A couple of years ago, I discovered a publication called Bella Grace. It’s a thick, perfect bound magazine on quality paper. There are no ads. The photos are soft and the ideas are sharp.
It’s timeless and well done.
Basically, it’s the opposite of everything else that’s popular these days.
They aren’t selling products and ways to fix yourself. They are shining a light on calm and beauty in this world. They give you stories and writing prompts to make you think. Reader submissions are creative, thought provoking and sometimes so familiar it’s exciting to know there are others out there who think like you. It’s also sometimes mindset changing to read thoughts from people who are different. This is how we learn.
Bella Grace is about making the everyday special and making hard days easier. It’s about making the good stuff magical.
In short, it’s a soothing balm for my nervous system that I didn’t even know I needed.
I’ve only seen it in two stores in Ohio – Barnes and Noble and Joseph Beth Booksellers on Cincinnati so it feels like a special occasion when get to pick one up. It ain’t cheap but it’s not a throw away piece either. I keep my past issues lined up together on a bookshelf and always have one or two lying around the house. They are great rereads because you always spot something new.
They also publish a companion piece called “Bella Grace Field Guide To Everyday Magic.” The new one is more than 130 pages of quotes, worksheets, lists and writing prompts to recall memories, make you think, spark creativity and to help you view your world differently.
One prompt asks in what ways you are like your five year old self. Another is what books you think everyone should read. Others deal with everyday beauty in common things, adventuring in the world and the loveliness of being a homebody.
Perspective is a huge theme because the things some find workaday can be viewed by someone else as having great value.
There’s a two page spread with 31 blocks – a calendar with no dates, if you will. Each block is an inch square. The prompt is to write something about every day. It can’t be too long and can be just snippets like “dark and rainy, read Frankenstein, laughed with a friend.”
This time I’m using mine to write something good that happened every day. Most days are easy. Some are really hard. That’s how life goes.
This week there were good things to report even on the hard days. In fact, it felt like the hard days outnumbered the good. But, as I sit here looking back over the week, it’s hard to focus on the bad when there was so much good. Just this week, I had porch suppers on pretty nights, saw the governor speak at the ribbon cutting of an amazing new community college facility here in my hometown, saw a rainbow, and my dad rescued a kitten from a tree because he’s a really good guy.
That’s not too shabby.
I think half the problem with this world is that people focus too much on the bad and on what scares them. That’s certainly understandable given the social injustices, cruelty, anti- intellectualism, mental health struggles, poverty, closed mindedness, inflation, and narcissism of the general population that exists every day of the week.
Don’t get me wrong. I think about those things too and I worry we are on exactly the wrong path toward the future. Worst of all, I can’t change it. I can only change myself and try to be a role model for decency.
Bella Grace feels like the escape that everyone needs and most people don’t want right now. it’s certainly the escape I need. Less stimulation, prejudice, anger, and all around cruelty and more calm, kindness, and thoughtfulness both inward and toward the perspectives of others are a good start toward a better world.
Be the change you wish to see.
And if you get a chance, pick up an issue of Bella Grace and see what you think! As for me and the 31 days of good things, I’m almost done with my available space. It has been good for my mental health so I think I’ll find another way to keep doing it!
