Inspired & Growing

One takeaway from reading Joie by Ajiri Aki was the encouragement to bring more intention and delight into everyday moments—especially something as simple as lunch. Inspired by that, I invited a group of women from work to lunch. Each of them had always struck me as kind and friendly.  Though they didn’t all know each other, I thought it would be meaningful to bring them together. There were about eight of us at that first lunch, and it turned out to be a really special experience. Despite being younger and in different stages of life, they shared similar hopes and fears. The conversation was warm and easy, and it reminded me how much joy and connection can come from simply making the space.  We now meet the first Wednesday of each month. That experience encouraged me to begin taking lunch at least once a week. It started small, just one lunch, but I enjoyed it so much that I now take time most days to step away from work for 30 to 60 minutes. At first, I’d watch people I foll...

Women Living Deliciously by Florence Given is part memoir, part manifesto, encouraging us to drop the hustle for approval and instead embrace beauty, pleasure, intuition, and power on our own terms . The book isn’t about perfection—it’s about presence. It affirmed what I’m learning on my journey: that living fully doesn’t mean waiting for the “big” moments, but delighting in the details and giving ourselves permission to rewrite old scripts. It’s a celebration of reclaiming our joy and choosing to live with bold softness. My Takeaways I’m learning to value my own opinion of myself—to believe that it counts, even if no one else validates it. It’s easy to outsource our power—letting others decide what’s best or silencing our own intuition—but I’m choosing to come home to myself. I am not the noise in my mind. I am the one who hears it, and I get to choose how I respond. Joy lives in the everyday. If I wait for the weekend or retirement to rest and enjoy my life, I’ll miss ...

The other night, I had a quiet realization—and it surprised me.  I had planned a perfectly cozy evening: Pull out tomorrow’s dinner Treadmill Read a few pages of my nonfiction book Start a new knitting project End the night with fiction and my dog curled up beside me Sounds lovely, right? But as I moved through the evening, it felt…  tiring.  Not because I was doing hard things—but because I was  doing so many of them.  Each one was a “restful” activity, yet somehow, together, they started to feel like another to-do list. That’s when it hit me:   I was treating my slow-living hobbies like productivity tasks.    Instead of soaking in the moment, I was racing through “rest.” And I had turned something meant to restore me into something I had to check off. The Trap of Performing Peace If you’re anything like me—someone who craves balance and deeply values making the most of your time—it’s easy to unintentionally hustle your way through slow livi...