The week seemed so promising. Events lined up, supposed to blur the ache I carried. If the memories I was making were loud enough, surely they could drown out the pain.
But like a roller coaster, there was no knowing the drop until my body was in it.
Grief boomed through every cell while joy and excitement tried to smother what was still there.
Less rest. Less sleep. No appetite or perhaps more.
Eat more. Sleep more. Laugh more. Do more. Feel less.
Almost there. The end of the week.
Nobody saw how much the fire burned, how deep those burns went. Healing seems impossible when I am still wondering whether the flames will take the little bit of soul I have left.
Grief pulls the strings.
Smile for the people. They don’t know what to do with this either.
So many questions. No answers. Just, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
Almost sounds funny.
Are you sorry for my loss, or at a loss for words, hoping to find the ones that will make this conversation go away?
A new month can make us want to change everything at once. We write the list, feel motivated, and imagine how good it will feel to finally follow through.
Then the week gets busy. We miss a day. The list starts feeling heavy, and suddenly we are disappointed in ourselves before we have given ourselves a real chance.
So for October, choose one goal you want to give your attention to. Here is a simple way to help yourself follow through.
1. Know why it matters to you.
Write your goal in your notebook, then ask: Why do I want this? How would it make my everyday life better? Choose something you care about enough to return to when the excitement of a new month wears off.
2. Turn it into a small action.
“Make more time for myself” is a lovely intention, but what does it look like? Maybe ten minutes reading before bed, a walk twice a week, or three sentences in your journal. Give yourself something specific you can actually do.
3. Decide when you will do it.
“Whenever I have time” can turn into another week passing. Pick a realistic moment and write it down. Start with what fits your schedule and your energy. You can build from there.
4. Keep track without making itcomplicated.
A check mark on your calendar or a quick note in your journal is enough. Let yourself see the effort you are making. You may be moving more slowly than you hoped, but that effort still counts.
5. Check in with yourself eachweek.
Take a few minutes to ask: What did I follow through on? What got in the way? What would make next week easier?
Be honest with yourself. If you kept putting it off, look at why. If the plan asked too much of you, make the step smaller. Accountability gives you a chance to notice what is happening and respond.
And if you miss a day, come back at your next opportunity. One missed step does not have to become a month of giving up.
A journal prompt to begin:
My October goal is ______. It matters to me because ______. This week, I will ______ on ______. I will check in with myself on ______.
Give yourself a promise you can reasonably keep, and make room to adjust as you learn.
What is one small action you will take toward your October goal this coming week?
Autumn arrived this week, and although I did not welcome her exactly when I planned to, I am learning that intention does not expire just because life interrupted the schedule.
Autumn is a season of change, release, balance, and preparation. It reminds us that letting go does not always mean losing.
Sometimes it means making room for rest, growth, and whatever is meant to come next.
This week, I am welcoming the season in small ways. I am making a simmer pot, refreshing my altar, cleaning one little space at a time, and writing down what I am ready to release. ( next week I’ll share a little more on that)
You can welcome Autumn whenever you have a moment. Light a candle. Open a window. Make something warm to drink. Sit outside for a few minutes.
Write down what you want to carry into this season and what has become too heavy to keep carrying.
It does not have to happen on the exact day. It does not have to be elaborate or look perfect.
Your intention still counts whenever you are ready to give it your attention.
Here is to entering Autumn gently, making room for change, and trusting that there is purpose in both holding on and letting go.
Welcome to Week One of The Pages We Avoid, my four-week journaling series.
Each week begins with one main topic, followed by five connected journal prompts. The point isn’t to answer one deep question, close the journal, and pretend we have everything figured out. Each day’s prompt will build on the one before it so that, by the end of the week, we can see the fuller picture taking shape across the pages.
Since we’re on Day Two, I’m putting our first two prompts together so we can begin from the same place.
Day One: What Am I Pretending Not to Know?
There are things we truly don’t know yet—and then there are things we know but aren’t ready to admit.
Maybe admitting it would require a decision. Maybe it would change how we see someone, something, or even ourselves. Sometimes pretending not to know feels easier because once we name something, we can’t exactly go back to not knowing it.
For this first page, begin with:
If I stopped pretending, I would have to admit…
Don’t try to make your answer sound pretty, logical, or acceptable. Nobody else has to read this page. Let it be honest, even if the honesty is messy.
Day Two: What Do I Usually Do When I Get Close to Admitting This to Myself?
Now that we have begun naming what we may be avoiding, today we’re looking at the escape route.
What happens when you get too close to the truth?
Do you suddenly get busy? Change the subject? Make excuses? Convince yourself that it isn’t a big deal? Start questioning something you already know? Sometimes avoidance doesn’t look like avoidance. Sometimes it looks like overthinking, procrastinating, joking about it, or finding one more reason not to deal with it today.
For this page, begin with:
When I get close to admitting this to myself, I usually…
Then ask yourself:
What does this response protect me from feeling, facing, or changing?
You do not have to solve the entire situation today. Right now, we are simply noticing what is there and how we move away from it.
Tomorrow’s prompt will take us one step deeper by asking what we fear might change if we finally acknowledge what we already know.
One page at a time. No performing. Just honesty between you and the page.
A blogger is the question. We are going to blame this post on this past Lunar Eclipse with the sprinkle of the Full Moon in Pisces (which I have). How was it for you? I”m still sore from that “workout”!
I don’t know what it was, but this past week was jam packed with so many things happening all at once. Some were highs, some were tears; I mean lows, but handled adequately.
In reality, I had to come to terms that certain things no matter how much they are things I “need” aren’t that, but instead are just“wants” that hinder our moving forward to bigger and better things.
This comes the reason for my post. I admit, I was happy to have hit a year with this little blog. Some (or maybe none) might have visited my previous blog where I had over 10 years sharing life as a mom from having a preemie baby(who’s 13 now!) to college graduates (yes more than one). Having 4 kids has filling those pages in my life and I have loved every minute of it. Thus was my blog: Adventures With Ellie. (which I completely shut down)
I knew it was time to shut it down as my children were for the most part now all adults expect my youngest and now this new part of our lives was just really for us and our immediate family in real life.
Thus this is how this platform came about. I wanted to share and also document for myself what it is I am blooming into for myself.
Besides being know as a mother I wanted to share the part of me being a woman who had dreams, aspirations, challenges, and most of all, a life she was hungry to bring a new chapter into her life.
Discovering myself and being able to learn about avenues that never crossed my mind have been both exciting and scary at the same time.
With that being said I am so ecstatic to share with you all (if you don’t follow me on IG/Threads you might know. (just in case you’d be curious it’s @lines_between_living_now) I am so ecstatic to say I completed my Journal Therapy Certification!
I also was given an opportunity for a new venture which was offered to me.
In opening that door, it means this door will have to be kept ajar for now as I need to focus on the new tasks at hand.
Please know I will still share new posts about familiar topics, as a matter of fact I actually will be sharing a series which is set to start on the 1st of September and I hope you join in.
I hope you will come back and join me as I share this 4 week series. I will be doing it for myself as well.
Again I can not thank you enough to those of you that not only stop by to see what’s been happening around here, but who actually leave me a comment. I admit you guys are the ones that give me that push to keep going and it makes so I want to share these bits of information and adventures.
Here is to finishing up 2026 strong and billing the platform to the amazing that is soon to come for 2027!
Not the drawer filled with dead batteries, mystery keys, and pens that stopped working in 2017 although we probably have that one too. 😂
I mean the emotional junk drawer.
It holds the conversation we keep avoiding, the boundary we haven’t set, the grief we promised to revisit, the dream we keep postponing, and the need we keep calling “too much.”
We tuck things away because sometimes we genuinely don’t have the energy to deal with them.
But not right now can quietly become never.
Eventually, the drawer stops closing. An old resentment gets tangled around a new disagreement. A buried need shows up as frustration. One small moment produces a much larger reaction because it was never only about that moment.
It was everything already inside the drawer.
With the full moon and lunar eclipse approaching, perhaps we can allow a little light to reach one thing we’ve kept tucked away. Not because the moon is magically reorganizing our emotional lives if only but because awareness gives us somewhere to begin.
You don’t have to clean out the entire drawer today.
Choose one thing.
Name it. Write about why you tucked it away and what it needs from you now.
Does it need a conversation? A boundary? Rest? Grief? Or simply an honest acknowledgment that it still exists?
What we tuck away doesn’t disappear.
But we can decide what deserves our attention, what needs a proper place, and what we are finally ready to throw the hell out.
Journal Prompt
What needs to come out of my emotional junk drawer?
Begin with:
I keep telling myself I’ll deal with __________ later, but…
Today I had to pay the annual fee for my domain and blog, which is how I realized, oh snap, it has officially been a year.
Lines Between Living is one year old.
I wish I could say I spent the entire year posting consistently, checking off every goal, and turning this blog into exactly what I imagined it would be by now.
I did not.
But I also did not abandon it.
This past year has been a lot. Life has been life-ing, as it tends to do, and there were plenty of times when I had something to say but did not have the time, energy, or mental space to sit down and actually say it.
Sometimes I was too busy living through the thing to write about the thing.
Still, I kept coming back.
So now that I have paid for another year, I need to be serious about what I want to do with it.
My goal is to post three times a week. I am putting that in writing so I cannot act like I never said it. That does not mean every post has to be some long, life-changing masterpiece.
Sometimes it may be a poem, a journal prompt, something I learned, somewhere I went, or simply a thought that would not leave me alone.
I just want to show up here more.
I also still have places on my summer bucket list that I have not crossed off yet. The summer is not over, and neither is my list. I want to actually go to these places, experience them, and write about them instead of continuously saying, “One day.”
One day needs to start finding its way onto the calendar.
The biggest change I want to make during this second year is bringing more of my future career into the blog.
I am studying journal therapy, and the more I learn, the more I know this is not just another random idea I picked up and will forget about later.
This is something I truly want to do. Writing has carried me through grief, anger, confusion, love, heartbreak, reinvention, and all the other shit life has thrown at me. Now I want to learn how to use it intentionally to help other people meet themselves on the page too.
I want to talk more about that here.
I want to share journal prompts, things I am learning throughout my certification, honest conversations about healing, and eventually more information about the workshops and services I plan to offer. I want this blog to grow with me as I move closer to becoming a journal therapy practitioner.
Then there is the seven-day affirmation PDF I created and tried to sell for seven dollars.
I’ve made the decision to turn it into a freebie. ( coming soon )
Not because it is not valuable, but because I would rather it actually reach the people who might need it than sit behind a price tag that is not doing much for it right now.
Maybe it was never supposed to be the thing that made money.
Maybe it is simply supposed to be the thing that introduces someone to my work.
I am learning that changing the plan does not automatically mean the original plan failed.
Sometimes you have to stop trying to force something to work one way and allow it to become useful in another.
So this is where I am after one year.
I did not accomplish everything I thought I would. I was not as consistent as I wanted to be. I still have places to visit, posts to write, a certification to finish, and a whole career to build.
But the blog is still here.
I am still writing.
And apparently, I just paid for another year, so I might as well make some magic happen.
8/8 is almost here, and whether you believe in the energy of the day, use it as a reset, or simply like having a reason to pause and reflect, I think it’s a good time to check in with yourself.
And no, this does not mean you have to completely change your life before August 8th.
These are just eight small things you can do to clear some space, quiet some noise, and think about what you want for the rest of the year.
1. Declutter one space
Just ONE. A drawer, your bag, your desk. Pick somewhere that needs a little attention and clean it out. Sometimes clearing a small space makes you feel lighter without even realizing you needed it.
2. Unfollow what drains you
If an account constantly has you comparing yourself, questioning yourself, or just feeling blah after you see it, unfollow it. Your social media should not make you feel worse about your own life.
3. Donate 8 things you don’t use
Find eight things sitting around that you haven’t used in months and let them go. Someone else may actually need what has just been taking up space in your home.
4. Sit in silence for 8 minutes
No phone. No music. No distractions. Just sit with yourself for eight minutes and see what comes up. You might be surprised by what your mind has been trying to tell you.
5. Write down 8 things you’re proud of
We spend so much time thinking about what we haven’t done that we forget what we HAVE done. Look back at this year and give yourself some credit. Big or small, write eight things that make you proud.
6. Reach out to someone
You know that person you’ve been saying, “I need to text them” about? Do it. If they’ve been on your mind and the relationship feels good and safe, send the message.
7. Do something your future self will thank you for
It can be something as small as saving a few dollars, making an appointment, filling out an application, or finally doing something you’ve been putting off.
Nothing huge. Just one thing.
8. Choose one intention for the rest of the year
What do you really want to give your energy to from now until the end of the year?
Write it down.
Then ask yourself:
What is one thing I can do TODAY to move toward it?
That’s it.
No pressure to magically become a different person because it’s 8/8. This is simply a chance to pause, clear out some things you don’t need, appreciate how far you’ve already come, and decide where you want to go next.
Sometimes a reset doesn’t have to be huge.
Sometimes it starts with one drawer, eight quiet minutes, a journal page, and one decision to keep moving forward.
First, can we take a moment because we made it to week four!
Thank you to everyone who keeps coming back each week to reflect and write with me. Whether you have answered every prompt, skipped one, or saved them all for when you finally have a quiet moment, I appreciate you being here.
There is no right or wrong way to do this. The fact that you are taking a moment to check in with yourself matters
This weeks Prompt:
Whose voice do you hear when you criticize yourself?
I came across a shadow work prompt that made me stop and think about the way we speak to ourselves.
We can be so hard on ourselves without ever questioning where those words came from.
That voice saying you are not good enough, you always mess things up, or you should be further along by now, is that really your voice?
Or is it something someone said to you so many times that you eventually started saying it to yourself?
That is the part that gets me. Sometimes the person is no longer around.
The moment has passed. We may even believe we have moved on, but their words are still living inside us and showing up whenever we feel insecure, make a mistake, or try something new.
After a while, their voice starts sounding like our own.
And because it sounds familiar, we believe it.
This prompt is not about blaming anyone or forcing yourself to suddenly think positively. It is simply about paying attention.
When that critical voice shows up, pause and ask where you first heard it.
You may realize that some of the things you believe about yourself were never yours to begin with.
Maybe your own voice has been buried underneath everyone else’s opinions for so long that you are not sure what it sounds like yet. That is okay too.
Perhaps it starts with something simple:
I am trying.
I am learning.
I deserved more kindness than that.
The goal is not to silence every negative thought overnight. It is to recognize which voice belongs to you and which one you are finally ready to stop believing.
Be gentle with yourself as you write. Some voices have been with us for a long time, but that does not mean they get to speak for us forever.
