A few weeks ago I had the privilege of boarding a plane heading to Bermuda to celebrate the Southern Woman with Garden & Gun Magazine. For me, saying “the southern woman” aloud always made me cringe in a way. LET ME EXPLAIN. I was never able to see Southern Women that looked like me celebrated when they did things differently, only when they did things the same. So, to be apart of this group that was celebrating ALL southern women because they were doing things differently was truly a treat.
We took quite the adventurous ride to get The Loren Hotel. Roads weren’t the same, steering was on the passenger’s side, we were driving on the opposite side of the road, but even in the midst of these contrary norms, beauty was the common denominator.
The Loren Hotel was one of the most beautiful resorts I’ve ever been to. The views of the North Atlantic are unmatched to those I’ve seen previously.
All checked in and ready to go, I headed back out to meet other people who were attending the event. There were women (and some men) from all over! I met one woman who has attended just about every G&G Magazine event!
As the night went on we were able to hear some inspiring words from Rebecca Darwin before calling it a night. There were a lot of activities planned for the following day and I needed to get a little beauty rest haha!
I chose to do activities that I wasn’t the strongest at in order to give myself a bit of a challenge, so a baking class + a bike riding adventure it was! On the first day, we took the baking class at Sweet Saak Bakery! I personally find that baking is not my strong suit, so I was very excited to attend this class! The class taught me so many useful tips and tricks to make baking a little easier. We made scones, pumpkin bread, fruit tarts, and cookies! I didn’t think I could bake one thing let alone four things in a two-hour time frame haha!
Meredith Andrews
After we were done with the baking class, we headed out for a beautiful lunch on the water! The city of Bermuda really accepted us with open arms while on this trip. Everyone was just so nice and hospitable.
After lunch, I headed out with Meredith, our photographer for the trip, and took some lovely shots around the island from there, we headed to dinner to toast to Southern Women and all that they’ve done! The following day we did a bike tour that really spoke to the history of Bermuda.
During the trip, I shot on film and can’t wait to share those images with you + the stories that go with them! I’m hoping to get those back soon 🙂
There are so many more wonderful things that I can include in this post, but I am going to stop it here with a quote from Allison Glock’s foreword from the G&G Book that Amanda (editor of Southern Women) read during her talk at our last dinner! I hope it impacts you the way it did me.
“Southern women, regardless of where we hail from in the region, share a consciousness of certain truths, a lean toward humor and humility and hard work, a tether (whether we like it or not) to the landscape, an impulse to give, a yearning for glory. We take the ingredients we’re handed and make delicious gumbo. We leave nothing out. We prefer it that way. We also carry in our cells a brutal, burdensome history, an awareness of wrongs that can never be made right. We plant flowers anyway.”