Day 35 : Weekly Reflection
This week was a living reminder that there’s nothing wrong with any of the different energies or emotions that arise in us and run through us. The only time it becomes a real problem is when the energy or emotion gets blocked and isn’t able to flow.
THIS WEEK’S HAPPENINGS:
- The Artist’s Way Week 10
- Daily shares in the Spiral Library
- No freelance design work
- Election Day
- Mid-week sauna and sushi date with Che
- Painting Workshop with Dave Muller
- Pattern Interruption group call
- Back to my chiropractor after a six-month hiatus
- Lunch with a dear friend
- Candle-lit lantern walk in the woods
- Parent teacher conference
- Visited my grandmother and uncle
GLIMMERS:
- In the moments of shame spiraling, instead of hiding, I reached out to dear friends and sweet family for support.
- The messages of love and support and understanding sent in response.
- Always teaching myself that: I am not alone. I am not alone. I am not alone. It is safe to be seen. It is safe to receive support. It is safe to feel deeply.
- The daytime date with Che. The warm ramen. Sharing dreams for new and simple holiday traditions.
- The lantern walk. Little lights a glimmer, moving together through the darkness.
1. What felt energizing, satisfying, or alive this week?
Walking. Walking. All I want to do is walk.
Building a palette for November, and the painting class with Dave, and going through the drawer filled with all my paintings from the classes I’ve taken over the past four years.
Natalie’s new podcast episode, Alchemizing Worry Into Wonder. Everything I needed and more.
The spaciousness of the first half of the week. Checking many things off the list and being in flow.
2. What felt draining, forced, or out of sync?
A call from one of the children’s teachers. The painful feeling of having done something wrong, or not done enough, and the urge to become defensive. Reminding myself that I am not the child anymore and I can take care of us. Choosing curiosity, empathy, and compassion.
We argued Thursday night and then couldn’t seem to climb out of our own wounded selves long enough to communicate beyond the hurt until Saturday night.
Misreading the school email and not realizing the day off was Tuesday instead of Monday.
My tendency to slip into hiding when my heart hurts and my emotions run wild like an overflowing river within me. How much effort it take to choose to reach for support instead. How long the road to healing feels.
Too much sugar and not enough sleep, and the way the critical voice within me gets unbearably loud when the veil thins before my cycle begins. How that voice can’t be trusted, and yet it seeps into everything like poison in my mind.
3. What do I want to remember or carry forward?
I am surrounded by people who love and care for me.
Most of it is an inside job.
People are drawn to those who make confident gestures, and confident gestures take practice.
People want more of the unique and creative and alive you.
From “I’m not allowed to feel this.”
To “This feeling is information; letting it move unfreezes me.”
From “If I give voice to my fear, I’ll make it worse.”
To “Naming the fear is the antidote to stuckness.”
The last of the leaves are falling.
A Wednesday night painting class that always inspires me. Afterward, I was called to look back through my archive of paintings from the last four years and I was really amazed at how much work I’ve created and how it’s changed over time, through the return to practice again and again.
Many walks spent admiring the trees.
Putting together a color palette for November.
A much-needed reminder while out on another walk, feeling deeply, painfully sad: that there are so many inspired actions we can take toward hope, change, and community care. More reminders and inspiration from this newsletter, Chop Wood, Carry Water.
Almost an entire Saturday spent crying (I am okay and my heart is full of the tenderness of grief and sadness). Followed by an entire Sunday spent in bed finishing my novel and drinking tea and listening to Enya.
EXPRESSIONS OF NOVEMBER 2025 — TINY DAILY PAINTINGS:
Beginning again.
LISTENED TO: A lot of Enya, especially this album. Medicine for my tender heart.
WATCHED: The Bear. I made it through the first two seasons and… it broke me open and took me deep and had me in tears. Such an incredibly well-done and powerful piece of cinematic work, storytelling, and evocative performances. Also, and on a lighter note, I watched Downton Abby: A New Era and The Grand Finale.
WORDS OF WISDOM:
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
is Change.
God
is Change.
— Octavia E. Butler
Fame is a shortcut for self-approval.
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
