The Moments Archive
where I end and begin again
The stories we tell about ourselves are powerful.
Dear Reader,
The stories we tell about ourselves are powerful.
Some stories we inherit,
some are given to us,
and others we write ourselves without realizing we’re doing it.
These stories help us make sense of where we’ve been and why we are the way we are. But over time, even the truest stories can become too small and limiting.
You can feel it when a story no longer fits, though it can take time to admit it.
For some, it’s the story of being the reliable one: the person others can lean on, the one who keeps things together. That story may have carried you through many seasons, and there is truth in it, but over time it begins to demand more than it gives. For others, it’s the narrative of not being enough. It runs like a thread through memory, so familiar it’s hard to imagine yourself without it. And yet it, too, begins to limit the ways you can see your own life.
When you are trying to find the new, part of you will want to cling to the old script, if only because it feels familiar. Even a limiting story can feel safer than standing in the uncertainty of what might come next.
To begin again is to live, for a time, without certainty. It is to step into a space where the next story hasn’t yet revealed itself. This can feel like loss, but it is also the raw material of becoming. In that unfinished space, new questions start to form: What else could be true about me? What else could my life hold? What does it mean to end, and to begin again?
Yours in the journey,
Looking for more Moments? Intentional Moments Archive
ritual
Ritual, at its core, is simply the rhythm we return to on purpose.
Dear Reader,
Ritual, at its core, is simply the rhythm we return to on purpose. It might be the way we start the morning, the habit of writing something down at the end of the day, or the choice to pray before a meal.
What makes something a ritual is not the action itself, but the meaning we attach to it. It is the difference between drinking coffee while scrolling through the news and drinking coffee as a quiet moment of arrival before the day begins. The action is the same, but the presence we bring to it changes the experience.
Without these intentional rhythms, life can easily collapse into a stream of tasks. Days blur, and we move from one demand to the next without anything to hold us steady. When we choose to mark certain moments, however small, they create a sense of order and grounding. They remind us of what matters and help us return to ourselves.
Ritual only asks for repetition: the willingness to show up again and again in ways that tether us to meaning. Over time, these small practices begin to shape the way we carry our days, offering a rhythm that we can feel comfortable living inside.
Yours in the journey,
Looking for more Moments? Intentional Moments Archive
the space grace creates
We all know what it feels like to be measured only by our mistakes.
Dear Reader,
We all know what it feels like to be measured only by our mistakes.
A single failure, comment, or reaction can outweigh months of good effort. And if we are honest, we know we have done the same to others: reducing them to the hardest thing we’ve seen instead of holding the whole of who they are. These experiences stay with us because they cut against the truth that people are always more than their worst day.
That is why grace matters.
Grace becomes most important at the moments when it feels hardest to offer. Sometimes it is when we realize we’ve fallen short of our own intentions. Other times it is when someone close to us responds in a way we cannot make sense of, or when an old pattern shows up again just as we thought we had moved past it.
Without grace, those moments easily harden into judgment. A harsh word becomes proof of who someone is. A setback becomes evidence that we will never change. The story shrinks until all we can see is the worst moment.
Grace widens the view. It makes space for complexity. It allows failure and effort to sit side by side without canceling each other out. It does not excuse what matters, but it refuses to reduce a person, ourselves included, to only what went wrong.
When we learn to extend grace inward, the shift is often even more profound. Instead of treating every misstep as evidence against us, we can begin to see it as part of the larger work of becoming. We still hold ourselves accountable, but we also hold ourselves as human.
To give grace is to resist collapsing a life into its most difficult moment. It is to look again, and to see not just what went wrong, but what still remains possible.
Yours in the journey,
Looking for more Moments? Intentional Moments Archive
encouragement that stays
By the time we recognize the need for support, we’ve usually been in the work for a while.
Dear Reader,
By the time we recognize the need for support, we’ve usually been in the work for a while. We’ve already been trying to stay with the thing we care about, and to keep going even when we are unsure of the outcome. Most of that effort happens internally. Often, no one else sees what it costs us.
What we find ourselves needing in those moments is not advice or a solution. What’s missing is encouragement. Not the loud, performative kind, but something smaller and more durable. A way of remembering that the effort still matters, even if it’s become hard to name what it’s leading toward.
But encouragement, when it’s honest, helps us stay connected to the truth that effort and struggle often live side by side. Encouragement doesn’t erase the difficulty or explain it away. It says, this is hard, and you’re doing it. It reminds us that we’re still in it, and that staying in it is its own kind of integrity.
We may not always hear those words from someone else. And that absence can feel painful, especially when we long for it from those closest to us like a parent, a partner, a friend. We can’t make others understand what we’re carrying. We can’t control whether they notice, or respond in the way we hope.
But we do have a say in how we meet ourselves in that space. Encouragement offered inward, with honesty and care, becomes a form of strength that no one else has to give us. And when we begin to trust that voice, even just a little, it becomes easier to keep going.
Yours in the journey,
Looking for more Moments? Intentional Moments Archive
staying with what matters
What often makes the difference is our willingness to continue.
Dear Reader,
There’s a kind of clarity that often accompanies the choice to begin. Even when the outcome is uncertain, the first step can feel grounding. We move forward with energy because our actions are aligned with something we care about.
Over time, that sense of alignment can become quieter. What once felt purposeful blends into the everyday. The feedback that encouraged us early on may no longer be there. Some days, it’s hard to tell whether anything is changing at all.
In therapy, people often describe this part as discouraging. The emotional reward has faded. The effort starts to feel disconnected from any visible result. When that happens, it’s easy to redirect our attention elsewhere - or to walk away entirely.
But what matters doesn’t always feel meaningful in every moment. And what carries us forward is rarely fueled by constant motivation.
What often makes the difference is our willingness to continue.
Staying with what matters, especially when it would be easier not to, builds something that couldn’t be built any other way.
It creates personal resiliency and shapes a life of meaning.
One formed not just by the spark of beginning, but by the steady practice of continuing.
Yours in the journey,
Looking for more Moments? Intentional Moments Archive