Welcome to Sharnanigans first “Reader of the Week”!
A new weekly feature introducing you to the interesting people who drop by here.
If you are interested in being featured , drop me a line
Without further ado, I’d like to introduce you to Kristin Brumm who has kindly followed me over from the Chronicles of Sharnia.
Kristin is Sharnanigans! very own “Dorothy” .
She lives in Kansas in the U.S.A, sounds to me as though she has found her OZ , Down Under.
Who is Kristin?
I’m a nonprofit professional who works too many hours, a mother, a sometimes world traveler, a wife, a neglectful housekeeper and a dreamer extrordinaire, and I write around the corners of all of this.
Where do you live & what is unique about it?
I’ve lived all over the US and even overseas, but currently live in Kansas, which is smack in the middle of the Midwestern Plains.
It is unique in that if you drive outside the city–and in Kansas this is not difficult to do, just drive twenty minutes in any given direction–you will find yourself surrounded on all sides by wide swaths of open space unrolling into the distance.
Mile after mile of wheat fields or wild grassland. Â And I love this. Â It makes me feel free, like I can breathe.
How do you keep the grass green?
By writing, writing, writing.
I recently started writing again after a 15-year hiatus and realized I had been a fool to stop.
Why do we ever stop doing the things that make us feel alive?
Writing for me is a way to connect with my own truth and when I stopped writing I think I lost myself a bit.
So writing again feels in a sense like coming home.
When I graduated from university I no longer had a community of writers and I didn’t know how to write without that.
I also was not able to recreate that for myself where I was living, which was on a rural island off the coast of Seattle.
There were other writers there, of course, but I was working and commuting off the island and trying to make those connections just felt unmanageable.
When I moved back to Kansas I remarried, had kids, went back to work. Â Again, it all seemed too much. Â But at some point I decided I couldn’t not write.
I had words and stories inside of me that needed expression.
And I discovered that in the mean time, something called blogging had cropped up and it solved the whole issue for me of community and connection. Â Thank God for that.
What has been your greatest epiphany?
I’m terrible with superlatives so I’ll just tell you about something that’s been meaningful for me.
Since you and many of your readers are in Australia I’ll say that I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for your country.
I spent six months there when I was in my early twenties and experienced a deep sense of connection with the land.
I’ve written about it on my blog and explained it like this:
Have you ever stumbled upon some place new, perhaps while on holiday, perhaps when you were younger and had the leisure to do some trekking with a backpack and a few dollars in your pocket, and you set foot upon this new place and felt an instant soul-smacking and inexplicable sense of connection? As if you’d been there before? As if the memory of this place was buried in the deepest recesses of your cells? As if you’d found your way back to a home you didn’t know you had?
 This was my experience of Australia.
It was an experience that completely circumvented the entire logic-centered part of my brain and went straight to my heart, so I can’t explain it to you in any way that makes sense.
I’ve lived so many, many different places and none of them has ever really felt like home.
They’ve all felt like temporary way stations really.
But each time I’ve visited Australia I get out in the country, into the open spaces, and I just feel like I belong there. Â It’s positively electric. Â I cry and cry and cry.
I have no explanation for this.
What makes this an epiphany? Â I used to feel like I needed to understand what this was about and what it meant for me.
Now I’m okay with not knowing, but I want to honor it and I do this by making space in my life for it, by returning again and again and collecting things from the land that are meaningful to me: stones, art, photographs, friendships.
What lesson did you learn the hard way?
To speak my truth, honestly and directly.
Even when it’s painful or unpopular or inconvenient.
For many years I thought that things might go better if I swallowed my truth and agreed with others or just didn’t say anything at all. Â But in the end that just made a mess of things.
I found that even when my truth was hard for others to hear, they respected me more for telling it.
The more honest and open I became, the more I tended to surround myself with others who also lived with integrity. Â That was a good side benefit.
What do you know now that you wish you knew when you were younger?
That I can and should trust my gut instincts.
I spent too many years dismissing my own wisdom and listening to everyone else’s.
Had I only listened to my own innate wisdom I would have saved myself a lot of grief.
I could have avoided the wrong jobs, the wrong men and various dead end paths.
My first marriage was brief and disastrous and after I got engaged I fell into a depression.
I knew in my gut it was wrong but I talked myself into it. Â I listened to other people’s truths and not my own.
So I wish I had the confidence when I was younger to believe in myself and trust my own instincts.
What are you favourite places to visit online?
Other blogs, of course.
Other blogs, of course.
As you might imagine, since I crush on all things Australian many of my favorite bloggers are Aussie.
When I first started blogging I came across Kim at Frog Ponds Rock and through her found her daughter Veronica at Sleepless Nights.
As well as fantastic bloggers, they are two beautiful people whom I’ve come to call friends.
Kim is a ceramics artist and her blog was nominated for best Australian/NZ blog for the 2010 bloggies.
Veronica is a talented writer and has a beautiful food blog as well.
There’s a stunning Australian photography site I follow called Sweet Wayfaring, and I love Badger atVienna for Dummies; his wit is brilliant.
Who would you invite to dinner and what would you cook, if you could invite absolutely anyone?
If I could conjure up my dream dinner party it would be to have all my bloggy friends from across the world come together under one roof.
We connect with each other almost daily and share support, encouragement, grief and joy, yet most of us have never met in the flesh.
I’m not sure it would matter what I would cook because we would be too busy consuming wine and generally being gobsmacked by the occasion to care.  But since it’s snowing outside right now I’m craving beef stew made with a good, deep burgundy and a crusty loaf of french bread, and how about individual ramekins of crème brulee for dessert?
I’ll even crisp the top with a butane torch for you and garnish with mint and raspberries.
Well Kristin, if you make it back to Australia, the One Horse Town has plenty of wide open spaces (and I have an oven) …you are more than welcome to drop by!
You can read more from Kristin by visiting her blog Wanderlust
9 Comments
great feature! i really enjoyed reading this.
Thanks for highlighting Kristin – I’m a fan of her writing, her warmth and her unflagging suport for other bloggers. She’s a real star.. and now she’s brought me here to you, so I’ll just take a little nose around, shall I?
What a great idea. What a great way to get to know fellow bloggers. Keep ‘em coming!!
Hey Sharni, thanks for the feature! I would love to make it by your one horse town of of these days!
Thanks, this was so very interesting. I love how everyone has a unique story. Wanderlust is fav of mine as is Kristin. Great questions too :)
Yum, dinner sounds divine! I’d love to meet a few people from the blogosphere for a chat and dinner. If only teleporting was possible. Great interview thanks Kristen!
Hey there gorgeous thing. You know I love you, right? Can not wait to see you. Big muahs from The Land Down Undah. Hahahaha.
Great read. You are such an interesting woman Kristin!
Thanks guys, for the love!