THE INKWELL SOUL

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  • A Poem: The Earth’s Soft Wisdom

    The oak stands tall in quiet decree, That time is the root of the reaching tree; Do not rush the branch or the widening ring, For seasons must turn before wood can sing.

    Listen when the wandering wind begins to blow, You are allowed to shift, to stall, or to go; Your pace is a prayer that you’re free to change, Across the valley or the mountain range.

    The flower bows low in the garden’s bed, “Nothing blooms forever,” is the truth it spreads; But the fading petal and the falling leaf, Are the grace of a beauty that is meant to be brief.

    The ocean cradles the moon on its breast, Holding the hurricane and the hour of rest; You are the tide, both the soft and the grim, With a storm in your heart and a stillness within.

    When the clouds turn gray and the air grows cold, Let go of the weight you were never meant to hold; Like the rain that falls to the thirsty floor, Release what you cannot carry anymore.

    The stars only speak when the shadows are deep, A silver promise that the Heavens keep; For only when the day has ceased, Is the hidden light of the dark released.

    And though you’ve been hidden or lost in the night, The sun returns with its gold and its might; No matter the depth of the valley you’ve trod, You will rise again from the silent sod.

    ~Elizabeth Proett

  • The 48-Hour Reclamation: A Memoir of Scent, Strength, and Survival

    The Baseline (The Last 5 months)

    For five months, I’ve been the architect of my own routine. Navigating my second round of cancer – this time with breast cancer mets to the bones – means I don’t take my health for granted. I’ve lived in the discipline of a low-carb, low-sugar lifestyle and a steady 14 to 18 hour fasting window. It’s my way of telling my body, “I’m still the one in charge here.” But I wanted more. I wanted the deep-clean. I wanted to see if I could push to 72 hours and give my cells the ultimate “factory reset.”

    Day 1: The Quiet Warrior

    I started the clock with the quiet confidence of a woman who has already stared down much scarier things than an empty stomach. The first 24 hours were surprisingly peaceful. By hour 20, my mind was laser-sharp. In the silence of my home in the country, I felt a sense of control that felt like a gift. My kitchen was no longer a place of “shoulds” and “musts” – it was just an area I passed through on my way to a deeper focus.

    Day 2: The Tavern Dream & Popcorn Ambush

    Then, the “Fasting Brain” kicked in, and my quiet country life turned into a sensory minefield. Being low carb by choice means I’m used to saying no to sugar and grains, but at hour 30, my brain started projecting a very specific movie: “Thin-crust tavern-style pizza.” I could see the crispy, cracker-like edges, the heaps of grilled chicken and roasted veggies, and a layer of golden, bubbly cheese so thick it looked like a warm blanket.

    But the real test wasn’t the pizza in my head; it was the daughter in the kitchen.

    My teenage daughter – my teammate in this life – decided it was the optimal moment to pop a bag of popcorn. In the stillness of our home, that pop – pop – pop sounded like a drum roll for a feast. The scent of salt and butter wafted through the rooms, a literal “butter-trap” designed to test my resolve. I stayed strong, but let’s just say that popcorn almost became my undoing.

    Hour 40-48: The Cellular Deep Clean

    By hour 40, I knew the internal work was happening. Autophagy was in full swing – my body’s way of identifying the old, the damaged, and the “no-longer-useful” and clearing it out. For a woman fighting a second round of cancer, there is something deeply poetic about cellular housecleaning. I felt light, clear-headed, and incredibly accomplished. At hour 48, I listened to my body. It told me I had reached my summit for this climb. I had done two full days. I had reset my system.

    The Breaking Point (and the Epiphany)

    I broke the fast with the precision of a scientist. First, the warm, salty embrace of bone broth. Then, after guiding my system back to the world of solids, I have the vegetables.

    I eat a healthy diet every day, but this? This was a revelation. Those vegetables didn’t just taste good; they tasted vibrant. It turns out that when you quiet the noise of constant digestion, you can finally hear how incredible real food actually is.

    The Aftermath

    I didn’t hit 72, but I conquered 48. In the middle of a battle for my health, I proved to myself that I am disciplined, capable, and still the boss of my own biology. I’m back to my 14 to 18 hour routine now, nourishing my body for the fight ahead. But that 72 hour mark? It’s on the map. And next time, I am hiding the popcorn!


  • The Tired Heart

    We are often taught that effort is a currency – that if we deposit enough sweat and sacrifice, we can eventually buy the life we imagined. But for many of us, this transaction didn’t work that way. We waited for the applause of success, only to find that survival is a silent victory.

    If you find yourself mourning the person you “could have been,” understand that grief is actually a form of respect for your own potential. But don’t stay in that graveyard too long. The person you are today – the one who is tired, wiser, and still breathing – is a much more impressive feat of engineering than the polished version of you that never had to face a storm.

    When the weight of “figuring it out” becomes a burden too heavy to carry, it is time to change your frequency. Our minds are designed to solve problems, but our hearts are designed to sustain meaning.

    The Mind asks: Does this make sense? Is this efficient? What if I fail?

    The Heart asks: Does this feel like home? Can I breathe here? Am I at peace?

    Sometimes, the most productive thing you can do is concede the argument. When the blueprints of your life fail you, stop looking at the map and start feeling the ground beneath your feet.

    Dreams often arrive dressed as promises, but when they leave as lessons, they leave you with something far more durable than a fantasy: character. Success might not clap for you when you survive a hard year, a broken relationship, or a lost career. But you don’t need the world’s applause when you have your own self-respect. There is a profound, sacred dignity in choosing to walk forward when you have every reason to sit down.

    Today, let your “quiet courage” be enough. You don’t need to have the answers; you just need to keep the rhythm. Take a deep breath, hand the heavy lifting over to your heart, and trust that what feels right is often more honest than what makes sense.

  • A Poem: The Sovereign

  • The Departure

    We are taught to listen for the thunder – the slamming doors, the sharp words, the jagged edges of a visible argument. We think that as long as the house is quiet, the foundation is still holding. But the most permanent departures don’t make a sound.

    When you hurt a person of depth, they don’t meet your fire with their own. They don’t reach for the weapons of manipulation or the theatrics of a scene. Instead, they reach for clarity.

    It isn’t a “silent treatment” designed to punish you or make you crawl back. It is the silence of a well running dry. It is the realization that they have been pouring water into a cracked vessel, and they are simply too tired to keep trying to seal the leaks.

    The End of Explanations: They stop telling you why they are hurt because they realize you already know; you simply don’t care enough to change.

    The Loss of Access: They don’t block you out of spite; they remove the bridge because the crossing has become too dangerous for their peace.

    The Shift in Vision: They no longer see you through the lens of your potential; they see you through the reality of your actions.

    There is a specific line that, once crossed, transforms a person’s warmth into a polite, distant chill. It isn’t a grudge. A grudge requires energy – it requires holding onto the heat of the hurt. A good hearted person doesn’t want to carry that weight.

    They choose peace over being right. They decide that their internal stillness is worth more than the satisfaction of a “final word.” They don’t need to win the argument because they have already won back their autonomy.

    “They still wish you well; they just no longer need to be close enough to watch it happen.”

    The tragedy of losing someone like this is that you often don’t realize the loss in real time. Because there was no explosion, you assume the status quo remains. You mistake their quiet for forgiveness, and their lack of revenge for weakness.

    But one day, you’ll reach for that warmth and find only a draft. You’ll look for the person who used to defend you, who used to explain the world to you, who used to fix what was broken – and you’ll realize that while they are still “around,” they are no longer there. They haven’t moved to a different city; they’ve moved to a different frequency. A place where your chaos can no longer reach them.

  • The Essence of “I Am”

    “I used to think that to ‘find myself’ meant adding things – more wisdom, more experiences, more achievements. I thought I was building a masterpiece. But I’ve realized that enlightenment isn’t an addition; it’s a radical subtraction. It’s peeling back the layers of who the world told us we are until all that’s left is the raw, unshakable pulse of being.”

    At the heart of every human life, there is a phrase that acts as both the foundation and the horizon: “I Am.” We spend our entire lives trying to finish that sentence. We tether it to labels like a boat to a dock – I am a parent, I am a worker, I am tired, I am successful. But if you have the courage to cut those ropes and let the labels drift away, you are left with a truth that is as terrifying as it is beautiful. You are left with the “I Am” that has no end.

    The Beginning and the End

    This statement is the absolute Alpha. It is the beginning because no thought can be thought, and no world can be perceived, without the “I” to witness it. Before you knew your name, you were “I Am.”

    Yet, it is also the Omega. When the stories of our lives eventually fade – when the titles we’ve earned and the roles we’ve played are stripped away by time – this pure existence is the only thing that remains. It is the silent witness that was there at your first breath and will be there at your last. It is the only part of you that never ages, never breaks, and never changes.

    The Mirror Presence

    Think of your consciousness as a mirror. Our labels – our happiness, our grief, our temporary identities – are merely reflections passing across the glass. The labeled self is fragile; it is stuck in the past or worrying about the future, constantly changing based on the world around it.

    But the pure “I Am” is the mirror itself. It does not become “broken” because it reflects a broken image, and it does not become “golden” because it reflects the sun. It simply IS. While the world of definitions is a world of boundaries and limitations, the “I Am” is a state of boundless potential.

    The End of Becoming

    Most of our lives are a frantic race toward “becoming.” We believe that if we gather enough labels, we will finally be “enough.” But the realization of “I Am” is the end of that struggle. It is the ultimate arrival.

    In this space, you are no longer a noun – a fixed, static thing to be judged or categorized. You are a verb. You are the very act of existence. You are the ocean recognizing its own depth, realizing that while the waves on the surface (our emotions and roles) may toss and turn, the depths remain in a state of eternal, unshakable peace.

    To stand in the center of “I Am” without an anchor is to realize that you aren’t just a part of the universe. You are the space in which the universe is happening.

    ———————————————————————

    The Final Step: Returning Home

    “We spend our lives traveling the world in search of a destination, only to realize that the ‘I Am’ was the ground we were standing on the whole time. It is not a place you arrive at; it is the truth of who you have always been beneath the noise.

    Tonight, before you fall asleep, try a radical experiment. As the roles of the day fall away – the employee, the parent, the friend – don’t reach for a new label. Don’t try to be anything at all. Just be the witness. Breathe into that space where the journey ends and you finally, simply, are.”

  • The Weight of the Unspoken

    This feeling – that my history is a vast, dark forest where others might get lost or flee – is a heavy burden to carry. It makes me treat my voice like a secret weapon that I have dismantled for safety, worried that if I reassemble it, the sound would be too loud, too jagged, , or too “much” for the world to hold.

    The truth is, we often quiet our voices because, at some point, the world or the people in it taught us that our complexity was a “complication.”

    I have swallowed my history like stones, one for every year, one for every scar, until my throat is a dry well and I’ve forgotten where the bucket and the rope are. I ask: Where is my voice? And the silence answers back in my own tone – I have traded my speech for a fortress, thinking it better to be quiet that to be known and then rejected.

    There is a phantom fear that my past is a flood, a dark water of “too much” and “too long ago,” that if I opened the floodgates of who I am, the people I love would have nowhere to go but away. I worry my history is a map of dead ends, a collection of flaws too sharp to be touched, that if they see the wreckage behind the curtain, they would realize they didn’t love me that much.

    So I keep the volume at a whisper. I prune my edges to fit into their frames. I hide the chapters where the ink is smeared and the characters have no names. I have learned to be a “soft” version of myself, a ghost in the corner of my own life, terrified that the “real” me – the loud, the hurt, the raw – would be a fire that cuts like a knife.

    But how can I be loved if I am a shadow? How can I be held if I am made of mist? The flaws I fear will drive them away are the very things that prove I exist. Maybe the voice isn’t lost, just waiting for a silence that feels safe enough to break – for a heart that doesn’t see a “burden” but a soul with a story it’s finally ready to take.

  • The Art of Shutting Up

    I recently stumbled across a quote that hit me like a cold splash of water to the face. It asked : When was the last time you really listened – not just waiting for your turn to talk, or rehearsing what you’ll say next? My immediate, knee-jerk internal reaction? “Oh, I have a great point to make about that!”

    And there is it was. The irony. I was literally “rehearsing my reply” to a quote about how I shouldn’t be rehearsing my reply.

    It made me realize that for a long time, I haven’t been having conversations; I’ve been conducting tactical maneuvers. I’ve realized that most of us (myself very much included) don’t actually listen. We reload. While the other person is talking, we’re back in the kitchen of our minds, chopping up our own clever anecdotes, seasoning our counter-arguments, and waiting for that split-second gap in their breathing so we can serve our masterpiece.

    It’s exhausting. And honestly? It’s why so many of my “connections” have felt about as deep as a parking lot puddle.

    We have this frantic, itchy need to be the “fixer.” When a friend starts venting about their boss or their partner, my brain immediately shifts into IT-Support mode. I start building a three-point plan to solve their life. But I’ve come to realize that “fixing” is often just a polite way of saying, “Your discomfort is making me uncomfortable, so I’m going to give you a solution so we can talk about something happier.” True listening, the kind that actually builds trust, feels a lot more like holding a heavy box for someone. You don’t try to unpack it or tell them it’s not that heavy. You just stand there and hold it with them until they’re ready to put it down.

    I’ve been trying to experiment with this lately, and let me tell you – it’s awkward. There’s this thing called the “pregnant pause” that feels about ten years long when you’re used to constant chatter. But I’ve noticed something wild: when I resist the urge to jump in with a “Me too!” or a “You should try this” and I just… stay there? The other person usually sighs and says the real thing. The thing they were actually worried about. The stuff that was hiding behind the first layer of words.

    I’m learning to embrace the “W.A.I.T.” acronym: Why Am I Talking? It’s a humbling question to ask yourself mid-sentence. Usually, the answer is “to sound smart” or “to stop the silence.” Rarely is the answer “because this is absolutely vital for them to hear.”

    My goal now isn’t to be the most interesting person in the room, but the most present one. I want to be a vessel, not a megaphone. It means quieting the internal chatter, letting the “perfect” comeback die in my throat, and just being there. Because at the end of the day, people don’t really need my “brilliant” advice. They just need to know that for five minutes, they weren’t alone in the room.

  • Why I’m Crashing My Own Funeral

    Seriously, hear me out on this one. I went to a funeral recently. It was lovely, truly. There were tears, beautiful flowers, and grandchildren telling stories that made everyone laugh and cry in equal measure. But as I sat there, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit jealous.

    Not of the being dead part, mind you – I am not in a rush for that. But I was jealous of the honesty and raw emotion.

    We spend our whole lives being polite, nodding at brunch, and sending “thinking of you” texts. But at a funeral? That’s when the real stuff comes out. That’s when people finally admit that your weird obsession with rocks was actually charming, or that the way you made your home made chocolate chip cookies changed their childhood. (At least I am hoping I am remembered by this.)

    And it hit me: Why on earth should I have to be dead to hear the best stories about myself?!

    With this second round of cancer making itself at home, I’ve decided I am not interested in being the guest of honor who can not enjoy the catering. If I am going to be the subject of a eulogy, I would like to be able to fact-check it (sorry, that is the Virgo in me talking).

    The Ultimate Party Plan

    People often spend their later years “planning” their funerals – picking out favorite verses and hymns or poems and songs. It is practical, but let’s be honest, it is a bit of a chore. (I’ve already had to plan a husband’s funeral and I don’t want that chore for my family.) I do not want to plan a service. I want to plan a party. I want to curate the vibe, the menu, and the laughter. There is something incredibly profound about taking the power back from a diagnosis and saying “if we’re going to talk about my life, let’s do it while I am still living it.”

    A Gift for Both Sides

    I know, some might say it is a bit “main character energy.” But I have realized that this isn’t just for me. It is a weirdly beautiful, healing gift for everyone involved.

    For me: I get the rare treasure of closure. I get to see the ripple effect of my life. We all wonder, “Did I matter? Did I do okay?” I get to hear the answer in the voices of my children, my family and my friends.

    For you: It is a release valve. Usually, we carry our best tributes to the graveside, heavy with the regret of “I wish I’d told them.” By showing up to my own send-off, I am letting you off the hook. You get to say it to my face. You get to cry on my shoulder instead of a headstone. We get to trade the “if onlys” for “I’m so glad we dids.”

    Celebrating the Presence

    Death is a thief, but it doesn’t have to be a party pooper. Most ceremonies are about a person who WAS. I want this to be about the person who IS.

    I want to see the tears, but I want to be able to hand you the tissue. I want to hear the “remember whens” so I can say, “Actually, it was even funnier than that!” I want to say my goodbyes not through a legal will or a pre-recorded video, but with a hug that lingers… just long enough.

    So, consider this my “Save the Date” for the ultimate “Life Premiere.” There will be laughter, there will be stories, and yes, it might be a little awkward – but the best parts of life usually are.

    I have spent my life doing my best to show up for the people I love. I’ll be damned if I’m going to miss the biggest party they ever throw for me.

    So til then…. let’s go make some more memories!

  • Intentions Over Expectations: Living Purposefully

    We’ve all been there: the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s, and we suddenly find ourselves under the crushing weight of a “New Year, New Me” checklist. We set massive expectations – hit the gym every day, double our income, finally master that hobby – and the moment life gets messy, we feel like we’ve failed.

    But what if we stopped chasing outcomes and started cultivating intentions?

    This year, I’m inviting you to join me in a radical shift. Instead of obsessing over where we’re going, let’s get deeply, beautifully obsessed with how we’re traveling.

    The Weight of “Expectation” vs. The Wing of “Intention”

    Expectations are rigid. They are pass/fail. They focus on a future result that we often can’t control, leaving us anxious and disconnected from the now.

    Intention is different. It’s the soul’s GPS. It’s about the energy you bring to the present moment. While an expectation says, “I must lose ten pounds,” an intention says, “I intend to honor my body with movement and nourishment today.”

    One feels like a chore; the other feels like a choice.

    Turning the Mundane into the Meaningful

    When you live with intention, nothing is “ordinary” anymore. Every decision becomes an opportunity to align your outer world with your inner values.

    *Mindful Moments: It’s pausing before you open your laptop to decide that today, you will lead with curiosity rather than frustration.

    *The Power of Growth: It’s recognizing that a “bad day” isn’t a failure of your plan, but a chance to practice the intention of resilience.

    *Gratitude as a Compass: When we stop looking for what’s missing (expectation) and start noticing the blessings already in our hands (gratitude), the magic starts to unfold.

    Designing a Life That Feels Good on the Inside

    Remember: Every choice you make is a vote for the person you are becoming. You have the incredible power to create a life you desire, but it doesn’t happen in one giant leap. It happens in the tiny, deliberate steps. It happens when you choose kindness when you’re tired, or when you choose to believe in your dreams even when the path isn’t perfectly clear.

    This year, let’s stop waiting for the “perfect life” to arrive and start creating a meaningful life right where we stand.

    A Little Challenge for You…

    Close your eyes and ask yourself: What is one intention I want to carry through this week? Not a goal to achieve, but a way of being. Is it “patience”? Is it “boldness”? Is it “rest”?

    Write it down. Carry it with you. And watch how the world shifts when you stop expecting and start intending.