personal growth

Purpose Lives in Small Decisions

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth


“Direction is built quietly, choice by choice.”

Purpose is not a grand declaration.
It’s a series of small, intentional decisions made while no one is watching, or they are.

What you choose today shapes the season ahead, not dramatically, but steadily.
Small steps carry surprising power.


One step,
taken on purpose
changes the whole
direction of the path.

Purposeful Practice:
Choose one thing today with full awareness and added purpose, the foods you choose, the movement you make, the words you choose and the rest take.

-Kerri-Elizabeth-
Tomorrow, we interrupt autopilot.

Brandee’s 40th Flame

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

“Some souls arrive to teach love by living it out loud.”

Forty years ago, the world shifted quietly and everything began again.
The first heartbeat I ever heard outside my own was hers, the beginning of motherhood, of awe, of endless learning.
She grew beside my becoming.

From her earliest days she carried calm strength, the kind that notices rather than reacts.
She stood where others turned away, listening before deciding, steadying those who lost their balance.
Through laughter, through challenge, she never stopped loving.
She gives space where it’s needed, grace where it’s rare, and courage where it’s called for.

She has worn many titles, student, friend, wife, officer, mother of three, sister, daughter and in each one she has remained herself:
brave, intuitive, fair, and radiant with a “Lovely” rhythm of her very own.
She faces danger for strangers, then returns home to teenagers who see what perseverance looks like.
She writes me notes that still sound like the child who used to pick me dandelions from anywhere.
Time has moved too quickly, but love has never aged.

So today, the celebration is not only for the woman she’s become,
but for the light she’s kept alive in every role she’s taken on.

“At forty, she doesn’t chase approval, she lives in the peace of knowing herself.”

“Forty Flames”

Forty flames now dancing,
each one shining true
patience, laughter, courage,
the love that carries through.

A daughter first, then leader,
a mother brave and kind,
a heart that holds its center
while giving space to find.

She meets the world with open hands,
with duty and with grace,
her spirit builds a safer path
for every life she’ll face.

So here’s to forty circles, round
the sun that lights her way,
may every dawn reflect the truth
she’s loved in every day.

-Kerri-Elizabeth- (Always a Mom first)
Tomorrow, November opens wide again, carrying her light forward, reminding us that renewal is never finished, it only changes form.

The Empty Chair

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

Emptiness carry’s its own weight, that slowly releases when noticed and nurtured with love.

There is a chair that waits,

its wooden frame holding

the shape of absence.

It remembers the weight

that once pressed into its seat,

the laughter that circled above it,

the warmth that is no longer there.

An empty chair is more than furniture.

It is a witness.

It holds silence the way a vessel

holds water,

quietly, steadily,

until the silence overflows.

You find yourself staring at it,

wondering if absence

can ever be filled

or if it must simply

be carried.

And still,

the chair remains,

a quiet sentinel

for what once was,

and what might one day return.

Tomorrow, the echo speaks…

~Kerri-Elizabeth~

The chair sits quietly, but it speaks of more than absence. Tomorrow, the echo will grow louder, carrying the sound of rejection through the walls.

The Waiting Amplifies

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

Waiting is where stillness builds strength, meditation becomes a pillar and breathing is noticed and not taken for granted.

The waiting room is not a place,

it is a season.

A space where clocks seem broken,

where time moves at an almost still water pace

present, yet unmoving.

You sit. You breathe.

You listen to the hum of unseen decisions

being shuffled behind invisible doors.

Every paper shuffled feels like a wind in the trees,

rustling with answers

you are not yet meant to hear.

Waiting stretches you.

It teaches that surrender is not defeat,

but a kind of quiet strength.

A knowing that love can hold you steady

even when the outcome trembles.

Through the window,

you see clouds piling in the distance.

They are , layered,

behind them the sun keeps burning,

unmoved by delay.

And in the silence,

you remember:

the sun does not rush,

and yet it always arrives.

You whisper love into the air,

not asking it to return,

only asking it to travel,

to find who it needs to reach.

The waiting is heavy,

but the love is light enough to carry.

And not all doors open into light…

~Kerri-Elizabeth~

The silence is thick, the outcome unseen. Somewhere beyond the door, decisions stir. Tomorrow, absence itself will take its place at the table.

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.

Where the Wind Lays It Down

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth


“The forest never asks the storm why it came; it simply bends, sheds, and begins again.”

The wind bends through the trees

in a language only the leaves understand,

a soft push, a whispered lifting,

a reminder that even the heaviest branches

can sway.

Above me, the sky is stitched in blues

deep as secrets in one breath,

light as forgiveness in another.

The pines stand like sentinels,

their green unwavering,

while some branches hold the yellow

of quiet endings.

Others are bare,

their story already returned to the earth.

Light slips between the gaps,

casting shapes across the grass,

the way truth sneaks through silence.

A bird trusts my open hand,

takes a peanut,

and disappears into the moving green.

All around me

cones scattered like unwritten sentences,

blackberries winding their own wild paragraphs,

shadows folding and unfolding

as clouds wander by

chaos and peace live side by side,

neither asking permission of the other.

Here, betrayals fall like pine cones.

They hit the ground with a weight

you cannot always hear,

but you can feel.

Left long enough,

the sharp edges soften,

they sink into the soil,

they turn to compost.

Not gone,

but changed.

And yet,

in the curated corners of the world,

none of this is written.

Only the polished pictures remain,

smiles framed without the ones

who bore the weight.

The heavy lifters left outside the lens,

while those untouched by the labor

stand centered in the frame,

as if they had carried it all along.

But the forest keeps the full story.

It holds the fallen and the standing,

the loyal roots and the broken limbs.

It tells me:

Feel the break.

Release the weight.

Root again.

And so I lay it here,

at the feet of the pines,

where wind can carry what I cannot,

where the ground knows

how to turn even the deepest cuts

into something that can grow again.

~Kerri-Elizabeth~

The unraveling, the walk through the parts of the forest no one shows on social media!!!

The Grace in the Distance

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

Not everything that breaks you is meant to harm you.

Some things break you open

The sun has returned after weeping skies

She filters through the trees in ribbons

laying herself across my skin

not in heat

but in hush

I sit with tea and unspoken prayers

surrounded by blooms I coaxed from earth

with trembling hands and whispered hope

Their faces turn toward the light

some nibbled by deer

still, they offer color

still, they sing

The bees perform their ancient symphony

The flag lifts and bows in rhythm

The dogs curl beneath the quiet

And I remain

rooted in the moment

and in myself

There is movement

on the other side of this sacred line

Footsteps

Voices

Wheels on gravel

A pageant of joy

gathering just beyond the reach of my porch

But I am not within it

And that

is its own kind of grace

Where I once felt displaced

I now feel delivered

Where I once felt wounded

I now feel softened

I do not have to clean up a mess I didn’t build,

do not have to perform where presence is a prop,

do not have to enter with an external masking of internal emotions to protect another

that reveres illusion more than truth

Instead

I sit among the wild things

and let them teach me

There is no truth in the now

Truth comes in the waiting

in the stillness

in the sediment of experience

as it falls and finds its resting place

like a stone drifting through water

It doesn’t crash

It settles

And that takes time

If you reach too soon

you interrupt its shape

If you speak too early

you miss the language of its silence

So I wait

not passively

but reverently

for what the ache may unveil

in its own unhurried way

There was a time I thought harm had a name

that betrayal wore a face

that what felt like breaking me was orchestrated by cruelty

But now

I see more clearly

What once felt venomous

was strangely medicinal

An unexpected chrysalis

forcing me inward

unfolding what I did not know I carried

They weren’t striking me

They were sculpting me

I mistook the pressure as punishment

But it was pressure that carved the poem from the stone

And somewhere

beneath the sunrise and sunset of this gathering

I hear it

soft

familiar

true

Don’t worry

I got you

A dragonfly swirls again in circles

its wings glistening like truth before it lands

and lifts again

It hovers

then flutters toward the sound next door

before returning

like it never left

Inside

we navigate each other’s tenderness

without a map

without a manual

just breath

just small offerings of presence

We’ve prepared to stay

We’ve prepared to leave

But I no longer want to run

There is medicine in staying

even when it stings

even when it echoes

even when it bends the heart

and shakes the voice

Because sometimes

the deepest healing

asks you to remain

asks you to feel it all

asks you to stop being afraid

of hearing what the silence says

What once looked like a path through torturous waters

now shows me a beautiful reflection of calm

I wait

with the bees

with the blooms

with the flag that waves with memories

I wait

with the shadows

and the light

and the truth I no longer rush to name

And I learn

that I am not the one unraveling

I am the one becoming

The Gathering among us

Let them gather

Let the music rise

Let the laughter spill across lines you no longer need to cross

You are not missing the moment

You are meeting yourself

In the stillness

In the choice to remain

In the sacred blooming

of what cannot be taken

~Kerri-Elizabeth~

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 Story We Tell Ourselves: Emotion, Intuition, and Trusting the Unfolding

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

  “The human being is not free when he is merely obeying impulses from outside or merely following his own desires.  

  True freedom arises only when we begin to act out of spiritual insight and conscious understanding.”  

  — Rudolf Steiner  

We don’t just live our lives—we build them, moment by moment, with the mortar of emotion and the bricks of experience, sometimes real, sometimes imagined. Our stories are rarely constructed from facts alone. They’re etched in reaction, stirred by sensation, and often told before the truth has even had a chance to breathe.

How often does one sit in the silence after the feeling rises?

Not long.

Not deep enough.

We react, we run, we narrate.

We assign roles and write scripts—guessing what others think, fearing what they might feel, assuming what they meant.

And then we build.

Brick by brick.

Until the fortress created to protect us begins to crumble—

sometimes suddenly, sometimes softly.

Each time it falls,

there’s something it seems to offer:

a moment of wisdom,

a return to presence,

an invitation to trust something deeper.

We often try to control the narrative, reaching forward to guess what’s next.

But the unfolding… is the path.

When panic rushes in, intuition slips quietly aside—

not gone, just waiting.

Beneath the noise,

that quiet sense that lives under fear

remains.

And perhaps trust doesn’t end—or even begin—with the self alone.

Trusting only in what’s familiar within may quietly place a lid

on something far more ancient wanting to rise.

When space is made for higher knowing—

the kind that pulses through nature,

through silence,

through spirit—

something shifts.

There is a deeper breath.

A reverence that awakens not from certainty,

but from surrender.

Rudolf Steiner spoke of this with striking clarity—

how we become inner slaves

when we’re endlessly shaped by the outer world.

True freedom, he said, is born from the spiritual self—

from awakening inward,

not by escaping,

but by truly seeing.

There may be moments when the very people once trusted

become the ones who unravel that trust.

Not because we failed to love—

but because life often places us face to face

with the lessons we most need to remember:

that strength and gentleness are not opposites,

that wisdom does not shout,

and that intuition does not beg for recognition—

it simply waits for quiet.

Sometimes a new kind of seeing arises—

one not through eyes that judge,

but eyes that witness.

Not with expectation,

but with presence.

And wisdom, much like nourishment,

can only be received when someone is ready to taste it.

Each of us is seasoned by different hands,

shaped by different climates,

moved by different flavors.

Not all will be hungry for the same truth at the same time.

But truth remains—

unrushed,

unforced,

ever patient.

And perhaps there’s something quietly beautiful

about honoring one’s own path

not as a fixed destination,

but as a living, breathing unfolding.

~Kerri Elizabeth~

Surfing the Weight: How to Hold Steady When You’re Holding It All

Posted on by Kerri Elizabeth

There comes a time when you’re asked to carry more than usual—when your strength is not an option but a necessity. You’re the anchor, the support beam, the space-holder. And in the quiet of that responsibility, your own voice feels muffled. You’re asked to say less, allow more, and hold steady while someone you love fights a battle that isn’t yours to fix.

But where do you go with the rising tide inside you?

When your own emotions have no safe landing, when your celebrations are whispered and your struggles swallowed, when you’re waiting and then waiting again… it’s easy to feel invisible. Unacknowledged. Alone.

You may feel like a stranger in your own environment—holding back tears while offering smiles, suppressing your ache to be present for theirs. It can feel like every part of you is being asked to expand, stretch, and bend without breaking… and still be okay.

But what if okay isn’t the goal?

What if, instead, it’s about honoring the weight you’re carrying?

Because there will be times when you’re holding more than others. In family, in work, in faith, in love. Life isn’t always balanced. But within the imbalance, there’s an invitation—a calling—to learn how to ride the wave.

Waves crash. They rise and fall. They come fast, or they move slow. Sometimes, they catch you off guard. Other times, you see them coming and brace. But one thing is certain: making decisions while you’re inside the wave is never where clarity lives.

Clarity comes after—in the stillness, in the center, in the in-between.

The high and the low are not your measuring sticks. They are motion. They are movement. They are meant to be surfed, not fought. And certainly not judged.

So, what can you do when you’re in the thick of it?

You take care of you in the most radical ways possible.

You ground.

You journal.

You walk.

You cry.

You move your body.

You call a friend.

You take five minutes of silence in the middle of chaos and breathe like it’s your only job.

You whisper to yourself, “Just surf this one… don’t try to fix the ocean.”

The wave doesn’t disappear because you ignore it. It disappears when it passes—on its own time. Your job isn’t to stop it. Your job is to ride it with as much grace as you can, and when you fall under, trust that the spin may just toss you right onto your feet again.

You don’t need to always be efficient, or perfect, or endlessly strong.

You just need to be human.

And brave.

And willing to wait for clarity, even when the wait feels unbearable.

Let the wave carry you to it.

Surf

Sometimes,

the strongest thing you can do

is not hold it all together—

but let it rise.

Let the ache have space,

let the silence breathe,

let the wave wash through

without the need to speak.

You are not failing

because you’re tired.

You are not weak

because your soul is soft.

Hold space for your own becoming

as you hold others in their storm.

Let the tide return you

to your own shoreline.

You are not lost—

you’re surfing.

–Kerri Elizabeth–