Shadows at the Edge

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

“At the edge of shadows, light waits to be seen, reminding us that endings are only thresholds to another beginning.”

Change doesn’t always come crashing.

Sometimes it lingers at the edges,

the way dusk slowly unravels daylight,

barely noticed until the sky is no longer blue.

There is a silence that weighs heavier than words.

It doesn’t scream, doesn’t accuse

it simply waits,

like a shadow just out of reach,

asking you to notice what has already shifted.

You walk through the day as if nothing has changed,

yet the air tastes different,

like rain just before it falls.

The trees seem to lean in,

the wind carries whispers you can’t quite hold.

Trust is not stolen in a single act,

it erodes,

grain by grain,

like cliffs giving way to the sea.

And by the time you notice the hollow beneath your feet,

the land is already gone.

You learn to sit with the silence,

to watch without rushing,

to let stillness teach you what words never will.

Because even in the shadows,

love can take new form

not the love that clings,

but the kind that releases into the wind,

trusting it will reach where it needs to go.

And somewhere in that silence, a storm is still gathering…

~Kerri-Elizabeth~

And still, the silence grows heavier, pressing against the walls of certainty. What happens when it finally breaks? Tomorrow, the storm begins to scatter its disguise.

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The Silent Divide

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

While distance and division may widen the space between you , take care to the division within, thats what separates you.

There are moments

when silence speaks louder than words,

not a gentle silence,

but the kind that carves distance,

a canyon slowly widening

between what was once close.

Trust does not always shatter

with a single strike.

Sometimes it erodes quietly,

grain by grain,

until one day you realize

the ground beneath your feet

is not where you thought you stood.

And so the divide grows,

not with noise,

but with the whisper of absence.

You feel it before you see it,

like the faint tremor of earth

before the cliff edge crumbles.

What falls away was never yours to hold.

What remains is the quiet knowing

that the soul sees more clearly

when the noise is gone.

~Kerri-Elizabeth~

But silence never stays still. It gathers, it thickens, and it waits. Tomorrow, we step closer to the shadows that rise where trust once stood.

When the Wild Calls in the Dawn

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

“Even the wilderness keeps its secrets until the right wind carries them.”

The morning began with a chorus not meant for gentle ears.

Coyotes, their voices sharpened on the bone of survival,

rose in unison

not a song, but a warning,

not a hymn, but collaborative howls.

Somewhere in the tangle of winds and shadow,

life was challenged

And they called to their own,

summoning the pack to witness, to feed, to remember.

It is the way of the wild

chaos laced with order,

Survival within a war braided with intensity,

a language we cannot fully know,

yet one we feel in the marrow.

I stood there listening,

watching the grass still gather dew

while dandelions blinked themselves awake.

Bees worked the petals,

bunnies darted through tall stems,

dogs pressed their noses to the wind.

The world carried on its quiet labors,

even as the echoes of the hunt still trembled in the air.

There are packs in the human world, too.

Invisible lines are drawn,

alliances formed,

territories defended with tooth and rumor.

Some voices are meant to stir fear.

Some are meant to summon.

And some,

like the wind through the trees,

carry truths that will only be heard when the season turns.

~Kerri-Elizabeth~

Another step in the unfolding …..a story told in sunlight and shadow, in poetry and perspective. Over the months ahead, the path will twist, the light will shift, and pieces will fall into place. I’ll meet you here, one step at a time, blooming.

The story will be told with careful dedication to the pain, relevance and life earned and learned , to open streams of hope for anyone within an experience you can’t seem to put words to.

Rebuilding Quietly

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

Not all rebuilding begins with hammers ,some begins with the choice to stand still and listen.

There is a silence that settles after the last echoes fade, not the hush of peace, but the stillness of a place deciding what it will become.

The rebuilding does not announce itself.

It starts in small, almost invisible ways: a stone set back in place without thinking, a path cleared because your feet naturally follow it, a breath drawn without the weight you’ve been carrying for months.

No one stands in a circle to mark the moment. There are no blueprints, no fanfare, no clear signal that now is the time to begin again. The work starts inside , in the soft decision to believe in the ground beneath you, even if it’s still damp from the storm.

And perhaps the most surprising thing is this: sometimes the first piece you set in place is not for shelter at all. It’s for beauty, a reminder that what is worth living for has survived, even here, even now.

Rebuilding is not about erasing what happened. The lines are still there, the cracks still visible, the ground still bearing the shape of loss. But within those shapes, there is space for new roots to find their way down.

~Kerri-Elizabeth~

This series moves through the storm’s rise, its breaking, and the quiet work that follows. What comes next will not be the same as what was lost but it may hold a strength that only comes from having been rebuilt.

The Map the Tide Left Behind

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

Every wave redraws the shoreline, leaving quiet instructions in its wake.

When the water finally pulled back, it did not return the world as it was. The shore had shifted ,lines carved where none had been before, sand pressed into patterns that would not wash away with the next tide.

It’s easy to think of waves as destroyers, but they are also cartographers. They leave maps in the debris, in the placement of stones, in the curve of driftwood that marks the farthest reach of the flood.

If you stand still long enough, you begin to read it ,the way the water circled here, the way it slammed straight through there, the places it spared without reason. The patterns are not for beauty; they are for understanding.

There is no rushing this kind of knowledge.

You trace the edges of what has changed, your feet sinking into new ground that has already decided what it will hold and what it will never keep again.

And in those moments, you see it clearly: the map is not for finding your way back. It is for showing you the way forward, through a landscape you would never have recognized before the tide touched it.

~Kerri-Elizabeth~

This series follows the slow work of storms and tides, charting the spaces they leave behind. Tomorrow, the current turns toward what it means to rebuild in the quiet , not as it was before, but as it can be now.

The Weight of Water

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

Even the fiercest wave can carry you home if you learn to trust its pull.

Grief comes in waves

not gentle tides,

but deep-water surges

that pull at the roots.

You can stand against it,

or let it take you

both are exhausting,

both leave you changed.

Grief is what we view,

based on what we can’t see anymore.

A tidal wave of loss.

There is also the grief you can see,

touching a different depth,

the kind that

requires another enduring perspective.

One that is received , with

or without permission.

Like waves laying upon a quiet beach,

the weight of water

is the weight of memory,

pressing against the chest

until every breath

is a choice.

When it recedes,

you find the shore altered

lines drawn where none were before,

stones rearranged,

driftwood marking where the tide reached last.

You learn to read those signs,

to know how far the waves can come

before they break you again.

And maybe,

just maybe,

you begin to trust

that even in the pull,

something is carrying you home.

~Kerri-Elizabeth~

Every wave changes the shoreline and every change leaves a map. This series moves with the water and the wind, through the quiet ache and the slow return. The next current rises tomorrow, and its direction is still unknown.

The Second Wall

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

Sometimes the hardest part of the storm is realizing the calm was never the end.

The calm came like an unearned mercy ,the kind that makes you believe the worst is behind you. The air felt lighter, almost sweet. For a moment, you let yourself imagine the storm had passed, that the tearing down was finished.

But calm can be a trickster.

It can be the still breath before the second wall arrives ,heavier, sharper, and carrying what the first did not take.

When it came, I felt it in the walls of my chest before I saw it in the sky. Words moved like wind through the spaces between people, lifting dust where nothing had been swept clean. The force was not in thunder, but in the way it pressed against the heart, testing where the cracks had deepened.

After, the ground was littered with what the storm had made visible…..broken beams of trust, shattered fragments of understanding, pieces of history scattered and unclaimed. I walked through it all barefoot for days, writing and feeling the sharp edges, deciding which wounds I was willing to tend to, and which would be left to weather on their own, for now anyways.

There is a strange kind of clarity in the second wall, maybe I didn’t see more before it, like I did this one. The first takes what it can reach. The second shows you what’s truly anchored and what only looked strong until the wind shifted.

And once you know the difference, you cannot unknow it.

The work is more of becoming, again, unraveling years already healed and placed away as wisdom show up to shake you and see how strong your foundation, really is.

~Kerri-Elizabeth~

This is one step in a series that moves through storms both seen and unseen, each one reshaping the landscape in ways that cannot be undone. The next tide is already building, and what it leaves or takes will tell the next part of the story.

After the Eye

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

The calm at the center is never the end, only the breath before the breaking.

The eye of the storm

is a dangerous kindness

a pause that lets you believe

the worst has passed.

But brisk breezes always comes,

and when it does,

you learn the shape of your own shelter,

the sound of your own voice

calling yourself home.

After it breaks,

you walk barefoot through the wreckage,

feeling for the edges of what’s still whole.

Not everything scattered

was worth keeping.

Not everything left standing

is meant to stay.

Sometimes survival

is not about rebuilding

it’s about learning

how to breathe

in the spaces

the wind has cleared.

~Kerri-Elizabeth-

The storms we survive are not just weather they are mirrors, showing us what cannot be moved, and what we can no longer carry. This series walks those paths, one day at a time, through the shifting light after the eye has passed. The next part waits just beyond the next gust.

Between the Currents: Patience is acquired

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

Some stand on the shore, torn between the pull of two tides, afraid to lose sight of either horizon.

There are places where the heart feels pulled in opposite directions , a delicate thread stretched between two shores, never sure which way the wind will blow.

Sometimes it is not the storm itself that wears you down, but the weight of holding both the anchor and the sail. One hand clings to the dock, the other reaches for open water, and you are left wondering which will give first.

To love people who stand on different sides is to live in a constant negotiation with yourself ,how to hold loyalty without losing truth, how to be faithful to more than one compass at a time. Those who live there often believe they are keeping the peace, yet they walk on a bridge that sways over a chasm neither side wishes to see.

But bridges creak under the strain. And when the wind shifts, the boards remind you that you cannot belong to both shores without feeling the splinters.

There are moments when you hope for a stand, not a battle, but a quiet, unwavering refusal to join what is wrong, even if it comes dressed in silk and lace. It is the unseen courage you long for, the voice that says, I see the harm in this, and I will not step into it.

When that voice is silent, you feel it in your bones. You watch the gatherings where absence has been engineered, the empty chairs where history once sat. You stand at the edge of the celebration and feel the chill of being placed in the shadows, while strangers are handed the front row.

It is a strange ache, to grieve what is still alive. To watch laughter carry a song that once belonged to your deepest mourning, and realize it is being danced upon without you.

And yet, even in that ache, you may still plant flowers along the invisible fence , sun-warm petals and soft-leafed roses , as both gift and boundary. A way of saying, I see you, I love you, and here is where the water meets the land. Even if the gesture is misunderstood, even if it is whispered against, you know the truth of your own hands and the soil they tended.

Somewhere inside, you know that the journey back to one another is not entirely yours to navigate. Sometimes you cannot swim against both tides. Sometimes you have to anchor to your own truth, and let the currents choose what washes back to shore.

~Kerri-Elizabeth~

But tides never rest for long. Tomorrow, we enter “After the Eye” , where the stillness is a trick of light, and the storm, patient as a predator, waits just beyond the horizon.

Between the Currents

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

Some stand on the shore, torn between the pull of two tides, afraid to lose sight of either horizon.

Between the Currents

The heart

can be moored to two shores at once

each tide whispering, stay,

each wind urging, go.

It is a quiet war,

standing where loyalties divide,

where the bridge beneath your feet

sways with every choice.

but of faces,

A hurricane passes through

not of weather,

words,

and silences.

It tears away the soft things,

flings petals into the dark,

strips truth bare

until it stands trembling in the open air.

When the winds settle,

you walk among what remains

the stones still rooted,

the flowers that refused to bow,

the empty chairs

where once there was warmth.

And you wonder

not how to rebuild,

but whether the house you knew

was ever truly standing.

Some storms

are not meant to be outrun.

They are meant to be sat with,

until the ache becomes a compass,

until the waves return

what was meant to remain.

~Kerri-Elizabeth~

This is part of an unfolding journey through storms that test our footing and winds that strip us bare. Each piece in this series is a step through the wreckage, into the quiet after, where perspective begins to take root. Tomorrow, the tide shifts again and what it carries will not be what it left behind.