Summer in the Valley
I fell in love with this valley three years ago, in the summer.
Jenna Griffin loves foreign music, old cookbooks, public transportation, and sunsets in new places. After graduating with degrees in writing and French, she is spending her first post-grad year as an English teaching assistant in the Midi-Pyrénées region of France.
by Jenna Griffin | Jul 10, 2019 | 0 comments
I fell in love with this valley three years ago, in the summer.
by Jenna Griffin | Jun 10, 2019 | 2 comments
You can’t care that deeply for every suffering thing,
Even I know this much.
by Jenna Griffin | May 10, 2019 | 0 comments
What does it mean though for a place to be ugly?
by Jenna Griffin | Apr 10, 2019 | 0 comments
I’m thankful for that strange sort of nostalgia that sits in my stomach when I read about my past lives.
by Jenna Griffin | Mar 10, 2019 | 0 comments
It’s worth checking to see if these roots are healthy and balanced.
by Jenna Griffin | Feb 10, 2019 | 0 comments
The reason we try to change as people is because we all have the power to change the world.
by Jenna Griffin | Jan 10, 2019 | 0 comments
She said that God had brought us to her, that we were like her children, and that she could be like our Romanian mother.
by Jenna Griffin | Dec 10, 2018 | 4 comments
May you warm your body under thick blankets, your hands by radiators, your feet in old slippers.
by Jenna Griffin | Nov 11, 2018 | 0 comments
But do we ever really comprehend what happens when we try to meet with God?
by Jenna Griffin | Oct 10, 2018 | 0 comments
“I’ve forgotten how to hold a prayer. If I ever really knew how… there are different ways of speaking to God, of hearing his voice.”
by Jenna Griffin | Sep 10, 2018 | 0 comments
I mean the real world, the one that roots and flowers and rots and hunts and shivers and casts its eyes to the moon and howls and sinks into dirt and blushes into color.
by Jenna Griffin | Aug 10, 2018 | 0 comments
Danke, Louise. Obrigada, João. Merci, Jess. Gracias, Vera.
by Jenna Griffin | Jul 10, 2018 | 0 comments
I am the fifth stranger here, and perhaps the strangest of them all. I am passing through this place. This will be my only night in the city, and then I will be gone.
by Jenna Griffin | Jun 10, 2018 | 1 comment
Your body is not your enemy. And if you think it is, then treat it like an enemy: love it. Do good to it. Bless it. Pray for it.
by Jenna Griffin | May 10, 2018 | 0 comments
Still, I’ve never felt the same level of attachment in any of these places that I’ve felt in Romania. When I step off of the plane in that country, it feels like I’ve come home.
by Jenna Griffin | Apr 10, 2018 | 0 comments
In your last days in this little town, you will start to see things as you saw them in the first days.
by Jenna Griffin | Mar 10, 2018 | 0 comments
I think when we look down on children it’s because we have momentarily, or perhaps chronically, forgotten that little kid inside earnestly whispering, “Don’t forget me. I’m still here.”
by Jenna Griffin | Feb 10, 2018 | 0 comments
She is
Smoke-tinted,
Wood and silver,
Vessel of the divine
And of acceptance
by Jenna Griffin | Jan 10, 2018 | 0 comments
This was the year of living with my parents, with my best friends, with a stranger. This was the year of mint tea and French TV shows, of cooking for my friends and of touching the North Sea.
by Jenna Griffin | Dec 10, 2017 | 0 comments
Eventually you have to look these fears in the face, and you have to sit with the things, both true and false, that you believe about yourself.
by Jenna Griffin | Nov 10, 2017 | 0 comments
You are always you, always becoming you. You’re always your own first person, over and over and over.
by Jenna Griffin | Oct 10, 2017 | 0 comments
I learned to love the fall, to really love it, at the foothills of the French Alps, in October, two months after my friend drowned in Lake Michigan.
by Jenna Griffin | Sep 10, 2017 | 0 comments
The light pooled on the horizon, stretching like taffy, growing and receding. When it faded away in one direction, we looked behind us to see it growing in another corner of the sky. It seemed to breathe.
by Jenna Griffin | Aug 10, 2017 | 0 comments
They’re not always noble or pure, but then of course neither am I. We try our best, and sometimes people climb mountains just to see us blossom in the cold.
by Jenna Griffin | Jul 30, 2017 | 0 comments
Though they stay with us in a way, miracles do pass. The mountain disappeared almost as quickly as it had come, the sun set quicker than we imagined it would, and we had far to go in darkness.