I soak up feelings like a sponge. Sometime around college I decided that this formidable empathy is more blessing than curse, but it’s an exhausting superpower to have either way. Over the years I’ve gotten better at deflecting the smaller, unhelpful feelings—like not taking everything so personally—but some things are too massive and messy to…
Read MoreGold stars + Grace
I spent the last few weeks of show and tell sharing my collection of gold stars with you all. But I’d like to reiterate a couple of things. First, all of these achievements require a bit of reading between the lines and re-reading the unsexy lines. The bullet journal habit took 4 years of false…
Read MoreDo your best; when you can, if you can
Whoa. Yesterday I wrote some words about how life is going, really going. The update itself was vague, but the emotional word vomit was not. After I published the post I spent about 10 minutes panicking in disbelief that I actually posted it, and heavily considered deleting the whole thing. Against my better judgement I…
Read MoreVague grief; just thinking and feeling out loud
Sometimes I use this tiny corner of the internet to write about feelings: Today started off just fine but by 11am it barrel-rolled into emotional chaos, again; like most days have for the past several months. I’ve been going through a bit of a grief-y stretch lately. I can tell that friends miss upbeat Katie. The…
Read MoreMore Wonder / CH 6
-CHAPTER 6-A bit more on grief Digging for marrow uncovered the issue behind the issue–– lack of wonder. That summer of traveling reminded me that the U.S is more than capable of evoking heart cartwheels, just like the ones that Portugal gave me. Which says a lot about the mental state I was in, that…
Read MoreWhy we moved / CH 2
– CHAPTER 2 – Forever Funeral Before our therapy trip to Portugal, our world was black on black. Everyone kept dying. In a short span of time we lost relatives, beloved grandparents, and a remarkable friend who died horrifically. Each loss knocked us down just as we’d start to rise up from the last. Each…
Read More
Katie Joy 