Launch event tonight! And a Shed of One's Own...

Hey friends and family,

Tonight’s the night! Mrs. Dalloway’s in Berkeley is hosting the Bay Area launch event for Bringing the Beach Home at 7 pm. I’ll be reading the book out loud, then Rob Trujillo will ask me some questions, with time for the audience to ask as well. You can find out more here. I would absolutely love to see you there!

And on Saturday, July 26th, I’ll be doing an interactive reading, then opening up to nature connection time, followed by a craft activity at the Dance Palace in Pt. Reyes Station at 10:30 am.

I’ve been playing with ideas for the craft activity and landed on people making their own little books inspired by their nature connection experience. I’ll have plain white booklets, but I’ve also made booklets from prints I’ve made with gel printing (thanks to editor and friend Molly for telling me about this artistic process). I’m really pleased with how they came out. I’ve been playing with samples so people will have an inspiration if they need it.

I’ll be bringing crayons, pencils, paint pens and gel pens so people can create as freely as they want. Please come along and let anyone know who you think might want to be there. Point Reyes Station is beautiful, and close to beaches, hikes, and so much more. You can find out more about the event here.

On a totally different subject, I recently wrote a guest post for my dear friend Mary who runs the Sparklandia substack. You can head on over there to read it, and she said I could also cross post it here. So if you want to learn more about this Shed of My Own, read on!

Back in high school I read Virginia Woolf’s book, A Room of One’s Own. And honestly, I don’t think it meant a lot to me then. Now, at just-turned 55, I understand it in my very bones. Because I now have a shed of my own.

How the shed came to be is a long story. It included Covid lockdown, two teenagers in a house with different challenges, my partner Mitch and me sacrificing our needs for our kids, and him offering to build a shed to help sort things out. 

We ordered the California Shed online and it showed up on a palette in late summer of 2023. With a friend’s help, we built the deck and then I and mostly my partner, and some my kid, put the tongue-and-groove shed together, piece by piece. It took maybe two weekends. And the shed was born…

Now I’ve had two years of having this space to myself, which I’ve decorated and added to with love and tenderness. I found a painted cabinet on Craig’s List and have turned that into an altar—candles, incense, photos of ancestors, flowers I collected from my father’s grave…

I’ve created paintings someone taught me called “soul maps”—where you use painter’s tape to tape the edges down and create a frame, paint whatever colors you want (I’ve used watercolors), and then surround all the different color blocks with a black pen. It’s a freeing form that shifts from trying to make something in particular, and instead to appreciating the process of creation. Sometimes I write stories on the back of what was happening in my life as I made it.

The shed has been a refuge. A lifesaver. Especially this past year when things with my teen have been challenging and scary. When I’ve had to face my own darkest fears and develop a deep spiritual warrior practice. It’s been a place to escape to and hide. And a place to pray to the Everything and call on the ancestors for help.

Coming to the shed I feel a sense of letting down, of safety, of me-ness. And as a person raised female in this society, I’ve felt so much pressure to put other people first, and to put my own needs second. This shed has given me a space to expand—where I can be myself, express myself, feel all the feelings. 

Sometimes people come in. My kid comes and visits me back here, and Mitch and I sit on the porch. My dog Milly is my most constant companion, though she’s afraid of the door that swings with the wind, so comes in only when I block the door with my body. She’s neurotic. But aren’t we all.

And here’s a video if you want to dive deeper. 

I wish everyone a shed of their own, in whatever shape or metaphorical interpretation works for you. We all deserve the space to be our full selves, to create in whatever way lights up our beings, and to feel safe and to love ourselves. Because we are all worthy of love and belonging.

Laura Atkins is in full mid-life shift from motherhood towards her witchy crone years. She’s taken up all kinds of creating (you can see some of her creations here), and has come to believe that nature-connection and creativity are our birthright—we need them to heal and to feel fully ourselves, and fully connected to each other. She’s a children’s book author and editor, and her newest picture book, Bringing the Beach Home, comes out on July 1st. You can pre-order a signed copy here. Laura lives in Berkeley, California, though she was born in Ohio, and then grew up between Boston and Berkeley. She’s lived in Portland, San Francisco, Madrid, Brooklyn, London, and the south of England—including the village of Rodmell where Virginia Woolf’s “room of one’s own” still exists at Monk’s House. Wherever she lives, it always has to be near(ish) to the ocean. You can learn more about her at lauraatkins.com. For more on Laura’s ideas about creativity and expression for kids, check out the supplementary materials that go with this picture book.