Category: Big Thoughts
Sunday, Nov 23, 2025 | Art, Big Thoughts, Confessions, Library, Manifest, Meditation, Work, Writing |
What if you cherished yourself, I asked my reflection in the bathroom mirror at school, one day last month. It knocked me out.
I’ve been doing art therapy this fall with a new therapist. During our first session, I drew myself as two distinct bodies, each on one side of a river that flows between them, separates them. The one self sits in peaceful meditation, untroubled, calm, gently smiling, eyes closed, inward-looking but attuned, while the other self gazes at her, lying on her stomach on the river bank, also looking somewhat relaxed, dangling one hand in the river, but she’s frowning, her mind full of muddled thoughts, trying to let them go by placing them onto leaves that are floating by.
What I could express to the therapist was that I longed to be the peaceful self on the other side of the river. She could think clearly. She was untroubled by change. She represented an ever-ness.
The therapist wondered: What if you were the woman on the other side of the river? What would that be like?
I laughed. I couldn’t imagine it. If it tiptoed toward imagining it, I sensed that the muddled self would spoil the peace of that other self simply by attempting to unite them together. It was almost like whatever was contained over there, in that self, would be spoilt by exposure to the rest of me.
It reminded me of a habit I’ve had since childhood. I withhold whatever is most desired from myself. It’s difficult to convince myself to use something that will get used up. A favourite tea, for example, will stay in the box and I’ll brew a different flavour instead. I save things, hoard them. Others eat or consume them instead. Or I tuck away something that I want to enjoy, and never get it out again. I enjoy it by hiding it away. For example, as a child I would hide my Easter candy in my drawer, not sharing it with my brothers, yet never ultimately eating it myself. I could never find an occasion worthy of eating that special candy. Because if I’d eat it, it would be gone. Better to keep it till melted together and spoiled than enjoy it? Strange, right? Interesting. Curious.
Immediately after that vision in the bathroom mirror at school, I went back to the library and scribbled down these words in my notebook:
What if you were the woman on the other side of the river? What would you be like?
How would you treat yourself? What if you treated yourself like a previous vessel? A sacred vessel? An honoured presence?
What if I honoured my presence fully? What if I trusted myself? What if I could just write like it was normal life and not an existential crisis?
Okay, friends. That’s a big what if, but I’m going there. All week I’ve written like it was normal life. It’s been so enjoyable.
xo, Carrie
Tuesday, Nov 18, 2025 | Adventure, Art, Big Thoughts, Fire, Lists, Meditation, Peace, Source, Space, Spirit, Work, Writing |
Today is the first day that I’m not going into an elementary school (a library or a school office) in about three years. It’s wild to be out here and not in there. I’ll miss the kids in the library. I’ll miss them coming in and basking in the light of my attention. To thrive out here, I need to be sure that my attention pours onto someone else, something else, every day.
Why give yourself away? Because it returns to you, tenfold. What you give returns. So know what you’re giving, give with honesty, give what is true to your experience, and what you’d hope to receive.
Dear school library, thank you for re-tuning my focus. Thank you for healing my heart and mind.
At the library: I’ve learned better boundaries, I’ve learned the value of structure in trust-building, I’ve learned the importance of recognizing what’s holding me back (so often a blockage in my own mind), I’ve learned how to seek what I want. How to ask—wait, is this what I want? Or—how can I improve on this process? what’s not serving us? how can I set us all up for success? I know that I am part of a community, I am part of the larger world.
There are things that I don’t want to return to from my life and routines before this job.
Looking back, I see my own self-pity. I recognize a tendency toward self-inflicted martyrdom. If I could change anything about my past self, I would excise the self-pity. Tell yourself the truth! That’s what I say to myself often, when I hear myself tipping toward self-pity. I could pretend that it’s other people stopping me from speaking my mind; I could pretend that I have to work a “real” job because of financial concerns rather than it being a choice I’m making; I could pretend that I don’t have the time to write; I could pretend that an artist can’t be a “good person” and that’s why I don’t want to be an artist.
But I am an artist. Many people are, possibly even most people. (And why this obsession with being “good”? Still trying to figure that out.)
An artist is someone who seeks beauty and wants in some way to interpret it and preserve it and share it.
I’ve learned that it works just as well, if not better, to share my art with kids, to pin it to a bulletin board, to ask questions, to witness others who have found a voice in small part due to my being there to listen.
I’ve learned that it’s okay to want to publish—it’s one way a writer finds connection with the larger world, but it’s a way, not the only way, and that’s often confusing and the experience of publishing can feel really disconnected from the effort and play and experimentation that went into a project. So I like to think of projects differently.
I learned that every day there is the possibility that I will be connecting with someone else, in some way that feels meaningful to both of us. I hope for that, out here too.
Unconditional positive regard. I hope to walk with this into the world, into relationships, to the best of my ability, and when I can’t or when I struggle: box breathing, 5 breaths; a walk in the wind; music and watercolours; notebook, 5 minutes, what’s on your mind?; go to the gym; find a repetitive menial task; or cook a homemade meal and hope for lots of takers around the table.
xo, Carrie
Thursday, Oct 30, 2025 | Art, Big Thoughts, Drawing, Fall, Fire, Friends, Fun, Job, Library, Lists, Peace, Sleep, Source, Spirit, Work, Writing, Yoga |
This is a not going to be a polished post. I’ve been creating an inventory of my interests, needs, weak spots, strengths, etc., in order to articulate, or even just grasp or glimpse what I want to be doing with my days and hours — at this particular stage in my life, this time of aging and flux. So here is a list of goals, the aspirations that I am able to articulate and maybe, with hope and support and gentleness and time, move toward. I’m going to name this list as being things that I want, even though it makes me feel distinctly uncomfortable.
I want …
… a fine life
… relaxation and contentment
… ample rest, a quick and nourished mind
… sweat, adrenalin, endorphins, breath, balance, physical exertion, core strength
… treatment of pain, and ongoing healing for mind and body
… to model and recognize other’s choices that honour: presence, generative actions, creative play, fun and humour, healthy practices and routines
… strong rooted lasting friendships, to be a good friend (by listening, walking with, caring for, giving space to, allowing to be); to let my friends help me too, be honest with them, share my fears sometimes
… strong healthy bonds with my children and other family members, no matter my role (as mother, daughter, spouse, sister, etc.)
… to live with creative bursts without floating into self-indulgence and disconnection, without being self-serving
… to be someone people feel comfortable and happy spending time with; to put others at ease
… to inhabit and build inviting spaces where people get to be themselves, feel welcome to be relaxed, to come and go, rest, laugh, talk, eat good food (as at the cottage); cry, laugh; feel so held and loved—this is aspirational, but I’d love to be that person for others
… to conceive of, surrender to, and finish ambitious projects (like novels) – for the joy of discovery day by day, and for the sense of accomplishment when all the threads have been woven together; for therapeutic reasons, and to explore what’s underneath and otherwise invisible and unknown and mysterious within my soul and body and the collective life force, because it feels necessary and relieving and cleansing and satisfying and good, and because writing is my way in, the practice that I’ve practiced more than any other
… to not behave like a martyr or fixate on sacrifice; surrender is a different beast
xo, Carrie
PS The watercolour is my version of characters from The Day My Mom Came to Kindergarten, written by Maureen Fergus with illustrations by Mike Lowery, which I read to classrooms in September. Most every week, I add a new character to the library’s story-time bulletin board – from a book we’ve read the previous week. (See below.) This is a practice I’ll miss and be seeking to replace when I move on from the library job.
Wednesday, Oct 1, 2025 | Adventure, Big Thoughts, Driving, Job, Manifest, Meditation, Source, Space, Spirit, Work |
Leaving work, driving out of my school’s neighbourhood, I saw a woman walking, alone. She looked like she was walking for no particular reason, just because she wanted to. Envy. That’s what I felt. I wanted to be her. Instinctively, I tried to squash that feeling, crush it, shame it into disappearing; but like all feelings, envy is not bad or good in and of itself, it’s neutral, it exists, it’s information.
The woman was walking, alone, coming from a wooded trail, there was still a lot of afternoon left, the air was warm, the leaves on the trees sun-soaked. I’d already swerved swiftly, effortlessly into envy’s twin, self-pity. She’s so lucky, she looks so content and free, that’s not for me, I don’t have that kind of time. All of this happened — seeing her, feeling envy, swerving to self-pity, squashing down both — in approximately ten seconds while I was turning a corner to get onto the highway. I had decided to run errands between work and home, and my first stop would be the library, about a ten minute drive away. I was listening to a political podcast and quickly became distracted by an aggressive driver who tailed me onto the highway, then floored it to pass me. So I wasn’t thinking about the woman, or envy, or self-pity anymore, or not consciously.
But as I walked into the library, I thought, you could just go for a walk.
It was there for the taking — the very thing that had sparked my envy. There are trails near the library. I didn’t have to be anywhere in particular. I actually did have the time (self-pity wasn’t a reliable source of information; it rarely is). I could just go for a walk.
And I wanted to. I wanted to be outside, to see the trees and feel the sun’s heat on my hair, and hear the insects humming.
I wonder: without that flash of envy, would I have known that this was what I wanted?
Of course, it wasn’t simply about wanting to go for a walk. I wanted what she’d represented to me, what I’d projected onto her. In her ease, she looked free to me, content, autonomous, capable of giving herself time to enjoy this beautiful day. I wanted those things, and driving away from work, those things seemed inaccessible. But maybe those things were inaccessible precisely because I had not even known that I’d wanted them.
I was like a sleepwalker and envy was a jolt, a pinch, a pain, a mirror.
This seems a little messed up, now that I write it out. I’m sure there are other ways to identify my wants and needs, but the truth is that I don’t always know what I want or need. I often have no idea. My responsibilities as a mother are changing and I have more time, and I will fill that time mindlessly if I don’t know what I want. I am attempting to wake up in the middle of my life and in the process not become an asshole or a raging void or a restless narcissist or a frightened recluse. So I’m open to taking whatever prompts arrive.
I went for that walk. I walked and walked and walked — alone, for about an hour. My senses opened, my body relaxed, my mind softened. I had to remind myself continuously that everything was okay. It was okay to keep walking. You don’t have to be anywhere. You can walk a little further. It’s okay. No one needs you right now. You are free to do this. But those cues only deepened my contentment, because my inner voice was reassuring and kind, which is also what I want. I want an inner voice that gives me permission to enjoy my life.
On the way back, I said to myself, you should do this more often. But that didn’t sound reassuring or kind. A should do is not the same thing as a want to do. So I began to list alternative prompts. What do you want? What do you long for? What do you yearn to do? (These made me laugh, actually, they sounded more earnest than I was feeling.) What do you wish to do? What would you like to do?
Ah. What would you like to do?
That question sounds like an invitation to my ear. What would you like to do? I’m asking it now. I was asking it as I stared into space about half an hour ago. I picked up the travel mug of leftover coffee from work and came into my office, I sat down in my great aunt Alice’s tiny rocking chair, I opened this app and I began to write.
And now, I ask it again. What would you like to do? And will you do it? Will you tell yourself it is okay to do it?
xo, Carrie
Sunday, Sep 7, 2025 | Art, Big Thoughts, Confessions, Job, Library, Play, Sleep, Spirit, Work, Writing |
Today I am hardly doing anything right.
I left the library a few minutes later than I wanted to, the drive home is at least 15 minutes, plus I stopped to get gas (that was a good idea). I walked Rose when I got home. I took us further than usual, all the way to the Seagram buildings because I had a hankering to walk through the swooping park with the grassy hillocks. It is very windy and quite sunny and the wind felt terrific on my face and in my hair. I changed into exercise clothes so I’m ready for my weights class at 5:30. I threw in a load of laundry as soon as we got home, and I toasted a bagel and then spilled pepper everywhere when I tried to grind pepper on a sliced tomato, so I had to pull out the vacuum and clean that up (or it felt like I had to).
By then it was well after 2PM,
I’ve been pretty faithful about starting the writing at 2:30, even when I’ve taken a little nap, like yesterday (so tired, up almost an hour earlier than usual, and that just did me in, but I came directly home, and napped immediately, waking at 2:30). Anyway, it is now 2:48 and I am not writing fiction. I might still need a nap, I’m not sure. I wanted to hang the laundry in the breeze because it will dry quickly, but will I have time?
I had my first class into the library this afternoon. It was nice to be reminded of why I do this job. There’s nothing quite like it. It’s a little kindergarten class, and they definitely have some impulsive talkers in the group, but on the whole, it was a really great story time and one of the children returned a book she’d lost during the last school year, and she brought me a card she’d made, with hearts and butterflies and two stick figure people—that’s me and that’s you, she said. I hung it on the wall over my book repair area.
I’m not sure how I feel about the job generally this year. I don’t feel as confident. I feel like I lost my sense of competence over the summer, like it’s weirdly and thoroughly disappeared, and I’ve been avoiding people, especially in groups. I just want to do my tasks at the library and hide away to write fiction and go to the gym and make supper for my family. Nothing extra.
I have loved the fiction writing I’ve been doing, it’s surprised me and delighted me, even when I didn’t think I was in the mood to write, I’ve just kept at it and continued, and the words seem to arrive. Yesterday I let my mind wander as I drifted off to sleep (for my 14-minute nap) and the images that arrived became the starting place for a new scene.
Today, I’m distracted and very very tired. I hate this predictive text — in very faint letters, if I’m not typing at max speed or if the word is long, some AI program embedded in this app will add in the letters that it believes should finish my word or thought. And mostly it’s wrong! Even when it’s right, I perversely (personally, it just wrote!!!) want to write something different, original. I need to turn this feature off. It is not serving me or my imagination. All this effort—delightful effort—to become a confident skilled writer and there’s something offensive about being “predicted”. Predicable.
Don’t become predictable, a mentor told me, when I was 18 or so. I heard it as a terrible warning, a rebuke—You are in danger of becoming boring, Carrie. You will lose your edge, your creativity. But I’m not sure that’s still applicable. Was I writing to prove myself interesting? Probably, when I was 18, that was true to some degree; now my youngest child is nearly 18, and proving myself interesting seems the least of my concerns. I wonder how many writers (and other artists) do their work for therapeutic reasons they may not acknowledge or recognize? I think that is most likely why I took to writing, and why I continue to write. I feel better when I write, much of the time. I also feel better sitting down to write something like this, nothing special, just pouring out what’s on my mind, a mental tidying, maybe.
And I don’t want AI attempting to do the tidying for me. Didn’t ask for it, gotta figure out how to opt out. Predictive text spells a life of tedium, where every thought is finished for me. No thank you.
I wonder why I started this by writing “Today I am hardly doing anything right”?
I can see, having written this down, that’s not accurate. Today, I did not meet every single one of the goals that I set for myself. That is accurate. I’m so tired, my eyes are closing. I will have to nap. I will nap too long, and be fuzzy-headed and unable to write very much upon waking, and I won’t like what I wrote yesterday, even though it thrilled me in the moment, and I’ll remind myself that first drafts are ugly and unwieldy, and rolling with the ideas that come is important to the process. I’ll go to the gym and lift heavy weights and my endorphins will take over and I’ll feel good again, and I’ll go out for dinner with my youngest child, just the two of us, and we’ll end up talking about big subjects and watching tennis and baseball on the big screens, and I’ll know that today, I showed up, again and again, even when it felt hard, or I felt uncertain, or anxious, or like I was hardly doing anything right.
Today I am showing up, consistently (which is sort of like being predictable, isn’t it?).
xo, Carrie
PS I turned off the predictive text. It was the doing of my web browser, and I had to figure out how to turn off “inline predictive text.” Now I can write without feeling like my screen is shouting answers at me. (And telling me that my gut instinct is wrong? That’s how I keep interpreting it … and I definitely don’t need any reinforcement of that self-defeating little voice in my head.)
Wednesday, Jul 2, 2025 | Adventure, Art, Big Thoughts, Fire, Friends, Lynda Barry, Manifest, Organizing, Peace, Play, Politics, Source, Space, Spirit, Stand, Success, The X Page, Writing |
Last Friday, I sat down and tried to write about the season’s X Page workshop. Our 6th season.
It is hard to pin down the value of this project, this PROCESS. You almost have to live it. It’s the truth of collaboration. It is not a solo journey. We are stronger together. Cliches!!! And yet — have I ever been hugged so fiercely? Have I ever shared such wordless pride? Leaning into Maha as we watched this season’s performers join hands and bow at the end, some faces beaming, others streaming with tears. I was weeping, almost sobbing, like a witness to a holy act.
I know. It sounds like an extreme response. But let me not back away from the ecstasy. Let me not minimize it when it reveals itself.
In that discrete moment, I could see — or glimpse — at last, what I’d hoped to make, something much deeper than I could ever have imagined. It didn’t feel like I’d burdened anyone with a madwoman’s vision (which at times I’ve wondered about!); instead I understood the project’s POTENTIAL for profound meaningfulness in the lives of those who take the leap of faith and join the adventure.
The X Page Storytelling Workshop is a true ART project, truly multidisciplinary, truly ambitious, truly visionary, truly risky, demanding and hard. And. It has a pull, a light. It magnetizes its participants. And we are all participants — that’s the truth of it, and the magic.
What we experience, as participants, is COLLABORATION—messy, risky, inefficient, complicated by conflict, conflicting ideas, competing visions, different ideas about what this all means or what it’s meant to represent and be. And yet somehow collaboration, through the vehicle of this project, also proves itself to have coherence, to be cohesive, durable, bound together by a shared goal and deadline—the performance!
Don’t get me wrong. The PERFORMANCE is not the whole of the project, but it is necessary. It gives purpose to our trials; energizes our efforts; lifts what we’ve tried to achieve into the light. Art wants this. It craves an outlet. It longs to be seen.
As a vision, the X Page workshop has a wholeness to it, a logic that is forceful. Yet its component parts are flexible.
It’s like seeing my self, my freed artist self, embodied in a process or EXPERIENCE that is translatable, intended for others to enter into. It’s not remote, or special, or precious; it’s invitational. Witnessing its phases and stages, its preparatory and planning periods, its hesitance, its fundraising efforts, its nervous energy, its excitement, its delight at welcoming each new cohort, its surprises, its endurance, its changes, its learning … it feels as though it’s given my life coherence. Or that its collective nature expresses a coherence that I can only glimpse with my solo work.
We have to go to extremes to do this thing together—that is the truth of making art. Art-making has its disciplined middle ground where much of the work gets accomplished, but that balanced “healthy” working state is fed by highs and lows (in moderation; too much of either poisons the ground). The middle wouldn’t be tolerable without a dose of both extremities to modulate the flow, and help us to change course as needed, to keep us present to the present moment, the context of the larger environment in which this is all happening. To wake us from being lulled, attune us to the needs of those around us: our collaborators, our witnesses, our fellow artists, our co-creators, our questioners, our allies.
The middle ground is where the work gets done, and the extremes are where we change and grow. Cliches!!! Again, I know!
Upon reflection, I don’t want to live a completely balanced life. I want the challenge of SURPRISE, I want to be off-balance on occasion, so I can strengthen those muscles that keep me grounded; and I want also to feel so much joy and gratitude that I overflow in tears; to feel is a great gift.
Summer holidays are here. I’m sick (again). I’m worn out. In need of replenishment. This summer, I want to dabble with a schedule that invites all the sensations and states, including rest. Focused reflection. Creation. I want the whole of my self, all my parts, integrated, as witnessed through the X Page. I want my life to make sense way down deep, the way that the X Page made sense on Wednesday night—Playfulness. DELIGHT. The power of mingling together grief and joy, friendship and frailty, generosity and autonomy, need and giving.
There are layers of deep structural muscle built and maintained over time that create a framework of strength, patient knowledge, and experience from which to build relationships of abiding trust.
That word! TRUST! Trust the process, we repeated, and in the end, we believed it because it was true.
How can I trust the ground under my feet if on some deep level I do not trust myself?
In abiding trust is love. Judgement falls away. AMBITION becomes collective—ambition for mutual thriving, ambition for forums in which one’s strengths can be used, one’s gifts may shine. Ambition that is not for the self but for the healing of communal wounds, ambition that trusts in the power of story to repair. And story needs its tellers, story needs its voice; and it needs its listeners, its audience; story needs attention and care.
A STORY exists in words. But also in the body, way down deep, and that’s where we’re going when we step into the X Page—underneath, to pause and sense the hum that is crying for attention, and quite possibly inflecting our interactions / lives / relationships with hurt and grief and pain. To repair is to relieve ourselves of suffering by aligning story with its container. Stories can be used for profit, to manipulate and harm, I know, I know; but so can every sacred thing be exploited and abused. So this workshop is a risky undertaking. I know, I know. It can’t be exactly all that I’ve claimed here, not all the time, nor to all.
Like all spiritual undertakings it eludes description. It could go sideways in so many different directions; when I lose trust, others step in because this is not a lonely undertaking.
Trust the process.
I believe. Story heals like nothing else on planet earth. Handled with attention and care, story is holy. I believe that.
xo, Carrie
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