mindful living

“Alive in the Everyday”

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

 “Art is not separate from living, it’s the way you live with awareness.”

Each act, pouring water, stepping outside, choosing rest, dancing or swaying to your favorite song, can be art when done awake. The more attention you give to the smallest tasks, the more beauty shows up to meet you. Renewal isn’t a program; it’s an attitude.

Today’s masterpiece is simple:
the breath you took on purpose,
the step you felt completely,
the light you chose to see.

-Kerri-Elizabeth-

 Spend 30 minutes outdoors or in quiet creativity, draw, write, photograph, breathe. Let presence be the art.

The Art of Seeing: When Doing Less Reveals More

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

“There is a rhythm beneath the rush. Wait long enough in silence, and you’ll hear it calling you home.”

There was a time I thought life was about doing.

Doing to be worthy.

Doing to be seen.

Doing to make others comfortable.

Doing to keep up.

Doing so I wouldn’t fall behind.

But somewhere between exhaustion and awakening, I stumbled into the beauty of seeing.

Not watching from a distance.

Not checking out.

But really seeing.

I began to notice the pull of my own breath, the shift of light on water, the way truth rises when I’m still, long enough to let it. I noticed that the world doesn’t actually need me to race it. That sometimes, the most powerful thing I can do is nothing, until the inner knowing says, Now.

We’re taught to override that knowing.

To push through.

To check boxes.

To be agreeable, efficient, productive.

But something sacred lives beneath all that noise.

And it reveals itself when I stop trying to explain who I am and just live it.

It reveals itself when I stop trying to fix things for others, and simply honor what I need.

It reveals itself when I wait, and listen, and inform not to be understood, but to stay in integrity with myself.

Seeing has softened me.

It has freed me from the grip of performance.

It has made me better, more aware.

And somehow, life still gets done.

In better ways.

Truer ways.

More wholeheartedly and less rushed.

When we learn to see instead of do, we don’t miss life.

We become it.

The Stillness That Moves

They said,

do more,

be more,

prove it.

So I danced in circles

of everyone else’s urgency,

chasing worth in mirrors

that never saw me.

But the trees never asked me to hurry.

The sky never measured my value

by the weight of my to-do list.

The river moved, even when I didn’t.

And in that stillness,

I began to see

the hush between words,

the whisper in my chest

that knew when to wait,

and when to rise.

Not everything grows by force.

Not every truth needs explanation.

Not every moment needs a task.

I am learning the rhythm

of unseen things

how clarity comes when I inform,

even when my voice shakes,

even when silence feels safer.

I am learning that

the deepest presence

is not in doing more

but in being true.

And in that truth,

everything that matters

gets done.

~Kerri-Elizabeth~

The Stories We Carry

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

We all have stories—
some passed down,
some passed around,
some born from glances never explained.

I’ve learned that the same story can be told a hundred different ways depending on who holds the pen. One person remembers the way the light hit the kitchen table. Another remembers the silence after a slammed door. Some recall laughter. Some can’t forget the ache. And none of it makes any of it less real.

What’s hardest is when the stories begin to live lives of their own—shaped by whispers, fueled by wounds, rewritten by those who need a version that comforts their pain.

Sometimes love is rewritten into betrayal,
connection into threat,
guidance into control.
And suddenly, you find yourself a villain in a story you never wrote.

There is a kind of grief—no, not grief, but a reckoning—
when a child is no longer allowed to speak to you.
Not because of something you did,
but because someone else needed them to stop listening.

Needed them to carry their pain,
to make sense of their own wounds by silencing yours.
And so, a legacy is broken, not by truth,
but by the stories others told loud enough, long enough,
that it began to sound like history.

And yet…

There are other children,
other souls
who are spared the chaos,
who find family in love,
who are given the gift of choosing their path—not out of fear or pressure,
but through the soft unfolding of experience.
They come to know love not as a tool or a transaction,
but as a presence.

That is the hope.
That is the beauty in this brokenness.

Because we cannot fix the feelings others are determined to carry.
We cannot rewrite their chapters.
But we can stop reading the story aloud to ourselves.

We can sit with it—not to suffer it, but to let it soften.
To breathe it in only long enough to find the lesson,
and then breathe it out
as something lighter.

This is how we stop the inheritance of pain.
This is how we leave space for joy,
even if some never return.

We do not need to resent them.
We do not need to chase them.
We simply need to be here—fully here—
with all the love that remains.

The past is not ours to fix.
But the present…
the present is ours to live.

Let the story pass.
Let the breath deepen.
Let the legacy of love be louder than the lie.

-Kerri-Elizabeth-

What If We Had No Mirrors? A Reflection on Aging, Beauty, and Living Naturally

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

Yesterday, I saw myself in a way I hadn’t before. It was a sunny afternoon, and I was with my daughter—nearly 40 now, though I could still feel myself walking in her age. We were at a sprawling plant nursery, checking out with our treasures of green, when I looked up and caught a glimpse in a mirror near the counter.

There I was—me. But not the me I feel inside. Instead, a version touched by time, by sun, by the softness that aging brings. I stood there for a moment, surprised. Not saddened. Not shamed. Just… aware.

What If We Had No Mirrors?

It hit me: I’m almost 60. But I don’t believe in “aging” in the way society speaks of it. I believe in evolving. In learning. In living closer to the earth. I don’t wear makeup—not because I’m against it, but because I love the way nature feels on my skin. I love wind-swept hair, the kiss of sunshine, and the medicine of plants.

What would life be like if we had no mirrors?

If our reflection only came from rippling water, or from the way someone’s eyes lit up when we smiled? If we were reflected only by the kindness we gave, the presence we offered, and the energy we carried?

Would we worry so much about wrinkles or wild strands of hair? Would we still feel the need to cover, conceal, or enhance? Or would we simply be—unfiltered, untamed, and entirely enough?

Aging as Evolution, Not Decline

That moment reminded me: I want my reflection to be a thank you, not a judgment.

A recognition of how far I’ve come, of how deeply I’ve felt, and of how naturally I choose to live.

Mirrorless

Let the water be my mirror

Let the wind paint lines of grace

Let the sun write stories on my skin

And time slow down its pace

Let reflection come in ripples

Not in glass with harsh demands

Let me be revealed by presence

And not by culture’s hands

I’ll wear the earth with reverence

Let my wildness show through

For beauty is in living

And in living, I am true.

~ Kerri Elizabeth ~