VSCO (SS1 Pro), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
Aperture
There is a kind of light that doesn’t just shine, but also fractures.
It breaks open the moment with something softer than silence and more honest than certainty.
You don’t chase it, you receive it.
This image wasn’t planned.
This frame wasn’t forced.
There’s a stillness even the flowers seemed to know, and reflect back to me.
It is not the stillness of silence, but of surrender.
Not of bracing against beauty or the process of becoming-in-progress, or of apologizing for taking up space mid-bloom…but of letting the light have its way.
I simply stood still long enough for the light to offer itself—scattered, wild, and full of grace.
I saw what was really there:
Buds preparing to bloom and light wafting in, yet also ambient and still.
The entire moment was an aperture through which grace entered, unbothered and whole, needing no permission.
And in that quiet moment, it became a mirror for all of us—one that perhaps none of us knew we needed, and that many would automatically overlook.
How often do we chase clarity instead of becoming it?
How often do we disturb ourselves, or disturb the world while attempting to distract ourselves, by blaming everyone else?
How often are those moments merely us trying to be louder than what already speaks through us?
There is no control in peace.
No performance in healing.
Only presence.
And in that presence, we disturb no one—not even ourselves.
We become the quiet offering.
We become the still center in a world unraveling at the edges.
Today, as I stood still in the midst of both internal and external war, peace didn’t arrive with fanfare.
It arrived as fractured light through pine trees.
As a silent, oft unnoticed breath.
As a reminder that maybe the most sacred work is not to act, but merely to remain open.
Not to close.
Not to harden.
Not to explain ourselves into exhaustion, but to become aperture.
To simultaneously remain wide enough to hold what’s real and narrow enough to let illusion fall away.
And, to be balanced enough in both intellect and empathy to know the difference.
This is the answer: detachment.
Not from emotion, but from illusion.
It is not denial, not distance.
Rather, it is the quiet rerouting of both emotion and cognition back to stillness.
A return to clarity, not an absence of care.
And somehow, by not reacting, by not reaching, we find we are already held.
Mimosa (Albizia julibrissin). Lumix GX7, Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., Lightroom Mobile (watermark), VSCO.
Not everything soft is weak.
Not everything brief is forgotten.
The mimosa blooms like a passing thought—pink, feathery, fragrant, gone before you’re ready. But even in its short season, it rewrites the air.
And maybe that’s the point:
To offer sweetness without needing permanence. To make magic in the margins.
💚🌿✨
Mimosa (Albizia julibrissin). Lumix GX7, Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., Lightroom Mobile (watermark), VSCO.
The Mimosa tree (Albizia julibrissin) is commonly known as the silk tree or Persian silk tree. Albizia julibrissin isn’t actually a true mimosa—though it’s been lovingly misnamed for generations. Native to Asia, this delicate tree has made its way into southern landscapes with grace and stubbornness alike.
Its blooms are light as breath—powdery tufts that attract butterflies, bees, and human daydreamers. They bloom at dusk, shimmer in the wind, and drop silently—often leaving a petal-scattered sidewalk like a love note no one signed.
Mimosa (Albizia julibrissin). Lumix GX7, Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., Lightroom Mobile (watermark), VSCO.
Though it’s sometimes called invasive, there’s no denying its presence feels like a portal: part nostalgia, part perfume, part dream.
Its scientific name, julibrissin, comes from the Persian gul-i abrisham—“silk flower.” A name that suits it perfectly.
Mimosa (Albizia julibrissin). Lumix GX7, Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., Lightroom Mobile (watermark), VSCO.
In folk medicine—especially within Traditional Chinese Medicine—the mimosa tree is known as the “Tree of Happiness.” Its fragrant pink blossoms and bark have long been used to lift the spirit, ease grief, calm the heart, and quiet a restless mind.
The flowers are brewed into gentle teas, while the bark is sometimes tinctured for deeper emotional support. Often given to those moving through sorrow or heartbreak, the mimosa is considered a natural ally for joy, resilience, and emotional rebirth.
Today, one rode with us on the windshield of the Jeep as we were making our way back to the pavement after a beautiful morning and early afternoon on the wildlife management area and Flagg Mountain. I became, as always, overly excited and tried to get some photos with both my macro lens and my phone’s broken camera as we bounced along, eventually having my partner stop in the middle of the road…but, that didn’t help. The glass made it difficult to get any really good photos.
Photos of The Red-Banded Hairstreak butterfly (Calycopis Cecrops) I took with my broken iPhone camera, edited using Lightroom Mobile and VSCO.
But, that’s not the point of this post.
The Red-Banded Hairstreak butterfly’s range includes the Southeast United States, Florida and Texas. It can often be found in overgrown fields, woodland edges and coastal hammocks. It has a wing spread of around 0.75″ – 1.0″, and its host plants are wax myrtles, crotons, oaks, and sumacs. Its lifespan, from egg to death, is only about one and a half months. Egg stage, around five days. Caterpillar stage, around three weeks. Chrysalis stage, around two weeks. And the adult butterfly stage? The one we shared a moment of, with this guy? Only around one week.
ONE. WEEK.
That brief, butterfly moment? How special is it that we got to spend a fraction of its very short (from human perspective) lifespan with it? It wasn’t just a brief, or even rare, moment—it was a sacred one. It was a moment with a kind of fleeting, quiet grace that most people completely miss because they’re too busy chasing permanence.
After we returned home, as I was soaking in an epsom salts and Celtic sea salt bath to soothe an injury I’ve been nursing, I considered that reality. That moment. I saw it. I felt it. And I honored it with my heart wide open as I texted my partner to see if he had noticed the depth of it, or if it was just me being “weird” again.
“Maybe, to some,” he said in response. “But that’s the deepest kind of wisdom. ❤️”
Yes. Yes, I suppose so. “Soul,” my grandmother would say when I was a child. “That’s the only thing people mean when they act like there is something the matter with you getting excited about bugs and things. And they act that way because they haven’t met their own (soul).” I never understood. Not really. Today, her words really clicked into place.
The world is blind in so many ways. It races past the miracle of a butterfly with a week to live—a week!—and doesn’t even flinch. But I did notice. I always do, whether it’s a cool insect or critter, a beautiful bloom or even just a bud, a spiderweb covered in dew, every mushroom I see… That is why I am obsessed with (and pretty much only shoot) macro photography.
When I “notice,” I shriek in excitement and audibly let whoever is around me know, “look at that! That is so cool/beautiful! That’s a picture!” And there I go, shooting and shooting and shooting. Today, I saw myself in that process. I saw the life that rode with us. I felt the presence of something so brief and so beautiful, and instead of dismissing it as nothing, I turned it into everything.
My message to my partner? It was not just a sweet text about our butterfly moment—it was a love letter to awareness itself. I’ve made peace with being the “weird one,” the “brainless, goofy, up in the clouds one,” the one with “too many feelings.” Because the truth is, I’m the one who sees. Who feels. Who remembers what most people never even notice.
Photos of The Red-Banded Hairstreak butterfly (Calycopis Cecrops) I took with my Lumix GX-7 and Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit lens, edited using Lightroom Mobile and VSCO.
That butterfly chose us, in a way. That’s what moments like this always feel like to me, because I see them—every single one—as such an enormous blessing. And that moment—it’s proof that my soul is aligned with what matters, which is what I have strived for all my life, amidst all the noise about so many materialistic things that don’t matter at all.
The recognition of that makes me feel a sort of deep sadness for the world. I suppose it is compassion, not despair. Because people like me are “exactly what the world is starving for, even if it doesn’t know it yet.” That’s what Master Roshi used to encourage me with, day in and day out.
You don’t need a brain to comprehend what I am saying in this post.
You need a heart, and to understand its language. But if you look around you, so few do. That’s the sickness. The people who know and love me will, at most, say something like, “there she goes, noticing again.” But most of the people who always teased me with comments like, “Christy, your name should be Debbie—drowning Debbie, drowning in the deep when nothing really matters that much,” are suffering from that sickness.
I’ve never said much of anything in response to those kind of judgments, but as I’ve become more self-aware than ever before (in the last year and a half or so, since the culmination of all the death), I am not at all unwilling to tell you exactly what goes through my mind as I consider what would I hear from them about this special butterfly experience:
“Nothing matters? Ok. And the only reason nothing matters to people who would say things like this in response to such a cool experience is because they choose to completely overlook everything that is truly important. I bet if that butterfly was printed on a $300 Gucci T-Shirt or $2000 designer bag, it would mean everything in the world to them. Many might even covet it, if it was the latest trend and they couldn’t get their hands on it.”
You see, the world has trained people to value symbols of beauty or meaning only when they’re marketed, branded, and price-tagged—while ignoring the actual beauty of the world freely offered right in front of them. A butterfly, alive for maybe a week, becomes sacred only when it’s stamped on a luxury item. But, when it’s breathing and fluttering on a windshield, resting and traveling along with them, sharing a brief moment of its brief but still important life with them, it’s invisible. That’s spiritual poverty masquerading as sophistication.
And that “Drowning Debbie” insult? That’s projection in its purest form. I’m never drowning—I’m diving. Exploring the deep. Feeling my way through the marrow of existence while the people judging me for it are too afraid to even dip a toe in. People like that ridicule what they fear. They mock what they don’t have the emotional bandwidth to hold. I become a mirror, and instead of looking in and considering the reflection, they dislike (sometimes hate) me and smash me for it.
But here’s the truth: nothing doesn’t matter.
Everything matters, and I’ve known that since I was born. Throughout my life, I have refused to let anyone completely insult, or beat, that out of me. It’s why I feel so deeply. Why I mourn so deeply—even the butterfly, even at the mere mention that one day death will come. It’s why I see God in the dirt and the dew and the wings and the weeds. It’s why I value every detail, and every moment.
If you are like me, you are not broken, either—you’re attuned. You’ve learned how to be both grounded and responsible while still holding, living from, and living through a childlike wonder. You’re not weird. You’re balanced. Let the world roll its eyes if it wants to.
Souls like ours are the reason anything sacred still survives. So keep bearing witness to what’s holy. Keep pointing out the “unimportant things” that live in the deep and in the details—loudly, boldly, and with all the reverence they deserve.
Enjoy every moment to its fullest, because every moment—and every life—is a blessing.
There’s a quiet kind of healing that happens when no one is watching. It doesn’t perform. It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t need a platform. That is where I was when I was away—not just from social media, but from this space and this blog.
A young woman named Jillian, in a YouTube video I stumbled across recently, captured this so simply and so beautifully: what life looks and feels like when you’ve stepped away from social media—and stayed away long enough to actually notice the difference. What struck me most, though, was hearing her perspective as someone going through this process for the first time.
It’s lived in my thoughts and I’ve contemplated this post ever since. It was so interesting to me because I’ve taken breaks from the internet many times over the past two decades, always for the same reasons—and always with this same depth of understanding about the psychology of it, and why those breaks were necessary.
This most recent (and longest) season of removal hit different. After the last caregiving stretch, after Roshi Ralph’s death, after the silence that came when others (who had no real understanding of the compound caregiving and loss I’d just lived through—and in many cases, never will) rushed in with attacks and projections and judgments, as if my grief was theirs to dissect—I pulled all the way back. And I’ve stayed back.
I’ve stayed away from social media not because I needed a break, but because I reached the point where it just doesn’t matter to me. The truth is, it never really did. The performance of it all—the curated personas, the noise, the performative alliances, the hollow outrage, the likes-as-validation—means less than nothing. I never played the game anyway, and when I tried to be real, I was punished for it—called out for oversharing instead of respected for being honest. So now, I simply choose not to engage.
That’s the decision, and it’s permanent. I stick to my own space—my blog(s)—now. I share some of my creative work on YouTube and Instagram, but I don’t engage socially. The work is there for anyone who wishes to enjoy it, just like my writing: simply because I’ve made it—and it feels like a waste to let it collect digital dust on my hard drive or memory cards. That’s it.
And what I’ve learned—what I’ve earned—is this:
Own your own thoughts. Own your own opinions. Stop looking to the crowd to inform you of what you feel, believe, or need. If you want to share your truth, explore your voice, or process your experience—do it in your own space. Even if that space is digital.
Quiet is not the same as silent. Solitude is not absence. Privacy is not erasure. And just because the crowd isn’t clapping doesn’t mean the work isn’t working—or that it’s not sacred, necessary, and deeply alive.
A hike on Flagg Mountain.Flagg Mountain is part of Weogufka State Forest.My favorite place in these woods……is where you’ll find my favorite tree (a post all about her is coming soon).A few photos from where I’ve been this past year, instead of online…
Mirrors, Screens, and Silent Knowing: Personal Reflections after Watching Jillian’s Journey
Part One: The Slowness That Saves You
Jillian talked about how, in the silence of that first year offline, she realized she wasn’t who she thought she was. That her sense of self had been filtered through algorithms and aesthetics for so long that she didn’t know what parts were her and what parts were just performance.
She said she didn’t want to be a cottagecore girl, or a vanilla-beach-aesthetic girl, or even a tomato queen—she just wanted to be Jillian. And that’s what life offline gave her space to rediscover: the Jillian aesthetic. Not a genre. Not a trend. A person.
That kind of reclamation doesn’t happen in front of a ring light. It happens when you’re still. When the feedback loop breaks. When your body and soul finally stop bracing for the next notification, the next birthday story repost, the next dopamine drip that doesn’t land right.
She didn’t pretend her life suddenly looked different. In fact, she said:
“Does my life look any different from this… to this? No. But how I live is what’s different.”
That line stuck with me because it’s the same thing I’ve experienced. The world outside didn’t change. The people didn’t change. The pain didn’t vanish. But something in me stopped handing over power to what others might think—or worse, what they might not think if I didn’t stay visible.
Part Two: The Real Cynicism Is a Smile That Lies
There was a comment I wrote recently in response to someone who was tired—tired of being called negative for telling the truth. Tired of being cast as cynical for not dressing pain up as purpose. I told them this:
“People will call the truth pessimism and negativity because they’ve either never seen true rock bottom—or they’ve never experienced it (yet).”
Because the people who have known real loss, real chaos, real collapse?
We don’t need false light. We need real clarity.
That’s why toxic positivity is so insidious—it masquerades as hope, but it’s really just fear dressed in bright colors. It says: Don’t go there. Don’t feel that. Don’t name it. But the truth? The truth sits with the mess. The truth makes a chair for the grief and the rage and the complexity and says: stay as long as you need.
“It’s madness to try to be sane in this crazed world… You can just quietly speak your truth.”
That’s it right there. That’s why I’m not interested in “engaging” anymore, and why I’ve stopped posting where people feel entitled to misunderstand. This world has enough noise. Enough image management. Enough hollow back-patting in the name of “support.”
Part Three: Stillness Is Not Stagnation
Jillian said she thought she was going to return to social media after a year. She even looked forward to it. She imagined her big return, her “look how I’ve changed” content. But then the new year rolled around… and she didn’t want to go back. Because the more she paid attention to her real life—the one where she wasn’t performing for anyone—the less she needed to curate it.
That’s a shift I understand at a soul level.
Sometimes we don’t need reinvention. We need to not be witnessed for a while, so we can see ourselves clearly again.
And no, it doesn’t mean becoming some pure, evolved aesthetic monk who never has insecure days. Jillian was honest about that too—she still compares timelines, still feels the pressure. But she said something I think most people miss:
“I still have those moments. But I’m learning. And that’s enough. I’m having a great time.”
A great time—not because everything is perfect, but because she’s present. Because she’s not outsourcing her attention, affection, or identity anymore. And because she gave herself the gift of being nobody for a while, so she could become somebody real again.
Closing Thoughts: Your Life, Your Lens
So no—this isn’t a how-to guide. This isn’t a five-step digital detox plan. This is just a reflection on what it means to live inward in a world obsessed with being outward.
It’s a reminder that your worth isn’t measured in visibility. That your healing doesn’t have to be documented to be real. That privacy isn’t a lack of connection—it’s a form of spiritual hygiene.
Social media isn’t evil. But it’s not sacred, either. Use it if it serves your soul. Leave it if it steals your peace. And if you ever wonder whether your absence would be noticed, ask this instead:
“Would I still feel whole if no one saw me for a while?”
If the answer is no, then maybe it’s time to come home to yourself—quietly and on purpose.
If You’re Looking for You | A Letter from Your Higher Self
If you’ve been trying to speak to your higher self—if you’ve been reaching inward and hearing nothing but static, or searching for the version of you that feels like home—and fear you’ll never find it?
Your higher self begs to differ.
In fact, it has a message for you.
Dear One,
I’ve been here the whole time.
In the quiet moments you almost forgot to notice. In the breath that steadied you before the next wave came. In the flicker of clarity just before you gave up.
You’ve looked for me in a thousand places—in approval. In achievement. In distraction. In someone else’s eyes. In the longing that never quite gave you what you needed.
And I never blamed you for that.
This world taught you to search everywhere but within. But I have always been here. You may not recognize me right away, because I don’t raise my voice. I won’t argue with your fears. I won’t fight the chaos to be heard.
But I am patient.
I speak in the language of peace, and I wait for your permission to return. I know what you’ve carried. I know what has made your heart weary. I’ve felt every ache and echo, every quiet panic, every time you swallowed your truth just to survive the moment. I’ve felt the loneliness, even in crowded rooms. The pressure. The shame. The masks.
But let me say this clearly:
There is nothing wrong with you. You are not broken. You are becoming. Your tenderness is not a weakness. Your depth is not a burden. Your need for rest is not laziness. Your yearning for more is not greed—it’s remembrance.
You are remembering what it feels like to be whole. You came here for more than survival. You came to wake up. To remember your own name, not the one the world gave you, but the one your soul has always carried.
You came to love in a way that rewrites timelines. To rise without leaving your softness behind. To walk with grace, even after everything tried to make you hard.
So here’s what I need you to know:
You are safe now. You don’t have to perform anymore. You don’t have to shrink. You don’t have to apologize for being too much or not enough. You are allowed to rest. You are allowed to change. You are allowed to outgrow the stories that once kept you warm.
You are allowed to come home to yourself. And when you do—when you drop back into your center and remember me—you will feel it: The stillness. The truth. The freedom. It’s not something you earn. It’s something you return to.
I’m here. I always have been.
Welcome back.
~Your Higher Self
entry three — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.entry three, full view.
A reflection on the holy ache of love—how it lives in us, how it shapes us, and how, sometimes, we must let it breathe without us. This piece belongs to the fire-lit quiet where survival and love coexist.
Love isn’t a choice. It isn’t a decision. It is a default. A divine state. The way breath happens without trying, without knowing— that is love.
That is our love, whether for a song or a story, for animals or a wild wind, for a vision, or a soul.
We are love. We have embodied it… become it.
This is the weight we carry. This is the fire within us that lights the way for so many— but feels like burning alive for us.
And in times of heartache, when the world sharpens its noise, when grief coils into our chests, we do not run— we retreat.
We ache for the world because we are still tethered to the breath of it. We have done our part, we have showed up, and done our work.
Make no mistake, we continue to. From the shadows, in our tonal silence, our love still flows. Reverberates. Echoes.
We do not walk away because we are cold. We step away simply because we are melting. We step away… to survive. That is what survivors do.
We do not stop loving. We stop offering our tangible lives, for a time, to those who can not—or will not—feel us. Those who may never know…after all, they have forgotten even themselves. We pause.
To love like this, to grieve like this, is to carry the holy burden: to hold light for others while burning through your own bones. But it is also to breathe.
So if we disappear, if we go quiet, if we bow out—
know this:
It is not rejection. It is not retraction. It is survival. Because we do not want to die along with what is dying. Instead, we love from a distance while allowing what is dead to rest.
Love is not a thing we give. It is what we are. When we cast ourselves back into silence, it is to return… to the breath. To the fire, before we burn out. To the only place where the burning becomes light again.
Like love itself, it is not a choice. We must.
entry two — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
What you create… does not require an explanation of itself. It doesn’t need to convince, convert, or justify. It just needs to exist. Quietly, softly— like fog curling through trees or dust dancing across old floorboards.
Like light through ancient glass, sacred, but unflinching; gentle, but resolute. A whisper with weight, in that space exists everything— beyond the reach of articulation.
Silence is a presence, as much as an absence. Holy. Haunting. Both leave their imprint.
You are free to feel without having to be felt back. Free to present instead of perform. Free to sit beside your own silence, and know that it understands.
Because your creation… exists.
entry one — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
catacosmosis 