Category: Fire
Friday, Sep 18, 2026 | Adventure, Fire, Manifest, Organizing, Reading, School, Space, Work, Writing |
Hello again. This summer, I was a writer working toward finishing a new manuscript (essays and poems) and revising my next novel; and now I am a full-time grad student, studying Spiritual Care and Psychotherapy.
It is weird and not-weird, I feel old and not-too-old, at times more socially inclined than I’d expected, at times a little too tired to rise to the occasion of small-talk with desk-mates (I try!). A big goal is to read in a way that allows me to absorb and retain what I’m reading, and that’s very time-consuming; I fear falling behind. But then, I need to practice balance and managing my own expectations; can I learn how to prioritize? For example, I spent about five hours this week on a brief reflection that is worth 5% and was guaranteed to receive an A+; the exercise felt valuable for me personally, but probably not 5 hours worth of value, if you see what I mean.
Proportionality. I have been prioritizing getting to the gym every morning before school. So far, still able to see friends, family. Volunteering. Where will I cut back in order to fit this intensive workload into my hours? I won’t be writing much, creatively, I mean. Journaling, yes, starting a novel, no, probably not. My evenings might be devoted to readings rather than doing a puzzle or watching a show (or going for a walk? but I want to go for walks!). I am still figuring this out.
I feel energized by the material. Open to new experiences. A little bit overwhelmed; mostly calm, prepared, attuned, attentive. I can walk to campus; I pack good food to fuel me through several night classes; I’ve made a few friends (or excellent acquaintances, perhaps more accurately). I sense the importance of building a group of professional peers in this context, as necessary and meaningful for this particular work.
On Monday, I’m going to draw “what God looks like to me”, as a reflective in-class exercise for a course on the “Spiritual Care” side of the roster. On the “Psychotherapy” side, I spent all day reading textbooks about Professional Ethics and the “Ethical Lives of Clients,” with great interest and engagement—I didn’t drift off to sleep even once! Side note: I am aiming for 7+ hours of a sleep a night, and (almost) managing that.
Sitting in the classroom, I feel a strong sense that I’m where I want to be; and wherever it leads, well, that’s a question for a future version of self, the one who’s read all these chapters and written a bunch of papers, and talked to peers, and played with balancing life and study and practice and care. Stay tuned.
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, 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
Wednesday, Dec 4, 2024 | Art, Drawing, Fire, Manifest, Play, Source |
Day 4 Prompt
Draw & write. Something you asked for and did not receive. (Do you still want it?)
Notes: pen & watercolour; songs: “Basement Apartment” by Sarah Harmer and “Atlantic,” by The Weather Station. The text reads a bit like a series of grievances, which was not where I’d originally imagined this going. But I got somewhere interesting. The final scrawl on the page reads: I asked to not have to ask — and that did not happen.
xo, Carrie
Monday, Jul 15, 2024 | Adventure, Art, Family, Fire, Friends, Fun, Peace, Source, Space, Spirit, Spring, Summer, Yoga |
In April, I embarked on a “spring burst”, aka return to the gym, with the initial intention of spending a month trying out spin and weights classes, in an effort to boost my cardio and strength.
I was a runner for many years. But it’s high-impact, and I am a woman well into middle age, and no amount of yoga seemed to help with the pain that would flare while running, even relatively short distances. It’s hard to stop doing something you love, and there is no replacement for the runner’s high, or being outside on a misty morning before the world has woken up. But. I’m trying to listen to my body and be softer with myself, so I let the running go (mostly). As of this spring, I’d been doing yoga twice a day for at least a year, and meditation regularly, and an occasional weights class with friends. Sometimes I’d bike to work. But suffice it to say, there came a moment in my weights-class-with-friends when I was gasping for air, my heart racing, and the thought arose: gee, I could really use some more cardio in my life.
Ergo: Carrie’s spring burst.
The first spin class damn near killed me, mostly because I go hard, no matter the challenge. I almost fell off my bike. I was light-headed, panting, dripping sweat, and not even close to keeping up with the instructor’s choreo directions. Yes, I go to a gym where the spin classes have choreo; and yes, this adds a certain soupçon of danger and thrill to each sweaty, fast-paced, rhythmically pumped up class—but that’s why I return, to be frank: to be challenged, mentally and physically, to occasionally reach a goal I’ve set or smile at myself while trying. I also look forward to the moment in each class where my worries vanish into the effort, and my mind goes quiet.
My spring burst has stretched into a summer of strength, or maybe a summer of sweat (haven’t come up with a title yet).
I’ve tried every available class, from weights to power to pilates to yoga to the hilarious humiliation of a what seemed like an aerobics class to boxing. As mentioned, I throw myself in deep, and am therefore currently in gym rat mode. It’s not that other things aren’t happening, social and emotional. But this is the place I’m returning to, as a form of a vacation, to give my mind rest, and to enjoy my body. Weight training is apparently critical during the peri-menopause / menopause era; and that’s me. Age happens, and with age, limitations; yet my body and mind can adapt and learn new things.
Summer loving. Bougie gym summer.
We aren’t travelling very far this summer. The kids are all living at home. The schools are closed, so I don’t have a job in the library for nine or ten weeks (haven’t done the math). I’m trying to revise a book manuscript, but honestly, if I do so, it will only be because it makes sense for my mental health, and not any other reason. The costs of artistic ambition seem altogether too steep; and this is not a new Alice-Munro-revelations-thought for me either, though has probably been somewhat cemented by that. I’ve long wondered and worried about the wisdom (for myself personally) of pouring so much energy and time and attention into what amounts to a series of personal passion projects—at times I would feel possessed, as if I was trying to cure an obsession or compulsion with novel-writing. And maybe it did help, for awhile—I have no regrets. I’m proud of my accomplishments. And—and! I hope for something quite different: a humble legacy of love and care, for strong and lasting connections and relationships, built on trust and kindness and open doors.
That’s my aim. That’s my over-arching goal.
What I’m finding is that if I prioritize connections, serving and feeding relationships, including paying attention to the the feelings and sensations in my own body, I can’t go wrong. The discomfort and disorientation of being disconnected, not in a right relationship, is a powerful cue for change. This might mean entering into difficult conversations. This might mean being open to hearing hard truths. This might mean hearing “no,” when I’d prefer to hear “yes!” It might mean shifting direction, allowing my priorities to shift too. Whatever possibilities lie before me, I hope to choose connection.
Summer delight. Summer solace. Summer song.
xo, Carrie
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