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“when I sat with it longer, what surfaced was harder to admit.”

Dear Reader

May was an emotional month for me. It meant letting go, embracing change, and celebrating the recent past. It began with excitement for summer as my classes ended and I celebrated my students’ accomplishments. I have learned to embrace the mix of feelings this time of the school year always brings for me. I feel relief, pride, and then a sense of loss. I tend to spend the week after the school year ends grieving (the routine of work, my time with specific students, the relationships I am slowly building with my new colleagues), but this year that week coincided with my daughter’s graduation ceremony. Processing the end and preparing for her special day took a toll, and my journaling practice saved me from a full meltdown. I am still learning that this practice does not just give me somewhere to put what I feel. It gives me back what is underneath it.

The Thread

This May turned out to be a month about what is underneath. Not the surface of what I felt, which I have gotten reasonably good at naming, but the layer that lives beneath the obvious emotions. I knew I was sad and proud and ready and not ready all at once at my daughter’s graduation. What I have been learning, though, through the photo-journal practice is that the surface is rarely the whole story. There is something else moving underneath, and it usually has to do with the specific person, the specific moment, the specific something this particular goodbye is bringing up for me. I feel so passionate about sharing this method with you because it is so customizable and puts you in control of making meaning. You, not a content creator, researcher, or author. Just you and a few materials you already have. Photo, then journal, and then the harvest of going back through what you wrote, circling the words that carry weight. That third step is what gives me back something I did not write down.

What I found underneath this particular grief was not just that my daughter’s childhood was ending. It was the quieter ache of wanting someone I love to be cared for the way she has cared for others, and the recognition that I cannot make that happen for her. And when I sat with it longer, what surfaced was harder to admit. The harder release is not about trusting others with her. It is about giving up my own version of her, the more delicate one I have been quietly protecting, so the strong young woman she actually is can step into the world without my hand on the brake. Thankfully, I have all summer to sit with that. I did not come to this understanding by being sad. I got there by sitting with what I had written and asking what was actually underneath. Going in for a second or third pass is vulnerable work, but you gain insights and strength the more you practice. This month I tried to show you what the method can give back when you are brave enough to engage.

This Month’s Posts

​The Quiet Power of Reflection in Midlife — What if the most useful thing you can do in this season is to look honestly at what you have already lived?

​Learning to Trust Myself Again — Self-trust isn’t retrieved in one dramatic moment. It is rebuilt in a stack of small ones.

What Midlife Collections Reveal — The thing you keep waiting for has often already arrived, quietly inside what you have been collecting all along.

​What if there was never going to be one right thing? — What if your collections (skills, materials, experiences) are like breadcrumbs leading toward deeper meaning and calling in this next phase of life?

A Prompt for You

What is one piece of writing, one photo, or one ordinary moment from your recent life that you have not yet sat with long enough to hear what it might be carrying? What might surface if you went back through it slowly, just once, before making assumptions about what it means?

Walking this journey with you,

Kerri

www.quietalchemyspace.com

P.S. If any of this month’s posts left you wondering how the photo-journal practice works, I have been working on something that focuses on paying attention to our bodies. My early summer guide, Listening to What The Body Holds, is for those of us who lost the habit of really listening to our bodies somewhere along the way, and want to find a way back. I am hoping to have it ready in the next few weeks. Let me know if you are interested in taking a peak or gaining early access to it before I list it.