Learning is not confined to a classroom.
Some of the most important things we learn happen in the ordinary places of life — around the kitchen table, in the garden, through conversation, through work, through mistakes, through curiosity, and through the people we love.
For many years, I educated my children at home. That journey taught me that education is about far more than completing lessons or collecting information. It is about learning how to notice, how to question, how to create, how to care, how to think, and how to participate fully in life.
Home became our classroom, but life was always the curriculum.
We learned through books and nature, through art and music, through history and mathematics, through cooking and conversation, through responsibility and freedom. We learned by doing things together and by making room for questions that did not always have immediate answers.
As the years passed, I have come to see that this way of learning extends far beyond childhood.
We are always becoming.
There is always something to notice, something to understand, something to question, something to practice, something to release, and something new waiting to be discovered.
Perhaps one of the most important things we can learn is how to see our own lives more clearly.
To notice what needs our attention.
To question what we’ve simply accepted.
To recognize what may need healing.
To understand what we want to carry forward—and what we may be ready to leave behind.
Nurturing Spirit is interested in that kind of learning — the kind that helps us become more awake to our own lives and more conscious of the lives we are creating.
Learning how to live well.
Learning how to care for what has been entrusted to us.
Learning how to make room for beauty, creativity, connection, and meaning.
Learning how to become more fully ourselves.
Learning what we want to carry forward.
Learning what we want to leave behind.
Because a life well lived is, in many ways, a life continually being learned.
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The Pace of Peace: You Are Not Behind
What the turning year can teach us about living without rushing our becoming. There is a quiet pressure in modern life to be further along. To have recovered by now, decided by now, achieved by now. Even growth can become another race: a project to manage, a timeline to meet, a version of ourselves we…
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What Is Mine To Choose Now?
The Quiet Work of Agency After Loss. There are seasons when life makes the limits of our control painfully clear. Something happens that we did not choose. A relationship changes. A person leaves. A dream ends. A future we were counting on disappears. We make a decision we regret. Someone else makes a decision that…
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The Practice of Discernment
Learning to recognize what is yours to follow. We live in a world that is very good at telling us what to want. There is always another opinion, another expert, another voice, another path to consider. Someone always seems to know what we should be doing next. And sometimes, beneath all that noise, there is…
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Approaching & Allowing Grief
There are losses we know how to name. Someone dies. There is a funeral. People bring food. They call. They say, “I’m so sorry.” But what happens when the person you love is still alive—but far away, unreachable, estranged, changed, or simply no longer part of your life? What happens when what you lost wasn’t…
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The Knowing Within
Learning to listen to what has been quietly speaking all along. I believe most of us carry a quiet knowing within us. We often know when something isn’t right. We know when we’re living out of alignment with who we are. We know when a relationship needs our attention. We know when we are tired…
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Rooted In The Dark
A Nurturing Spirit reflection on the unseen work of becoming. There is something about a tree that feels like a picture of the human life. We tend to notice what happens above the ground. We see the height of the tree, the shape of its branches, the green of its leaves, and eventually the fruit…
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You Are Not Lost. You Are Becoming.
What to do when the life you knew no longer fits, but the life you’re becoming hasn’t taken shape yet. There is a particular kind of uncertainty that doesn’t feel like failure. It feels more like standing at a threshold. You know you aren’t who you used to be. But you aren’t quite sure who…
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Radical Responsibility; The Question that gives Us Our Lives Back
A reflection on agency, healing, intentional living, and what we choose to carry forward. What if taking responsibility for your life has less to do with blame—and more to do with freedom? The phrase radical responsibility can sound harsh. It can even sound like an accusation: if someone is wrong in your life, you must…
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Gratitude
For the Prayers That Became My Life There are things in my life today that I once prayed for. And sometimes, I forget. I get so accustomed to the life I’m living that I fail to recognize how many pieces of it were once whispered prayers. The people I asked God to bring into my…
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The Sacred Pause: Finding Meaning in the Space Between Paradigms
What if the space between who you were and who you’re becoming isn’t emptiness—but an invitation? There is a strange season of life that can be difficult to explain. You know that something has changed. The old way doesn’t fit anymore. The beliefs you once held may feel incomplete. The goals that once energized you…
