Latest Author Features

Healing Water for My Soul

My love for healing water is the whole point for so many of the stories I tell and that I’ve told on the pages of Bella Magazine this year. The drops of healing water in my life are the moments of loving connection with others where I get the opportunity to share life with them, and they with me, with no strings attached. Some of these encounters this year have been a brief passing moment as I exchanged glances and a smile with someone, and other encounters have been for long chapters of my life that continue. There are so many times in this chaotic year when I have felt

What’s In the Reflection of the Mirror to Your Soul?

What would I look like if I actually accomplished what I set out to accomplish? I find myself in the midst of a construction project in which others are following my vision. I am mindful of having a vision that is clear enough for others to follow. This requires having a clear picture of the project, drawings even, and having a clear picture of the steps we are going to take to accomplish the vision. That’s my job. But as I thought about writing the vision, a deeper understanding came to me. I was having this thought early in the morning when I walked past the bathroom mirror, and again

I Create Beautiful Things

If there was a job called Professional Creator, I could be THAT. I love to create stuff, all kinds of stuff. I like to find forgotten yarn and watch it become something new and beautiful. I glean from thrift stores or estate sales or garages or attics and find old balls of tangled messes and watch them unfurl, and then I create anew. I enjoy taking pieces of fabric, once serving their past-life purposes, and then cut and craft them into a new blanket or quilt. I am entertained by taking wood and screws and building stuff. Sometimes it’s bird atriums for my farm animals. Or functional things like a

The Honey Chile’ Sistergirl Playlist for Getting Your Life Together

This is one of those stories that should start with “OMG, so I was …” I was in the shower so I couldn’t get it written in the moment. Some of my best moments of enlightenment happen when I’m in the shower with Pandora playing. So yesterday I was doing the same thing. I turned on Pandora to my Tank and the Bangas station and the song Walmart started playing. “You know it girl, keep the receipt!” “That was such a full story with some good advice,” is what I thought. And then Eryka Badu came on talking about the baggage we carry around. What if there were a playlist

Lessons From Nature: The Ocean

Oh, how I long to visit the beach, but with the current state of pandemic, the beach is not on my summer calendar. That, however, doesn’t stop me from reflecting on a trip to the beach that I took while in graduate school a decade ago. On one trip in particular, I made some notes about a profound experience. As summer draws to an end, and as I long for the sound of the waves and the cooling water, I reflect back on that poignant evening, one spent standing in the ocean as the bold red sun dipped below the beach front properties as it escaped westward to continue its

I’ll Die When I’m Done: Until Then I Live!

Around Father’s Day each year, I take some time to reflect deeply. It was in the early morning hours of Father’s Day thirteen years ago that I stood by as my father took his last breath and passed away. And while it still makes me have a quiet cry when I think deeply about it, it is not a cry of sadness. It is the cry of deep gratitude. I tell many “dad stories” these days, not because he was a model father or the perfect daddy. I tell them because of a gift he gave me, a gift so overflowing that I can share it deeply and freely with

Finding Your Lane: A Quest Worth the Journey

I listen to music often. When I am working on my farm it is common to hear my playlist blasting extra loud on my bluetooth speaker or to see me wearing my earphones as I do my chores. It was a day like this recently when a Tom Misch song captured me. It captured me in a way that made me put the song on repeat for over an hour. After the third replay I added it to one of my playlists, the one entitled My Frequency. His song It Runs Through Me is about why I even have a playlist called My Frequency. On this playlist are some songs

The Hopeful Nature of Seeds

Growing Hope I love spring. But moreso, I love what spring means to me. Spring is a time for shedding the bulky winter sweaters. It means longer days, warming temperatures, and seeds! Oh, the joy that seeds bring to my life. I did not specifically plan to be a lady farmer who owns a dump truck. But seeds caught my attention one day years ago on my first invitation to participate in a community garden. They let me plant seeds. And seeds I did plant. I had a ledger in my journal, and containers, and I planted way too many seeds for the size of that community garden. I had

Dance like everybody’s watching and you don’t care

Writing about dancing seems very counter-intuitive to me. I have always felt rhythmically challenged, which has never made sense to me given my deep love for music. From elementary school age into well past my college years, I was a musician. I dropped out of the dreaded piano lessons as a young child but begged until my mother conceded to rent my first flute. Several flutes later I was a regular performer and had embraced several other instruments with some proficiency. I love music, and some music compels me to sway in my seat, bob my head, and tap my feet or fingers or both. But rarely am I compelled

The Power of Love | Live Better, Love Better

What if we all began loving better? Would it change our lives, our communities, our world? I love music. I love the way songwriters catch an emotion and clothe it in words and melodies. I love how they can take a trumpet or a saxophone and, like an ancient mythological siren, pull me dangerously into deep thought about something that connects with my own emotions, or pondering thoughts about the meaning of life, or purpose, or love. A song like that caught me recently and it made me check myself. I had not intended to question the quality of my love but that is the dangerous mental playground this song

LaRahna Hughes

Latest Author Features