Silence, Solitude, and Time: Wisdom from May Sarton's 'Journal of a Solitude

kicking off my self study, my notes from reading May Sarton's book, O'Keeffe's art

I’ve kicked off my year-long self-study on silence, solitude, and time with the book Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton. I'm usually not a fan of personal journals published posthumously, but I appreciate journals that writers intentionally share during their lifetime, as Sarton did.

To accompany my reflections, I've selected several Georgia O'Keeffe paintings that visually echo Sarton's themes. O'Keeffe (1887-1986) is an American artist who found creative solitude in the New Mexico desert. She shares with Sarton an intense observation of nature. Incidentally, in Sarton’s journal, she mentions going to see O’Keeffe’s exhibit at the Whitney Museum in NYC during the time she was writing this book.

Georgia O’Keeffe “White Flower No. 1” 1932, Oil on Canvas

Sarton (1912–1995), a Belgian-American poet, novelist, and openly queer woman who came out in the 1950s, writes candidly about living alone, tending to her garden, navigating her mercurial moods, and finding joy in small rituals.

The book unfolds as a dated journal. What makes it special is its ordinariness.

Sarton doesn't romanticize solitude as something picturesque or consistently peaceful. Instead, she documents the rhythms of her life, both external and internal.

My Notes from Sarton's book Journal of Solitude

It's 1970. May Sarton is 58 years old and living alone in what she calls a village in Nelson, New Hampshire, when she begins her first journal entry in September. Almost immediately, she begins to articulate her relationship with solitude:

"I am here alone for the first time in weeks to take up my 'real' life again at last. That's what is strange—that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened."

Sarton articulates something I've felt but couldn't name, that genuine understanding requires private reflection. Being with others, even those we love, can make clarity elusive. It's in being alone that we begin to separate, sort, and understand our true emotions or thoughts on things.

Georgia O’Keeffe “Pelvis with the Moon” 1943, Oil on Canvas

In another journal entry, Sarton reflects on how, as we age, our whole life can start to feel like noise. There's a pull to abandon what we've built and go on a journey that's truly our own. It reminds me of people who pack it all up and walk through a new door after the kids are grown.

"More and more I see how true is the Hindu idea that a man may leave family responsibilities and become a 'holy man,' a wanderer, in his old age, in order to complete himself—a time for laying aside all that has pulled the soul away from nature, from pure contemplation."

Georgia O’Keeffe “Pink Tulip” 1926, Oil on Canvas

This might feel small to mention, but I really loved how Sarton elevated the importance of flowers in her daily life. As someone who makes a whole event out of choosing the week's bouquet and proudly rotates my vintage vase collection, I felt an immediate connection.

"On my desk, small pink roses. Strange, how often the autumn roses look sad, fade quickly, frost-browned at the edges. But these are lovely, bright, singing pink lilies, recurved, maroon pollen on the stamens, and a branch of peony leaves turned a strange pinkish-brown. It's an elegant bouquet… When I am alone the flowers are really seen. I can pay attention to them. They are felt presences. Without them I would die."

Georgia O’Keeffe “Jimson Weed” 1936, Oil on Canvas

I actually found myself wondering if she ever paused, mid-sentence, and questioned whether her readers in the 1970s might find it strange—this repeated mention of the flowers in her view, or her beloved Japanese vase she arranged them in.

Today, flower photos are everywhere in our social media feeds, but I get the feeling Sarton would've been right there with us, sharing her daily arrangements with pride.

She shares how flowers in her home really help drive her energy and joy.

"Today I feel centered and time is a friend instead of the old enemy. I have a fire burning in my study, yellow roses and mimosa on my desk. There is an atmosphere of festival, in the house. We are one. The house and I, and I am happy to be alone - time to think, time to be."

Georgia O’Keeffe “Red Snapdragons” 1923, Oil on Canvas

Most of her flowers came from her garden. As the growing season came to a close, she lamented having to rely on store-bought ones, but her need to keep flowers in her life, even with these substitutions, is clear.

"I have the very last bunch of garden flowers on my desk—a few yellow marigolds, one pale yellow and pink rose, and two others in bud. Now it will have to be florists' flowers with their awful sameness, none of the delightful, home-grown mixtures of the spring, summer, and fall."

I mentioned earlier that Sarton doesn't present solitude as one long, beautiful exhale. She's clearly bored at times, frustrated by the isolation of village life, and openly critical of herself for her perceived shortcomings. How clearly our shadows show up when we're alone.

Georgia O’Keeffe “Oak Leaves” 1929, acrylic on birch

What makes Sarton's account of solitude so valuable is its honesty. By acknowledging both the peace and the demons that emerge in isolation, she offers a more complete picture than the romanticized versions we often encounter.

"It occurs to me that boredom and panic are two devils the solitary must combat."

"I am bored with my life here at present. There is not enough nourishment in it. There are times when the lack of good conversation, theatre, concerts, art museums around here—cultured life—creates a vacuum of boredom."

"I have sometimes wondered also whether in people like me who come to boil fast (soupe au lait, the French call this trait, like milk soup that boils over) the tantrum is not a built-in safety valve against madness or illness."

Georgia O’Keeffe “Gray Lines with Black, Blue and Yellow” (1923) Oil on Canvas

While reading about Sarton's life, I learned she was known to be quick to anger and that she lost friends and lovers because of her moody nature. She doesn't directly address this in the journal, but in some entries, you sense she's working through the pain she may have caused or the ache of being misunderstood.

There are only a few glimpses in Sarton's journal where she reflects on the cultural, historical, or political events of her time. But I appreciated those brief notes, they gave me a sense of how she was responding to the world around her, even while living in solitude.

"Instant success is the order of the day. 'I want it now!' I wonder whether this is not part of our corruption by machines. Machines do things very quickly and outside the natural rhythm of life, and we are indignant if a car doesn't start at the first try. So the few things that we still do—such as cooking (though there are TV dinners), knitting, gardening, anything at all that cannot be hurried—have a particular value."

Sarton's prescient observation about machines conditioning us to expect instant results seems even more relevant today than in her time. What would she make of our world where algorithms serve our needs before we've fully articulated them?

Even in the 1970s, Sarton was noticing how people were losing patience for sustained effort, for sticking with something meaningful over the long haul. She worried that machines were teaching us to expect everything instantly, pulling us away from the natural rhythms of life. Her reflections remind me that each generation wrestles with what gets lost when speed and convenience start to define the way we live.

Georgia O’Keeffe “Yellow Sweet Peas” Oil on Canvas

As a mother of two adult children and currently raising my youngest (17), all while climbing to the top of the corporate ladder, I've spent the past few decades in constant pursuit of solitude, craving silence, and always reflecting on time—how to manage it, how to make the most of it. Sarton, who never married and didn't have children, still found herself writing about motherhood and women's work. She often received letters from women asking how to sustain a creative life while raising children.

"It is harder for women, perhaps to be "one-pointed," much harder for them to clear space around whatever it is they want to do beyond household chores and family life. Their lives are fragmented…This is the cry I get in so many letters - the cry not so much for a "a room of one's own" as "time of one's own."

A bit of shade to her contemporary, Virginia Woolf, no? She goes on to also say:

"If she has an infant to care for, the jump from intellectual life to that of being a nurse must be immense. She has longed for children. She has what she thought she wanted, so she suffers guilt and dismay to feel so disoriented. The fact remains that in marrying, the wife has suffered an earthquake and the husband has not."

As someone who has navigated motherhood while pursuing professional goals, I recognize the "earthquake" she describes, the profound realignment of self that parenthood demands.

Georgia O’Keeffe “Two White Shells” 1937, Oil On Canvas

Sarton shares that she's pretty content with her life choices as a woman who has dodged society's wills during her possible childbearing years beginning in the 1930s where motherhood and marriage was basically guaranteed.

"It is an age where more and more human beings are caught up in lives where fewer and fewer inward decisions can be made, where fewer and fewer real choices exist. The fact that a middle-aged, single woman, without any vestige of family left, lives in this house in a silent village and is responsible only to her own soul means something. The fact she is a writer and can tell where she is and what it is like on the pilgrimage inward can be of comfort."

When I read this, I am reminded of all of the essays I've read and appreciated recently about women making decisions not to have children or boldly taking other nontraditional paths. I welcome these perspectives as I am an avid champion of the child-free movement.

Georgia O’Keeffe “White and Brown Cliffs (1965) Oil on Canvas

Sarton also touches on her era which feels familiar.

"I, like everybody else, have tried to come to grips with the hard truth. We have had to accept civilized man as the most cruel of all animals, to recognize, that given absolute power, we all become sadists (the German camps etc)...we have come to understand that blacks, far from being "liberated," are still oppressed in every possible way, and now we are increasingly aware that women must fight a difficult and painful war for their autonomy and wholeness. The marvel is that there are still so many people of courage who go on fighting in spite of all these reasons for despair."

"The big question, I jotted down during the long wait at the airport is how to hope and what to hope for. We are citizens of a corrupt country, of corrupt vision. There is such a sense of death and of being buried under the weight of technocracy. How to keep cool and get hold of the essential..and, above all, how to recognize the essential."

Throughout this book I am reminded it's really the little things that bring us real joy and delight. I enjoyed seeing Sarton’s relationship with money here.

"I myself am quite irresponsible about money. I believe it must flow through me as food does, be spent as it is earned, be given away, be turned into flowers and books and beautiful things, be given to people who are creators…it must remain convertible, not allowed to fallow."

Georgia O’Keeffe “On the River” (1965) Oil on Canvas

My Key Insights

My key insights from May Sarton's Journal of Solitude are summed up by this quote:

"The delights of the poet as I jotted them down turned out to be light, solitude, the natural world, love, time, creation itself."

These elements form a framework for meaningful existence regardless of one's circumstances.

Sarton has inspired me to document the seemingly small moments, the flowers on my coffee table, how morning light transforms a room, the subtle shifts in my mood, change of season, the rhythms that are unique to my life. In noticing and recording these details, I am practicing presence, slowing down time and cultivating attention regardless of whether I am in solitude or in the midst of family and community.

The Journal of Solitude is a mundane, ordinary book. It's what made it a good vessel to discuss solitude and silence. Through its simplicity, Sarton shows us that profound insights don't require extraordinary circumstances, they emerge from simply paying close attention to the everyday.