Tag: VSCO Recipe

  • Seeing Red.

    Seeing Red.

    entry four — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.

    I used to think “seeing red” meant I was losing it.

    Rage. Shame. Fury so old it felt eternal—like I was born with it burning.

    I have learned that is not always true. I have witnessed that sometimes, it blooms.

    Recipe below. Watermarked in Lightroom.

    Not in fists. Not in voice. Not in overwhelming memories.

    In the woods, on a soft stem I almost missed.

    No thunder. No soundtrack. Just the quiet permission to stop and look again.

    Recipe below. Watermarked in Lightroom.

    It didn’t demand to be captured. It didn’t beg to be picked. It just was.

    This star-shaped wound of a flower, humming its red into the green—not angry, not hiding, not burning just to survive.

    Just be-ing.

    Recipe below. Watermarked in Lightroom.

    I thought, “maybe that’s all any of us need now.”

    Not vengeance. Not closure. Just the knowing that beauty still rises where no one’s watching.

    That peace can wear red and still be holy.


    “Seeing Red” Recipe (same for each photo in this series)

    Be mindful.

    Observe.

    You might catch a glimpse of the peace behind the red you see, too.

    xo,

    c.

  • Breath.

    Breath.

    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.
  • Presence.

    Presence.

    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.