The Lamp Within the Body

To whom this letter finds, There is a quiet exhaustion that comes not from the body alone, but from the need to explain the body. To put words around what is difficult to measure. To justify why energy has changed. To describe something that shifts from day to day. For those living with complex health, this can become its own kind of fatigue. Because not everything visible on the outside reflects what is happening within. And so we try. We explain when we cancel plans. We exp

Dear friends, This letter brings forward how strength finds different ways of letting life move onwards and so here, there is a kind of strength that does not announce itself. It does not strive for attention. It does not measure itself against others. It does not rush. It simply remains. I have been thinking often about the women who came before me. Women who lived full and demanding lives. Who carried families, homes, grief, responsibility and often without language for the

Hi friends If you’ve wandered with me in these letters, you may have noticed something very interesting happening in the arc of the series now: Listening Rest Regulation Faith Structure And so this letter is an important threshold where I attempt to gently meet fear and untangle it. —————————— There is a quiet fear that often rises when we begin to honour the body. If I slow down ~ am I giving up? It is not always spoken aloud. But it lingers. Especially for those of us who h

Dear friends and followers, There comes a moment when listening to the body begins to change the shape of life itself. Not dramatically. Not overnight. But quietly, through a series of small decisions. In earlier years I often built my days around expectation and what needed to be finished, what others required, what productivity seemed to demand. My body simply followed along as best it could. But living with complex health eventually asks a different question: What if life

Dear friends, I open this weeks letter to you on how a particular kind of tiredness reshapes our faith. Not the end of the day kind that sleep easily restores. But the deeper fatigue that settles into the body when health becomes complex and energy unpredictable. In seasons like this, faith changes its posture. It becomes quieter. Less about certainty. More about presence. For many years my prayer life looked structured and strong. Morning prayers, evening prayers, long stret

Dear friends, Letter One was listening. Letter Two was honouring through rest. Letter Three is participating in restoration and so I begin; There was a time when I believed my art was something extra. A gift. A calling. A beautiful addition to an already full life. I no longer see it that way. In recent conversations with my specialists, something unexpected happened. As I described my daily rhythms of painting, journaling, structured quiet, prayer woven through brushstrokes,

“If Letter One was illumination, Letter Two is warmth. And so I say to you this week…”

Dear friends, There is a particular kind of stillness that arrives not because we choose it, but because the body insists. And so it is that across the next nine Mondays, I will be dropping a letter here about living faithfully inside complex health. For many years I have lived with symptoms I could not fully name. Fatigue that did not match my schedule. Inflammation that felt disproportionate. Moments where my mind felt clouded, as if moving through early morning fog long af

Over the past weeks of intentional stillness, I’ve been able to chase new information about my health complexities. What I have learned, is that my body has been carrying more than I understood ~ more than my health specialists understood! Thats all changing! I now know that the moderate sleep apnea and REM atonia conditions that I live with have likely been quietly shaping my health for many years. My specialist believes these disruptions may have contributed to the immune a