Integrity is one of my highest values. I admire it in others.
As an avid reader, I often think about the authors I read in relation to what they write—even how they live. This is how I came to observe and admire the integrity displayed by:
Author Susan Wittig Albert.
I stumbled into the “view” of her integrity I’m sharing today. I just finished her whimsical mystery series The Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter, set in England’s Lake District during the early 1900’s.
While the anthropomorphized talking animals and quaint village life might seem like “fluffy entertainment,” the series is created from the real life of Beatrix Potter, in the years when she moved away from her parents’ home in London and began her legacy of land/farm acquisition and stewardship.
From a UK Lake District website:
“Beatrix Potter was a key figure in saving the traditional Herdwick sheep from extinction. With the profits from her publications, she bought Hill Top farm, other hill farms and estates in the Lake District. … When she died in 1943 she left 14 farms, sheep and 4000 acres of land to the National Trust.”
Clearly, Susan Wittig Albert admires Beatrix Potter’s fundamental impact on the land and way of life she loved.
Earlier this year, I happened upon the section of the library featuring author memoirs. There I picked up and read Susan Wittig Albert’s Together Alone: a Memoir of Marriage and Place.
The memoir is tremendously engaging, weaving itself primarily around what is now 31 acres in Texas she and her husband Bill Albert acquired and nurtured in the Texas hill country, called “Meadow Knoll.” That story, too is full of animals—though none of them talk, she often names them.
Taken together, these books showed me how highly Susan Wittig Albert values holding one’s relationship to the land as a primary responsibility.I admire the way she’s taken what she values and has made it central in her own life (as well as giving it a role in her creations!)
Kudos to your personal and creative integrity, Ms. Albert!
Why this matters…
When you live in integrity, you are living with deep authenticity. Success flows from here, along with inner peace and delight.
Coach’s Challenge:
Who do you admire? How are you embodying the values they project into the world? Think about it, journal about it—if there isn’t integrity, do something about it!
