Gluten-Free Pumpkin Bread with Walnuts

The new road home, and pumpkin bread recipe.

Pulling Up Roots. Again.

It's been brewing for awhile now- our dissatisfaction with LA and the film business, the slow, dawning realization that living out here is simply not sustainable. Every penny I make goes for rent and bills. The financial pressure is suffocating. And I have no space to paint. Physical space, of course. But also psychic space. The energy of LA is so imposing, so invasive. Someone else's narrative is always intruding. Even if that narrative is only a car alarm. Or a leaf blower.

I can't hear my own voice here.

And so I haven't felt like an artist in a long, long time. I hoped Redondo Beach might be different. But I still didn't have the studio I needed. It was healing to live at the ocean for a year. But again, not sustainable.

My husband and I have been empty-nesters now for seven years or so. Pursuing Steve's mid-life dream of writing screenplays. We've been living like gypsies, in a series of small apartments. But it wasn't always this way. We used to both paint for a living. We used to be homeowners, with a house and a studio, a garden. A family. Steve taught painting for extra income, but we lived off our art. We sold work in galleries, and lived well as artists. I met Steve in a painting workshop. And two and a half years later, he asked me out for coffee.

Art and painting have always been our first bond.

Truth is, these last few years I have missed our "life as artists". I miss having a home, a garden, a private studio. And I told Steve, after visiting New England for our son's wedding last year- I miss New England. I miss the seasons- which connect me to a sense of belonging, connect me to the Earth. I miss New England people.

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