What are yours?
If any of the themes below resonate with you, I’d love to hear from you.
with love ✨, CATHERINE
Observations on moving, breathing and being. These are mine.
I’ve been writing them down since 2020.
I took a long pause. I’m back now.
On the loop
Phil Connors—Bill Murray in the 1993 film Groundhog Day—was trapped reliving the same day for something like 12,400 of them, by one popular estimate. By my count, I'm only 222 days into this latest stretch of unemployment. But the monotony of the last few months is real.
And, like the movie, there are lessons in it.
On kindness
I woke up sweating. Not the typical 50-year-old-perimenopausal-woman sweats, nor the expected "it's a summer heat wave" sweats, but the "is my air conditioner working" sweats. And sure enough, my 1905 Victorian and its insufficient central HVAC system was, in fact, not working—in the middle of the 2026 heat wave, at the exact moment I happened to be a 50-year-old woman in perimenopause.
To say I was miserable would be an understatement.
On courting
Oh! I say to myself. Who's that?
She looks back at me with terrified yellow eyes and an expression that reads far more skepticism than I had...Ohhhh...who's that?
I open the door. She scatters away.
A few hours later...the courting begins again.
On 50 and choosing
I turned 50. Not 50 laps in a row, not 50 pages at a time (though I am reading a good book)—50 years of age. WOW.
And you know what? I feel pretty dang good.
On what a few hundred carrots can teach you
I volunteered this week. Once chopping carrots at DC Central Kitchen; once playing with cats at the SPCA. Both brought me into the present moment and provided emotional connection to self, others, community, purpose. Both surfaced appreciation for current state, even in its highs and lows.
On connection
I often don't allow myself to lean into emotion the way I did last week. I tuned inward, into my body and its sensations. Into the heaviness and emptiness alike. My yard becoming my medicine, my solace.
This week, my yard remained my medicine, but in community. The weight was light, the space full.
On smiling
I’ve been smiling (and laughing) a lot lately. It’s been through connecting to people, places and activities that bring me joy. It’s been through releasing that which doesn’t through journalling, meditating and walking, e.g. Through it all, I’ve turned more inwards than ever before, noticing how “alive” I feel from allowing myself to be in the present moment—smiling and laughing and experiencing that which is around me.
Beginnings (part 2)
It is a hard and beautiful time to be alive. These words could likely be written, read, spoken, heard at any time in history to accurately represent life, yet they seem particularly fitting in this present moment.
Many of us right now are likely angered, saddened, anxious. As if we didn’t have enough already to carry, we bore witness earlier this week to an incomprehensible act of sedition and insurrection at one of the foremost symbols of democracy in the world. We are shaken.
…
It is during these moments of incomprehension that I am even more grateful for my self-care and well-being practices that are so strongly anchored in yoga. It is through these disciplined practices that I can still attempt an inner calm despite all that is with respect to work and love and life.
So as we enter into week two of this new year…what might we implement today to nurture and foster this inner stillness and influence our perspective on life?
