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Rest for the Weary Soul
My dear friends, today I scribble this reflection from the Gospel (Matthew 11:25–30) as Jesus speaks directly to the tired parts of our hearts. He looks at the heavy burdens we carry, our anxieties, our endless to do lists, and the quiet struggles no one else sees and He offers us a beautiful, gentle invitation if we dare listen closely enough: "Come to me." And if you listen, you’ll notice that Jesus does not demand that we fix our lives before we approach Him. He does not
Lisa Raie
Jul 62 min read
The Chooks Are Out
This painting feels like a quiet memory made visible. And it speaks very loudly in quiet whispers, where my art is wandering these days. Life is often made up of ordinary mornings, familiar routines, and small moments that rarely make it into history books, yet become the places where love quietly grows. And so through this piece “The Chooks Are Out” another branch of my family tree can be seen. Again the people and their place of residence are not marked by grand events or f
Lisa Raie
Jun 302 min read
Not Alone In The Making: ~ A Prayerful Reflection
Lord, Today I find myself thinking about hands. Hands that stitched before mine. Hands that carried responsibilities I can only begin to imagine. Hands that repaired, comforted, provided, and persevered. As I continue stitching my legacy quilt, I am reminded that every thread I pull today follows a path laid down by someone before me. My thoughts return to Mary Martha. To the quilts she made. To the hours she spent creating warmth and comfort from her own hands. Though separa
Lisa Raie
Jun 172 min read
The Art of Change at Studio Kre’at: Slowly Becoming…
Change is a quiet companion. It arrives softly, sometimes unnoticed, like the gentle shift of light through a window. I have come to understand that embracing change is not about rushing forward but about slowly becoming . This kind of change can feel overwhelming. It can shake the very foundation of who we think we are. But what if we allowed ourselves to move with it, rather than against it? To listen to its rhythm, soft and steady, like a heartbeat beneath the surface. I
Lisa Raie
Jun 113 min read
What The Hands Remember
This week, on the podcast my thoughts have been resting on something beautifully ordinary. Hands. Not simply what they do, but what they remember. As I continue stitching pieces together for my legacy quilt, I find myself slowing down enough to notice the countless hands that came before mine. Hands that mended clothing rather than replacing it. Hands that stitched blankets to keep families warm. Hands that prepared meals, tended children, worked long hours, and quietly carri
Lisa Raie
Jun 102 min read
Repose Art: A Journey of Contemplation and Artful Mindfulness Techniques
After the public holiday , I am sitting within the quiet moments for how much the world feels heavy, where pain and hardship seems to be weighing so many down in spirit ~ finding a gentle refuge in art seems key. And I am not just talking about any art, but repose art ~ this way is a tender, slow unfolding of shapes, colours, and textures that invite us to pause, breathe, and reflect. This is a journey of contemplation, a soft embrace for the soul. It is here and in this sp
Lisa Raie
Jun 93 min read
A Name, Stitched Back Into Breath
This week’s episode comes through a name that has quietly stitched itself back into my daily breath. That name is Mary Martha. As I continue working on my legacy quilt and piecing fabric together in the studio, I find myself thinking often about the structure of Mary’s life not simply the events of it, but the strength it required to live it. Mary was an “on strength” wife and mother living within the demands and restrictions of military life. Her days would have been shaped
Lisa Raie
Jun 32 min read
The Threads of Resilience, Sacrifice, Perseverance and Quiet Courage…
There has been something quietly stirring within me as I work on my legacy quilt and other creative projects lately and that is a deeper connection to the life of my 3 x great grandmother Mary, and to what it meant for her to live “on strength.” The phrase itself feels like more than history to me now. It feels like inheritance. As I stitch fabric together, I find myself thinking about the structure of Mary’s life and the daily duty, the utter responsibility and constant dem
Lisa Raie
May 292 min read
Slow Stitching Is A Lot Like Living…
Late night thoughts… And I see how pieces gathered over time, some bright with celebration, some worn thin by grief, some patterned with memories we never would have chosen but somehow still belong. Nothing matches perfectly. Edges fray. Colours clash. Threads knot and tangle beneath tired hands. And yet the beauty is not found in perfection, but in the willingness to keep stitching anyway. To hold joy beside sorrow. To let softness live beside survival. To believe that even
Lisa Raie
May 291 min read
The Ones Who Sit Beside Me (Episode 1 - The Quiet Company We Keep Podcast)
There are moments inside the studio when I become deeply aware that I am not creating alone. Not in a loud or overwhelming way but through a quiet sense of accompaniment. A feeling that the lives of those who came before us continue to echo forward through the ways we create, nurture, endure, remember, and carry love into ordinary life. Over time, genealogy has become something much deeper to me than names written onto a family tree. It has become relationship. A gentle notic
Lisa Raie
May 271 min read
A Place for You Here
The studio journal pages haven’t been filling quite as frequently as normal - but today a threshold moment marks the beginning of something that has been quietly forming within me for a long time. And so I share with you all; “The Quiet Company We Keep” podcast was created through a growing awareness that the lives of those who came before us continue to shape the way we move through the world now. Through genealogy, art, writing, memory, faith, and creative practice, I have
Lisa Raie
May 201 min read
My Vision Is Extraordinary Clear Now…
My vision is extraordinarily clear now. Studio Kre’at is becoming more than an art studio, more than a writing practice, and more than a lineage project. It is becoming an archive of emotional survival. A place where the lives of real women are not flattened into dates and records, but restored as fully human: mothers, sisters, carers, migrants, protectors, wounded women, builders of refuge, women who endured, women who quietly changed the lives of others. And what makes this
Lisa Raie
May 132 min read
Held Close to the Ground
Today, I met this space from a different place… closer to the ground, and quieter than before. Not seated in the chair where I often come to reflect, but lowered here on the sofa, with the weight of my body asking for stillness I could not ignore. There is a different kind of awareness that comes in moments like this. Not the kind we reach for, but the kind that meets us when everything else falls away. From here, the room feels changed. The chair is still there. The light st
Lisa Raie
May 71 min read
The Boy Who Signed Another Name (An Anzac Day Letter)
There is a kind of silence that lives between the lines of a family story. Not absence ~ never that, but a quiet that holds what could not be said at the time. As I prepare for Anzac Day, I find myself sitting with one of those silences. His name was Thomas Francis Cass. Just nineteen years old. A boy, really. A son of Johanna and John, my 2 x great grandparents who was raised in Footscray, in a home that knew both hardship and deep, enduring faith. A home where children were
Lisa Raie
Apr 254 min read
Sides To Life We Don’t See…
If you wander with me over on instagram and tiktokhttps://www.tiktok.com/@studio_kreat?_r=1&_t=ZS-95lgWczuOQO you would of seen and read a snippet of my thoughts as a AFL fan, as I found myself stopping…not just to watch the game, but to think about the sides of life we don’t see. I’m sitting this afternoon again thinking about the unseen sides to life we don’t see and so I journal these thoughts here: And when I say the unseen, I mean the quiet struggles so many carry ~ the
Lisa Raie
Apr 232 min read
The Lamp Within the Body Letter Nine: Carrying the Lamp Forward
To you, yes YOU who is reading this letter, There is a moment, often quiet and almost unnoticed, when something we have been learning begins to feel like something we can live. Not perfectly. Not all at once. But gently, with growing trust. As I come to the end of these letters, I find myself returning to where this began ~ not with certainty, but with listening. Listening to the body. Honouring its need for rest. Creating in ways that bring regulation. Allowing faith to soft
Lisa Raie
Apr 132 min read
Following The Thread…
There are pieces that are planned… and then there are pieces that arrive through prayer. This one came slowly. Thread by thread, like a quiet knowing unfolding beneath my hands. A womb. A holding. A sacred space of becoming. Within it lives our story ~ myself, my husband, and the five lives we were entrusted to nurture and carry forward. Not perfectly formed, not neatly contained ~ but woven together in love, in faith, in all that has shaped us. This next chapter of the studi
Lisa Raie
Apr 91 min read
The Lamp Within the Body Letter Eight: Community Without Explanation
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
Lisa Raie
Apr 73 min read
A Quiet Inheritance: Adoration, Faith, and the Threads That Hold Us
There are moments when time feels as though it folds in on itself. Yesterday, sitting in adoration, I became aware of something deeper than memory. It was not just my own presence in that church, it was a shared presence. A thread drawing ever so gently through generations. I found myself thinking of my great grandmother, Mary Frances. How many times had she sat in that same sacred stillness? Am I sitting where she sat on those many occasions? How many whispered prayers had r
Lisa Raie
Mar 313 min read
2026 - With The Lamp
There are words that arrive as invitations rather than plans. They do not come with strategies or timelines. They simply ask to be lived. As I step into 2026, the word given to me is “lamp”. Not a spotlight. Not a flare. Not a floodlight meant to impress or overwhelm. A lamp small enough to be tended daily. It requires attention in trimming, oil, care. It does not rush the dark away, but it does make the next step visible. Much of what will be shared here in the coming weeks
Lisa Raie
Jan 1, 20261 min read
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