Hello dear Joy Risers,
Welcome to the October episode of Notes to Self.
Click play to listen, and scroll to the bottom of this transcript for an episode-inspired creativity provocation.
Last weekend, I had the spine-tingling thrill of returning to Haworth, the village in West Yorkshire where the Brontë sisters lived and wrote, to headline (!!!) the 15th Brontë Women’s Writing Festival, with the one and only Tracy Chevalier (!!!!!!!!).
Ever since my first visit to Haworth in 2010, each time I return feels like crossing a threshold into somewhere both ancient and alive. It feels as if the land remembers me, like I remember it. The air always carries a trace of peat smoke and wildness. And the moors, so wide and wind-bitten, harsh and dramatically beautiful, open themselves slowly, with a kind of fierce quiet. Bracken curls underfoot, heather grows purple and brown either side of the moor trails, and somewhere in the distance, swallows and pheasants call into the wind. I never know what weather will greet me there, only that the sky will feel close, the light slightly otherworldly, and the land will offer what it always does: space to breathe, to reckon, and to remember who I am when the world falls away.
After spending four days there throughout the Brontë Women’s Writing Festival, I’ve only written myself one note this month, for October.
