Category: Spirit
Wednesday, Jun 3, 2026 | Adventure, Art, Big Thoughts, Conflict Management, Mediation, Meditation, Peace, Source, Space, Spirit, Writing |
Questions for the table
Where are we now?
Who are we now?
What if you just accept what is happening?
What does it mean to be tenacious , ambitious, to use your natural born skills?
How do you know if it matters?
Does it matter if what you make is good? (How would you know? Who would tell you? On what grounds would this judgement be made?)
What instinct shall you follow?
What are your priorities, and how are they expressed, through what means?
(Why do you write?) Why do you do what you do?
What do you hope for?
Are there things you want to learn?
Are you done here?
What are you carrying?
Are you well enough to continue?
What would it be about instead?
Where does it hurt? When? How?
What gives you relief?
xo, Carrie
PS This is one of my circle poems, but I will also use each question as a prompt for a future journal entry, to get beyond “what’s on your mind?” A few of the questions are yes/no, but even those can work as prompts, urging an explanation, depending on the tone you’re hearing the questioner speak in.
Can you imagine a dinner party where you’d go around the table asking everyone to respond to one of these questions? Which one would you choose to ask? (Today, I’d like to know, What are you carrying?)
Monday, Apr 27, 2026 | Art, Big Thoughts, Family, Manifest, Organizing, Spirit, Spring |
What have I have up to? There’s been some waiting, there’s been some doing, there’s been some not-doing, there’s been enough disciplined activity to justify small treats given to myself (take-out coffee, meeting friends for breakfast).
BEGIN is temporarily quiet. I am planning to read the manuscript out loud in June, as my editor has recommend, to listen for clashes, awkwardnesses, redundancies, overuse of favourite words, etc.
Meanwhile, I am writing essays and poems, personal essays paired with poems, a project that came and found me, not the other way around, so I’m honouring this unexpected discovery with my attention. I visited a writing group earlier this month week, and on Saturday I’m visiting a book club. In May, I plan to travel to Chicago with one of my children who is presenting an academic paper and speaking on a panel (at a Medieval Studies conference). Also in May, I plan to complete certification in Conflict Management and Mediation. What will I do with this certification, how might it be applied? Good question. Are you looking for a coach in your creative life? Maybe something like that. In other news, though it feels tentative, like it could be taken away by impossible-to-square circumstances, I’m starting an MA in Theology, Spiritual Care and Psychotherapy this fall. (My second attempt to do this degree; when I tried in 2018, life got the better of me, and I dropped out before classes had even begun.)
Meanwhile, I am thinking about being this age, and being this person who genuinely enjoys looking after other people. The caregiver role has at times subsumed my identify. During early motherhood, it was (almost) all I wanted to do. (The ambition and discipline to write was threaded in there too.) Now my care turns in the other direction, toward my elders, and again, I recognize that my identity could be subsumed. In recent months, it has felt like I’m sleepwalking, accumulating responsibilities without noticing, till suddenly I’m so tired and sad it feels impossible to continue. This is true. Not all the time, but at least some of the time. I recognize the warning signs. I don’t want to discover myself having sleep-walked into numbness, or resentment, drained of my spark, estranged from my self.
So I’m trying to make a few changes, make decisions that are choices rather than things that just happen, as if I were a passive observer in my own life. Which I’m not. Isn’t it funny, though, how our minds can set traps for us? My own traps usually relate to control, to wanting to be in charge or in the know, when I could just … just … let go, let be. Am I doing this because I want to, or because I believe I should? That’s a good question to ask when I’m stuck in a trap of my own making. What’s this feeling? I sometimes ask too. Where are you feeling it? What’s happened recently that might have knocked up against a tender spot, a fear, a pain that wants to be noticed?
Am I doing this because I want to?
How do you know what you want, really? This question is a challenge, I hardly know how to reply. I like making others happy. I value and prioritize relationships. I know this requires thought and planning, attention, time, energy, and also enough self-awareness to respect my own needs. I need solitary time, rest, intense physical exertion. (But is a need the same as a want?) I could, I can, set aside my own needs for someone else’s. That could, that can, be what I actually really want. How am I to know for sure? It pains me to see people I love struggling or suffering, it cheers me to ease their burdens, if I can.
There are too many layers here to sort into a coherent blog post. Ergo, essays and poems.
Here’s today’s “circle poem.”
Steal your own wealth
Sunshine here across the page
The shadow does not look the same
What put that shame into you, where did it come from?
We lived there.
It passed down through us like light
but poisoned, saying, you are bad
Child in the world
Obvious wound, evidence
Hide or pretend, cover yourself
All these coverings
When everyone, most everyone, yearns
Imagine turning
What would that say?
Shine this quiet light on it.
Heal.
xo, Carrie
Friday, Mar 27, 2026 | Art, Big Thoughts, Lists, Source, Spirit, Word of the Year, Writing |
Prompt – Day 30 – A journaling manifesto, prompt by Suleika Jaouad
I reach for the page like I am addressing an oracle. The oracle is my own hand, tracing letter shapes in a way that demands slowness, patience, craft, that organizes electrical impulses into shapes that speak of beauty, longing, love, loss.
I reach for the page like a lifeline. Give me news from the wilds of self, news I’m missing, can’t see, for all the humming noise in between, and the layers of self-protection.
I reach for the page like a friend, an old dear familiar faithful friend, who reflects back to me facets of my own being that I am reluctant or sometimes unable to see or appreciate.
I reach for the page like I’m practicing a religious rite. I rarely think anymore with fear about its blankness, nor fear of putting down the “wrong” thing, committing an error. Practice has disciplined me to accept and admire whatever appears — because existence, life, is a miracle.
I reach for the page as a tonic, to soothe my rage, or reframe it, recast my judgement in these softening lines and curves, so that it lives somewhere apart from me, and I am not denying or accusing it, but merely giving it a place to reside where its harm — the harm that is my judgement — may rest and not be wielded. I lay down my pain here, on the page, so that I may live more fully as I hope to in the world, with humility, with kindness, and without the imposition of my needs unexpressed and otherwise unknown to me. The page accepts all of these, uncovers and grants ease, soaks the wounds — my wounds — in salt water that somehow, by some miracle, lessens the sting while healing.
xo, Carrie
Monday, Mar 23, 2026 | Big Thoughts, Confessions, Manifest, Morning, Organizing, Source, Spirit, Word of the Year, Writing |
Day 80 – Prompt – Lament and Confidence paired with Erase Poem
Excellent sermon at church yesterday, so absorbing that I didn’t even get my notebook out to entertain myself. We had a guest speaker, a woman who co-owns a local cafe (and is also a pastor), and I felt what it would feel like to see myself more often reflected at the pulpit. Also, she fully owned how much she loves preaching, speaking, having a microphone — so refreshing. And her sermon, on lament paired with statements of confidence in the Psalms, was thought-provoking yet spacious. I had time to reflect on my own choices, tendencies, hopes, struggles to communicate.
I thought about how often people are just waiting to be asked about themselves — how good it feels to get to tell your story. I have to believe it’s that power that fuels the X Page Workshop, and will translate in my absence (I’ve bowed out for this season, as I’ve taken on a heavy caregiving role in another part of my life).
It’s hard to confess to my own limitations; how easily I become overwhelmed; how much I don’t do right now, or seem incapable of doing; how very often I go to the gym to escape, by which I mean to glimpse my ability to endure, because my mind, my emotional capacity feels exhausted. It ain’t pretty. This is my lament.
What is my statement of confidence that sits alongside my lament? Truthfully, since “retiring’ in November, I’ve been hyper-disciplined and focused and I’ve finished this next draft of Begin and I think the novel is special, magical, and writing it has brought me so much delight. Talk about escape. Somehow, sharing the joy of reading and books with children these past few years restored my own faith in reading and books. I’d become cynical and bitter, I’d lost my sense of purpose. The library work gave me a path forward. In my statement of confidence, I declare: I’ve thrown myself headlong into writing because stories matter.
I declare gratitude for the gift of creative energy, the gift of another version of escape. And I pray for more belief, more trust that purpose and meaningful expression can be found through writing. I pray for courage. That my steps are guided by what matters. So that my inner life and hopes can meet my outer actions with love and confidence.
Erase Poem (my version = Circle Poem)
I felt it would feel reflected, owned, spacious
I had time, tendencies, struggles, your story
I have to believe in my absence, confess
I didn’t simply shut the door
This is my lament —
Roles anoint themselves
Bad feelings, self-destructive ways
Disappointment at not being wanted
Confidence sits with sharing delight
A prayer for more belief! For courage!
Hopes meet actions
Hope for life ongoing.
Stay.
xo, Carrie
Wednesday, Jan 21, 2026 | Art, Big Thoughts, Drawing, Laundry, Meditation, Morning, Peace, Source, Spirit, Winter, Writing |
Another day, another prompt. Day 21 — “Is there a moment when your mind’s chatter quiets? What do you notice then?” This prompt is about quieting the thinking mind. I wrote while visiting my mom’s apartment this morning.
How do I turn off my thinking mind? Actually, I’m an expert — I’ve learned all kinds of strategies by necessity, because writing doesn’t thrive when thinking, if thinking is equated with panic or rumination. Thinking seems like the opposite of trusting, of going with the flow. Thinking spirals. To turn off the thinking mind, you need to get what’s inside, out — by drawing, sketching, making music. Even talking is not the same as thinking.
When I’m quiet and listening, there’s tone, there’s atmosphere, sensation, a lot of valuable communication expressed beyond words. Am I thinking, then? “Lost in thought” — that phrase expresses wandering in interiority. How different it is from being “absorbed” — when I am absorbed in a task, in an experience, the world is there/here and my attention and awareness is heightened.
As practices for quieting the thinking mind, I like meditation that focuses on sensation. And I like my friend Emily’s observational meditation, too, that breaks down what’s seen into descriptors that don’t name the thing itself. So that tree outside Mom’s window becomes a spiky set of fractals growing from an inner stem, tiny spikes on larger spikes, dark green prickles, cones in some of the crevices where the branches part like arms held up or legs spread, and the spears are topped with crusted white gatherings, hardened flecks come together to form lopsided bolls, dollops, all different shapes and sizes, clinging fast to any outspread surface, and in smaller tighter balls collecting on inner protected crevices.
Maybe? Was I thinking when I wrote that? Yes, of course, but I wasn’t spinning. I wasn’t entirely “I” either. I was observing closely, without weighing the value of what I was seeing, and that’s a state that feels unselfconscious, and self-sustaining, satisfying. I am sustained and occupied in this observational state, and being alive and in my body is so easy. The task is easy too. It is very relaxing. It happens quite often to me, that I enter into this state, or find myself in this state of relaxed attention, maybe because of all the practice. This is the state in which I write — anything. Including this.
xo, Carrie
Monday, Jan 19, 2026 | Art, Confessions, Current events, Family, Meditation, Morning, Source, Spirit, Word of the Year |
Day 19 prompt – listening to what the body has to say
Hello Body, I am listening.
Carrie, I need you to know exactly how tired I am — no, not exactly, that is a term you would to measure something that wafts and flows and defies the work of measurement. I am tired. I keep drifting, sliding sideways into sleep but you don’t seem to notice or read this as a warning. You think — oh, body just needs more stimulation. My God, I am so stimulated that I only relax when — no, I do not relax, I fall, I slip, I slide. And furthermore, I am not “I” the way you see seem to think of it, or us. I am we, multiple, flowing, shifting, changing.
So yes, hard to read.
But we send out signals, like falling asleep sitting upright as soon as the mind eases its grip on us. We do what we can to support you (you?), we will hone our muscles and suffer and quake and we can endure a great deal of pain in support of your causes and whims —no, that’s too harsh.
We are doing our best to please you (you?), to relieve you (you?). Can you relieve us? Feed us. You seek to control us, deny us, mete out pleasure in tiny doses lest we become overwhelmed and greedy, and sink into — what? Bliss? A morass of nothingness?
Let’s be friends. We like to breathe and sweat. We like ever so much to stretch and breathe too. But we are tired, tired, tired. Give us leave to change. Will you let us age and spread? Will you let us fail you and not call it failure? Can we be kind across all spectrums of experience and sensation?
Things change, no matter how hard you push to hold on.
I can give you (you?) pleasure and rest. Trust what’s rising. The body knows how little time it has, how precious and advancing the hours. But also how much time too — the body is not begging for accomplishment. The body will luxuriate in sensation, give us leave to show you how beautiful you are in this world of beauty and loss.
Body, I am, Body, we belong to, we know, we are made of beautiful loss.
xo, Carrie
PS I’m in the middle of a 30-day series of journaling prompts from Suleika Jaouad. This was today’s outpouring. I’m also using my reorganized studio space for a daily drawing ritual, which includes a very quick sketch capturing one moment and one phrase from the day; a word for the day (usually taken from my daily journaling); and a sketch using a photo from today’s newspaper, in pen and coloured with water colour markers. It’s been a tough start to the new year on many levels and from many angles, and this studio, completely reorganized during the final days of 2025, has been my bliss, renewal, and recovery.
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