THE FOLLY & FORTITUDE OF HER YOUTH ☼ Magdalen Painting {Art Print}

Folly and fortitude: these were the qualities she saw in herself when she looked back to those days of innocence. Full of life, she had always been determined. There was a fierce independence about her. She dared to go her own way in a world where women were branded for doing so. She looked back with satisfaction on the way she had balanced creative pursuits with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. 

Despite what appeared to others to be an incessant choice for frivolity, she had a sincerity and depth that only he seemed to see. The two of them, so different and yet joined in their ability to see the worlds beyond. It was true; her faith in the unseen was unshakable, as he had told her then, when they were young.

Whenever she could, in small ways that often went unseen, she made her humble contribution to the spacious home for which she was so grateful. It was what others misread as "attitude" that prevented them from seeing her heart of gratitude; though even she had to admit in that way too she had been unconventional, a girl out of time, as if she had been plopped into a strange world she could not comprehend. 

She liked to think of those days as floating free, not connected with all that came after. They had formed her; she had been shaped by them. The music and merriment. The wild imaginings of all they thought possible. How could she have known how it would go? She was glad she did not know and for all she had always known.