What revelations.

As a child, while I was living on an island in Washington state, I used to stare at a copy of The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady at my mother's friend's house. For some reason, I just felt like it held unknown mysteries, beyond what I could see or read in its pages.

"Edith Holden - Wikipedia"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Holden

"Edith's middle name honoured the pioneer woman physician, Elizabeth Blackwell, also a Unitarian and the Holdens' cousin. The Holden family attended the Birmingham Labour Church.

Before the death of Edith's mother Emma in 1904, the Holden family had become Spiritualists. The Holdens held regular Spiritualist seances at home in Olton, with the intention of communicating with the spirit of their deceased wife and mother. Edith and her four sisters were instrumental in assisting their father with these communications, which culminated in 1913, when Edith's father published them in his own diary, entitled Messages from the Unseen, only weeks before his own death."

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It was so interesting to find out that the creator of the Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady and Elizabeth Blackwell were related! 

As an even younger child, I had read about the first woman doctor, Elizabeth Blackwell (the book was another gift from my mother.)

The entry also says that Edith was made posthumously famous for her nature diary the year I was born.

I wonder what the television program based on her life could be? I will look for that next.

I knew my mother's friend really liked the nature diary and it seemed almost a bit sacrosanct. After all these years, that feeling that there was more than I could see in the book's pages came back to me.

Gosh, I wish I could have talked more about these things with them. But we didn't have the Internet in those days.

I suppose it just says to me that I need to remember that a love of both art and nature can make me feel extremely interested in being alive on Earth in this lifetime.