Weekly Round-Up
Welcome to this week’s blog round up. This week’s reflections move between survival and creativity, memory and meaning, and the moral clarity required to stay present in difficult times.
Barbara marks 18 years of blogging and community, reflecting on how writing — encouraged by her husband — became a source of purpose, connection, and support through significant health challenges.
In a stark, moving poem, Philippa confronts the landscape of a body shaped by surgery and survival, closing with the uncompromising declaration, “I am alive.” It’s a piece that says much in few words, holding vulnerability and affirmation in equal measure.
Connie reflects on setting new year goals in a way that feels sustainable and aligned with personal values rather than driven by pressure or perfection.
Beth revisits a long-held fear rooted in early driving experiences on vast, exposed bridges in Louisiana, tracing how that anxiety lingered long after the journeys themselves ended. Years later, she returns to the idea of bridges through her art, painting one from the safety of her studio and finding unexpected calm and meaning in the process. The piece reflects on how creativity can transform fear into reflection, and how bridges — literal and symbolic — can still point toward connection and unity amid division.
Finally this week two reflections that speak directly to the wider political and social moment many of us are living through. Abigail, Elizabeth and Nancy each write from a place of deep moral clarity, engaging with anger, turmoil, and uncertainty not as something corrosive or shameful, but as a human response to injustice and a signal that something precious is being threatened. What unites these pieces is their insistence on presence rather than persuasion. Whether through naming anger as a form of witness, resisting numbness, or calling us back to connection and practical action in the midst of chaos, they reflect a shared understanding — particularly familiar to those shaped by illness, loss, and advocacy — that staying awake, engaged, and human still matters. Together, these reflections remind us that holding onto truth, tending to one another, and choosing not to look away are themselves meaningful acts in difficult times.
Until next week,
May the week ahead invite you to stay present — to notice, to bear witness, and to hold onto what feels true even when it’s uncomfortable.
Much love always
Marie xxx
