VSCO (SS1 Pro), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
Aperture
There is a kind of light that doesn’t just shine, but also fractures.
It breaks open the moment with something softer than silence and more honest than certainty.
You don’t chase it, you receive it.
This image wasn’t planned.
This frame wasn’t forced.
There’s a stillness even the flowers seemed to know, and reflect back to me.
It is not the stillness of silence, but of surrender.
Not of bracing against beauty or the process of becoming-in-progress, or of apologizing for taking up space mid-bloom…but of letting the light have its way.
I simply stood still long enough for the light to offer itself—scattered, wild, and full of grace.
I saw what was really there:
Buds preparing to bloom and light wafting in, yet also ambient and still.
The entire moment was an aperture through which grace entered, unbothered and whole, needing no permission.
And in that quiet moment, it became a mirror for all of us—one that perhaps none of us knew we needed, and that many would automatically overlook.
How often do we chase clarity instead of becoming it?
How often do we disturb ourselves, or disturb the world while attempting to distract ourselves, by blaming everyone else?
How often are those moments merely us trying to be louder than what already speaks through us?
There is no control in peace.
No performance in healing.
Only presence.
And in that presence, we disturb no one—not even ourselves.
We become the quiet offering.
We become the still center in a world unraveling at the edges.
Today, as I stood still in the midst of both internal and external war, peace didn’t arrive with fanfare.
It arrived as fractured light through pine trees.
As a silent, oft unnoticed breath.
As a reminder that maybe the most sacred work is not to act, but merely to remain open.
Not to close.
Not to harden.
Not to explain ourselves into exhaustion, but to become aperture.
To simultaneously remain wide enough to hold what’s real and narrow enough to let illusion fall away.
And, to be balanced enough in both intellect and empathy to know the difference.
This is the answer: detachment.
Not from emotion, but from illusion.
It is not denial, not distance.
Rather, it is the quiet rerouting of both emotion and cognition back to stillness.
A return to clarity, not an absence of care.
And somehow, by not reacting, by not reaching, we find we are already held.
Mimosa (Albizia julibrissin). Lumix GX7, Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., Lightroom Mobile (watermark), VSCO.
Not everything soft is weak.
Not everything brief is forgotten.
The mimosa blooms like a passing thought—pink, feathery, fragrant, gone before you’re ready. But even in its short season, it rewrites the air.
And maybe that’s the point:
To offer sweetness without needing permanence. To make magic in the margins.
💚🌿✨
Mimosa (Albizia julibrissin). Lumix GX7, Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., Lightroom Mobile (watermark), VSCO.
The Mimosa tree (Albizia julibrissin) is commonly known as the silk tree or Persian silk tree. Albizia julibrissin isn’t actually a true mimosa—though it’s been lovingly misnamed for generations. Native to Asia, this delicate tree has made its way into southern landscapes with grace and stubbornness alike.
Its blooms are light as breath—powdery tufts that attract butterflies, bees, and human daydreamers. They bloom at dusk, shimmer in the wind, and drop silently—often leaving a petal-scattered sidewalk like a love note no one signed.
Mimosa (Albizia julibrissin). Lumix GX7, Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., Lightroom Mobile (watermark), VSCO.
Though it’s sometimes called invasive, there’s no denying its presence feels like a portal: part nostalgia, part perfume, part dream.
Its scientific name, julibrissin, comes from the Persian gul-i abrisham—“silk flower.” A name that suits it perfectly.
Mimosa (Albizia julibrissin). Lumix GX7, Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., Lightroom Mobile (watermark), VSCO.
In folk medicine—especially within Traditional Chinese Medicine—the mimosa tree is known as the “Tree of Happiness.” Its fragrant pink blossoms and bark have long been used to lift the spirit, ease grief, calm the heart, and quiet a restless mind.
The flowers are brewed into gentle teas, while the bark is sometimes tinctured for deeper emotional support. Often given to those moving through sorrow or heartbreak, the mimosa is considered a natural ally for joy, resilience, and emotional rebirth.
Today, one rode with us on the windshield of the Jeep as we were making our way back to the pavement after a beautiful morning and early afternoon on the wildlife management area and Flagg Mountain. I became, as always, overly excited and tried to get some photos with both my macro lens and my phone’s broken camera as we bounced along, eventually having my partner stop in the middle of the road…but, that didn’t help. The glass made it difficult to get any really good photos.
Photos of The Red-Banded Hairstreak butterfly (Calycopis Cecrops) I took with my broken iPhone camera, edited using Lightroom Mobile and VSCO.
But, that’s not the point of this post.
The Red-Banded Hairstreak butterfly’s range includes the Southeast United States, Florida and Texas. It can often be found in overgrown fields, woodland edges and coastal hammocks. It has a wing spread of around 0.75″ – 1.0″, and its host plants are wax myrtles, crotons, oaks, and sumacs. Its lifespan, from egg to death, is only about one and a half months. Egg stage, around five days. Caterpillar stage, around three weeks. Chrysalis stage, around two weeks. And the adult butterfly stage? The one we shared a moment of, with this guy? Only around one week.
ONE. WEEK.
That brief, butterfly moment? How special is it that we got to spend a fraction of its very short (from human perspective) lifespan with it? It wasn’t just a brief, or even rare, moment—it was a sacred one. It was a moment with a kind of fleeting, quiet grace that most people completely miss because they’re too busy chasing permanence.
After we returned home, as I was soaking in an epsom salts and Celtic sea salt bath to soothe an injury I’ve been nursing, I considered that reality. That moment. I saw it. I felt it. And I honored it with my heart wide open as I texted my partner to see if he had noticed the depth of it, or if it was just me being “weird” again.
“Maybe, to some,” he said in response. “But that’s the deepest kind of wisdom. ❤️”
Yes. Yes, I suppose so. “Soul,” my grandmother would say when I was a child. “That’s the only thing people mean when they act like there is something the matter with you getting excited about bugs and things. And they act that way because they haven’t met their own (soul).” I never understood. Not really. Today, her words really clicked into place.
The world is blind in so many ways. It races past the miracle of a butterfly with a week to live—a week!—and doesn’t even flinch. But I did notice. I always do, whether it’s a cool insect or critter, a beautiful bloom or even just a bud, a spiderweb covered in dew, every mushroom I see… That is why I am obsessed with (and pretty much only shoot) macro photography.
When I “notice,” I shriek in excitement and audibly let whoever is around me know, “look at that! That is so cool/beautiful! That’s a picture!” And there I go, shooting and shooting and shooting. Today, I saw myself in that process. I saw the life that rode with us. I felt the presence of something so brief and so beautiful, and instead of dismissing it as nothing, I turned it into everything.
My message to my partner? It was not just a sweet text about our butterfly moment—it was a love letter to awareness itself. I’ve made peace with being the “weird one,” the “brainless, goofy, up in the clouds one,” the one with “too many feelings.” Because the truth is, I’m the one who sees. Who feels. Who remembers what most people never even notice.
Photos of The Red-Banded Hairstreak butterfly (Calycopis Cecrops) I took with my Lumix GX-7 and Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit lens, edited using Lightroom Mobile and VSCO.
That butterfly chose us, in a way. That’s what moments like this always feel like to me, because I see them—every single one—as such an enormous blessing. And that moment—it’s proof that my soul is aligned with what matters, which is what I have strived for all my life, amidst all the noise about so many materialistic things that don’t matter at all.
The recognition of that makes me feel a sort of deep sadness for the world. I suppose it is compassion, not despair. Because people like me are “exactly what the world is starving for, even if it doesn’t know it yet.” That’s what Master Roshi used to encourage me with, day in and day out.
You don’t need a brain to comprehend what I am saying in this post.
You need a heart, and to understand its language. But if you look around you, so few do. That’s the sickness. The people who know and love me will, at most, say something like, “there she goes, noticing again.” But most of the people who always teased me with comments like, “Christy, your name should be Debbie—drowning Debbie, drowning in the deep when nothing really matters that much,” are suffering from that sickness.
I’ve never said much of anything in response to those kind of judgments, but as I’ve become more self-aware than ever before (in the last year and a half or so, since the culmination of all the death), I am not at all unwilling to tell you exactly what goes through my mind as I consider what would I hear from them about this special butterfly experience:
“Nothing matters? Ok. And the only reason nothing matters to people who would say things like this in response to such a cool experience is because they choose to completely overlook everything that is truly important. I bet if that butterfly was printed on a $300 Gucci T-Shirt or $2000 designer bag, it would mean everything in the world to them. Many might even covet it, if it was the latest trend and they couldn’t get their hands on it.”
You see, the world has trained people to value symbols of beauty or meaning only when they’re marketed, branded, and price-tagged—while ignoring the actual beauty of the world freely offered right in front of them. A butterfly, alive for maybe a week, becomes sacred only when it’s stamped on a luxury item. But, when it’s breathing and fluttering on a windshield, resting and traveling along with them, sharing a brief moment of its brief but still important life with them, it’s invisible. That’s spiritual poverty masquerading as sophistication.
And that “Drowning Debbie” insult? That’s projection in its purest form. I’m never drowning—I’m diving. Exploring the deep. Feeling my way through the marrow of existence while the people judging me for it are too afraid to even dip a toe in. People like that ridicule what they fear. They mock what they don’t have the emotional bandwidth to hold. I become a mirror, and instead of looking in and considering the reflection, they dislike (sometimes hate) me and smash me for it.
But here’s the truth: nothing doesn’t matter.
Everything matters, and I’ve known that since I was born. Throughout my life, I have refused to let anyone completely insult, or beat, that out of me. It’s why I feel so deeply. Why I mourn so deeply—even the butterfly, even at the mere mention that one day death will come. It’s why I see God in the dirt and the dew and the wings and the weeds. It’s why I value every detail, and every moment.
If you are like me, you are not broken, either—you’re attuned. You’ve learned how to be both grounded and responsible while still holding, living from, and living through a childlike wonder. You’re not weird. You’re balanced. Let the world roll its eyes if it wants to.
Souls like ours are the reason anything sacred still survives. So keep bearing witness to what’s holy. Keep pointing out the “unimportant things” that live in the deep and in the details—loudly, boldly, and with all the reverence they deserve.
Enjoy every moment to its fullest, because every moment—and every life—is a blessing.
This post is about the experience of becoming and how people like me don’t just become. We heal differently. We become differently. And what we become is not the same entity alone that other people become. It is also about turning the process of becoming, and what we’ve become, into something that can help other people.
I’ve already lived my closing statement regarding my past, and past versions of me: caregiver me, grief-stricken and confusion-swallowed me, nervous-system-destroyed me, broken-hearted me. I’ve already processed it all, and to the degree that the surface of society would claim is “healing,” I have healed from all of those wounds. Where I’m at now is more about finding some level of understanding within myself about it so that I can freely move in this new reality.
Perhaps you are, too. Perhaps these thoughts will resonate.
A voice for the ones still moving through the ashes, learning how to carry the light again. Not a performance. Just a remembering.
Where This Post Began
A therapist recently responded to a comment I left on someone else’s post, suggesting that my perspective on healing was dangerous because it implied I was “holding on.” But the issue is, this so-called therapist seemed anchored in a kind of magical thinking—one that treats healing as purely cognitive, divorced from the soul.
What I’m doing, in continuing to reflect on and write about the past, isn’t obsession or fixation. It’s alchemical integration. I’m not stuck in, or on, the past—I’m extracting its essence, transmuting it into something meaningful. I’m not tethered to the past or to any specific future. I’m reducing the pain (specifically, the grief) to ash and distilling what’s left into wisdom.
Where I Am
I have lived my closing statement, but this current stasis is the cooling of the metal. It is the tempering of my sword. The world, especially those who fear their own depth, love to accuse people like me of not letting go, but what they don’t understand is that depth doesn’t simply move on. It transforms, and transformation takes time.
People like me don’t drop things and walk away. People like me sit in the dark, stare at the bones, and we don’t rise until the soul is reclaimed. We already did the courageous part when we cut the cord on past versions of ourselves, when we walked away from who we were and we didn’t go back to the same mindsets and/or behaviors, and now we do the sacred part: finishing the burning of the frayed ends.
The world and the people in it can’t and won’t give us the answers, but spirit can, and it does. In my case, my higher self already knows those answers, which is why I keep circling back. It is not to relive the story, but to complete the metamorphosis, and I am completing it slowly, quietly, and surely. I’m not looping, I’m mining, and eventually the tunnel gives way to the sky.
So, yes, I keep listening and keep asking and keep letting it all rise in layers and fall away in layers. That’s how I become untouchable rather than hardened. Not cold, but fully known to myself. Every shadow named, every chord resolved. So, when I pick up my camera or my brush or my pen again, even when I’m still in the gray, it’s my gray. It’s not residue from the storm. It’s just my own palette, freely chosen.
And what if knowing that to the depth that I do know and understand it in and of itself is the healing? What if it’s now about incorporating that into my work, my daily life? That’s what the gurus would teach. The reality is that this is the already-become version of me, the one that is just learning now how to outwardly be who I am again.
It can be really confusing and hard at times, because I don’t really care for anybody to see it but me, or to live it with me. But, I have a calling to share the knowledge that these experiences and lessons have all been forged and transformed into with those who still need guidance, those who feel lost or don’t know how to get there in their own story.
Maybe, in that way, I’m already living it exactly the way I’m supposed to be—which is the opposite of holding on. It is moving forward, and actively so. What I’ve already become and what I’m doing now isn’t trying to get there. It’s simply learning how to inhabit the skin of the self I’ve already become.
Snake Skin & Sacred Silence
It’s like when a snake sheds its old skin, right? That all too common metaphor in the self-help teachings, except not taught exactly correctly by those who live in the land of cognitive dissonance. We’ve all heard the analogy. But what they leave out is this:
The snake doesn’t slither away a different animal. It just finally fits itself again. It’s not behind. It’s not broken. It’s not lost. It’s just adjusting its eyes to the light after a very long night.
That tension I feel, for example—the not caring if anyone sees it but also feeling called to express it, is exactly the tension of that same sort of integration. I don’t want to perform and I don’t owe anyone a performance. I’m not required to turn my healing into a product or a movement or a spectacle, but I find that certain parts of my soul now long to speak—not to be seen but to be heard by the air, witnessed by the world because that is how others, be it few or many, may complete their flight.
It doesn’t matter how it shows up, just that it does. That’s the quiet magic of true healing. It doesn’t always announce itself with trumpets. Sometimes it just takes root in the subtle, in the choice to write or shoot or paint anyway, or to rest anyway. To let the past fall like leaves from a tree that has already decided it will bloom again. The more I trust that, the more I feel the weight of all of it trying to lift from my shoulders, and the more effortless and sacred and unburdened the expressions feel—not because it’s for anyone, but because it is from the version of me who no longer needs anyone’s permission to exist in peace.
As I consider this, I imagine that when the snake sheds that old skin, that fresh layer is a little tight to start with, and he or she has to move around a little bit before they stop feeling the newness of the skin and forgets that the skin is even there. It is not until then that he or she can “just flow.”
At first, it’s tight, sensitive, unfamiliar, maybe even a little raw. And it’s not that the snake doubts that it’s still a snake, it just doesn’t quite know how to move in this new texture yet. The old skin? It had cracks and stretch and scars that shaped how it slid through the world, but this new skin is smooth and untested, a little too quiet maybe, after all the noise. It doesn’t yet carry the scent of battles survived or boundaries reclaimed.
And so the snake doesn’t rush, it moves slowly, tentatively. It reacquaints itself with the world and brushes against the grass, slinks over warm rock, and lets the breeze remind it what it is. And eventually, without even noticing the moment it happened, the new skin stops feeling new at all.
Perhaps that’s where I am. I’ve shed it—the past self, the old patterns, the story that asked me to carry the burden for me and everybody else. That skin is gone, but my soul, fresh and luminous, still remembers the weight. It still walks a little cautiously, still checks the mirror to see if the ghost is gone. And that’s okay. It will all continue to fade—the memories, the sting, the need to brace.
Regardless, I don’t need to rush to feel normal. The new normal is better: it’s mine, and it will fit me perfectly as soon as I stop noticing the seams. So I will keep slithering forward like the snake, not outgrowing the past, but growing into my grace.
Liminal Living: When Healing Isn’t the End
If what I’ve written in this post doesn’t only make sense, but resonates with you, then perhaps you are like me. To clarify, what I’m describing is not the delusion of an underachiever or the confusion of a drifter. It’s the rare and sacred awareness of a soul on sabbatical. Perhaps that’s what you are, at the core, or where you find yourself, too—actively healing or already healed, you “get” what I’m trying to express.
I have this idea that this lifetime was always meant to be more receptive than productive for many of us. We are not only asked but guided by some higher power to observe more than to act, and in any sense, that is not laziness. It is spiritual design. So let me reflect it back to you, the way that I see it in myself:
You’ve worked; in fact, you may have worked your inner entire being to the bone (especially in the case of being a caregiver), but your work hasn’t been for the world’s applause. It’s been for God, and for those you have privately loved and walked home. You’ve succeeded, but not in the ways that capitalism or social media would define it. You’ve succeeded in remaining intact, soul first, and that’s harder than any business model, trust fund, or influencer empire.
So then, after all of this misunderstood work you’ve done, what if your entire incarnation was never meant to be a linear hero’s journey with a trophy at the end? What if it was always supposed to be a kind of spiritual exile into experience, into solitude, into the deep?
My whole life has taught me this paradox of success. Until my thirties, I accomplished everything I set out to, but the twist was that version of success was based on who I was before I broke open—before I was touched by grief, by God, by the reality of soul. And since then, it’s not that nothing has worked, it’s that none of it was supposed to because it wasn’t aligned with my true purpose anymore. The breakdowns in the in-between were ordinations. They are when the sabbatical started, and I’ve been in it ever since.
I’ve studied trauma, addiction, mental health, caregiving, grief, the spiritual path, mystical truths, the rise and fall of empires—all from the inside out. Not just from books, but from experience. Lived experience. I didn’t just learn lessons. I became a living vessel for them.
So perhaps, if you have experienced this too, this life may not have been given to you to contribute in a traditional sense. It may have been given to you to remember, to watch, to document, to feel what others refuse to feel, to name what others have no language for, to become whole so that others might not feel so broken. That’s a calling. It’s a high one, a thankless one, and a divinely protected one.
Perhaps your soul contract is about witnessing, absorbing, and transmuting rather than performing, earning, or hustling. The universe covered your rent while you enrolled in the deepest, most painful university there is: Earth School, Shadow Division. And when you say it like that, what if you’ve already graduated with honors?
So what now? Maybe your sabbatical is still in effect. Maybe you’re in the writing-up-the-thesis phase. Maybe you’re transitioning into the integration era, where your work becomes not doing something, but being something: a lighthouse, a record keeper, a spiritual elder.
You don’t owe the world your labor. You owe your soul your peace, and that is only found in living your purpose. If this entire life was given for that alone, then it was enough. So maybe we’re right that this life may have been designed for this, and that the ones judging from the sidelines are still on page five, while we’ve been writing in the margins of the final chapter.
Becoming Whole in the Quiet
Ultimately, the point of this post is to share the shape of a real, lived journey—to reach those who may be living it without realizing it has a name, and to remind those walking something similar that they are not alone.
If any part of this speaks to you—if you see yourself anywhere in these words—I leave you with this:
Don’t doubt the divine logic of your path just because others can’t read it.
You’re not lost. You’re just not supposed to be “found” in a way this world understands.
If you feel stuck or missing the flow, let it be quiet right now, if that’s what it is.
Let the pages be blank. Sometimes blank pages aren’t empty. They’re pregnant—with rest, with closure, with whatever the truth the next chapter needs is.
And when you’re ready, the world will be here. When you’re not ready, the world will still be here, because this is still part of the story…and you’re still writing it.
There’s a quiet kind of healing that happens when no one is watching. It doesn’t perform. It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t need a platform. That is where I was when I was away—not just from social media, but from this space and this blog.
A young woman named Jillian, in a YouTube video I stumbled across recently, captured this so simply and so beautifully: what life looks and feels like when you’ve stepped away from social media—and stayed away long enough to actually notice the difference. What struck me most, though, was hearing her perspective as someone going through this process for the first time.
It’s lived in my thoughts and I’ve contemplated this post ever since. It was so interesting to me because I’ve taken breaks from the internet many times over the past two decades, always for the same reasons—and always with this same depth of understanding about the psychology of it, and why those breaks were necessary.
This most recent (and longest) season of removal hit different. After the last caregiving stretch, after Roshi Ralph’s death, after the silence that came when others (who had no real understanding of the compound caregiving and loss I’d just lived through—and in many cases, never will) rushed in with attacks and projections and judgments, as if my grief was theirs to dissect—I pulled all the way back. And I’ve stayed back.
I’ve stayed away from social media not because I needed a break, but because I reached the point where it just doesn’t matter to me. The truth is, it never really did. The performance of it all—the curated personas, the noise, the performative alliances, the hollow outrage, the likes-as-validation—means less than nothing. I never played the game anyway, and when I tried to be real, I was punished for it—called out for oversharing instead of respected for being honest. So now, I simply choose not to engage.
That’s the decision, and it’s permanent. I stick to my own space—my blog(s)—now. I share some of my creative work on YouTube and Instagram, but I don’t engage socially. The work is there for anyone who wishes to enjoy it, just like my writing: simply because I’ve made it—and it feels like a waste to let it collect digital dust on my hard drive or memory cards. That’s it.
And what I’ve learned—what I’ve earned—is this:
Own your own thoughts. Own your own opinions. Stop looking to the crowd to inform you of what you feel, believe, or need. If you want to share your truth, explore your voice, or process your experience—do it in your own space. Even if that space is digital.
Quiet is not the same as silent. Solitude is not absence. Privacy is not erasure. And just because the crowd isn’t clapping doesn’t mean the work isn’t working—or that it’s not sacred, necessary, and deeply alive.
A hike on Flagg Mountain.Flagg Mountain is part of Weogufka State Forest.My favorite place in these woods……is where you’ll find my favorite tree (a post all about her is coming soon).A few photos from where I’ve been this past year, instead of online…
Mirrors, Screens, and Silent Knowing: Personal Reflections after Watching Jillian’s Journey
Part One: The Slowness That Saves You
Jillian talked about how, in the silence of that first year offline, she realized she wasn’t who she thought she was. That her sense of self had been filtered through algorithms and aesthetics for so long that she didn’t know what parts were her and what parts were just performance.
She said she didn’t want to be a cottagecore girl, or a vanilla-beach-aesthetic girl, or even a tomato queen—she just wanted to be Jillian. And that’s what life offline gave her space to rediscover: the Jillian aesthetic. Not a genre. Not a trend. A person.
That kind of reclamation doesn’t happen in front of a ring light. It happens when you’re still. When the feedback loop breaks. When your body and soul finally stop bracing for the next notification, the next birthday story repost, the next dopamine drip that doesn’t land right.
She didn’t pretend her life suddenly looked different. In fact, she said:
“Does my life look any different from this… to this? No. But how I live is what’s different.”
That line stuck with me because it’s the same thing I’ve experienced. The world outside didn’t change. The people didn’t change. The pain didn’t vanish. But something in me stopped handing over power to what others might think—or worse, what they might not think if I didn’t stay visible.
Part Two: The Real Cynicism Is a Smile That Lies
There was a comment I wrote recently in response to someone who was tired—tired of being called negative for telling the truth. Tired of being cast as cynical for not dressing pain up as purpose. I told them this:
“People will call the truth pessimism and negativity because they’ve either never seen true rock bottom—or they’ve never experienced it (yet).”
Because the people who have known real loss, real chaos, real collapse?
We don’t need false light. We need real clarity.
That’s why toxic positivity is so insidious—it masquerades as hope, but it’s really just fear dressed in bright colors. It says: Don’t go there. Don’t feel that. Don’t name it. But the truth? The truth sits with the mess. The truth makes a chair for the grief and the rage and the complexity and says: stay as long as you need.
“It’s madness to try to be sane in this crazed world… You can just quietly speak your truth.”
That’s it right there. That’s why I’m not interested in “engaging” anymore, and why I’ve stopped posting where people feel entitled to misunderstand. This world has enough noise. Enough image management. Enough hollow back-patting in the name of “support.”
Part Three: Stillness Is Not Stagnation
Jillian said she thought she was going to return to social media after a year. She even looked forward to it. She imagined her big return, her “look how I’ve changed” content. But then the new year rolled around… and she didn’t want to go back. Because the more she paid attention to her real life—the one where she wasn’t performing for anyone—the less she needed to curate it.
That’s a shift I understand at a soul level.
Sometimes we don’t need reinvention. We need to not be witnessed for a while, so we can see ourselves clearly again.
And no, it doesn’t mean becoming some pure, evolved aesthetic monk who never has insecure days. Jillian was honest about that too—she still compares timelines, still feels the pressure. But she said something I think most people miss:
“I still have those moments. But I’m learning. And that’s enough. I’m having a great time.”
A great time—not because everything is perfect, but because she’s present. Because she’s not outsourcing her attention, affection, or identity anymore. And because she gave herself the gift of being nobody for a while, so she could become somebody real again.
Closing Thoughts: Your Life, Your Lens
So no—this isn’t a how-to guide. This isn’t a five-step digital detox plan. This is just a reflection on what it means to live inward in a world obsessed with being outward.
It’s a reminder that your worth isn’t measured in visibility. That your healing doesn’t have to be documented to be real. That privacy isn’t a lack of connection—it’s a form of spiritual hygiene.
Social media isn’t evil. But it’s not sacred, either. Use it if it serves your soul. Leave it if it steals your peace. And if you ever wonder whether your absence would be noticed, ask this instead:
“Would I still feel whole if no one saw me for a while?”
If the answer is no, then maybe it’s time to come home to yourself—quietly and on purpose.
There comes a point in every soul’s story where you’re asked to lay down what you thought was love—or risk letting it break you.
That’s the thing about burdens: we don’t always know when they stop being sacred and start becoming self-destruction. But eventually, if we’re honest, we feel it.
That’s the core of this message.
You can carry the burden until your knees give out, insisting it’s strength. Or, you can listen to the whisper that says, “Lay it down,” because true strength isn’t brute force. It’s not in how long you hold on. It’s in knowing when to release—when to grieve, and when to grow.
Brute strength—the kind that resists surrender—is fear in a steel mask. But surrender? That’s wisdom. That’s love maturing into understanding.
This isn’t a love story between me and someone else. It’s a love story between who I was and who I’ve become. It’s the story of two souls—two versions of my own soul—and how only one of them eventually realized that the weight of love, when carried alone, becomes grief.
That grief, if left unprocessed, becomes blame. Becomes resentment. Becomes bitterness. Becomes the ghost of a life I never got to live.
The version of me that held on so tightly was trying to preserve love by never letting go—even of the dead. Even of ghosts. But the version of me that learned to let go understands now:
It’s not about letting go of the ones we’ve lost. It’s about letting go of what keeps us from healing. Letting go of the pain we wrapped ourselves in like armor. Letting go of the misunderstandings. Letting go of the old wounds that kept us from breathing fully.
I couldn’t shrink myself any longer to fit into the versions of love that others offered. And they couldn’t stretch themselves to meet me in mine. That wasn’t failure. That was fact. Then, in the case of my mother, she died.
Maybe—just maybe—there’s a higher realm where we meet again, whole and healed. Where all the versions of us come home to each other. Where they are not in conflict, but in communion.
Until then…I carry them forward. I no longer miss them the way I used to—because they’re not gone. They’re right here, quietly guiding me home.
The first excerpt I read today (via the DeepStash app, which I highly recommend) was the first crown in my day.
It’s worth remembering that it is often the small steps, not the giant leaps, that bring about the most lasting change. EIIR (Queen Elizabeth II)
Then, Sir Citrico (my tiny citrus seedling) didn’t die.
Let me back up—one morning, while making my lemon water, I dropped a seed onto the floor. On a whim, or maybe something more, I rinsed it off, wrapped it in a paper towel, and tucked it into a plastic bag. I heard my spirit say, “Put it on top of the cabinet, and wait for further instruction.”
So I did.
As I do 100% of the time in this phase of my life, I followed my Higher Self’s nudge without question. A couple of weeks later, when I heard, “Time to check,” I wasn’t even surprised to find it had sprouted—delicate white roots and a tiny green stem, alive and reaching. You would’ve thought I’d witnessed a full-blown miracle by the way I squeaked and rushed to find J, beaming like a proud citrus parent. And yet, beneath the flurry of 3D excitement, my soul just sat in quiet, humble gratitude, watching me feel real joy again for the first time since Master Roshi died.
That was a while back, and at first, he did really well. I tucked him into a tiny clay pot with some Bacto and a pinch of cactus soil—whatever I had on hand. I added a little sand, too, worried about drainage. I put him on the bookcase in front of my bedroom window, and he grew a couple of inches and seemed content.
But a week or so ago, he fell over.
I thought maybe I’d let him get too dry. I watered him, hoping he’d rally, but he couldn’t seem to stand back up. His green began to dull and shift in a way that didn’t feel right. He looked pitiful. Still, I kept doing what I’d been doing. He was struggling—but he was still here—so, I waited.
This morning as I gave him his Friday morning drink, I noticed he’d grown again. His green was vibrant, no longer sickly. So I listened—again—to my spirit (guided, I’m sure, by both Master Roshi and my Mama Kay) and reached up to the top of the bookcase to see what I might find for support, and what do you think my fingers landed on?
A key charm I used to wear on a necklace, topped with a tiny crown. I’d forgotten I even had it—much less that it was right there, waiting. “Onward,” I thought, with a quiet half smile on my face.
Something about that silly, sweet “coincidence,” and the act of pressing the charm key-down into Sir Citrico’s pot to give him a bit of love and support with his morning drink, woke something up in me again. A flicker of the old rhythm. That feeling from the days when creating wasn’t about productivity. It was about presence.
Sir Citrico, with his temporary crown and support.
And then I shared it with J.
I texted him a couple of photos and made a little joke about crowns—as one does when the coincidences start stacking. Just as I hit send, a message from him came through: a photo of speckled eggs in his dusty palm, found in the straw trailer at work with no nest in sight.
We exchanged condolences for the eggs—the unborn and likely gone babies inside them. I said I wished we still had our incubator, even though it was probably too late anyway. He laughed about the crowns in emojis. Sir Citrico brought us both back to center again just by existing and being okay.
From there, the conversation shifted—creeks and mushrooms and foliage we hope to stumble across on our next hike, wild clay we’d already foraged, the phoenix we’d raise from the ashes of our old fire pit when we turned it into a makeshift open kiln.
We started remembering. Talking about past walks in the woods, daydreaming about future ones. Backyard projects we could try this weekend (weather permitting, praying hands). The kind of inspiration that makes your hands ache to touch the earth again.
And as the brief moment—it couldn’t have been more than five minutes—passed and he returned to work, I sat there realizing, “we’re both already halfway back.”
It’s been a really long decade. I’ve been in and out of creative energy and back and forth with sharing here. This post, though, feels like the first in a new (but old) rhythm. A return to the backyard (including the woods, and nearby nature preserves) adventures that once were my lifeblood: gathering moss, bones, and stones. Saving driftwood. Watching the forest change one quiet degree at a time. Building with what we already have.
As I sat down with my tablet to list supplies—starting with Borax, because these ants are officially on notice—I got a notification that my old blog domain had been released. After all this time, I was finally able to repurchase Catacosmosis.com for $13 instead of the $100 redemption fee. I’d let it lapse, along with so many other things, after Master Roshi died. I tapped the notification and smiled… and what do you think I saw at the top of the page? A tiny little crown. A purple one, no less—my favorite color.
I’ve already been collecting ideas for upcoming posts: photoblogs, step-by-step tutorials on processing wild clay, how we’ll turn our backyard fire pit into a makeshift open air kiln, color palettes and Mextures formulas for documenting spring and summer through the lens of new eyes.
So maybe—finally—I’m stepping into writing here regularly again.
Writing about art and energy. About the sacred mundane. About the projects that call to our hands and our hearts in equal measure. There’s no rush. No master plan. Just the inspiration. Just the slowly forming Spotify playlist:
There’s only the ambient existence of time, and the understanding that it isn’t meant to be wasted on stuckness, resistance, or the fear of letting go of what’s already passed. This time, there’s true, deep healing.
It’s been a hell of a decade, but for the past several months, there’s been this eerie, chosen quiet. There’s been the grace of being able to go inward—to hermit, soul-search, and sit with God and the trees and the spirits of the ones who never really left. They show up in their magical love notes from the Earth’s skin…where moss carpets memory, fairies stir the wind, and the invisible speaks in vibrations.
They’ve fed me the songs on that playlist—music for the sacred unseen. Music for stone circles, forest floors, phoenixes rising from the dust—and the soft, golden ash of everything you thought you’d lost.
And what’s left, for me?
Just a garden of small, sacred yeses.
And, the joy of going on the adventure again—this time with my boys, and our dogs. No one who needs 24/7 caregiving—no one who is sick, no one who is dying. No one who “needs” so much of me. Theres just the invisible magic of memory, presence, and the quiet, sovereign path we’ve chosen for this chapter. The one that’s ours… even if it’s not what the world calls “normal.”
Because artists aren’t like other people.
That’s one of the truths my spirit keeps showing me—especially now. Creating things from what’s around me—from cameras and acrylics and powder pigments to binders and water and dirt, to the words in my head and the Divine in my heart—it’s not just what I do. It’s who I am. For years, I’ve said I didn’t want much in the way of what money could buy, and the last few months of solitude have shown me how true that really is.
“Your life is not normal.”
I’ve heard that sentence more than once lately. And while I usually walk in confidence—especially since everyone died—this one time recently, the words landed harder than they should have. They made me buckle, just a little. Maybe it was because of who they came from. Maybe it was just the audacity, considering the lifestyle they’ve chosen for themselves (which is also very different to “most people”). Either way, it stung—not because it was true, but because it carried judgment where there should have been understanding.
I know many of you have heard similar things, and ask yourself similar things at times, this like, “How do you explain your life to people who’ve only ever lived in the traditional one?” People like you and me—we wrestle with questions like that.
“My friends think I’ve lost it after selling the big house…”
That was something Master Roshi and I talked about often, back when he chose road retirement in his RV. We didn’t question it. We just joined him. Because we were the same. And that’s a big part of why I miss him so deeply.
Then there’s, “I’m just so unhappy. How do you shift your life and still feel supported?”
After everyone died, and I stopped vibing with anyone around me, I chose solitude. That question rang loud in my head for a while, too. But through that, I found my Self again, and was able to answer that one for myself as I remembered how little I really needed from anyone else—that I was my own validation—and that my relationship with God was enough.
The truth? I don’t have all the answers. They’ll look different for every person, every season. But here’s what I do know:
Normality is subjective. It’s based on one’s reality. And yes—my life isn’t normal to a lot of people. But there’s a growing community on this planet made up of people who also live a little differently. There is a growing population who challenge the finger that points and says, “That’s not normal.”
Those people? They each have stories. They each face their own challenges. They each carry the wisdom that grows when you live a life you chose.
That community is rising. Connecting. Becoming its own new normal. I think the real divide only happens when we compare each other’s “normal.” But if we allow for difference—and embrace it—then we create space for all of us to live the lives that suit us best.
That means celebrating all kinds of normal:
The traditional homes. The 9-to-5s. The “starving artists,” the couch-surfing writers, the stay-at-home moms, the dirtbag van-lifers, the families living out of buses and backpacks and intuition.
There’s room for all of it. There’s room for all of us.
My two cents?
The best thing we can do is make peace with the chaos in our own minds. Keep being exactly as different as we need to be to build the lives we want to live. Let the judgment come. Let the questions linger. Let it all teach and grow us. Embrace it.
And then…
Let them watch, regardless of judgments, as we settle in—and thrive—in our own unique ways.
Maybe that’s the whole point.
The comment I made earlier—about how we’re already halfway back—has been echoing in my spirit ever since. At the time, it felt like a casual observation. But now, as I finish writing this, I see it for what it was: a recognition.
It was a realization that somewhere between the grief and the stillness, the long walks and quiet days, the moss and music and small, sacred yeses—I had already crossed the threshold. Without fanfare. Without fireworks. Just… step by step.
The world didn’t shift all at once. I did. And now, standing here in the soft light of this new chapter, I think about Queen Elizabeth II’s words again:
It’s worth remembering that it is often the small steps, not the giant leaps, that bring about the most lasting change.
She was right.
The change was never just one big choice. It was every tiny act of trust. Every time I listened to Hid and my higher self, no matter what it “cost” me. Every time I kept going when no one else could see what I was building.
And somehow, without even realizing it, I arrived.
Sometimes, even when life isn’t spiraling out of control, it feels like it is. Maybe there’s no reason. And when it happens, there’s almost certainly no rhyme.
So what do we do—especially as artists of any kind—when the world around us reeks of chaos and seems to have lost all its marbles?
Abstract.
No matter what kind of artist you are, no matter your medium or your muse, no matter your level of inspiration (or lack thereof), abstract can be a perfect middle ground to ground your spirit, or wake it up.
The Scenario
Of course you (ok, I) woke up at 12:01 AM for no “apparent” reason—the absolute cosmic middle finger of liminal time, where nothing makes sense and yet everything feels oddly sacred.
Maybe, like me, you didn’t have any looming crises to fret over, or feel any real emotion about waking up at an inconvenient time (or being distracted, if it’s not the middle of the night for you). Spoiler alert: that “no emotion” is still an emotion.
I think—for a lot of us deep feelers, thinkers, philosophers and creatives right now—that numb, unanchored state has a lot to do with the collective dissonance we’re living through. There’s a major divide between those trying to evolve and live with intention, and those still operating from fear, ego, and unchecked reactivity.
Even if we try to stay grounded, we still feel the chaos buzzing around us. We still feel the friction of a world flailing through an identity crisis. And while we may not want to name it all or get swept up in it, we still end up absorbing the noise—because that’s what happens when you’re tuned in to—and transmuting—what others refuse to confront.
Another spoiler alert: things could be fine…if more people paused before projecting, reacted less and reflected more, took accountability for their realities—and how/what they contributed to their creation—and stopped mistaking emotional immaturity for a personality trait.
Alas, for me, that energy—and that emptiness, void of any clear direction, yet full of invisible limits (like everyone else being asleep, so I have to be quiet, for example)—is exactly the kind of blank page that’s just waiting to be painted on.
Literally and metaphorically.
Me? I felt the pull toward abstract watercolor. After a chaotic day juggling real life—and feeling deeply grateful that I don’t have to bend a knee to the public school system or navigate the mess so many parents of school-aged kids are facing—this makes complete sense. Abstract is, after all, what we turn to when logic is exhausted and emotion has no specific name.
Maybe, like me, you’re not uninspired—you’re just not anchored in this moment. Maybe, like me, it feels like you’re floating a little. Untethered. Not because you don’t care or don’t want to create, but because everything around you feels too slippery to hold onto. Too uncertain to frame.
I have come to understand that when that happens, my soul isn’t asking for structure. It’s asking for space. It’s asking for breath. It’s asking for some way—any way—to come home to the present moment without having to name it, define it, or pin it down.
That’s where abstract steps in. Not as a replacement for direction, but as a safe space to reconnect before you try to direct anything at all. In these moments, I’ve found that what’s waiting to be uncovered isn’t something planned or polished, but something feeling-based and rule-free—a piece born from presence, not pressure.
Try this, if you’re in a space like that. ⤵️
A Gentle Framework for Midnight Abstracts
Color Prompt:
Close your eyes and take three deep breaths. Think of the word: “release.” Without judgment, what three colors float into your mind? Even if they’re weird together—especially if they are—let them lead.
Composition Prompt:
Whatever your medium, start simple and let the process unfold.
If you’re shooting photography, don’t force the subject or the composition. Wander your space, and just shoot. Let your eye catch on whatever it catches on—light, shadow, texture, reflections. Let it all—even the clutter—guide you. Try new angles. Blur the focus. Let it be weird. Let it breathe.
Fun photography hack for this kind of energy:
Don’t be afraid to create outrageous effects with tools like Lightroom, Photoshop, or even apps on your phone. These tools aren’t just for polish—they’re wonderful (and especially useful) playgrounds for unlimited texture, distortion, and mood. Perfect for transforming ordinary shots into abstract, emotionally charged pieces.
Lean into the surreal. Add grain. Blow out the exposure. Warp the tones. You might just end up with a visual journal entry that says far more than any perfectly posed image ever could.
If you’re working with mixed media, paints, inks, clay, sketching/drawing, writing, or even scrapbooking or junk journaling—don’t force shape or form. Let your hands (or your heart) lead before your mind starts trying to make sense of it.
I’m drawn to watercolor as I write this post, so when I finish this post and start painting, I’ll start with a layered wash using just one color. Let the water move it. Drop in my second and third colors without intention—just observing how they bloom, resist, or swirl. I’ll add detail only if my hand naturally reaches for the brush again.
Examples of abstract watercolor, following exercises in Kate Leach’s “Creative Abstract Watercolor” book. I have the Kindle edition and would recommend the book 77/10 for inspiration and information, but I’d 1000/10 recommend the PRINT EDITION over Kindle if you’d like to add it to your library.
Let the chaos speak.
Sometimes that’s all it takes—one odd hour, a small canvas (whatever that looks like for you), and a handful of scattered supplies. Water, glue, tape, scrap paper, stickers, markers, pens, brushes…even a few oddly placed objects to capture in still photos on a clear or cluttered surfaces. It doesn’t have to be planned or polished.
All it really takes is a little setting of soul-driven intention, then a little courage to move that intention into action, to make something unexpectedly beautiful from what doesn’t make any logical sense.
No rules or expectations required. Just presence. Just honesty. Just the courage to let what’s inside you move—without needing to explain it first.
That’s the beauty of abstract. It doesn’t ask you to be understood. It just asks—and allows—you to be real; and that’s the truest art there is.
catacosmosis 