Every Christmas season, at least once, if not several times (okay, many times!), I just have to watch a documentary called Take Peace – A Corgi Cottage Christmas with Tasha Tudor.

A children’s book author and illustrator, Tasha passed away in 2008 at the age of 92. I discovered her in 2012 when looking through an old edition of Victorian magazine where they had paid tribute to her.

I became obsessed with her, checking out just about every book at the library I could that was about her, and that she’d also written herself. I also visited the Tasha Tudor Museum in Brattleboro, Vermont the same year I learned about her.

I’m in my obsession mode again having gotten out the Christmas DVD, Take Peace to watch it over the weekend. To me, Tasha truly celebrated in the spirit of the season as it should be. The tree got cut on Christmas eve and decorated on Christmas day, along with many other traditions not practiced too often these days.

She lived in her own world and pretty much self-sustained, within a small English style cottage her oldest son built, out in the country miles away from the outside world.

But what I love most about her, and what really hit home watching the documentary this weekend, is that her creative life was woven into her daily life – there really was no distinction between the two.

Each were instrumental to the other, but it came most naturally to her. Tasha’s children’s books and illustrations depict this very clearly – but it was also how she lived. She wrote and painted what she was living and had lived as a young girl.

Isn’t this what all creative people seek?  I know I do. And I guess it’s why I’m so mesmerized by a woman who was able to make this work. She didn’t let the outside distractions get in her way of what a meaningful life was for her.

While many considered her quite eccentric, and she lived without electricity or running water for the most part of her life, I admire her greatly for living by the beat of her own drum.

As she also states in the film, she was never in a hurry – she didn’t see a point of that and she always took time for tea each day no matter how much was going on her life –and yet she managed to write and/or illustrate close to 100 books in her lifetime.

And I can’t help but think how so often we look outside ourselves for answers, and yet, Tasha found them all within her own world – and that is what she created from.

It was her love of corgi’s, her exquisite flower garden, her love of nature, cooking, sewing, creating, and goats, cats, and doves that she wove right into her paintings and books which are adored to this day by many.

And yup, I’m one who continues to be inspired by her with many books by Tasha I requested from the library so I can once again immerse myself into a space of peace and joy…

And which encourages me to continue to strive to live from that inner light that I call me, and that only I can live from, which I hold sacred and dear.

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