“Just keep telling the story.”

how I extended self-care on a hard week + the story of strength we get to tell

CW: medical trauma and some allusions to sexual abuse. I’ll talk about both tenderly and with minimal details.

I’m recovering more slowly from my port surgery than I expected (see the post linked below if that’s news to you!); so please read this with grace. I’m actively extending compassion to myself by not overfunctioning in how I write this. But I trust that somehow my little offering might open new doors to kindness in your life—or at least give you permission to pause.

Sadness is the Soul’s Way of Saying, “This Matters.”

The most important spiritual discipline in my life isn’t prayer. It’s storytelling.

Every night, I unwind my way to sleep with a story. Fiction feeds what my mind can’t muster—peace, purpose, and the possibility that today’s wounds can become tomorrow’s wonders. I can’t remember when I made the shift—to return to fiction not as a distraction from a serious faith but food I can’t find anywhere else.¹ I choose to go to bed satiated.

So, before I sleep, I stitch my soul to stories. Whether it’s a 500 page epic spanning hundreds of years and several main characters or a story of dogs or climate activists or a band, the pages piece together a hope my eyes can’t always see. Soon, I’ll share a post of what I’ve read recently—something I’m looking forward to doing here regularly!² But for now, what I need you to know is:

Your whole life is a story. And you get to decide what kind you will tell.

Self-compassionate self-care is part of how you can grow to tolerate living in a story full of unpredictability, trusting that like the characters in books, this plot is headed somewhere good.

eating the Queen of Gluten Free donuts—Mochi Thai’m in Colorado Springs

And, folks, I’m telling the story where I deserve a donut when things get dark…

LOL. But, I am kind of serious.

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Here’s the deal: I thought I was going to spend my summer focused on writing my next book, traveling to national parks, treading through tender parts of my past, and feeling full of wonder about the future.³

The story we think we are telling isn’t always the story most asking to be told.