entry nineteen — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
Lumix GX7 + DistressedFX + Mextures
I’ve been thinking about how easily we overlook what does not bloom on command. How quickly we decide something is less valuable when its rhythms are quiet or unusual or slow to reveal themselves. How we are conditioned by convenience to turn away from what requires a different or more tender kind of attention, unless we are its mother.
As mothers, the expectations begin to pile up, even as the help quietly disappears… if it ever shows up to begin with. It showed up for me recently, with my son’s diagnosis of autism, and then the weight shifted again. The label alone added a layer of juggling and balancing that feels impossible, even in ways that his father may never fully know…
…but these small remnants of #lovelydeadcrap in my backyard have been teaching me how to package it all and express what’s inside.
Lumix GX7 + DistressedFX + Mextures
In their faded textures and fragile lines, I find a gentler truth. Beauty is not always loud, nor peace immediate. Sometimes neither are easily interpreted. Sometimes they appear in the very things the world has already dismissed as unremarkable because they do not fit the desire or expectation.
When my son was diagnosed with moderate to severe autism, the world tried to hand me a script of loss and limitation. But the more I sit with the reality of who he is and what I know he has experienced in his life, the more I understand that nothing essential has been diminished.
Lumix GX7 + DistressedFX + Mextures
Not unlike #lovelydeadcrap, the reality of his story simply asks to be read with a different kind of seeing. The light lands from another direction. The beauty moves at its own pace. That is what this winter season is teaching me:
To honor what does not conform. To stay open to the quiet forms of life and value that do not perform for anyone’s comfort. To recognize that some truths require presence rather than projection.
Lumix GX7 + DistressedFX + Mextures
My son is not less. He is not broken. He is not something to mourn. He is fully himself, unfiltered and unhidden, and there is a sacred beauty in that.
May we all learn to truly see what stands before us, not merely what we were taught to expect.
Yesterday on my hike, I paused for a long while. I gave nearly an hour of stillness and reverence to the nature around me, watching as butterflies moved over water and earth, dancing with the light in a way that spoke of freedom and trust. I sat with it — what felt like hours, though really only about thirty minutes — before stepping back onto the trail, camera in hand. As I rose from the creek to walk on, almost by instinct — more a photographer’s habit than intent — I pressed record.
Later, on the drive home, I found myself reflecting on that time as I listened to one of my favorite songs — one I’ve leaned on heavily in recent years, especially since the decline and death of the last of my human teachers and spiritual guides: “Oceans (Where Feet May Fail).” The two moments merged together in my heart.
After Ralph’s death, I finally understood where I should have been leaning all along. He — and my dad — had both tried to guide me toward this truth while alive in human form, but I depended too heavily on them. And if not on my mother in person, then on her prayers. It wasn’t until they were all gone, when I no longer had any “training wheels” to lean on, that it fully clicked at a conscious level:
I had been depending on God all along, hearing Him, even resisting His direct guidance. I just hadn’t been consciously aware of it. That’s when I realized my faith had never left me — it had only been muted, even scapegoated, by my dependence on the faith others carried.
It was only when I allowed this song to become a foundational prayer of my heart that His presence became tangible in a way I could no longer deny. The veil fell from my heart and my eyes, and through His grace I saw with a clarity I had once resisted — the kind of knowing that hurts, yet somehow makes the truth easier to embrace.
The lyrics of this song speak of stepping out into places where our own strength isn’t enough, and trusting God to steady us anyway. That truth became real to me after Ralph died — especially about a year later, when I found myself in a moment of decision: to choose what I merely wanted to believe, or to stand in what I knew was real.
I understood the magnitude of that choice. I knew it would break my human heart, and I knew it might stir misunderstanding, anger, and hurt in those around me. It was the hardest place I had ever stood. But I also knew it was time. Time to trust Him not only with my conscious mind, but with my open soul — my entire being. Time to leap.
So I did. I quietly — nay, silently — forgave all that needed forgiveness, and I let go of everything: past, present, and future… even the things I still and always will love, but that I knew could never take root in this life. For just over a year, all that mattered outside of physical survival — food, shelter — and caring for my son was solitude in His presence.
I chose God. I surrendered everything. And in that surrender, I rebuilt and reinforced boundaries — not only to protect what was holy from the evils that I knew would seek destroy it, but also to shield those who weren’t ready to walk the path of full and true surrender from the consequences of my choice to do so.
Almost immediately, things began to unfold around me — things I had long since lost hope for, or had no idea how to overcome or achieve, in my life. None of it happened exactly as I would have liked, nor in the timing I would have chosen, and almost nothing came about in the way I would have planned or orchestrated it. But that was the entire point of surrender.
And in that realization, I understood something deeper: I had spent years trying to explain surrender to others with words, but the example — living it out, letting God’s hand write the story — was far more important, and a far more powerful testimony for Him.
Butterflies have always been a reminder to me of my grandmother, and of the simplest analogies of metamorphosis and transformation. But now? What I see most prominently in their flight is this — so fragile, yet so fearless in the air:
They carry the story of loss and love, of veils lifted and prayers surrendered — of a journey where survival gives way to presence, and presence gives way to peace. And for all of us, just like these butterflies, it is only through full surrender to the grace and truth of something higher than ourselves that we can be — and will be — fully loved, fully supported, and able to flourish.
Here, I’ve paired them with the piano playing of the song and these reflections as a reminder to myself, and to anyone who reads this, that even when we feel small, it is faith that keeps us aloft. I share this in hope that it might offer whoever sees it a nudge of encouragement as we continue the journey God has given us — the one He has called us to submit to and surrender.
After decades of seeking, struggling, and trying to show and teach others (while really teaching myself), here’s what I know:
If we ever want to find purposeful growth or true peace, we must fully surrender to the creator and orchestrator of it all — to His will, not our own.
xo,
c.
🦋💜🕊️
You call me out upon the waters… The great unknown, where feet may fail. And there I find You in the mystery. in oceans deep my faith will stand.
And I will call upon Your Name, and keep my eyes above the waves. When oceans rise, my soul will rest in Your embrace… for I am Yours, and You are mine.
Your grace abounds in deepest waters. Your sovereign hand will be my guide. Where feet may fail and fear surrounds me, you’ve never failed, and You won’t start now.
So I will call upon Your Name, and keep my eyes above the waves. When oceans rise, my soul will rest in Your embrace. For I am Yours, and You are mine…
Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders. Let me walk upon the waters, wherever You would call me. Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander, and my faith will be made stronger in the presence of my Savior.
Oceans (Where Feet May Fail), written by Joel Houston / Matt Crocker / Salomon Lighthelm.
But what we often mistake for freedom is only substitution. We trade one mask for another, one prison for another, one dream for another.
Replacing one illusion with another does not set us free. It does not bring liberation. It simply shifts us deeper into what I sometimes call non-happening happening — the endless cycle of movement that looks like change but never truly is.
So where, then, is freedom?
Maybe it’s in understanding that simple truth.
Maybe it’s in seeing clearly that nothing we have called “freedom” has ever been real freedom at all.
Maybe that was the point, all along.
Is that awakening?
Awakening as Death
Awakening is the death of the familiar.
Because what is “familiar” to us — what we call “our life,” “our personality,” “our world” — is illusion.
Nothing we are familiar with is actually real. None of it is actually us.
We are not real. We are not what we think — what we are told — we are. And yet, here we are.
So when awakening comes, it feels like death. Because it is death — the falling away of everything we thought was “me.”
And without that death, there is no birth of what was real all along.
Meaning Before and After
Before awakening, there is no meaning of our own.
The only meaning available to us is what others have told us is meaningful. Parents, teachers, religions, governments, lovers, friends, enemies, cultures, systems — all of them have fed us their meanings.
And we absorbed them as if they were truth.
We were conditioned to believe meaning is handed down, not discovered.
We were punished for expressing anything antithetical.
Yes, that is a word. I did not make it up. I checked, as always, when I returned from the other side.
I digress.
Even when we think we are thinking for ourselves — are we? Have we ever? Do we even know how?
This is the prison of the familiar.
But those of us who have never been able to simply swallow it — those of us who have spent our lives being told we are crazy, too deep, over-analytical, antithetical — maybe we’ve always been a little closer to freedom.
Because we have always been with ourselves. We have always lived in the company of our own questioning. Our own introspection.
And that has saved us.
Moving Through Darkness into Light
My entire life has been this movement — through darkness into light.
And then again. And again.
I never stayed still in a 3D thought long enough to let ideology calcify around me. Never settled enough into the world’s definitions of reality to say: “Yes, this is it. This is reality. This is me. This is final.”
No.
I couldn’t.
Always, incessantly, I questioned. I sought. I chased myself. I chased I am.
Because each time I reached for that exactness, that rigidity, something in me would die. And something deeper would awaken.
So instead, I’ve kept moving. Through darkness, into light.
Through lies, into truth.
Through death, into life.
Over and over again.
And each time, what I found was not more of “me,” but less.
Until I began to understand that the “me” I thought was the center of the story was never the point at all.
And then, I actually… died.
And then, I came back!
What?
I know. That’s what I said, too.
And that is when the fullness of both illusion and irrelevance were clear to me, and the illusion and irrelevance… both shattered.
Freedom.
The Irrelevance of “Me”
“Me” is irrelevant.
Yet somehow, everything has always been about me.
That’s the paradox.
The small “me” — the conditioned self, the mask, the name, the history — means nothing. It is dust. Illusion. A temporary construction.
But the deeper “I” — the one who moves through the dying and the awakening, the one who is aware of even that dust falling away — that “I” has always been the ground of everything.
So in a sense, “me” does not exist.
And in another sense, “me” is all that has ever existed.
It was always… the I Am.
The Misunderstanding
This will be misunderstood.
Mostly by anyone and everyone who reads it.
If they even make it past the first few lines.
Because illusion defends itself. It doesn’t like being called what it is.
But misunderstanding doesn’t matter.
Life takes care of itself.
Life Happens
Even when you are not there to see it, life still happens.
Everything still unfolds — rivers flow, winds move, earth shifts.
Even if you choose inaction — even if you refuse to eat, drink, or sleep — things still happen. The body dies, yes, but death itself is a happening.
Because everything is always happening. Always in motion.
Even in stillness, there is happening.
And everything that happens has a result. Even nothingness produces consequence.
Life is self-correcting. Even ungrounded, it finds its own balance.
Sometimes that balance looks toxic. Sometimes it looks destructive. But it is always balance. Always motion. Always happening.
Death Must Occur
Death, then, is necessary.
Not the physical death we fear — not suicide, not the cutting short of the body’s days.
Though that death is really not all that bad, in my experience.
The dying part itself is no fun.
The death?
Too many words — words are funny for this one; there is not a word, other than death.
It is nothing, and everything.
Alpha, omega.
I am.
Here? What must die is the illusory self.
The self we defend, cling to, and worship without even knowing it. The self we call “me.”
That death is the doorway.
The Last Illusion
And yet, even here, there is a final paradox:
If the self is illusion, then death is illusion too.
Which means — death cannot free us either.
Because an illusion cannot free an illusion.
I do not fear.
Why is none of this terrifying to me?
Maybe because fear only exists where there is something to lose. And what I am losing was never real in the first place.
Maybe because I have already died a thousand small deaths, the fear has already been burnt out of me.
Maybe because I saw it:
That what I am cannot die.
And maybe that — quiet, simple, unshaken — is what freedom has always been.
Saw an intriguing article about Waffle House this morning.
I never frequented Waffle House. Not many people around here did, apparently—ours closed a while back. The building was recently torn down, the lot cleared to make room for yet another gas station…or maybe another drive thru ATM. I’m not sure.
I ate there a handful of times over there, never much caring or giving it a thought. But now, strangely, I miss it. I find myself wishing I had the chance.
It’s become a metaphor for a lesson life keeps offering, and most people keep ignoring: You’ll miss it when it’s gone.
It’s true. You’ll miss a lot of things you once took for granted. I certainly do.
Waffle House isn’t a major one—but it is a reminder.
I miss my parents.
I miss my best friend.
I miss my spiritual teacher, and the person who gave me Alan Watts’ The Book for Christmas two decades ago—the gift that changed the course of my inner life.
They’re all dead. Dementia and Cancer.
I miss the dogs I’ve loved across decades, the ones who were more than pets—they were companions with souls.
I miss the version of myself before my hysterectomy and menopause—before synthetic HRT dulled the edge of my vitality. I wish I had chosen a more natural route, even if it had been less convenient.
I miss my child being a child.
I miss the eras of my life that were stunning in their beauty, even though I didn’t see it at the time—too blinded by hardship to notice the glory braided into the struggle.
I miss my opportunities—ones I didn’t recognize until they’d passed.
I miss what it meant to be a woman before the world started reducing us to caricatures. Despite all the so-called “feminism” and “women’s rights,” it feels like women are more undervalued than ever.
I miss being able to raise chickens and grow food without running into city ordinances telling me what I can and can’t do with my own land.
I miss the forests and wild places I used to roam freely—now gated off for hunting clubs or planned graphite mines, despite the fact that nobody seems to be doing much hunting or mining.
I miss when the weather was more stable, more alive.
I miss a society that at least pretended to aim for peace.
I miss healthy masculinity—not the social performance of “manhood,” but the actual divine masculine: rooted, mature, strong in spirit. The kind of strength both men and women are capable of carrying, choosing, embodying.
I miss the wildlife. The abundance. The bees, the butterflies, the owls, the foxes, the birds, the bats. I don’t miss the mosquitoes, but I miss the balance they were once part of.
When I look back over my life, I hear the same message whispered in memory, echoing through every loss:
You’re going to miss it when it’s gone.
I didn’t mean to miss it. I didn’t know I was actively, very literally missing it. But I did.
My body. My femininity. My strength. My time. My freedom. Those are the things I miss the most where I am now.
Don’t be like me.
Do better.
Let something as simple—even silly—as Waffle House become a gateway. A reminder. An invitation to gratitude.
Live with more presence. Choose more wisely. Love more deeply.
Speak more freely—not with opinion masquerading as truth, but with emotional intelligence rooted in what truly matters. Not just to be heard—but to be known. Let your words carry truth, not ego. Let them build bridges, not burn them.
When you’re connected, you pause. You listen, and ask better questions. You observe your own patterns, and stop attacking or blaming others for theirs.
When you’re connected, you become a space of calm in a world of storms rather than another disruptive, destructive wave in a sea of chaos.
When you forget how to listen inward, when you stop grounding in self-awareness, you lose your anchor.
Check yourself before you wreck yourself. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about being aware.
Pause, and come back to yourself.
Reconnect, and become the clarity you’ve been searching for.
Remain connected, and become the clarity that helps to guide others home.
It’s the end of the world as we know it…and I do not, in fact, feel fine.
I just heard that song on the radio. It inspired introspection, which is more than I can say for most current popular radio. Bill, Peter, Michael and Mike may have felt fine when the world ended in 1987—but 2025’s version? It’s a different beast entirely.
I’m not disassociating to the beat of their catchy chorus. No chorus, really…
No matter what music I play, what books I lose myself in, or how many hours I spend painting, collaging, shooting and processing images, praying, meditating, or absorbing art—I can’t not pay attention.
It’s like God has made it impossible for me to look away.
No matter how many creative rabbit holes I disappear into, my soul keeps returning to the same painful truth: I still see the world clearly. And I still care.
I’ve already finished 31 books this year. Some I began a year ago and it’s taken that long to finish them, but still. I’ve read a lot this year (speaking of which, what are you reading? Here’s my list, if you’d like some suggestions…).
I’ve listen to over 200 albums, all told (2.717 tracks, according to LastFM).
Watched 50+ documentaries—science, history, mythology, medicine, art, folklore, theology, religion, all sorts (according to my watch history on Amazon and YouTube).
But no matter what I consume or create throughout these days and nights spent in the studio or my own den or bedroom, my heart always circles back to the chaos we’re living in.
The blame shifting. The addiction and obsession and lack of self-control. The emotional manipulation—by the media, by governments, by people you thought you could trust.
The hatred. The division. The apathy.
Even the weather feels weaponized now—whether by nature or man, we may never know. And most days? It feels like we’re collapsing. Not just politically or economically—but spiritually.
When children’s deaths are celebrated, when cruelty trends, when people are told, “it’s OK to mask your real pain by pretending to be someone you’re really not,” and/or real pain is ignored in favor of performance and profit…how do you call that anything but collapse?
And still…I feel their pain, too.
The ones lashing out. The ones clinging to false power. Even the ones I disagree with or who’ve attacked me—and the ones in real life who wish I would “just die”—I can feel the torment beneath their rage. Because it takes serious misdirected conditioning and trauma to become someone who cheers for suffering.
I know what it is. I know myself and so many others have been purposely called to employ it. “Charged” with it, if you will. But I also understand now that that number is mighty small.
It’s empathy.
It’s spiritual discernment.
It’s energy.
And it’s real. That’s the loudest truth in me. I preach it, in comments and voiceovers and prose, and I practice it through my actions. I continue to do this, even if it makes me seem “crazy” to a world that calls numbness normal (and to some, that makes me a “glutton for punishment”).
I cry with strangers on the internet more than I ever admit. Sometimes when I log on just to post art or check an email, I’m immediately met with headlines about another shooting, another suicide, another senseless death. And still, I pray. Because Spirit won’t let me stop seeing—and won’t let me stop loving, either.
Prayer isn’t useless. Many feel that it is, and I understand why. But they’re wrong. Prayer isn’t useless—especially not when more than one person is praying.
It creates ripples. It fuels the art, the writing, the stillness, the hope. It’s a frequency of resistance that can’t be monetized or hijacked.
And maybe, as the world is in an overwhelming energy of doubt, fear, and anger, that’s the most powerful rebellion of all right now: to stay in the vibration of love, even when everything begs you to sink into rage or despair.
So if you’re not feeling fine either—but you’re still holding on to your humanity, still radiating clarity, still praying or creating or showing up gently?
You’re not alone.
There’s sacred clarity in this discomfort. Keep not-feeling-fine. It means you’re still awake. And just in case nobody’s said it today:
I love you. I’d like to bring goodness into your world. I’m sending it out to you whether you like it, or me, or not. I hope you’ll receive it.
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 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.
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