Tag: life lessons

  • For all the deep ones…

    For all the deep ones…

    …because I know there are deep ones feeling it.

    Some days feel like breaking points. They come around randomly, and lately it seems like I see posts about them more frequently. They come out of nowhere, and lately the signs of them seem louder, more open, less afraid, more honest… yet still misunderstood and brushed aside as ever.

    Final | Lumix GX7 + DistressedFX + Mextures

    This is what I have learned from my entire life experience as one of the weird ones, and I hope it encourages someone – anyone – who might stumble across this:

    These “breaking point” days aren’t just about being in a bad mood, waking up on “the wrong side of the bed,” or any of the other surface-understood “off vibes” most people will throw at you. They don’t happen because you’ve lost your grounding or your gratitude. They happen because even the strongest and especially the most conscientious, feeling people run out of buffer when the weight keeps pressing without pause. 

    You live with and within a level of whole, full awareness (spiritual, emotional, historical, prophetic, and on and on) and with a gift of discernment that most people do not (and honestly, cannot) touch. On most days you can hold that awareness with quiet clarity, letting discernment – God – alone be your support. On most days you can walk in a kind of peaceful resignation, but some days it just scrapes you raw. 

    When you have lived through circumstances completely outside your control, and your very calling seems to be holding everything together for others – helping them face the consequences of their choices while you carry your own – only to have life lead to more pain, more grief, more betrayal, more loss, the kind of life that is a thesis in forced endurance, then you learn what the deep ones who came before you have tried to help you understand all your life:

    You were created and sent for that life, precisely because it’s not an easy experience.

    DE | Lumix GX7 + DistressedFX

    When you understand not just the world but the unseen realities because you have experienced them directly, it is not bitterness to feel anger. It is not ungratefulness to feel the burn of it all. It is simply the cost of carrying truth while the rest of the world insists everything is made of cardboard cutouts and moral illusions.

    You are not angry because you lack gratitude. You are angry because you have, experienced too much, known too much, and felt too much to simply ignore or shake it off… and sometimes the contrast between what you see clearly and what the world pretends is real is utterly unbearable.

    It is maddening to watch people cling to entertainment, political, influencer, and other societal idols as if they will save anyone, and to watch the never-ending performances of “truth tellers” who are actually grifters. It is infuriating to see the perpetual cycles of denial, the refusal to acknowledge that evil is real. To watch the world ignore the spiritual reality beneath global chaos, and to be gaslit about things Scripture already told us plainly, and that daily happenings prove are very real.

    You are not imagining the acceleration. You are not wrong to see the pattern. You are not wrong to feel the urgency in your bones. You see the bigger picture in a way most people still refuse to. You see with long vision instead of shortsighted reactions, and you are not fooled by the shallow pull of momentary comfort or distraction.

    DE | Lumix GX7 + DistressedFX (birds)

    Some days the spiritual clarity feels like peace. Other days it feels like fire. Both are real. Both belong to the same walk. And that longing for it all to finally come to its ultimate conclusion is not despair. It is a righteous longing.

    It is the same longing the Biblical prophets carried, the same longing Paul wrote about, the same longing the early church lived with every day. It is a knowing that we were not made for this world’s madness, and something holy is coming. Soon.

    You are allowed to have days like this. Even Jesus did. You are allowed to feel the heaviness and the exhaustion with human stupidity and shallow commentary and empty politics and spiritual blindness.

    “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I put up with you?” (Matthew 17:17)

    This is Jesus openly expressing exasperation, frustration, and spiritual fatigue with human stubbornness and stupidity.

    He grieves over people’s refusal to see truth, accept help, or change in Matthew 23:27 (“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem… how often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.”) and he admits emotional heaviness, spiritual fatigue, and the weight of what He carried in Matthew 26:38 (“My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.”).

    Deep sadness, deep clarity.

    Original | Lumix GX7

    So if today is a fire day, let it be one. Speak it out to God. The church rarely teaches this, but this is the relationship He actually wants from us: full, honest, all-encompassing. Venting to Him is not disrespect. It is the doorway to healing. It is the only way He can walk you through the weight of what you are carrying. You have to do more than ask for a fix. He cannot move you forward if you have not shown Him that you understand where you were or where you are.

    There is a difference between complaining and venting. Complaining just adds to the problem. Venting clears the way for truth to rise, and for God to meet you in it. With venting, you will not stay in bitterness. You will always return to gratitude, because that is who you are at your core.

    Why? Because you have learned to see God in the ashes. That is a gift, even on the days it feels like a curse.

    Hang on.

    xo.

    c.

  • Unhidden

    Unhidden

    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.

  • Always look up.

    Always look up.

    iPhone 17 Pro + DistressedFX + LR (watermark only)

    Always look up. Especially when you’re already shaken, don’t ever look down. That’s when you lose what steadiness you do have, and crash.

    This week hit hard. J was told he’s going on unpaid shutdown leave from Dec 15 until the second week of January. No vacation time, no cushion. At least not yet…maybe they’ll change their mind about that.

    It always makes me heartsick when companies do this to families in December, right before Christmas. Now, here we are, and I’m not sick about it. Just determined.

    This, after receiving the full evaluation for our boy yesterday, which finally gives us clarity… but also informs us that we have to get “further testing,” as if what he’s already been through and what we’ve already done couldn’t possibly be enough (money for them) for any referrals or disability help.

    I genuinely don’t know how we’re supposed to afford it with everything happening at once, but we will. If I don’t laugh in the face of it all (especially the system) believing God’s already got it handled, I’ll collapse under the weight of that situation alone.

    Christmas this year is going to be bare… at least materially. Some part of me feels immediate comfort, though, because I so intimately recognize this feeling… the gritty “underdog in a Christmas movie” version of life I’ve always known. Always the underdog…

    But the thing about underdogs? Most especially when they’re faithful and balanced in determination, heart and spirit, they always come out on top. Always.

    God is in this story. God is in the details. He always has been, and when I’ve followed His guidance and employed discernment, He has never turned away or left us. I’m holding onto that. That is my foundation.

    I have to do my part, though… so for that, besides us trying to pick up a seasonal job until this shutdown is over, I’ve created an Amazon wishlist for my boy. If the universe wants to make sure he gets a Christmas beyond my homemade treats, it will. And if not, he already knows he’s loved, supported, and my whole world.

    I’ve already got my Christmas miracle. That boy, and his precious heart.

    Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays,

    xo

    ❤️

  • On Waking Up to the Truth of Your Own Life

    On Waking Up to the Truth of Your Own Life

    This morning, out of nowhere, I had a strange and sudden realization that felt less like an epiphany and more like a truth finally stepping out of the shadows and clearing its throat.

    It hit me in a way that it never has that I have never lived a “normal” life. Not even close. And for the first time, I felt both strangely happy about that fact and, at the same time, a little bit like life handed me a rigged deck from the beginning.

    Maybe it’s the moon. Maybe it’s a transit. Maybe it’s just timing. Either way, something clicked.

    And if you’ve lived a life anything like mine — a life full of early ruptures, spiritual bends, hard-earned wisdom, and more turning points than you asked for — then maybe this will resonate with you too.

    Some of us woke up “too early.”

    I think there are people in this world who become different because of trauma… and then there are people who were already different before anything bad ever happened.

    I fall into the second category, and maybe you do too. Even before the losses and the betrayals and the hard choices of life, I always had that sense of being “other.” Not better, not worse — just operating at a different depth. And when you put a child like that into an environment that can’t meet them, or worse, harms them, it doesn’t create the strangeness. It simply intensifies the contrast.

    Being awake too early will always make life feel both heavy and crystalline. Extraordinarily beautiful and impossibly painful. More than you can stand, and somehow exactly what your soul signed up for.

    My life began mid-sentence. It began with trauma — separation at birth, adoption, the whole invisible story that comes before the first memory. And when your life starts that way, it’s like opening a book already in motion. You’re responding before you even know what you’re responding to.

    People who haven’t lived this don’t understand it. They don’t understand the tracking, the depth, the intuition, the constant meaning-making, the sensitivity that isn’t fragility but perception.

    They don’t understand why you see everything. Why you feel everything. Why you cannot live on the surface of yourself. But some of us were built this way, and some of us were shaped this way. Both can be true.

    It’s a double-edged realization. As this awareness came in today, I felt two very different truths rising at the same time:

    I love who I’ve become. I love my depth, my discernment, my perspective, my capacity. I love that I can see through people and patterns and illusions. I love that nothing stays on the surface for me. I love that I’ve survived every version of myself I’ve ever had to be.

    I also grieve the softness I never got. I grieve the easy childhood that never existed. I grieve the uncomplicated love I didn’t receive early on. I grieve the sense of safety I had to build by hand.

    And I think a lot of us who’ve lived through big, early, life-defining trauma feel this way: grateful for who we are, but aware of the price we paid to become it.

    This doesn’t make us “confused.” It makes us honest. It makes us the “weird one.”

    Someone I love deeply even to this day, but lost because of my depth, once told me, “Everybody thinks you’re weird.” They meant it to sting, and it did for a second, because it came from someone who should have known better. But after the sting passed, I realized:

    People say “weird” when they really mean, “I can’t categorize you, and that makes me uncomfortable.”

    People like us — the ones who survived too much, grew too fast, felt too deeply — we are not weird. We are densely written. And people who only read in small print will never understand a book like us.

    That’s fine. It is truly okay. We have to learn to let them go, even when it’s the last thing we want to do. We have to learn to let them stay on Sesame Street if that’s the universe they need, and love them from afar. We weren’t made for that kind of world, and that’s what I learned from that “dig.”

    It changed my entire being and life experience, because it gave me vision into both myself and into the psychology of others that I’d only ever read in books and studied during undergrad. It led me to where I’ve been for the last year or so. The crossover point.

    If you’re reading this because you searched a tag related to being somewhere in that liminal space — not who you used to be, not quite who you’re becoming — let me tell you something from the messy, holy middle of my own transformation:

    Your life is not normal because it was never meant to be. You weren’t built for the simple version.

    People like us come in with assignments: to break generational patterns that have the power to wake up entire lineages. To spiritualize the places that were barren. To heal things we didn’t cause. To mother differently.

    We are here to live awake. To see through the noise. To choose purpose over pattern. To walk into the “better” with our eyes open.

    My own perspective, after years of seeking and purposeful, mindful, active awareness, has become that we were born into struggle on purpose. To make mistakes, to suffer, to learn, and then to teach and to use our experiences to help heal the world. Because we can.

    Our struggle prepares us for our purpose, because without that preparation I can promise you that the last five years would have killed me — not grown me or led me to God.

    It’s not an easy calling, and it’s rarely fair. It’s often lonely, and it’s never “easy.” But… it is real. And it will be worth it, in the end.

    If you’ve made it this far — bruised, aware, still standing — then the next chapter will not require the same kind of suffering the earlier ones did.

    This is the turning point. The crossing over. The place where the story stops being about survival and starts being about purpose.

    You’ve earned this part. You really have. Use it to make your life everything you’ve ever dreamed of. I believe you can, because I’ve lived it. I’ve put the pieces together, and I know that if any of this resonates with you, you can do anything.

    It’s what you were made for.

    xo,

    c.

  • Babel, Babylon, and Beyond | The Same Old Serpent

    Babel, Babylon, and Beyond | The Same Old Serpent

    Fall is already upon us. Nature seems to have gotten ahead of itself in recent weeks and the world around me, from my backyard to the vast wilderness, has already begun to experience the cycles of death and decay that the fall season brings to prepare us to enter a season of rest.

    I’ve found myself meditating on this as I’ve observed the process and explored the details of it with my camera lately. Here are some of the fruits of these meditations — especially the ones I experienced while studying this little corner of my backyard that has been unseasonably filled with the tiniest but cutest mushrooms.

    We so often use falling leaves as the symbol of letting go in autumn — but mushrooms tell another side of the story. They are decay in action, the hidden transformation beneath the surface, breaking down what once was so that life can be nourished again. They remind me that endings are not passive; they are active processes of renewal, just as necessary as the more obvious metaphors we tend to notice.

    What follows in this post may not feel “light and pretty,” but the deeper work is still life-giving. Much of it was born from reviewing and processing my recently captured mushroom images — small, humble, not glamorous, yet quietly essential. These considerations and introspections, though they may seem less than inviting, have at their core offered me encouragement.

    When you strip away the politics, money, and power structures, what you’re left with is a spiritual war. That’s the root of it all.

    The “deep state,” the “new world order,” whatever names we slap on it in the 3D — those are just costumes. The real battle is what Paul described in Ephesians 6:

    “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places.”

    In short, demonic and low-level forces that have always tried to mimic, distort, and overthrow the authority of God.

    From Babel to Babylon to Rome to today, it’s the same rebellion recycled. Every empire that tries to erase God ends up becoming a shadow play of Babel — the same arrogance, the same lust for control, and the same inevitable collapse. The schemes shift form — empire, propaganda, deception, perversion — but the spirit behind them hasn’t changed.

    It’s the same old serpent trying to counterfeit creation and place itself on the throne. But here’s the thing you need to remember, if you are of the light:

    Humans can choose to align with that darkness or resist it. That’s why it looks like whole institutions, movements, or leaders are “possessed” by this agenda. But the truth is, they’re vessels. Some willingly, some blindly. And even when people align with darkness, they are never the true source of its power — and they are never beyond God’s reach if they repent of and rebuke the darkness.

    The vessels may change, but the spirit behind them is the same counterfeit. It’s not their power. It’s borrowed power, and because the Devil is a trickster and a liar, it cannot outlast the sovereignty of Source truth.

    That’s why, in the light of evil tragedy, the instinct to pray “God bless and protect” is attacked and pushed down so brazenly by some, and depended upon and held on to so tightly by others. The only way for the dark to win is to try to sniff out the light.

    The only shield that stands against the dark, though, isn’t more politics, more anger, or more fleshly fight — it’s divine covering. That’s why light beings, from Buddha to Jesus, called us salt and light — because no matter how deep the night gets, even the smallest flame cannot be overcome.

    Light exposes. Truth cuts through lies. And no empire, no “order,” no demonic hierarchy driving human ego has ever been able to out-rule the Source of the Universe: Love.

    The darkness may rage, but it has already lost. Its decay is inevitable. Our task is not to fear its noise, but to keep carrying the light that cannot be extinguished.

    if you are only just beginning to see the reality of this battle and sense that light, do not be afraid of how small it may seem in you. Even the faintest flicker is enough to drive back the dark. Nurture it. Walk with it. Let it steady your steps.

    The path may feel unfamiliar, but you are not walking it alone. Every spark joins the greater flame, and together we rise.

    Keep going — the light you carry is already proof that the darkness has not won.

    xo,

    c.

  • A Pause…

    A Pause…

    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.
  • I died, and it… was okay. | Notes from the Other Side

    I died, and it… was okay. | Notes from the Other Side

    The First Illusion

    How can an illusion free an illusion?

    It can’t.

    Impossible.

    And yet, freedom itself is not impossible.

    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.

    ✨

    xo,

    c.

  • The Line Is Always Open

    The Line Is Always Open

    A while ago, God asked me to step away from the noise. The purpose was not just to “rest,” but to enter true solitude. It wasn’t the kind of solitude that simply quiets the mind; it was the kind that strips away the need to convince, the compulsion to rescue, and the reflex to correct every error you see in the world.

    When you live in that stillness long enough, especially when you begin to examine how deeply and how long you have been misunderstood in your own life, you finally grasp why no one was truly listening. You begin to understand:

    The time for saving people by warning them and trying to teach them by telling them, begging them, or reasoning with them has passed. Just like with a child, there comes a time when you have to let them just keep screwing up until they learn. Experience is the only teacher that can accomplish anything fruitful.

    At some point, you realize your job is and always has been to just be the example and let them hate you or blame you if they wish. The time now, and the purpose, is to show up anchored in truth, walking forward for the sake of those who are searching.

    It is time to lead without any guarantee of who will follow, even if the path takes you to meet God alone. In the end, it all comes down to free will — and on the day you stand before Him, the only life and soul you will ultimately give account for is your own.

    There is no bureaucracy at the Pearly Gates, no worldly process to pass through. Character witnesses don’t exist there. Your actions, your choices, and the truth of your heart and relationship with Source will speak for themselves to the one and only true Judge, whose authority is absolute and divine.

    After months of this solitude, returning to public spaces feels different. The peace you find in solitude makes the digital clamor almost unbearable. You realize most people are not listening, not because they can’t, but because they don’t want to. They’ve been taught to fear the very silence that would heal them.

    Still, there are always a few — maybe only two or three in a sea of millions — who are listening for a different kind of voice. And for them, we show up.

    As I dipped a toe back into social media in recent weeks, I saw exactly why Source had been directing me as it had. Then, this morning, I saw a post on Instagram that reminded me exactly why I hesitate to return.

    It was a meme “conversation” between two cats:

    Cat 1: I don’t know who I am anymore.

    Cat 2: That’s okay, everybody feels that way sometimes — the universe doesn’t have a support line or customer service to tell you how to fix the problem.

    It’s clever on the surface, but the truth is: this is false.

    Yes, everyone struggles with knowing who they are from time to time — that’s life. But somewhere along the way, society began labeling that struggle as illness, defining solitude as unhealthy withdrawal (thereby denying people access to the solution), and filtering human experience through a narrow definition of “normal” set by a handful of powerful voices.

    And the part about the universe not having a “support line”? That’s the deepest untruth of all.

    The universe — God’s creation, and the divine voice within it — is always speaking. The language is there for anyone willing to learn it. The signs are constant. I know this because I have been hated for decades for striving to be a translator.

    The problem is not absence; it is illiteracy. Most people are not listening, or even looking, because they’ve been conditioned to tune in to the wrong frequency.

    Depression is not always depression, but many times (and this was my experience) the immediate response to anything that feels unpleasant is to label it as depression and drug people to Timbuktu and back again. Honestly? That is the reason many people can’t hear and don’t care to try. Not all — but so many.

    Lost is not always lost. Not every ache in the soul is a disorder to be medicated or pathologized. Sometimes it is simply disconnection from self and Source. The remedy is stillness, quiet, and the willingness to listen, and to then face and accept the truth — the very things people are told are “unhealthy” or “unproductive.”

    Society has been trained to fear solitude and invisibility, to measure our worth in noise and visibility. And then, when society meets those who have rejected that conditioning — who have done the work through blood, sweat, and tears — it labels them as “too deep,” “too intense,” or “problematic.” Society dismisses them because the truth they carry is rarely the easy answer the world wanted to hear.

    It’s willful ignorance, fed and nurtured by systems that benefit from a distracted, disconnected people.

    Those same systems encourage shallow comforts and praise the very mechanisms keeping us miserable. And when you break free, find balance, and refuse to play the game, you’re labeled extreme or hateful — when in reality, you are simply walking in the narrow space between reality and insanity.

    This was on my mind when I saw another post, one about the pressure of social media as an artist versus as a human being.

    My response was simple:

    I used to approach social media in the same way — letting the noise, the opinions, and the unspoken “rules” decide how and when I would show up. I carried the weight of strangers’ expectations until it felt heavy enough to crush my own reasons for creating.

    And then I realized: the ones who made me feel small were not here for the same reasons I was. They were chasing validation, purpose, or attention they didn’t already have. I already had those things. I was meeting my own goals, my own standards. When I stopped caring if they “got it,” the pressure disappeared.

    It is the same in life beyond the screen. Too many people are chasing money, status, and recognition, and too few are working from genuine passion or purpose. The work done from love will feed you. The work done to please others will drain you.

    That’s why these two posts — one about “not knowing who you are” and one about the pressure of showing up as an artist — are really about the same thing.

    The sickness of our time is not that we feel lost or uncertain; it’s that we’ve lost the ability, and in some cases the willingness, to listen to the truth that’s already speaking.

    If you can hear it, you don’t need a “support line” from the universe — you’re already, and infinitely, connected to it. If you can’t hear it, no human voice will convince you until you quiet the noise long enough to try.

    So for me? I keep showing up as I feel led to, as I hear God guiding me to. I keep sharing my experiences, through my photography, my art, and my voice, softly and quietly in shared expressions meant to be examples, not to convince the unwilling, but for the few who are listening and searching for a different kind of voice.

  • The Oldest Tree and the Newest Truth

    The Oldest Tree and the Newest Truth

    Yesterday, I went shooting. I collected over 1,500 photographs in a single morning.

    It’s been a long time since I’ve been that focused, that immersed in the creative energy that sustains me. It felt good to be so deeply aligned with The Flow—Nature’s and God’s flow, not mine, not anyone else’s.

    For hours upon hours, I alternated exploration and randomly sitting still with nature, and with my favorite tree—the oldest documented in my state—for a long time. I quietly observed every detail, inner and outer, letting my mind wander and my spirit settle.

    So long, in fact, the chiggers are still feasting on me. A worthy price, though, for what was finally made clear to me—the missing puzzle piece that’s been keeping me from being able to help others fully grasp my perspective when I talk about grounding and meditation:

    So many people deeply misunderstand meditation.

    Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Lumix 100-300mm Telephoto. VSCO (G6 PRO) + Lightroom (watermark only).

    It’s not about escaping the body, 3D reality, or floating above your life. It’s not about leaving. Healthy, true meditation is the opposite of escape.

    Meditation is about stillness, observation, and rooting in. It’s about grounding into the physical body, and the earth itself, consciously connecting with both.

    It’s about sinking into the body—not running from it. Anything rooted in “escape” isn’t meditation. At any spiritual or energetic level, escapism is a cop-out. Worse, it’s a lie.

    Meditation is about bringing the physical, mental, and emotional into balance so that rising energetically, emotionally, and intellectually becomes not only natural… but possible in the first place.

    This shift in understanding can (and will) change everything for anyone who is willing to open their minds and hearts enough embrace it.

    🙏🦋🕊️

  • Wilderness

    Wilderness

    Lumix GX7, Panasonic Lumix 100-300mm Tele-Lens. Handheld. Lightroom (watermark and contrast).

    The wilderness is the oldest, truest friend a human can have, both in body and in spirit.

    Lumix GX7, Panasonic Lumix 100-300mm Tele-Lens. Handheld. Lightroom (watermark and contrast).

    It teaches in silence.

    Lumix GX7, Panasonic Lumix 100-300mm Tele-Lens. Handheld. Lightroom (watermark and contrast).

    It speaks without words.

    Lumix GX7, Panasonic Lumix 100-300mm Tele-Lens. Handheld. Lightroom (watermark and contrast).

    It holds space for your becoming, your undoing, your return.

    Lumix GX7, Panasonic Lumix 100-300mm Tele-Lens. Handheld. Lightroom (watermark and contrast).

    And it is only “dangerous” when we forget to honor it, or refuse to learn from and respect it.