It’s the end of the world as we know it…and I do not, in fact, feel fine.
I just heard that song on the radio. It inspired introspection, which is more than I can say for most current popular radio. Bill, Peter, Michael and Mike may have felt fine when the world ended in 1987—but 2025’s version? It’s a different beast entirely.
I’m not disassociating to the beat of their catchy chorus. No chorus, really…
No matter what music I play, what books I lose myself in, or how many hours I spend painting, collaging, shooting and processing images, praying, meditating, or absorbing art—I can’t not pay attention.
It’s like God has made it impossible for me to look away.
No matter how many creative rabbit holes I disappear into, my soul keeps returning to the same painful truth: I still see the world clearly. And I still care.
I’ve already finished 31 books this year. Some I began a year ago and it’s taken that long to finish them, but still. I’ve read a lot this year (speaking of which, what are you reading? Here’s my list, if you’d like some suggestions…).
I’ve listen to over 200 albums, all told (2.717 tracks, according to LastFM).
Watched 50+ documentaries—science, history, mythology, medicine, art, folklore, theology, religion, all sorts (according to my watch history on Amazon and YouTube).
But no matter what I consume or create throughout these days and nights spent in the studio or my own den or bedroom, my heart always circles back to the chaos we’re living in.
The blame shifting. The addiction and obsession and lack of self-control. The emotional manipulation—by the media, by governments, by people you thought you could trust.
The hatred. The division. The apathy.
Even the weather feels weaponized now—whether by nature or man, we may never know. And most days? It feels like we’re collapsing. Not just politically or economically—but spiritually.
When children’s deaths are celebrated, when cruelty trends, when people are told, “it’s OK to mask your real pain by pretending to be someone you’re really not,” and/or real pain is ignored in favor of performance and profit…how do you call that anything but collapse?
And still…I feel their pain, too.
The ones lashing out. The ones clinging to false power. Even the ones I disagree with or who’ve attacked me—and the ones in real life who wish I would “just die”—I can feel the torment beneath their rage. Because it takes serious misdirected conditioning and trauma to become someone who cheers for suffering.
I know what it is. I know myself and so many others have been purposely called to employ it. “Charged” with it, if you will. But I also understand now that that number is mighty small.
It’s empathy.
It’s spiritual discernment.
It’s energy.
And it’s real. That’s the loudest truth in me. I preach it, in comments and voiceovers and prose, and I practice it through my actions. I continue to do this, even if it makes me seem “crazy” to a world that calls numbness normal (and to some, that makes me a “glutton for punishment”).
I cry with strangers on the internet more than I ever admit. Sometimes when I log on just to post art or check an email, I’m immediately met with headlines about another shooting, another suicide, another senseless death. And still, I pray. Because Spirit won’t let me stop seeing—and won’t let me stop loving, either.
Prayer isn’t useless. Many feel that it is, and I understand why. But they’re wrong. Prayer isn’t useless—especially not when more than one person is praying.
It creates ripples. It fuels the art, the writing, the stillness, the hope. It’s a frequency of resistance that can’t be monetized or hijacked.
And maybe, as the world is in an overwhelming energy of doubt, fear, and anger, that’s the most powerful rebellion of all right now: to stay in the vibration of love, even when everything begs you to sink into rage or despair.
So if you’re not feeling fine either—but you’re still holding on to your humanity, still radiating clarity, still praying or creating or showing up gently?
You’re not alone.
There’s sacred clarity in this discomfort. Keep not-feeling-fine. It means you’re still awake. And just in case nobody’s said it today:
I love you. I’d like to bring goodness into your world. I’m sending it out to you whether you like it, or me, or not. I hope you’ll receive it.
entry ten — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), a fading ember of late summer—graceful even in decay, still holding the shape of sunlight after the bloom has passed. Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (A10PRO), Mextures (personalized texture formula: MEZPZZC), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
My mother always told me, in every possible circumstance a child might ever need encouragement, “Do your best, and leave the rest. It’ll all come right some day or night.”
It was a line from “Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell.”
She was a third grade teacher, a grammar Nazi, and a mother trying her damndest to connect with me and, well, do her best.
And, as ornery and difficult a young person as I could often be, she never knew that I believed her…
…even when I forgot I did.
Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), a fading ember of late summer—graceful even in decay, still holding the shape of sunlight after the bloom has passed. Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (A10PRO), Mextures (personalized texture formula: MEZPZZC), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
There was so much distance between us as I struggled through high school with her overbearing “sin obsessed” guidance, and she struggled to save my soul.
Even when the days were so long, when they bled into each other, and when the nights felt like punishments I hadn’t earned, as her brain and body were swallowed by Alzheimer’s.
Even when the thread broke, or maybe I cut it, when she died…I honored and nursed a clean, holy wound in the shape of freedom for both of us, from past grievances, from debts yet unpaid, from fear, from tension, from aching hearts and confused minds and the evils of that horrific disease.
Still, that line stayed, like a soft breath. Like a healing balm. Like the part of her that couldn’t leave, because it lived in me.
Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), a fading ember of late summer—graceful even in decay, still holding the shape of sunlight after the bloom has passed. Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (A10PRO), Mextures (personalized texture formula: MEZPZZC), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
Do your best. Not more than that. Not perfection. Just presence. I tried, truly.
Leave the rest… The story. The tragedy. The one who couldn’t stay.
entry nine — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
Weevil (Meibomeus musculus), a quiet laborer of the forest and the fields…carrying the weight of being, petal by petal. Vision: Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S. Tools: VSCO (KP3), Mextures (personalized texture formula: QBHASZK), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
There is a kind of presence that doesn’t announce itself.
No sound. No shimmer. No need to be noticed. Just a body doing what it does.
Clinging to a petal, breathing the moment, belonging to the quiet. Sometimes, that is the work.
Not saving, not proving. Just being.
And somehow…it shifts the entire forest, the entire field.
For some souls, there is a burden in being seen —not the fear of visibility, but the ache of being misread when presence itself was the offering.
entry eight — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
Bicolor Bush Clover (Lespedeza bicolor), a humble member of the wild clover family. Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (HB3 PRO), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
Zooming in, pulling back, reframing… …it’s the practice of shifting perspectives. Cropping is discernment.
It’s important in photography, and in life.
Focusing closely. Examining the details. Leaning into the moment. Studying the layers. Trying different angles— then pulling back to take in the whole.
I do this with my art, my edits, my healing… …and my priorities.
Bicolor Bush Clover (Lespedeza bicolor), a humble member of the wild clover family. Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (HB3 PRO), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).
Cropping, and discernment. Both are framing what matters— letting the noise blur into the background.
It’s not just a gift, not just a tool. It’s a process.
With practice, it teaches clarity through choice. Over time, it becomes discernment embodied.
Cropping alters perspective. It is learning to see again…
…as many times as it takes to actualize the vision.
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.
Today, one rode with us on the windshield of the Jeep as we were making our way back to the pavement after a beautiful morning and early afternoon on the wildlife management area and Flagg Mountain. I became, as always, overly excited and tried to get some photos with both my macro lens and my phone’s broken camera as we bounced along, eventually having my partner stop in the middle of the road…but, that didn’t help. The glass made it difficult to get any really good photos.
Photos of The Red-Banded Hairstreak butterfly (Calycopis Cecrops) I took with my broken iPhone camera, edited using Lightroom Mobile and VSCO.
But, that’s not the point of this post.
The Red-Banded Hairstreak butterfly’s range includes the Southeast United States, Florida and Texas. It can often be found in overgrown fields, woodland edges and coastal hammocks. It has a wing spread of around 0.75″ – 1.0″, and its host plants are wax myrtles, crotons, oaks, and sumacs. Its lifespan, from egg to death, is only about one and a half months. Egg stage, around five days. Caterpillar stage, around three weeks. Chrysalis stage, around two weeks. And the adult butterfly stage? The one we shared a moment of, with this guy? Only around one week.
ONE. WEEK.
That brief, butterfly moment? How special is it that we got to spend a fraction of its very short (from human perspective) lifespan with it? It wasn’t just a brief, or even rare, moment—it was a sacred one. It was a moment with a kind of fleeting, quiet grace that most people completely miss because they’re too busy chasing permanence.
After we returned home, as I was soaking in an epsom salts and Celtic sea salt bath to soothe an injury I’ve been nursing, I considered that reality. That moment. I saw it. I felt it. And I honored it with my heart wide open as I texted my partner to see if he had noticed the depth of it, or if it was just me being “weird” again.
“Maybe, to some,” he said in response. “But that’s the deepest kind of wisdom. ❤️”
Yes. Yes, I suppose so. “Soul,” my grandmother would say when I was a child. “That’s the only thing people mean when they act like there is something the matter with you getting excited about bugs and things. And they act that way because they haven’t met their own (soul).” I never understood. Not really. Today, her words really clicked into place.
The world is blind in so many ways. It races past the miracle of a butterfly with a week to live—a week!—and doesn’t even flinch. But I did notice. I always do, whether it’s a cool insect or critter, a beautiful bloom or even just a bud, a spiderweb covered in dew, every mushroom I see… That is why I am obsessed with (and pretty much only shoot) macro photography.
When I “notice,” I shriek in excitement and audibly let whoever is around me know, “look at that! That is so cool/beautiful! That’s a picture!” And there I go, shooting and shooting and shooting. Today, I saw myself in that process. I saw the life that rode with us. I felt the presence of something so brief and so beautiful, and instead of dismissing it as nothing, I turned it into everything.
My message to my partner? It was not just a sweet text about our butterfly moment—it was a love letter to awareness itself. I’ve made peace with being the “weird one,” the “brainless, goofy, up in the clouds one,” the one with “too many feelings.” Because the truth is, I’m the one who sees. Who feels. Who remembers what most people never even notice.
Photos of The Red-Banded Hairstreak butterfly (Calycopis Cecrops) I took with my Lumix GX-7 and Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit lens, edited using Lightroom Mobile and VSCO.
That butterfly chose us, in a way. That’s what moments like this always feel like to me, because I see them—every single one—as such an enormous blessing. And that moment—it’s proof that my soul is aligned with what matters, which is what I have strived for all my life, amidst all the noise about so many materialistic things that don’t matter at all.
The recognition of that makes me feel a sort of deep sadness for the world. I suppose it is compassion, not despair. Because people like me are “exactly what the world is starving for, even if it doesn’t know it yet.” That’s what Master Roshi used to encourage me with, day in and day out.
You don’t need a brain to comprehend what I am saying in this post.
You need a heart, and to understand its language. But if you look around you, so few do. That’s the sickness. The people who know and love me will, at most, say something like, “there she goes, noticing again.” But most of the people who always teased me with comments like, “Christy, your name should be Debbie—drowning Debbie, drowning in the deep when nothing really matters that much,” are suffering from that sickness.
I’ve never said much of anything in response to those kind of judgments, but as I’ve become more self-aware than ever before (in the last year and a half or so, since the culmination of all the death), I am not at all unwilling to tell you exactly what goes through my mind as I consider what would I hear from them about this special butterfly experience:
“Nothing matters? Ok. And the only reason nothing matters to people who would say things like this in response to such a cool experience is because they choose to completely overlook everything that is truly important. I bet if that butterfly was printed on a $300 Gucci T-Shirt or $2000 designer bag, it would mean everything in the world to them. Many might even covet it, if it was the latest trend and they couldn’t get their hands on it.”
You see, the world has trained people to value symbols of beauty or meaning only when they’re marketed, branded, and price-tagged—while ignoring the actual beauty of the world freely offered right in front of them. A butterfly, alive for maybe a week, becomes sacred only when it’s stamped on a luxury item. But, when it’s breathing and fluttering on a windshield, resting and traveling along with them, sharing a brief moment of its brief but still important life with them, it’s invisible. That’s spiritual poverty masquerading as sophistication.
And that “Drowning Debbie” insult? That’s projection in its purest form. I’m never drowning—I’m diving. Exploring the deep. Feeling my way through the marrow of existence while the people judging me for it are too afraid to even dip a toe in. People like that ridicule what they fear. They mock what they don’t have the emotional bandwidth to hold. I become a mirror, and instead of looking in and considering the reflection, they dislike (sometimes hate) me and smash me for it.
But here’s the truth: nothing doesn’t matter.
Everything matters, and I’ve known that since I was born. Throughout my life, I have refused to let anyone completely insult, or beat, that out of me. It’s why I feel so deeply. Why I mourn so deeply—even the butterfly, even at the mere mention that one day death will come. It’s why I see God in the dirt and the dew and the wings and the weeds. It’s why I value every detail, and every moment.
If you are like me, you are not broken, either—you’re attuned. You’ve learned how to be both grounded and responsible while still holding, living from, and living through a childlike wonder. You’re not weird. You’re balanced. Let the world roll its eyes if it wants to.
Souls like ours are the reason anything sacred still survives. So keep bearing witness to what’s holy. Keep pointing out the “unimportant things” that live in the deep and in the details—loudly, boldly, and with all the reverence they deserve.
Enjoy every moment to its fullest, because every moment—and every life—is a blessing.
This post is about the experience of becoming and how people like me don’t just become. We heal differently. We become differently. And what we become is not the same entity alone that other people become. It is also about turning the process of becoming, and what we’ve become, into something that can help other people.
I’ve already lived my closing statement regarding my past, and past versions of me: caregiver me, grief-stricken and confusion-swallowed me, nervous-system-destroyed me, broken-hearted me. I’ve already processed it all, and to the degree that the surface of society would claim is “healing,” I have healed from all of those wounds. Where I’m at now is more about finding some level of understanding within myself about it so that I can freely move in this new reality.
Perhaps you are, too. Perhaps these thoughts will resonate.
A voice for the ones still moving through the ashes, learning how to carry the light again. Not a performance. Just a remembering.
Where This Post Began
A therapist recently responded to a comment I left on someone else’s post, suggesting that my perspective on healing was dangerous because it implied I was “holding on.” But the issue is, this so-called therapist seemed anchored in a kind of magical thinking—one that treats healing as purely cognitive, divorced from the soul.
What I’m doing, in continuing to reflect on and write about the past, isn’t obsession or fixation. It’s alchemical integration. I’m not stuck in, or on, the past—I’m extracting its essence, transmuting it into something meaningful. I’m not tethered to the past or to any specific future. I’m reducing the pain (specifically, the grief) to ash and distilling what’s left into wisdom.
Where I Am
I have lived my closing statement, but this current stasis is the cooling of the metal. It is the tempering of my sword. The world, especially those who fear their own depth, love to accuse people like me of not letting go, but what they don’t understand is that depth doesn’t simply move on. It transforms, and transformation takes time.
People like me don’t drop things and walk away. People like me sit in the dark, stare at the bones, and we don’t rise until the soul is reclaimed. We already did the courageous part when we cut the cord on past versions of ourselves, when we walked away from who we were and we didn’t go back to the same mindsets and/or behaviors, and now we do the sacred part: finishing the burning of the frayed ends.
The world and the people in it can’t and won’t give us the answers, but spirit can, and it does. In my case, my higher self already knows those answers, which is why I keep circling back. It is not to relive the story, but to complete the metamorphosis, and I am completing it slowly, quietly, and surely. I’m not looping, I’m mining, and eventually the tunnel gives way to the sky.
So, yes, I keep listening and keep asking and keep letting it all rise in layers and fall away in layers. That’s how I become untouchable rather than hardened. Not cold, but fully known to myself. Every shadow named, every chord resolved. So, when I pick up my camera or my brush or my pen again, even when I’m still in the gray, it’s my gray. It’s not residue from the storm. It’s just my own palette, freely chosen.
And what if knowing that to the depth that I do know and understand it in and of itself is the healing? What if it’s now about incorporating that into my work, my daily life? That’s what the gurus would teach. The reality is that this is the already-become version of me, the one that is just learning now how to outwardly be who I am again.
It can be really confusing and hard at times, because I don’t really care for anybody to see it but me, or to live it with me. But, I have a calling to share the knowledge that these experiences and lessons have all been forged and transformed into with those who still need guidance, those who feel lost or don’t know how to get there in their own story.
Maybe, in that way, I’m already living it exactly the way I’m supposed to be—which is the opposite of holding on. It is moving forward, and actively so. What I’ve already become and what I’m doing now isn’t trying to get there. It’s simply learning how to inhabit the skin of the self I’ve already become.
Snake Skin & Sacred Silence
It’s like when a snake sheds its old skin, right? That all too common metaphor in the self-help teachings, except not taught exactly correctly by those who live in the land of cognitive dissonance. We’ve all heard the analogy. But what they leave out is this:
The snake doesn’t slither away a different animal. It just finally fits itself again. It’s not behind. It’s not broken. It’s not lost. It’s just adjusting its eyes to the light after a very long night.
That tension I feel, for example—the not caring if anyone sees it but also feeling called to express it, is exactly the tension of that same sort of integration. I don’t want to perform and I don’t owe anyone a performance. I’m not required to turn my healing into a product or a movement or a spectacle, but I find that certain parts of my soul now long to speak—not to be seen but to be heard by the air, witnessed by the world because that is how others, be it few or many, may complete their flight.
It doesn’t matter how it shows up, just that it does. That’s the quiet magic of true healing. It doesn’t always announce itself with trumpets. Sometimes it just takes root in the subtle, in the choice to write or shoot or paint anyway, or to rest anyway. To let the past fall like leaves from a tree that has already decided it will bloom again. The more I trust that, the more I feel the weight of all of it trying to lift from my shoulders, and the more effortless and sacred and unburdened the expressions feel—not because it’s for anyone, but because it is from the version of me who no longer needs anyone’s permission to exist in peace.
As I consider this, I imagine that when the snake sheds that old skin, that fresh layer is a little tight to start with, and he or she has to move around a little bit before they stop feeling the newness of the skin and forgets that the skin is even there. It is not until then that he or she can “just flow.”
At first, it’s tight, sensitive, unfamiliar, maybe even a little raw. And it’s not that the snake doubts that it’s still a snake, it just doesn’t quite know how to move in this new texture yet. The old skin? It had cracks and stretch and scars that shaped how it slid through the world, but this new skin is smooth and untested, a little too quiet maybe, after all the noise. It doesn’t yet carry the scent of battles survived or boundaries reclaimed.
And so the snake doesn’t rush, it moves slowly, tentatively. It reacquaints itself with the world and brushes against the grass, slinks over warm rock, and lets the breeze remind it what it is. And eventually, without even noticing the moment it happened, the new skin stops feeling new at all.
Perhaps that’s where I am. I’ve shed it—the past self, the old patterns, the story that asked me to carry the burden for me and everybody else. That skin is gone, but my soul, fresh and luminous, still remembers the weight. It still walks a little cautiously, still checks the mirror to see if the ghost is gone. And that’s okay. It will all continue to fade—the memories, the sting, the need to brace.
Regardless, I don’t need to rush to feel normal. The new normal is better: it’s mine, and it will fit me perfectly as soon as I stop noticing the seams. So I will keep slithering forward like the snake, not outgrowing the past, but growing into my grace.
Liminal Living: When Healing Isn’t the End
If what I’ve written in this post doesn’t only make sense, but resonates with you, then perhaps you are like me. To clarify, what I’m describing is not the delusion of an underachiever or the confusion of a drifter. It’s the rare and sacred awareness of a soul on sabbatical. Perhaps that’s what you are, at the core, or where you find yourself, too—actively healing or already healed, you “get” what I’m trying to express.
I have this idea that this lifetime was always meant to be more receptive than productive for many of us. We are not only asked but guided by some higher power to observe more than to act, and in any sense, that is not laziness. It is spiritual design. So let me reflect it back to you, the way that I see it in myself:
You’ve worked; in fact, you may have worked your inner entire being to the bone (especially in the case of being a caregiver), but your work hasn’t been for the world’s applause. It’s been for God, and for those you have privately loved and walked home. You’ve succeeded, but not in the ways that capitalism or social media would define it. You’ve succeeded in remaining intact, soul first, and that’s harder than any business model, trust fund, or influencer empire.
So then, after all of this misunderstood work you’ve done, what if your entire incarnation was never meant to be a linear hero’s journey with a trophy at the end? What if it was always supposed to be a kind of spiritual exile into experience, into solitude, into the deep?
My whole life has taught me this paradox of success. Until my thirties, I accomplished everything I set out to, but the twist was that version of success was based on who I was before I broke open—before I was touched by grief, by God, by the reality of soul. And since then, it’s not that nothing has worked, it’s that none of it was supposed to because it wasn’t aligned with my true purpose anymore. The breakdowns in the in-between were ordinations. They are when the sabbatical started, and I’ve been in it ever since.
I’ve studied trauma, addiction, mental health, caregiving, grief, the spiritual path, mystical truths, the rise and fall of empires—all from the inside out. Not just from books, but from experience. Lived experience. I didn’t just learn lessons. I became a living vessel for them.
So perhaps, if you have experienced this too, this life may not have been given to you to contribute in a traditional sense. It may have been given to you to remember, to watch, to document, to feel what others refuse to feel, to name what others have no language for, to become whole so that others might not feel so broken. That’s a calling. It’s a high one, a thankless one, and a divinely protected one.
Perhaps your soul contract is about witnessing, absorbing, and transmuting rather than performing, earning, or hustling. The universe covered your rent while you enrolled in the deepest, most painful university there is: Earth School, Shadow Division. And when you say it like that, what if you’ve already graduated with honors?
So what now? Maybe your sabbatical is still in effect. Maybe you’re in the writing-up-the-thesis phase. Maybe you’re transitioning into the integration era, where your work becomes not doing something, but being something: a lighthouse, a record keeper, a spiritual elder.
You don’t owe the world your labor. You owe your soul your peace, and that is only found in living your purpose. If this entire life was given for that alone, then it was enough. So maybe we’re right that this life may have been designed for this, and that the ones judging from the sidelines are still on page five, while we’ve been writing in the margins of the final chapter.
Becoming Whole in the Quiet
Ultimately, the point of this post is to share the shape of a real, lived journey—to reach those who may be living it without realizing it has a name, and to remind those walking something similar that they are not alone.
If any part of this speaks to you—if you see yourself anywhere in these words—I leave you with this:
Don’t doubt the divine logic of your path just because others can’t read it.
You’re not lost. You’re just not supposed to be “found” in a way this world understands.
If you feel stuck or missing the flow, let it be quiet right now, if that’s what it is.
Let the pages be blank. Sometimes blank pages aren’t empty. They’re pregnant—with rest, with closure, with whatever the truth the next chapter needs is.
And when you’re ready, the world will be here. When you’re not ready, the world will still be here, because this is still part of the story…and you’re still writing it.
There’s a quiet kind of healing that happens when no one is watching. It doesn’t perform. It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t need a platform. That is where I was when I was away—not just from social media, but from this space and this blog.
A young woman named Jillian, in a YouTube video I stumbled across recently, captured this so simply and so beautifully: what life looks and feels like when you’ve stepped away from social media—and stayed away long enough to actually notice the difference. What struck me most, though, was hearing her perspective as someone going through this process for the first time.
It’s lived in my thoughts and I’ve contemplated this post ever since. It was so interesting to me because I’ve taken breaks from the internet many times over the past two decades, always for the same reasons—and always with this same depth of understanding about the psychology of it, and why those breaks were necessary.
This most recent (and longest) season of removal hit different. After the last caregiving stretch, after Roshi Ralph’s death, after the silence that came when others (who had no real understanding of the compound caregiving and loss I’d just lived through—and in many cases, never will) rushed in with attacks and projections and judgments, as if my grief was theirs to dissect—I pulled all the way back. And I’ve stayed back.
I’ve stayed away from social media not because I needed a break, but because I reached the point where it just doesn’t matter to me. The truth is, it never really did. The performance of it all—the curated personas, the noise, the performative alliances, the hollow outrage, the likes-as-validation—means less than nothing. I never played the game anyway, and when I tried to be real, I was punished for it—called out for oversharing instead of respected for being honest. So now, I simply choose not to engage.
That’s the decision, and it’s permanent. I stick to my own space—my blog(s)—now. I share some of my creative work on YouTube and Instagram, but I don’t engage socially. The work is there for anyone who wishes to enjoy it, just like my writing: simply because I’ve made it—and it feels like a waste to let it collect digital dust on my hard drive or memory cards. That’s it.
And what I’ve learned—what I’ve earned—is this:
Own your own thoughts. Own your own opinions. Stop looking to the crowd to inform you of what you feel, believe, or need. If you want to share your truth, explore your voice, or process your experience—do it in your own space. Even if that space is digital.
Quiet is not the same as silent. Solitude is not absence. Privacy is not erasure. And just because the crowd isn’t clapping doesn’t mean the work isn’t working—or that it’s not sacred, necessary, and deeply alive.
A hike on Flagg Mountain.Flagg Mountain is part of Weogufka State Forest.My favorite place in these woods……is where you’ll find my favorite tree (a post all about her is coming soon).A few photos from where I’ve been this past year, instead of online…
Mirrors, Screens, and Silent Knowing: Personal Reflections after Watching Jillian’s Journey
Part One: The Slowness That Saves You
Jillian talked about how, in the silence of that first year offline, she realized she wasn’t who she thought she was. That her sense of self had been filtered through algorithms and aesthetics for so long that she didn’t know what parts were her and what parts were just performance.
She said she didn’t want to be a cottagecore girl, or a vanilla-beach-aesthetic girl, or even a tomato queen—she just wanted to be Jillian. And that’s what life offline gave her space to rediscover: the Jillian aesthetic. Not a genre. Not a trend. A person.
That kind of reclamation doesn’t happen in front of a ring light. It happens when you’re still. When the feedback loop breaks. When your body and soul finally stop bracing for the next notification, the next birthday story repost, the next dopamine drip that doesn’t land right.
She didn’t pretend her life suddenly looked different. In fact, she said:
“Does my life look any different from this… to this? No. But how I live is what’s different.”
That line stuck with me because it’s the same thing I’ve experienced. The world outside didn’t change. The people didn’t change. The pain didn’t vanish. But something in me stopped handing over power to what others might think—or worse, what they might not think if I didn’t stay visible.
Part Two: The Real Cynicism Is a Smile That Lies
There was a comment I wrote recently in response to someone who was tired—tired of being called negative for telling the truth. Tired of being cast as cynical for not dressing pain up as purpose. I told them this:
“People will call the truth pessimism and negativity because they’ve either never seen true rock bottom—or they’ve never experienced it (yet).”
Because the people who have known real loss, real chaos, real collapse?
We don’t need false light. We need real clarity.
That’s why toxic positivity is so insidious—it masquerades as hope, but it’s really just fear dressed in bright colors. It says: Don’t go there. Don’t feel that. Don’t name it. But the truth? The truth sits with the mess. The truth makes a chair for the grief and the rage and the complexity and says: stay as long as you need.
“It’s madness to try to be sane in this crazed world… You can just quietly speak your truth.”
That’s it right there. That’s why I’m not interested in “engaging” anymore, and why I’ve stopped posting where people feel entitled to misunderstand. This world has enough noise. Enough image management. Enough hollow back-patting in the name of “support.”
Part Three: Stillness Is Not Stagnation
Jillian said she thought she was going to return to social media after a year. She even looked forward to it. She imagined her big return, her “look how I’ve changed” content. But then the new year rolled around… and she didn’t want to go back. Because the more she paid attention to her real life—the one where she wasn’t performing for anyone—the less she needed to curate it.
That’s a shift I understand at a soul level.
Sometimes we don’t need reinvention. We need to not be witnessed for a while, so we can see ourselves clearly again.
And no, it doesn’t mean becoming some pure, evolved aesthetic monk who never has insecure days. Jillian was honest about that too—she still compares timelines, still feels the pressure. But she said something I think most people miss:
“I still have those moments. But I’m learning. And that’s enough. I’m having a great time.”
A great time—not because everything is perfect, but because she’s present. Because she’s not outsourcing her attention, affection, or identity anymore. And because she gave herself the gift of being nobody for a while, so she could become somebody real again.
Closing Thoughts: Your Life, Your Lens
So no—this isn’t a how-to guide. This isn’t a five-step digital detox plan. This is just a reflection on what it means to live inward in a world obsessed with being outward.
It’s a reminder that your worth isn’t measured in visibility. That your healing doesn’t have to be documented to be real. That privacy isn’t a lack of connection—it’s a form of spiritual hygiene.
Social media isn’t evil. But it’s not sacred, either. Use it if it serves your soul. Leave it if it steals your peace. And if you ever wonder whether your absence would be noticed, ask this instead:
“Would I still feel whole if no one saw me for a while?”
If the answer is no, then maybe it’s time to come home to yourself—quietly and on purpose.
catacosmosis 