Tag: perspective

  • 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.

  • Coffee Thoughts | #1

    Coffee Thoughts | #1

    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.

    Be better, while you still can.

    It’s never too late…

  • Focal Point

    Focal Point

    It’s as important as perspective. Perhaps even more so…

    We talk so much about perspective—about changing our view, reframing the story, finding the silver lining in the storm cloud.

    But sometimes, perspective doesn’t shift easily.

    Sometimes, circumstance leaves you standing exactly where you’ve always stood. The view is the same. The light hits the same edges. The shadows fall in familiar places.

    But even when the scene remains unchanged…the focal point doesn’t have to.

    Focus is a choice.

    A sacred, stubborn one.

    It’s the difference between staring at the problem and noticing the petal behind it.

    It’s where your attention lands, and where your energy follows.

    It’s learning to zoom in on grace even when grief is still in the frame.

    In these frames, nothing moved.

    Not the flower. Not the light. Not the angle.

    Only the focal point changed.

    And with that subtle shift, a new vision — a new truth— came forward.

    Almost always—including in life, and despite circumstance—the best composition doesn’t come from changing the scene but from learning which part of it to focus on.

    catacosmosis // 2025

  • Lifted

    Lifted

    entry twelve — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
    Lumix GX-7 + Panasonic-Leica DG Macro Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. VSCO (A6 PRO) + DistressedFX + Lightroom (watermark only).

    There is a moment, early in a few blessed summer evenings, when the heat—the oppression—sighs and lets go.

    Not in protest, but in quiet surrender—the sun lingers, the sky softens, and a hush moves in with the rain.

    Steam rises like incense from the bones of the earth.

    You’ve felt that coveted shift.

    It’s not loud. Not showy. Just the heaviness loosening its grip on your ribs as breath returns without warning.

    This is how some battles end—

    Not with victory, but with survival.

    Not with a roar, but with a breeze.

    No fanfare—just rain through fractured light, and the ache leaving your body before you even know it’s gone.

    What remains?

    A field of yellow flowers—bent but blooming.

    Tired, but free.

    And air that smells like something holy—finally lifted.

    catacosmosis // 2025

  • Where Abundance Lives

    Where Abundance Lives

    It’s never been money or material success that has defined wealth for me.

    For most of my life, I chased meaning in moments loud enough to echo—grand gestures, perfect timing, outcomes wrapped in validation. But it was my most treacherous and grueling experiences—the ones that stripped me bare and rebuilt me from the soul up—that taught me something higher.

    They taught me to be still.

    To be quiet.

    To kneel at the altar of the subtle.

    A blurry cloud, simultaneously barely and boldly defining its own form, illuminated at just the right angle.

    Lumix GX7 + Lightroom (watermark only)

    A battered feather, found in the dead center of a forgotten dirt road, caught in evening light.

    Lumix GX7 + Lightroom (watermark only)

    The soft hush of trees at dusk, whispering the memories of the ghosts that still roam underneath them.

    Lumix GX7 + Lightroom (watermark only)

    This is abundance.

    There’s something sacred about catching these quiet offerings—the ones that ask for nothing but your presence. No performance. No hustle. Just your full attention. And I think that’s what I’ve been learning to fully morph into, slowly but surely, all my life.

    I’ve always been in love with nature, and over the past few years, I’ve begun to understand why—consciously, spiritually, viscerally:

    Nature doesn’t demand applause, but it offers everything to those who notice.

    Before caregiving and grief, nature called to me—quietly, consistently—and I always accepted her invitation to explore and to wonder. During caregiving, she became an escape. I retreated there as often as possible, weary and begging for rest that not even sleep could offer…and nature always obliged.

    Now? I don’t go to escape or to retreat, I don’t just visit. Nature meets me. Whether I’m deep in the woods or walking my yard…hiking a trail or running my neighborhood…now, I am always home.

    We live in a world trained to skim, to scroll, to monetize every breath of stillness. But this—this sky, this feather, this light that passes and never repeats—reminds me:

    Presence is the prize.

    It’s all around us, all the time, no matter where we are…but people don’t see it anymore. They no longer observe. Most have forgotten—that observation is a form of reverence. And reverence, when practiced daily, becomes a kind of homecoming.

    “Abundance is not found in money and material gain—at least, not for me. To me, it is found in nature’s unexpected surprises.”

    I wrote that in my memory while standing beneath the canopy of trees shared above as it held the last light of evening. There was no one else there. No applause. Just me, and the divine choreography of stillness.

    In that moment, nature herself invited me to remind you:

    If you’re searching for proof that you’re loved, that you belong, that there’s meaning woven through even the hardest days—

    Look up.

    Look closer.

    Be still.

    The abundance you’re looking for is already here.

    It’s been waiting for your eyes—and your heart— to land on it.

    Be present.

    Pay attention.

    Be observant.

    Your presence in the present matters.

    It’s where abundance lives.

    🪶💜✨

    catacosmosis // 2025

  • The Art of Being Alive

    The Art of Being Alive

    The real you is not a puppet which life pushes around; the real, deep down you is the whole universe. (Alan Watts)

    📷 Lumix GX-7 + Panasonic-Leica DG Macro Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH
    🛠️ VSCO (06) + Lightroom (watermark only)

    The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves. (Alan Watts)

    📷 Lumix GX-7 + Panasonic-Leica DG Macro Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH
    🛠️ VSCO (06) + Lightroom (watermark only)

    I stood in the green hush, face to face with a bloom so intricate it felt like a secret whispered by the wild. The passionflower doesn’t need to perform. It simply is. Unapologetically strange. Beautifully complex. Alive.

    📷 Lumix GX-7 + Panasonic-Leica DG Macro Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH
    🛠️ VSCO (06) + Lightroom (watermark only)

    I thought of the two Alan Watts quotes I’ve included above, and I thought of my dead loved ones. This is what I want to remember:

    📷 Lumix GX-7 + Panasonic-Leica DG Macro Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH
    🛠️ VSCO (06) + Lightroom (watermark only)

    That being fully present—here, now, in the middle of whatever hurts or heals—is enough.

    That passion isn’t always loud.

    Sometimes, it curls quietly out of the forest and dares you to look closer.

    This is what death has taught me about life.

    I’m really grateful I stayed, after they were all gone.

    🪽💜✨

    catacosmosis // 2025

  • One Decade | Sanctum

    One Decade | Sanctum

    This image wasn’t meant to carry all this, but tonight, it does. It holds the rupture I didn’t know I’d been tiptoeing around all week.

    A decade ago today, my father died. Not on the 13th, when the machines started breathing for him—that was just when I knew he was gone. On the 18th, at this hour, the veil broke open for real. And now here I am—ten years later—haunted by dreams I couldn’t explain and a sudden stillness in my creativity I couldn’t shake.

    Until now.

    I thought I was just tired. Distracted. Stuck. But it was grief. It was reverence in disguise.

    My soul remembered the date even when my mind forgot. That’s the strange thing about grief that matures—it doesn’t scream anymore. It hums, low and holy, beneath everything. It clouds the light, then sharpens it. It takes your voice, then gives it back with new timbre.

    This image—originally photographed by Mikhail Nilov—became a sort of altar. I edited it using Mextures, VSCO, DistressedFX, and Lightroom, layering texture over color, blurring presence and absence, trying to capture what it feels like when sorrow doesn’t knock—it just saturates.

    Sanctum.

    There’s chaos in this. Petals and light blurred through glass and rain. Beauty you can’t quite hold. A yellow rose—like the ones we laid at his grave—folding in on itself. A daisy, centered in clarity, yet surrounded by blur.

    That’s what this night feels like. Clarity in the middle of confusion. Stillness in the swirl.

    Earlier tonight, as I outlined these words in my head while I felt my way through the shift I felt in real-time in the energy, I said to myself:

    “You didn’t lose your creativity. You’re in holy pause. This isn’t numbness—it’s reverence. You were unconsciously grieving a resurrection-day anniversary, and your spirit bowed its head before your body could even name the loss.”

    And now, I feel it even more deeply: Tonight isn’t for making things happen. It’s for honoring what already did.

    Tonight is for prayer—prayer and intercession not only over the souls of loved ones who have already crossed over, but over one very important soul who’s still here. One who I know doesn’t understand why I had to go.

    The truth is, those crossed over souls didn’t leave to hurt me…even though it did. They left because it was time. That was my burden to bear. The lessons they left me with were my responsibility to sort through, clean up, and learn.

    Likewise, I didn’t leave the living out of anger or rejection, or even lack of love. I left because God Himself guided me in a different direction, even if they didn’t want to go that way, or grow that way, too. I will never have a choice above God. And I know that hurts…it hurts me, too.

    Forgiveness is an ongoing action, reflected not in words but in the quiet practice of letting go. The love is, and always will be, unconditional. “Anyway love” always is. And my soul will carry a piece of all of their souls within it. Always.

    A lot of things are coming full circle for me tonight. Invisible messages carried by unseen energies are releasing a kind of clarity within me—one of deeper substance and fuller understanding, puzzles pieces arriving and falling into place in a way I’ve never experienced before. The spiritual warfare, the dreams full of ghosts, the aching grief—none of that is new. But the understanding I have tonight…it reaches deeper than anything I’ve ever touched before.

    Tonight isn’t for sorting through the rubble, cleaning up the floors of my memory, or putting all the lessons learned into neat little compartments in my mind. After all, I’ve already been processing through that, and slowly overcoming it all, for some time now.

    No, tonight isn’t for being swallowed by the hauntings of my own heart. Tonight is for letting grief rain gently through the window, washing my soul—and watching how even the blur, when looked at with love and patience, can be textured out, shaped into a symbolic snapshot in time—capturing both the beauty and the chaos—and become art.

    It is the emblem of the closure of what has, all at once, been the most painful and the most beautiful decade of my life: the one where, in the end, I finally met God.


    I speak the name of Jesus over you
    In your hurting, in your sorrow
    I will ask my God to move
    I speak the name ’cause it’s all that I can do
    In desperation, I’ll seek Heaven
    And pray this for you:

    I pray for your healing
    That circumstances will change
    I pray that the fear inside will flee in Jesus name
    I pray that a breakthrough
    Would happen today
    I pray miracles over your life in Jesus name
    I pray for revival
    For restoration of faith
    I pray that the dead will come alive in Jesus name

    In Jesus name…

    -Katy Nichole, In Jesus Name (God Of Possible)

  • A Reminder to Self (But We ALL Need It)

    A Reminder to Self (But We ALL Need It)

    Reminder to self:

    Disconnection makes you stop reflecting and start reacting. It’s not because you’re a bad person. It’s because you’re lost in the noise.

    Disconnection from awareness breeds reactivity. Connection with awareness invites response.

    📷 Shot handheld with Lumix GX-7 + Panasonic-Leica DG Macro Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH.
    🛠️ VSCO (06, 2.5) + Lightroom (clarity +7 + watermark).

    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.

    🕊️💜✨