We Grow & Good Heavens, It’s Slow

However you landed here, thanks for stopping to absorb timeless design inspiration. While content here is often luxe and aspirational, I share lifestyle, simplicity, and paint colors too. How does my mystic nature and one-off humor mesh with the range of topics? Awkwardly perhaps. It’s fitting. I’m happy to keep things weirdly unexpected as an aging blogger, standing in front of an audience of beauty seekers, asking them to grow with her.

How Slow We Grow

Good gracious, what a daygum year! Anyone care to debate? No politics or too much religion to rattle you here, but oh my. This blog is part diary so I know exactly what stirred me last Spring: wildfires. They burned everywhere as my autoimmune illness flared. My internal landscape simmered with traumas old and new. Dumpster fire? Holy refining fire?

Prayers for relief were ablaze, and I can still smell the smoke.

I wasn’t sleeping which led to moongazing. As a literal body of water, maybe it’s only natural to respect the moon’s tidal brilliance and authority. It went beyond gazing. Moonbathing and moonhealing too. More new moon songs written at the piano to process emotion as I progressed through medical treatment. (Progressed is important here. Travel to a plateau of perfection isn’t on the itinerary…even dismantling along the way is progress.)

The protocol failed, and we hoped wintering in Arizona would be good medicine for rest and recovery. While my symptoms remain, more dismantling and discovery (progress!) yield more Grace and opportunity for growth.

We’re a long way from home in this desert with assorted mysterious vortex energies. Energies? Just a friendly reminder: your girl is multisensory as EFF. She is porous where palm trees rise and innocent-appearing cacti jump. Botanical growth is beautiful here, but density, dryness, and desolation are undeniable. I consider the dry slowness of my own progress.

Does personal evolution feel slow compared to the rapid evolution of culture and technology? Evolution no longer takes its own sweet time. Rapid changes in tech and AI affect this small business daily. I bet you are reeling too. Is our culture equipped to adapt to such rapid dismantling and creation?

How do we measure personal satisfaction or spiritual growth these days? How quickly we forgive? Our children’s successes? Generosity? The length of our friend list? Peace with our partner? Sobriety? A settled nervous system? Does the question prove my ignorance since the wise don’t need to ask, free as they are of ego, restful as they are in those higher chakras?

What signs of slow-but-sure deepening occur beneath the dismantling? Is heaven hovering closer to us now when holy discernment is more critical than ever? I am learning to be still in slow fashion as an act of faith. The “and know” part of Psalm 46:10 is on the horizon.

Still requires getting over my Windy City self daily. Stillness is contemplation and entering an unstructured, uncreated, raw boredom where I consent to divine therapy. I assure you I am not good at this, yet a higher calling from my soul leads me there.

At 60, I imagined feeling more chill and settled in this body. After years of trying to GET THERE, it seemed conceivable I would reach…I don’t know, maybe not the land of chill, but somewhere. Is somewhere a state of Grace?

My longing for home surprises me. I miss the willow at our Northern Illinois prairie home and deer arriving to the yard at dawn and dusk. Many folks don’t care for humidity, but I miss the fragrance of the rain. Days in the valley here are sunny yet varied. The dusty atmosphere changes with winds, drought, traffic, and the season.

I had little access to gratitude last year so I’m thankful it’s back. I’m grateful for sunshine warming my skin and for the kindness of neighbors and family. For my husband who was willing to relocate and sacrifice for my good. We were very young when we found home not in a place but with each other. In fresh ways, we are redefining its meaning for the future and for ourselves.

Last year, I wrote:

I feel the firm resting ground beneath my bare feet…charging me with quantum energies, holy secrets, and a hidden wholeness.

Right where I am, the ground underfoot is rocky, dense, and awake with magnetic energies. Far from familiar sources of living water, it’s my own body of water invited to flow in the stillness. Without the sway of trees and prairie grass to remind me, I am called to create new sacred rhythms.

I am praying for us all since I know you are also journeying through uncertainty. Gravity presses me low in this valley as mountains and moon call me to BE. To be STILL. And to KNOW.

Peace to you right where you are.

-michele

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