We compare ourselves to others and try to fit in when our true power is being uniquely who we are.

I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to be like anyone else.

But I’ve never felt like I fit it in either. No matter which friend group, which church group, or work, I have never felt like I fit in.

I knew there was something different about me, and I didn’t want to be like everyone else. For heaven’s sake, my hair started going grey at 22 years old, and I decided to never color it. And I owned it. I might even consider it my best feature.

Even though I didn’t want to be like anyone else, I think deep down I was still trying to figure out how to fit in. How to belong.

It took me well into my late forties, though, to understand that I belong wherever I want to belong.

I never fit in because I didn’t want to be like everyone else. I didn’t want to assimilate.

But there’s a difference between fitting in and belonging.

Fitting in only comes from the external. It comes from how others find you acceptable.

But belonging?

That’s different. Belonging comes from an inner knowing. It’s confidence in who you are and a deep abiding sense that your worth is not dependent the opinions of others.

We place so much of our worth on the external instead of the internal.

Looking to the external for our confidence, our worth, our sense of belonging, and validation, dilutes the gifts we’re meant to share with the world. It’s taken me years to realize this, and it’s my daily work to rewire the patterns in my brain and shift my mindset.

I’ve realized that every time I look outside myself for confidence, belonging, or validation, I lose touch with the gifts I’m here to share.

It’s taken me years to recognize that. And it’s still a daily, sometimes hourly, practice to notice those old patterns, give myself grace, and gently choose a different way.

I wonder what changes when we stop asking, “Do they see my value?” and start asking, “Am I honoring it?”

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I have been thinking about how much energy we spend trying to be understood by people who may not actually be willing or able to understand us.

Not because they are bad people. Not because we are doing something wrong. But because somewhere along the way, many of us learned that being misunderstood meant we needed to work harder.

So we explain. We soften. We clarify. We replay the conversation later.

And often, underneath all of that, is something quieter:

Please like me. Please approve of me.

We become people pleasers to keep the peace. To prove that we’re good enough. To prove that we’re needed. To make us feel safe and part of the group.

And somewhere along the way we forget who we are. We think we just aren’t confident. We feel like imposters.

We forget to take care of ourselves. We overwork to be accepted or appreciated.

We become fearful of using our own gifts and strengths.

We forget that we matter too. We lose faith and confidence in ourselves and our own knowing.

We are conditioned to believe confidence is loud. Direct. Certain.

But what if confidence is built when we stop trying to do and be what we think others want us to do and be? What if confidence is actually trusting in our own intuition? In our own strengths and gifts?

For too many years, I gave away my own creativity and intuition because others told me I was good at something that didn’t bring me any joy. Yes, I was good at it. But I was over functioning to please other people.

I gradually shut down my wonder, my intuition, my discernment, and my creative side because I kept being praised for the work that didn’t require those parts of me, but for the parts of me that produced.

Work that drained me instead of energizing me. Work that burned me out and kept me stuck in overwhelm. Not the work that made me come alive.

I was basing my worth on the external instead of truly knowing and owning my worth from a place of confidence, peace, and purpose.

I couldn’t see the pattern I was living inside of. I couldn’t see that I was people pleasing because I feared not being good enough.

And even when I did begin seeing the pattern, I wasn’t ready to admit that I had given away my own authority. I was listening to the people in my life who were “supposed to know.” They were in leadership. From the outside they looked so confident in their faith and abilities.

I thought I was being a good person. Even a good Christian. A good member of society.

But what I came to realize is confidence can never last long term when it comes from external praise or admiration. Yes, it can help you build your confidence, but I don’t believe it can be the foundation.

It has to come from a place of belief in your own worth and trust that you have a purpose that the world around you needs.

Confidence is not always found in speaking louder. Sometimes it is found in protecting your energy.

Trusting your own judgment. Letting someone misunderstand you.

Choosing not to explain yourself. Coming back to what your own intuition and body is trying to tell you.

It means remembering your own worth and value. Again and again and again.

I often felt unseen. Still do if I’m being honest. Like I was supposed to simply be a wallflower.

Except with one dear childhood friend. With him, I felt safe enough to just be myself.

It wasn’t because anyone was cruel to me. I can’t point to one specific moment and say, “That’s where it started.”

I think I just saw the world differently before I had words for it. I didn’t know that noticing could feel so lonely.

I noticed what people didn’t say. I noticed tension in a room. I noticed when someone was becoming smaller to keep the peace. I noticed the gap between who people seemed to be and who they might become if they felt safe enough.

For a long time, I assumed everyone noticed these things.

I grew up in an in-between generation. Gen X. The sandwich generation.

Many of us were raised by people who put their heads down and did the work. They stayed in the same jobs. Built a life. Didn’t complain much.

And for a while, we followed that same pattern.

We got jobs. Started families. Did what responsible people did.

But somewhere around midlife, many of us started asking deeper questions.

Is this really the life I’m meant to build? Is this what leadership is supposed to feel like? Is there more to me than being capable and responsible?

What was my purpose? Why had I spent so much of my life feeling slightly outside the room? Why did I seem to notice things other people didn’t?

I was somewhere between raising my son and wondering, Is this all there is for me? Working part time so I could be home for him, but quietly asking, What if there’s something else? And in the bigger picture, questioning what leadership was actually supposed to look like.

I’ve realized that my gift comes from the wound of never feeling seen for my own gifts and strengths.

I’ve found purpose in helping people see what they’ve stopped seeing in themselves. The gift was always there but I needed to live a lot of life to realize it.

I’ve always naturally noticed both people’s potential and the patterns that seem to hold them back.

Not just their strengths. But the undercurrents.

The places where someone is editing themselves. The environments draining them. The fear underneath the over-functioning. The stories they’ve repeated so long they no longer question them.

Some of us spend our lives feeling like outsiders, only to realize later that we were noticing patterns other people were still living inside of.

Sometimes you’re too close to your own patterns to see them clearly.

Over time, I’ve realized something else: seeing the pattern does not mean you can force someone to change it. It may be true. It may even be needed. But that does not mean they are ready for it.

You can spend years seeing things clearly for other people before realizing you cannot make someone ready to see themselves. They have to see the patterns they’ve been protecting first.

You cannot see every pattern you’re inside of.

Sometimes someone else sees it first.

Awareness cannot be forced. It usually arrives when someone feels safe enough, tired enough, or honest enough to finally face what’s underneath.

Some people are not resisting the truth. They are not ready to lose the life that truth would ask them to question.

I used to think seeing clearly meant I was supposed to do something with what I saw.

Now I know that clarity is meant to make me steadier, not louder.

Maybe wisdom is learning the difference between what you can see and what you are responsible for changing. Learning what is mine to carry and what is not.

I still notice patterns.

In people. In rooms. In myself. In the stories we inherit and the ones we keep repeating because they once helped us survive.

But I am learning that seeing is not the same as saving.

Sometimes the invitation is not to say more. Sometimes it is to stay honest about what I see and humble about what is mine to carry.

And sometimes the most honest thing we can do is stop trying to pull someone out of a pattern they are not ready to question.

Even when we love them.

Even when we see what it is costing them.

Even when we want to see them thrive and succeed.

Even when we remember what it felt like to be inside a pattern ourselves and not know there was another way.

Mainly music. I’m not a huge music listener either, especially not in the mornings in the car on the way to the office. The 15 minute drive is typically quiet.

I have learned over many years that a quiet morning drive is what my mind and spirit need to get ready for the day.

But suddenly, I was zoning out and listening to a playlist of one artist I had made on Spotify & then on YouTube in the evenings.

Even the smallest of tasks drained me. Washing my face before bed. Brushing my teeth before bed. The smallest of things.

Within a day I noticed these patterns that aren’t typical of my daily rhythms and routines. But I gave myself lots of grace and compassion knowing it had been a very busy two weeks and weekends in a row with less downtime and alone time than I usually have and need as an introvert and highly sensitive person.

Add in a tense situation at my job, and it made sense why I had fallen into a funk.

It isn’t depression. If it continued, I could see it becoming depression, but at this stage it’s not.

And I don’t know that there’s really a label for it.

So I just call it a funk.

And I’ve been here before. If we’re honest, we all have. Especially when we’re in the in between of something.

In those liminal spaces that can seem to go on and on and last forever.

Looking back, I think it does hit in those seasons of life where we are so close to moving out of the liminal, but it’s just not quite time yet.

When we’re on the cusp.

Standing just at the threshold, but it’s not quite time to move through yet.

The almost. But not quite.

So when my funk lasted more than a few days, I knew it was time to wind the clock.

To focus on just the next task at hand no matter how small. Just one thing at a time.

When all the steps for cooking dinner one night seemed just too overwhelming and didn’t get done, I broke down the steps for the next day’s dinner little by little. Getting out the bowls and pots that morning. Then the spices and non-perishables a little later. Then the final step of assembling and cooking that evening was doable instead of overwhelming.

Giving myself permission to shut down the constant list of decisions and focus on just the very next thing I needed to do: wash my face, brush my teeth. Just the very next step. Not looking at the bigger picture.

Winding the clock. Just the next smallest step. Digging just a bit deeper and putting one foot in front of the other.

One. Thing. At. A. Time.

Wind the clock.

And slowly the funk begins to lift.

I’ve started a new hobby - needlepoint. All my hobbies except one (reading), involve making something with my hands. Scrapbooking, card-making, painting, writing, smocking, sewing, knitting, cross-stitching. So I’m not new to using my hands or a needle and thread. I’ve had granny hobbies long before they were popular. For years I’ve laughed and said I had an old soul partly because I’d rather be making things.

In 2025, I knew I had to get back to working with my hands. The job I’d had for almost seven years had drained me. I had pretty much given up all my hobbies except reading. Too exhausted to do anything but either numb out watching television or climbing in the bed with a book.

But something was missing, and I knew what had to change. For the sake of my own mental health, I knew I needed to get back to my creative pursuits. Writing, at least sporadically, came first.

Then a local friend who curates a vintage online shop started a needlepoint club. She was teaching a beginner in-person needlepoint class and the club would meet once a month.

A new hobby to use my hands, supporting a friend who could teach me, and community.

That was all the sign I needed.

As introverted as I am, I also know I can’t become a hermit so the needlepoint club has been a great way to meet new people and learn something new.

I have been blown away at just how many people our needlepoint club has now. And from all ages! From retired ladies, to college students, to middle age moms like myself.

I think people are craving time away from their phones and screens and more interaction with people who enjoy the same things they do. Even a highly sensitive introvert like me who loves her alone time after a draining day of work.

My older 20-something year old nieces and future daughter-in-law are all finding their own granny hobbies with needlepoint, embroidery, card making, and sourdough baking.

It gives me hope.

Hope that creativity and craftsmanship still exist.

Hope that we aren’t completely numbing out when life gets intense.

Granny hobbies are also slow and holy work.

There’s something calming and regenerative about using our hands to craft and create.

They strengthen and stimulate our brains.

They keep us off our screens.

They keep skills and traditions alive for the next generations.

They ground us. They become a moving meditation.

They teach us quiet wisdom and steady rhythms.

And they are a visual reminder of the ordinarily extraordinary magic of our humanity.

Over time, I started to see that the same patterns shaping how we live, constant urgency, external metrics of worth, and a distrust of rest and reflection, were also shaping how we lead.

I couldn’t separate the two.

Questioning hustle became inseparable from questioning leadership norms.

Slowing down became inseparable from learning how to lead myself well.

And eventually, it became clear: many of us aren’t struggling because we’re failing at leadership. We’re struggling because we’re trying to lead in ways we were never wired for.

That’s the ground my work grows from.

My work exists to restore spirit, meaning, and emotional honesty in a world that has learned to rush past itself.

Through Rebellion from Stillness, I explore the quiet, often overlooked work of presence, reflection, and living at a pace where truth can surface.

Through The Quietly Powerful Leadership Approach and Growth Essentials Coaching, I support both individuals and teams, guiding introverted and highly sensitive leaders one-on-one, and working with groups through Enneagram and Working Genius workshops, to stop leading against themselves and instead work and lead in ways that honor their wiring, nervous systems, and shared values.

Through The Stressed Out Leader podcast, I also create space for honest conversations about pressure, burnout, and the quieter paths toward clarity and steadiness.

At the heart of all of it is the same calling: to challenge cultures of hurry, pressure, and hollow, unsustainable certainty, and to create space for steadiness, discernment, and human connection.

This work exists because leadership, growth, and spiritual formation were never meant to be loud, forced, or hollow. They were meant to be lived with integrity, depth, and care.

This is the work I’m called to — and the work I’m willing to tend, slowly and faithfully.

It doesn’t happen overnight.

It doesn’t move at the frenetic pace of this culture of productivity we live in.

It only unfolds when we give it space, when we pause and ask questions. It shows up in the contradictions we can no longer ignore. It reveals itself in the long seasons where nothing seems certain or resolved.

It’s also holy work. Whether you consider yourself religious or not, all inner work of getting to know ourselves on a deeper level is spiritual work. Not because it is dramatic or even visible, but because it forces us to slow down and move with patience, humility, and a willingness to sit inside what we do not yet understand.

The hurry and hustle of our western culture, the battle of constant noise, harms our personal growth. By nature, it’s not something we can rush or outsource in the name of efficiency.

It’s a spiral. Hopefully an ever upward moving spiral. But still a spiral.

We think we have mastered some aspect or inner shadow only to find it comes back around in a different way. This type of inner work cannot be brushed over.

Urgency and noise don’t belong here, and they damage our ongoing formation.

So much of life is what we can’t see. Some things will remain a mystery until we have done enough of our inner work and are ready to see what we weren’t prepared to see before. Sitting in the doubt and wonder of that mystery and continuing to ask questions isn’t failure. It’s where true growth happens.

Rigid certainty in our own self-understanding, and even our faith, keeps us stuck.

We no longer have space for growth when we decide anything with finality. I don’t like the word failure, but deciding anything with finality becomes a failure, a loss of imagination.

Resting in stillness and silence isn’t removing yourself from society. It’s giving yourself permission to do the work only you can do on yourself. It allows space for your intuition to bring clarity.

And yes, it’s a slow and holy work.

The invitation is not to hurry toward answers, but to stay present long enough for something truer to emerge.

Some work cannot be optimized. Some knowing cannot be forced.

Some things are revealed only to those willing to move slowly — and to trust that this, too, is enough.

How we create these narratives in our mind and follow the emotions those narratives trigger. We forget to stop and check in with the intuition our body intrinsically knows and the truth our spirit is trying to remind us of in a whisper.

I lost touch with a friend several years ago. We had kept in touch after college and then in the early days of Facebook. Years pass and life happens. I thought of her one day and decided to look her up on Facebook but she was no longer on it.

Fast forward a few years and we had moved. Then one day I saw her in the big warehouse store while I was picking up a few things. I called her name but she didn’t respond and started walking off in the other direction.

The narrative I built in my head was that she just ignored me. That for some reason she didn’t want to acknowledge me.

Fast forward several years and a few weeks ago she’s at the same meeting I am. I ask her if she went to my university. Then she realizes who I am and was as kind as could be. We caught up on life and family.

The narrative I carried for years was fragmented. And wrong. I never stopped to check in with my intuition, heart, or spirit.

We’ve learned to doubt our intuition and what our body is trying to tell us.

We’ve learned to stuff our emotions down and ignore what they are really bringing to light.

We’ve been programmed to believe that siloing our health will heal us. Ignoring what ancient wisdom has known all along. That we are body, mind, emotion, and spirit and they are all interconnected.

Doctors treat a heart condition as if emotions do not play a part. They treat mental conditions as if the physical does not play a part.

This fragmentation has created a fog so thick that for some they can’t see their way through it so they hand their discernment over to so-called experts and gurus.

Recently, the morning was so foggy. Foggier than I had ever seen it. I was driving on the four lane highway on the way to the office, but barely getting to the speed limit. If I had not known when to expect the traffic lights, I could have easily driven right through them the fog was so thick. I did not see the lights until I was 2 car lengths from them. I intentionally drove slowly, knowing they were ahead, my intuition telling me to use caution. Other cars were still speeding past me though.

Culture and society, especially here in the western civilized world, just like the cars speeding through the thick fog, are rushing past and just ignoring the fog that fragmenting ourselves has caused. Hurrying and hustling won’t fix the issues.

Slowing down to a pace where we can breathe and sitting for a time in rest and stillness, are needed if we are to rediscover what our whole self is trying to tell us.

The fog isn’t confusion. It’s what happens when we stop listening to ourselves.

Slowing down isn’t a luxury. It’s how we clear the fog.

Stillness gives the body time to speak. It gives intuition space to rise above the noise. It reconnects what fragmentation has pulled apart.

When we refuse to slow down, we don’t become more efficient. We become less aware. We mistake speed for clarity and noise for truth.

Quiet isn’t weakness. It’s where discernment returns.

And those willing to move more slowly — to listen instead of rush — are the ones who can finally see the road ahead.

For several years now, when the light starts shrinking each day in October, I feel a pull to slow down. To sleep more. To almost hibernate. Everything in nature is showing us how to pause, how to rest, but everything and everyone else seems busier and more hurried than ever.

This year, that pull has been stronger than ever.

Maybe that’s the curse of an industrialized society. The side effect of an electrified one. An illusion that the earth itself isn’t slowing down and falling asleep for the winter.

I see bare trees against the sky and see beautiful art. Where others see dreary gloom, I see peace.

I’ve wondered if I have a bit of winter blues or seasonal affective disorder because of the sluggishness and melancholy I feel during this time of year. And maybe that’s what allopathic medicine would call it. But I’ve come to see it differently.

My body is reminding me that it’s time to slow down for a season. To rest in the dark and allow dreams and ideas to ground themselves before it’s their time to grow and bloom.

And the melancholy? I’ve come to see it not as depression, but as holy discontent — pointing to a deeper truth that deep rest and clarity only come after slowing down for a season.

The truth is, a hurried and hustled pace doesn’t rejuvenate us. It doesn’t give us insight. It doesn’t teach us anything except how to disregard our health and wholeness. It doesn’t mean success.

Winter, in itself, is a quiet rebellion against the constant pace of industry, productivity, and urgency.

But slowing down and following the rhythm of nature isn’t failure.
It’s wisdom.

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I dread the holidays. Each December, Christmas lands heavier and busier and no longer carries any magic.

For the past several years everything about the holidays feels…well…fake.

The idealist in me loves the stores and houses lit up—the twinkling lights like a starry sky brought down to earth.

When it’s evening and just the lights, it’s serene. Quiet.

Then the traffic and stressed-out people in the light of day make me want to burn Christmas villages in a fire pit.

My spirit can’t ignore the tension of how far removed Christ seems from the season. I feel the stress and anxiety vibrating off people.

And don’t get me started about how December 25th is nowhere near Jesus’s actual birthdate, which many historians and scholars argue was more likely in the spring.

Christians just reappropriated (a.k.a. hijacked) the winter solstice celebrated by other cultures. The trees and greenery and Yule logs were tied to honoring the solstice long before Christianity.

And if life isn’t already stressful enough, add in extra gatherings and parties, having to figure out what gifts to get, and—God forbid—an office Secret Santa or Dirty Santa exchange. Extra travel on top of the extra stress to see family when you’re already exhausted.

Let’s face it: it’s an introvert’s and a highly sensitive person’s third circle of hell.

You’re expected to be cheerful when the sun is setting at 4:45 p.m. and you barely get ten hours of daylight—and most of that you’re stuck inside an office. It’s barely light when you leave for work and dark by the time you get home. And the farther north you go, the less daylight you have.

With so little sunlight and so much noise, my nervous system isn’t wrong; it’s telling the truth.

How in the heck are an introvert and a highly sensitive person supposed to be cheerful with very little sunlight and angry crowds everywhere they go?

Yes, I realize I’ve become a Grinch about the holidays.

But here’s the thing: ignoring it and putting on a fake face isn’t me. I’m done gaslighting myself. I can love the lights at night and refuse the script by day.

And what about those who are experiencing the first Christmas after a devastating loss? I think about a friend who recently lost her spouse just before the holidays. Another friend whose parent is facing a terminal illness. Another friend who has no family left. Others facing difficult life changes.

For those friends the season isn’t merry or bright. It’s a threshold. We can honor that by not dismissing their grief—allowing their sorrow without fake cheer or trying to fix it. Just listening, and sitting with them in that grief.

Maybe the “fake” I feel is holy discernment.

Deep down my spirit knows the difference between a ritual that changes me and a performance that costs me.

The holidays are complicated. And that’s okay. There’s grace for all of it. Even for a Grinch like me.

Why can society and culture no longer lean into uncertainty, into mystery?

Heaven knows how many mystery and who-done-it shows and books we watch and read. Why then do we hold so tightly to wanting situations, and people, to behave the way we expect?

Don’t get me wrong. We do need some control when it comes to certain areas of life. Consistent bedtime routine? Physically, mentally, & emotionally healthy. Setting boundaries around work and toxic people? Vital.

But for so much of life, we can’t control it. Because control is an illusion.

But the illusion of control is not a flaw. The tenseness you might feel in your body. The constant need to know what is going to happen or anticipating what “might” happen. These aren’t flaws. It’s a survival strategy.

A strategy I’ve learned to question.

It’s a strategy our minds and bodies use because they want to keep us safe. And we resist what makes us feel unsafe. Sometimes that is necessary, but not as often as we think. We fear being disappointed, unprepared, taken advantage of.

But the truth is, we can’t control what others do, and we can’t control every situation or experience that might happen. The tighter we try to grip control, the more stressed and anxious we become.

Opening our hearts and letting go in a world that seems like chaos is an act of rebellion. Choosing to let a situation, conversation, or interaction unfold without wanting to control it, releases the inner distress and disappointment of unmet expectations.

We can lean into the mystery that we don’t have to force a script we think will keep us safe. We can learn to trust that something larger is guiding all of it. That we are being guided if we can simply stop and listen. We can allow our minds to rest in wonder instead of our nervous system being on alert.

Letting go is a deliberate intention. Moving the thoughts and emotions through our bodies. Noticing where we feel the resistance physically. Breathing before we respond. Pausing to ask questions of the thoughts running through our mind instead of immediately responding, instead of assuming.

It’s an act of listening and observing. And listening and observing is a rebellion to the fast pace and hurried frenzy of our world.

What if we trusted that the path will appear as we gently move forward?

What if we sit in silence and stillness and trust the next right action will reveal itself?

Instead of gripping for control, maybe the mystery of the next moment isn’t something to fear. Maybe it’s something to lean into and embrace.

I struggle to sit and let be even though I see fissures and gaps.

My nature is to improve. Yet within that is also being a disruptor. Because you can’t improve anything without disruption.

Resistance is strong when you see areas for improvement but egos aren’t ready to also see.

So my task is to wait until they are ready.

Perhaps the disruptor identity is in learning to disrupt myself first. To file my observations away when my nature sees things others don’t until they are ready.

To wait for the invitation. What if that’s the key to releasing the resentment that builds when I don’t feel seen and what I have to offer is dismissed?

Waiting for the invitation leads to finding serenity.

The path always seems to lead to one thing. Being present and not wishing the present moment were different.

No matter our personality, strengths or way to growth, it always comes back to this. But learning to be present doesn’t happen except for slowing down.

Society and culture would have us believe the narrative that hurry and hustle is normal. It doesn’t want us to slow down. It doesn’t want us to find a calm pace where we find clarity.

If we did, we would find our power. We would remember the wisdom deep inside our soul that it wants to drown out.

So how do we find that gentle pace and slowness? How do we make our way back to that deep inner knowing?

We slow down to a pace where we can sit in silence and stillness. It has to be intentional. We won’t drift on auto pilot and find it. Everything will try to tug us into hustle.

The message is always the same: Be present. Don’t wish the present moment were different. Be still.

That is where our true work is. That is where we find our truest purpose.

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What if slowing down isn’t falling behind. But finally catching up to yourself?

My writing has evolved as I’ve gotten older. I find myself putting words and reflections to the page because I want to move slower and see deeper and share that with others who may be sensing the same shift.

Maybe you’ve known me from my old blog Ordinarily Extraordinary. Maybe this feels like a shift. It is.

I’ve realized that what I want to bring now is still about noticing the extraordinary in the every day ordinary but also about simply being. Being present with more clarity and calm.

Less about the pace of hurry and hustle and more about the quality of our attention. Less about fitting into the rhythm we’ve always been told to follow and more about discovering our own rhythm and path.

So in this space you’ll find:

• A slower beat — posts that ask you to pause, reflect, and see.

• Quiet strength — not loud declarations, but deep truths you recognize when you feel them.

• Realness over perfection — I’m not here to polish everything; I’m here to speak what’s bubbling beneath the surfaces.

If this resonates, thank you.

If it doesn’t, and you realize you’re looking for something different, that’s okay too. You’re still welcome here.

Here’s what you can do next:

• Take a moment and breathe out.

• Read the post that drew you here.

• Hit reply and tell me what caught your attention, what’s resonating for you.

Here’s to the threshold of something quieter.

I’m honored you’re here. Truly.

Some days it feels like time and the world is literally speeding up. The older I get the faster time seems to go by. It feels like my oldest nephew and niece were just a toddler and baby last year, and now they are having babies of their own. Yes, it’s cliché to say, but “where did the time go?”

I will often be driving through traffic and someone speeds up way too close behind me. I’m minding my own business in the slow lane doing the speed limit (and sometimes even a bit over) when someone in a hurry gets impatient and tries to weave through the morning traffic.

Now one thing to know about me. If you speed up and ride my bumper because you are in a hurry and I’m doing the speed limit, I am going to slow down even more just to tick you off. Hello, Shadow. It’s nice to see you again.

Yet when this happens and the highway speed demon maneuvers around me and all the other drivers to “get ahead,” we all end up having to stop at the same red light a couple of miles ahead. He didn’t get anywhere any faster than those of us taking our time.

And even though I try to live at a slower pace, why does it feel like moving at a slower pace means you’re left behind and others decide you’re not enough?

If I’m honest, I get caught up in the hurry and grind also. AND I’m really tired of it. I’m not wired like everyone else who seems to be on the go all the time. All it does is drain me and cause unnecessary stress. I wasn’t created to always be on the go and rushing to produce and accomplish. I don’t think any of us are really if we’re honest.

And if I’m even more honest, I’m angry and tired of the expectations others put on you because they can’t see past their own damn nose and think you have to be what they expect you to be. They expect you to bend over backwards, rush and hurry, so they feel comfortable instead of slowing down long enough to see the amazing value and strengths you bring to the table.

Let people just be. Let them be who they were created to be. Stop pressuring and rushing them. When you open your eyes to their worth and value simply because they exist and not for how fast they can work or what they can produce, only then will you see the amazing gifts, strength, and genius they bring to the world.

When we are rushing and hurrying, we aren’t able to see the gifts right in front of us. The gift that the people in front of us are. The gifts nature gives us. The October blue sky after a rainstorm so blue it hurts your eyes. The gift of the flowers in so many colors and shapes it’s mind-blowing that something could come from such a tiny seed. The way the wind shifts from the end of summer temps to the cool fall breeze like a long exhale.

If we are to remember who we were truly created to be, we have to slow down. That’s the biggest rebellion there is. Nothing in this world wants us to remember our divine nature. And remembering is the boldest way to live.

I was reading something recently and the writer called September a ‘threshold month,’ and I immediately said “yes” out loud in agreement.

Last year I became very aware of how my body and spirit don’t want to follow our current system of calendar seasons and the way it pushes us to treat time as a commodity instead of a rhythm to live within. Western culture puts so much pressure to turn time into productivity when my body and spirit simply crave flow, rest, and presence.

People keep preaching about setting goals like it’s a personality trait. We get it. You’re goal setting. No need to yell from the rooftops. Seriously, how many people actually reach the goals they set for the New Year? Not that many. And maybe there’s a good reason.

Mother Nature starts slowing down in fall and then she rests in winter. I feel like I slam right into the holidays season out of breath and just trying to push through until after Christmas. Why do we think we should continue moving at such a rapid pace chasing goals when the earth (at least in my hemisphere) says its time to be still?

Maybe my spirit animal should have been a bear. All I want to do after Christmas is hibernate until spring.

Not to mention the government systems of the world meddling with the clocks and springing us forward and then falling us backward. Nature has never needed a clock so why on earth would those in power decide ‘hey let’s mess with everyone’s minds and fool around with their internal circadian rhythms’?

Nevermind. We all should know why. But that’s another story for another time. I digress.

I woke up yet again this morning later than I wanted after a night of restless sleep. This happens every spring and fall when the days march slowly toward the equinoxes. My body reminding me the seasons are shifting, but it’s not quite settled in just yet. So I give myself grace knowing all will be well. Reminding myself to just go with the flow. To do my best to keep my routines but if not there is grace.

What do we do when we are in a liminal space where we aren’t in the season we were in but not quite in the one coming next? This question is where my thoughts have been this September as I’ve caught myself getting frustrated and thinking I’m not doing enough. These are two ways I’m choosing to respond.

• Accept it all without judgment: If I struggle with sleep and my morning doesn’t go as I had hoped? No judgement. I capture those thoughts that try to berate me and release them because they will not serve me as I go about my day. They will just keep me stuck.

• Give myself plenty of grace.

We hurry and hustle to get to the next thing, to the next experience, to the next season, when we need liminal spaces. We need those in between seasons to rest and recuperate. To allow our bodies to ready itself for the next season. To allow our thoughts and minds to breathe and settle before we move into what’s next with intention, not exhaustion. These in-between spaces are where integration happens, where clarity quietly takes root. We may not always see the growth right away, but this pause? It’s part of the process, not a break from it.

What might shift if you trusted the in-between as necessary, not wasted?

I didn't realize how noisy the world had become until 2020. When life suddenly slowed down the noise felt louder. No gradual build up. Just without warning the level of noise increased. Not the physical sounds like traffic and crowds. In many ways the physical sounds of life quieted, but the digital noise, the talking heads, the noise of opinions, just became louder.

And far more divided than ever before.

What almost instantly struck me, though, was how all that noise was rooted in fear.

I walked into the grocery store feeling like the only person not moving about full of fear. The fear so high I could almost see it emanating off their bodies. It felt suffocating. And all of the vitriol in the news and media? It was underlaiden with fear.

I've always been a bit of a quiet rebel, never wanting to follow the crowd, but more than ever I knew I didn't want to live on auto-pilot allowing the talking heads and all the fear I was sensing to determine what was best for me.

So I turned it off. I started asking one question of anything I saw, watched or listened to. Does this cause me fear? If so, I turned it off. No more constantly filling my ears with podcasts. Definitely no more news casts.

I moved further under my rock. Not to stick my head in the sand, but to find what my intuition and spirit were trying to show me but couldn't because of all the noise.

Most people in the office where I worked began working from home. I couldn't due to what I did, but the quieter office? Absolute bliss. I had more energy. I wasn't having to guard myself from other people's energy and moods. My introverted and highly sensitive self had more peace.

As culture and society 'opened back up' it's been easy to fall back into those patterns of hurry and hustle. Allowing the “noise” of the world to infiltrate the rhythms and routines of my days.

Too often the 'noise' of the world steals our peace:

• The digital noise of constant email dings or messaging pings.

• The mental noise of worry and ruminating thoughts or comparing ourselves to others.

• The noise of others' expectations and trying to manage their perception of us, resentments, or fear that we are missing out on something.

• The noise of external voices telling us what our purpose "should" be or dogmatic religious rules that make us question our own inner knowing.

• The noise of feeling like we have to prove our worth by being productive or succeeding instead of listening to what our own heart and intuition are trying to tell us.

Making time for silence and stillness is so important. It can be uncomfortable to sit with your own thoughts. We think we can't control our thoughts so we do everything we can to drown them out.

But our thoughts don't have to control us. When a thought arises, we can question it. We can simply observe them for what they are.

Our thoughts are like clouds drifting across the sky — shaped by the weather of memory, fear, desire, and habit. Some rise from past experiences, others from the voices we’ve absorbed or the futures we imagine. At times they are simply the brain doing its work of sorting, predicting, and protecting; at other times they are whispers of longing or the surfacing of old wounds. They are signals, not definitions — passing forms that show us where our attention has landed, but not who we truly are.

And this is why silence matters — without it, the noise around us drowns out the wisdom we already have within us. We forget that our thoughts are only passing visitors, not the essence of who we are.

Where have you found quiet lately? Drop a note in the comments so we can learn from one another’s practices.

Know a friend who might be craving stillness too? Pass this reflection along.

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I’m looking out over my flower garden. When I first began growing flowers I started seeds indoors on heat mats and under lights earlier this spring. Learning how to grow seeds into seedlings and then when they can be transplanted, how to keep critters away, trying to journal everything I was learning so I didn’t forget what worked and what to do differently next time, took being intentional. I’ve learned to be okay with it if it doesn’t work. I try again and get better each time. I can only do so much and then it’s out of my control. I have learned to trust in the slow work of nature.

Starting my own sourdough starter and learning to make sourdough bread has been trial and error. It’s a slow process from feeding the starter to learning the process of making the bread. It takes time to learn how it should feel and look and when it needs more time, but not too much time. I know it will be a lifelong practice and learning. It’s observing nature and working with it instead of against it. It’s slow work.

I was watching The Craftsman on The Magnolia Network recently. He uses century old tools made before there was electricity and electric tools to carve and craft the wood for restorations of Victorian homes and furniture and other things. It’s slow work.

Learning about ourselves, being brutally honest about our core fears and weaknesses, takes time. We aren’t able to handle all we need to learn about ourselves in one pass. It would overwhelm us allowing guilt and shame to take up residence. Learning how we were created, what we fear, and what we long for takes work. Slow work.

Allowing the slow work to happen means trusting. Trusting that we are enough. Trusting that we are exactly where we are supposed to be at this moment in time. It’s surrendering our autonomy and our need to control and hurry to accomplish something.

I’ve come to believe all the best things and worthwhile things are slow work.

There is beauty and joy in the slow work.

We shouldn’t despise the slow work. We should welcome and cultivate it, because when we do the slow work will lead us to something holy.

In 2020 it seemed like many people were wanting to learn to make sourdough bread. I enjoy baking and had tried making bread many years ago when my son was little, but being the mom of a boy takes a lot of energy so I put the bread making aside. I typically don’t follow trends or hop on a bandwagon. If I try something, or become interested in something that seems like the trend at the time, you can rest assured I took a lot of time and thought before diving into it and if it’s something I stick with or continue doing then you know I truly do find joy in it or have found something transformative in it.

But alas 2020 was not the year for me to try my hand at sourdough bread making again. I couldn’t find the right flours to use so I set that desire aside. In the fall of 2021, I decided to try again. I found the flours I wanted to use and so I started. I made a starter. It took some trial and error, taking a break, and coming back to it, but I can now safely say I’m addicted to it. Much like I am growing flowers now.

And there is something holy about making sourdough bread just like there is growing flowers. Sourdough bread making is a spiritual practice.

There is something holy in waiting for the levain, in adding the salt onto the dough, then spreading the levain over the dough, then gently pressing the levain into the dough and then using more pressure to mix it in and throughout the dough. There is something holy about the folding and waiting for the dough to rise, then shaping the loaves and letting them proof overnight, waiting to bake them the next morning.

The process makes me more aware of my day. It slows me down causing me to be intentional with each step. There is no “throwing it all together” in sourdough bread making.

I learn from making the starter that it takes feeding and care and that what is all around becomes the growth. We have to throw some of the growth away in the beginning keeping just what is needed and feed it again. There is a rhythm to it. The starter grows each day, and each day some of the growth needs to be removed and used to make other things and the original fed again. A perfect metaphor for life.

Then when it’s time we make the bread. It teaches me there are times the dough must be worked and then are times it needs to rest. Isn’t that how life is? Times when we need to work out our salvation and times where we need to rest in God’s timing even though we want to rush it?

Does it always work out perfectly? No. Is there a spiritual practice in trying again, taking stock of what you should do differently the next time? Absolutely. This is the power of learning to make sourdough bread. From making your own starter from scratch and learning what works, to starting your levain and dough to the finished boule or batard, it is a practice showing us the spiritual practice of life if we will only become aware and see it through different eyes.

There are days where I feel like I'm wandering. Days where my focus can't lift itself from the ground beneath me. Frustrated with any number of situations trying to steal my joy. Isn’t that life for all of us?

It's easy to simply wander about. And there are some days where we need to slow down and breathe. But we can not remain in a state of just aimless wandering.

In the episode from Dr. Who above the good doctor realizes a fact so significant that it shifts his perspective drastically. He realizes he is no longer just the last of his kind wandering aimlessly about trying to save the world. He now has a goal. He may get there the long way around, but he now knows where he is going.

Home.

How difficult is it for us to do the same. Because this long way around can be discouraging. We often wander without purpose. Forgetting that our purpose is most of all to be fully present in this moment.

Home means doing the inner work and realizing our true identity and who we were truly created to be. Quieting our thoughts and sitting in silence to hear what our divine nature has been trying to call us to all along. Blocking out the noise of this world that distracts us from where we were always meant to go. Not the home here in this material world that we can see and touch, but as one spark of something greater than ourselves.

Home in the present moment and not wishing it were different. Releasing the resistance and constriction that our ego uses to try and pull our mind away from the now.

That's when we find our center. That's when we find home. Isn't that how Christ taught us to live? We search for heaven trying to avoid hell yet it's staring us right in the face whispering "you are already home."

We just miss it because we're too busy wishing it were something else instead of finding the heaven, the extraordinary, right here in this moment realizing that while we are one drop of the ocean we are still the ocean.

My husband gets irritated with me telling me to watch where I'm walking before I trip. (For the record I've never tripped while looking up in awe at the sky. Others times, yes, but not when gazing at the sky.)

Maybe it's the universe reminding me to see the extraordinary in the ordinary. Maybe it's nature calling me to stop the doing for a moment and just breathe and be.

The hurrying the rushing. The constant pressure to be productive and to be doing something. It's not healthy - physically, mentally, or spiritually. I think when I'm in a hurry and rushing it's my spirit's way of telling me I'm not in alignment with my core beliefs and values of peace, presence, and purpose.

One thing I'm struck by is how the most beautiful skies are usually not clear and calm.

The most deeply colorful sunsets are always after a storm has blown through & the sky has cleared a lot but not completely. Where the sun is coming through, but the clouds aren't completely gone.

Then there are the billowing clouds against the blue sky on a hot summer day ballooning larger and larger but not yet full enough to rain. It's like God just reached down and painted the perfect painting with all the shades of white, grey, and blue that are beyond my comprehension.

And there is something so mesmerizing about an October blue sky after a strong storm that is so blue that it almost hurts your eyes if you stare at it too long.

All of it sharing life lessons from nature:

• Nature just is. It doesn't rush or hurry. It's present in each moment.

• The most beautiful views are also found before and after the storms.