so lightly stories

HELLO

I travelled to Malaysia last year to attend a family reunion, and there I discovered, from my uncle’s mouth, that when my dad (my ‘ba’) ran away from school to find his father who worked in the tin mines, he became a watermelon farmer. Unable to return his wayward son home to his town, my grandfather instead put him to work in the watermelon fields close to the tin mine until he was able to take leave and take his wayward son home. I remember staring at my ba with new eyes, he then gleefully recalled that he used to sleep in a bare hut in the field and that he was quite good at farming watermelon. He was perhaps 11 years old. Only weeks later, my beloved uncle was killed in a road accident. If he hadn’t shared those memories with me, these stories would likely have been lost. How many others are untold?

It reinforced to me that although I am obsessed with preserving moments in time with my camera, there are endless stories swirling unspoken all around me or hibernating on my various hard drives - and I need to create a proper place for them to be shared. Stories buried so deeply that they require effort to pry out, or there just waiting to be asked to be told. Stories that are still in the making. All of your stories.

Thus So Lightly Stories is born. A place for community, for belonging, for sharing what has, and does, matter, to you. Whilst this first issue is mostly me, I hope next time it will be mostly you.

You are all special to me and I know given a chance to meet, that you would love each other. My hope for this space is that it becomes a place for your stories to belong, and those of your other friends and family, and eventually their loved ones also. My dream is that this becomes a wider community for story telling, however those stories best come to you.

If you would like to submit a story, or to pick up a copy of the magazine (it is physical in print only at this stage) please contact me or you can also send submissions to solightlyco@gmail.com