Secret Letters: four years ago in a Florentine cemetery 🪦
I found a video message from myself from four years ago at Elizabeth Barrett Browning's grave.
Welcome to Secret Letters, a paid subscriber perk of Letters from the Homestead. These monthly letters are exactly what you think: secret dispatches that feel a little too vulnerable to put in a free newsletter.
Thank you, as always, for reading and being a supporter of my work.
{ Secret Letters usually only goes to my paid subscribers, but I thought today’s post was pretty special, so I’m sending to all. Enjoy! 💜 }
Florence, Italy. March 2019.
Four years ago, I was on the first grown-up vacation I’d ever saved and planned for (at age 31, no less). I took the trip with my then-husband. It would turn out to be the last trip we ever took together.
But when I remember this trip to Florence, Italy—before the pandemic did its worst—I don’t think of that old relationship. Instead, I think of this moment in the city’s only English cemetery. It’s the final resting place of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the Victorian poet. I’m not sure why, but I was compelled to pull out my old iPhone and record something. I wanted to remember this moment, this place, this intercession.
If you take a look at the video, you’ll see how happy I am, grateful to pay my respects to a famous writer and hungry for inspiration. This cemetery was at the top of my list of places to visit.
It’s telling, too, that I visited it alone.
In the cemetery, I made a promise: I was tired of being a friend to the writer. I wanted to see what it was like to be a writer in my own right.
And the rest is history, I suppose.
I hope you enjoy this time capsule post. And if you’re curious if things will ever change, maybe this video will remind you that they always do.
Yours,
Courtney
