Su Misura in Italian means ‘tailor made’.  It recalls my mother saying that clothes made ‘su misura’ either by her practiced hand, or by the hand of a local sarto or sarta, had a quality and a provenance unmatched by mass produced commercial wear. 

It makes sense that one’s lifestyle choices should be tailor made to who one is, without apology,  without ‘rules’,  or the unconscious relinquishing of the true self.  Sometimes we don’t know we’re giving in to the expectations of others.  Life goes on its normal pace.  We conform. We live less.

Until something happens- a chance encounter, a solo trip, a poem, a film, a scent that recalls an important or painful memory, a long walk or bike ride, a tug at the heart, the scent of spring, the smell of the sea, a late night walk through a snow covered park lit only by antique street lamps, or a book one plunges into, like an impassioned swimmer…and it wakes us up….in time to see the rainbow of possibilities we’ve ignored until now.

And then there is no stopping us…..

While writing Sass, Smarts, and Stilettos I imagined the Su Misura Life in its pages.  Life lessons gleaned from my mother and grandmother, from extraordinary women across continents, from summers in Italy, words of literary masters, nature’s landscapes, trials and textures, and the wisdom that seeps in after difficult truths or one too many Campari cocktails.

The Su Misura Life is about those made-to-measure honest moments and sensory revelations we make time for because we can, each particle a gemlike reflection of what is possible.

So here’s to possibilities and revelations, to the virtue of procrastination and the clarity of distraction, and to lives fully lived.