The Origin of Malibu Maine
Hello, my name is Tonya. I was born in Portland, Maine, and have lived in the Greater Portland area for most of my life. Before I knew what the word “grateful” meant, I felt it. I was a little girl lying down in a field behind our house, watching puffy clouds in the blue sky move towards the sea. I was thinking that of all the places in the world I could be from, I was so lucky to be from this place. I still feel that way.
The seven-year-old from that field is never far away. She had a lot to do with the making of The Maine Birthday Book. She had even more to do with Hop Onward Rabbit Rabbit. She was also present for the hardest time of my adult life a few years ago, to help me when I was losing my Mom.
Health issues had ganged up on my Mom for 3-4 years when things took a hard turn for the worse in early 2016. She didn’t want to eat anymore. My Dad and I were caring for her around the clock, yet it was hard to wrap our heads around what was happening before our eyes and hearts.
Weeks went by, and life felt mostly on hold, because I knew she was dying. Every day was uncertain and confusing. I felt stuck and helpless.
Malibu Maine was an imaginary place I co-built with the seven-year-old inside me during this time. It was where we could go when we needed a break. It was part fort, part frontier; a place to escape and explore and feel whatever we needed and wanted to feel. It helped us cope. Having Malibu was like having a workshop for our imagination to go to. That space gave us perspective and helped us reckon with the hard things that were mostly out of our control outside of Malibu.
My Mom passed away in May of 2016. Within weeks, the place I had invented to escape the day-to-day pain of losing her became the place to embrace her memory and spirit. The workshop for my imagination - the imaginary hometown of Malibu Maine - is greatly inspired by her life and the influence she had - and has - on me.
The idea of Malibu Maine was reborn as a home for my projects and a place to encourage others to make space for imagination. I launched the website on my Mom’s birthday that year, July 24, 2016. It will always be a work in progress, but will consistently celebrate nature and being outdoors, the four seasons, wildlife, curiosity, imagination, and growth.
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Please scroll down to learn a little more about Malibu and my Mom.
Thank you for visiting,
Tonya Shevenell
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.”
logo by peter shevenell
In memory of Diane E. O'Donnell Shevenell, Malibu Maine is symbolically established on her birthday, July 24th, so that the town will have an extra special reason to celebrate each year. Diane is the mother of Malibu creator, Tonya Shevenell.
My brother, Peter, listened to my every thought bubble while designing the logo for Malibu Maine. The barn and its alewife weathervane are nods to the natural beauty of Maine and to two of its enduring industries. Where farmlands meet the sea are places of "ancient conversations" and inspiration. I walk along one of these places every week, and it's where ideas seem to find me; including the one for Malibu Maine. The barn represents creative space where ideas grow and develop; its doors and window both invite light in and let it shine forth as a beacon. The weathervane shows direction. Alewives are sea-run fish indigenous to Maine, that once could be found migrating in any stream or river near the Gulf. Their journeys from ocean to pond or lake are symbolic of timeless persistence and exploration. Malibu Maine is all about imagination, creativity and the spirit of place.
Diane O’Donnell was born in Portland, Maine and graduated from Deering High School. She spent her childhood between Portland and Chebeague Island, where her Mother’s side of the family goes back for generations. She went to the University of Maine at Portland (before it merged with the Gorham campus into the University of Southern Maine) and after two years, transferred to the University of Maine at Orono. Second semester junior year, she did an internship in Washington D.C. with Maine Congressmen, Stanley R. Tupper (pictured).
In Washington D.C., she met Ray Shevenell, a senior at Georgetown University. He was from Portland, too, and even though they had grown up less than a mile from each other, their paths had never crossed. They were married at St. Joseph’s Church on Stevens Avenue in Portland in May, 1965.