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Posts Tagged ‘self-reflection’

What Is Mine To Choose Now?

Posted in Living & Learning, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 7, 2026| Leave a Comment »

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 changes our life.

And eventually, beneath the grief and the questions, something quieter begins to ask for our attention:

What is mine to choose now?

I think this is where agency becomes important.

Agency Is Not Control

Agency is easy to confuse with control because our culture often tells us that we are the authors of our own lives. There is truth in that—but only up to a point.

We are not responsible for everything that happens to us.

We cannot undo a loss. We cannot change another person. We cannot rewrite a conversation that already happened. We cannot make the past become something different simply because we understand it differently now.

Agency does not ask to pretend otherwise.

It asks a smaller, more honest question; Given what has happened, what is mine to participate in now?

Sometimes Agency Is Very Small

We can choose what we carry.

We can choose what we release.

We can choose what we repair.

We can choose what we practice.

We can choose what we attempt again.

And sometimes the choice is almost invisible to everyone else.

Getting out of bed.

Making the phone call.

Telling the truth.

Setting the boundary.

Asking for help.

Taking the first step.

Small does not mean insignificant.

The Past Still Matters

Agency is not a way of avoiding grief or responsibility.

There are things we need to grieve. There are things we need to repair. There are consequences we may need to acknowledge. There are patterns we may finally need to stop repeating.

But agency asks us not to surrender the rest of our lives to what has already happened.

The past can be real without becoming the only author of the future.

What Do You Carry Forward?

Discernment is knowing the difference between what belongs in the next chapter and what does not.

Some things should be carried forward: a hard-earned wisdom, a love that remains, a value you discovered, a boundary you finally learned to honor, a part of yourself you had forgotten.

Some things need to be left behind: old stories, shame that has already taught you what it came to teach, patterns that no longer serve you, identities built around survival.

And some things need repair before they can become wisdom.

The Threshold

A threshold is the place between what was and what comes next.

You do not cross it by having every answer.

You cross it by becoming willing to participate in what comes next.

Grief asks: What have I lost?

Attempts ask: What was I learning?

Agency asks: What is mine to choose now?

And becoming asks: Who am I willing to become?

Maybe the question isn’t whether you can get back to who you were.
Maybe the question is what you will do with who you are now.

A Practice for the Threshold

Take a quiet moment and write about one season of your life that changed you.

What have I lost?

What was I attempting?

What did that experience teach me?

What is actually mine to chose now?

What will I carry forward?

What am I ready to leave behind?

What is one small action I can take?

You do not need complete control. You do not need a promise that everything will be easy.

You need a place from which you can choose.

A threshold.

And from there, perhaps the question is simple enough to carry.

What will you do with what remains?

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The Practice of Discernment

Posted in Living & Learning, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on September 30, 2026| Leave a Comment »

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 a quieter question waiting for us:

What do I actually know?

Not what am I being told. Not what would make everyone else comfortable. Not what looks good from the outside. What is true?

This is where discernment begins.

Discernment isn’t simply making a decision, and it isn’t quite the same thing as intuition, although intuition may be part of it. At its heart, discernment is the practice of becoming quiet enough to recognize what deserves our attention, and what doesn’t.

It asks us to slow down long enough to notice what is happening within us and around us. To distinguish between the voice of fear and the voice of wisdom, between urgency and timing, between what we want and what we are actually being asked to do.

I’ve learned that not everything that appears in front of us is ours to pursue. Some things are invitations. Others are distractions. Some become lessons we carry with us, while other things simply aren’t for us. Learning the difference takes time

It takes willingness to become quiet, but it also takes honesty. Sometimes discernment asks us to admit that the thing we wanted isn’t the thing we need. Sometimes it asks for patience. And sometimes it asks for enough courage to walk away from something that looks perfectly good because, somewhere deeper, we know it isn’t ours.

I think this is one of the reasons seasons matter so much.

There are things that belong to us in one season that may not belong to us in another. There are doors we may be ready to walk through now that we couldn’t have walked through before. And there are things that may be right for us someday without being right for us today.

Something can be right, but not right yet. Something can be good, but not good for you. Something can be yours,
but not yours to do now.

Discernment teaches us to respect timing.

It teaches us that saying no can be just as important as saying yes. It reminds us that we don’t have to respond to every voice simply because it is loud, persistent, or certain of itself.

There is wisdom in becoming still enough to hear the quieter one.

The knowing within.

The voice beneath the noise.

The sense that sometimes arrives without a great deal of explanation and simply says:

This.
Not that.
Now.
Not yet.
Keep going.
Let it go.

I don’t believe discernment means that we will always know exactly what to do. Sometimes it gives us something much more modest, and perhaps much more useful: enough clarity to take the next right step.

We don’t have to see the entire path. We just have to learn to recognize what is ours to follow.

And perhaps that is part of becoming, not only learning how to listen, but learning how to distinguish what we hear.

A question to carry with you:

What is yours to follow, and what are you being invited to let go?

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Approaching & Allowing Grief

Posted in Living & Learning, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 23, 2026| Leave a Comment »

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 a person at all?

A marriage you thought would be different. A childhood you didn’t get to have. A dream you quietly stopped pursuing. A home. A friendship. A family as it once was. A version of yourself. A future you had already imagined.

There are so many ways to lose something. And there are so many losses we learn to live around without ever really grieving.

We keep functioning. We go to work. We make dinner. We raise our children. We answer the phone. We keep going.

And sometimes we become very god at carrying on.

But carrying on isn’t necessarily the same thing as processing what happened.

Sometimes I wonder if grief doesn’t disappear simply because we become accustomed to its weight.

Maybe we just become stronger carrying it.

I’ve been thinking about what it means to approach grief rather than outrun it. Not to romanticize suffering. Not to turn every loss into a lesson. Not to rush toward gratitude. And not to tell ourselves that everything happens for a reason.

Just to tell the truth:

This mattered.
This hurt.
I loved this.
I miss this.
Something changed.
And I am still here.

Grief can be experienced through the body—a tight chest, a clenched jaw, heaviness, tears that won’t come, tears that come unexpectedly, or the exhaustion of holding something together. We don’t have to claim that grief is literally stored in a particular body part to acknowledge that loss can be deeply embodied.

Perhaps approaching grief begins with a simple question:

What have I lost?

And then a harder one:

What have I never allowed myself to mourn?

Maybe allowing grief doesn’t mean giving ourselves permission to stay forever in sorrow. Maybe it means giving sorrow somewhere to exist—a place where it doesn’t have to perform, become wisdom immediately, or make us stronger.

This may be one of the thresholds of a life well lived: not becoming untouched by loss, but becoming willing to meet it.

To name it. To grieve it. To make room for it.

And eventually, when we are ready, to ask:

“What remains?”

Not the silver lining. Not the lesson. Simply—what remains?

What love remains? What wisdom remains? What part of me remains? What can I carry forward?

Because we don’t always have to move on from what we loved.

Sometimes we learn to move forward with it.

Here are a few reflection questions approaching grief:

What have I lost?

What loss have I minimized because I told myself it wasn’t “bad enough” to grieve?

Is there someone who is still alive, but no longer accessible to me in the way I wish they were?

What version of myself am I grieving?

What have I never allowed myself to mourn?

Here are a few reflection questions allowing grief:

What happens inside me when I allow myself to remember?

What have I been trying not to feel?

What would it mean to let this grief exist without demanding that it teach me a lesson?

What remains?

What part of the love connected to this loss can I carry forward?

One gentle thing I can do after opening this grief is:

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The Questions We Don’t Usually Ask

Posted in Living & Learning, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 31, 2026| Leave a Comment »

There are questions we’re taught to ask.

What do you want to be when you grow up?
Where do you want to go to college?
What kind of career do you want?
How much money do you want to make?
When are you getting married?
When are having children?
What’s next?

We become remarkably good at answering questions that help us move forward.

But there are other questions.

Quieter questions.
The ones that don’t necessarily have an obvious answer.

Am I actually happy with the life I’m living?

Do I still want the things I once thought I wanted?

What have I outgrown?

What am I doing because it matters to me—and what am I doing because I’ve always been expected to do it?

What would I choose if I wasn’t afraid of disappointing someone?

These aren’t always comfortable questions.

And perhaps that’s why we don’t ask them very often.

We can become very good at living on autopilot.

We follow the path that made sense 10 years ago.
Then five years ago.
Then last year.

And sometimes we don’t notice that we’ve changed while the path stayed the same.

The career that once fulfilled us may no longer fit.
The definition of success we inherited may no longer feel meaningful.
The relationships, routines, possessions, expectations, and identities that once felt like us may quietly become things we’re simply maintaining.

Not because something is necessarily wrong.

But because we are not the same person we were when we chose them.

And that realization can be unsettling.

It can also be liberating.

At Nurturing Spirit, I believe realization is often where meaningful change begins.

Not because every realization requires immediate action.

Sometimes the first step is simply seeing something clearly.

Naming it.

Allowing yourself to acknowledge it without judgement.

Giving yourself permission to ask:

Is this still true for me?

That question alone can open a door.

Maybe the answer is yes.

Beautiful.

Maybe the answer is no.

That can be beautiful, too.

Because knowing what no longer fits gives us the opportunity to make a different choice.

What if you gave yourself permission to question the script?

There is a tremedous freedom in realizing that a life doesn’t have to be lived according to someone else’s definitions of success.

You are allowed to reconsider.
You are allowed to change your mind.
You are allowed to want something different than you wanted before.
You are allowed to decide that “enough” looks different than you once believed.

You are allowed to build a life that reflects who you are now, not simply who you were expected to become.

And perhaps most importantly:

You don’t have to have the answers before you’re allowed to ask the questions.

So, what questions are waiting for you?
Maybe start with one.

Not the biggest question.
Not the one you think you should be asking.

Just an honest one.

What have I been accepting without really asking whether I still want it?

Sit with it.

You don’t have to solve it today.

Sometimes awareness is enough to begin.

Because a life well lived isn’t created by having all the answers.

It begins with being willing to ask better questions.

Explore the Reflection Guide

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