell-Chambers
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