As I set up my calendar for the month, I select a quote I’ve found that speaks to me. I write it in my planner and leave space below it to capture phrases I hear or read that speak to me and relate to the quote. I found this practice centers me throughout the month, and helps me be more present in my conversations, meetings, and readings. For August 2025, my quote was: “Sunshine.”  

Only one or two other times have I picked 1 word for my monthly phrase. I saw many phrases but they felt forced, judgy, and heavy. Or, perhaps that’s what I was feeling all arAs I set up my calendar for the month, I select a quote I’ve found that speaks to me. I write it in my planner and leave space below it to capture phrases I hear or read that speak to me and relate to the quote. I found this practice centers me throughout the month, and helps me be more present in my conversations, meetings, and readings. For August 2025, my quote was: “Sunshine.”  

Only one or two other times have I picked 1 word for my monthly phrase. I saw many phrases but they felt forced, judgy, and heavy. Or, perhaps that’s what I was feeling all around me and it tainted what I saw? So, I sat, reflected, and sensed my phrase from within. Sunshine arose, and it felt good in every way. Brightness to invade the dark corners. Vitamins for my body. Warmth for my soul.

Here are the quotes, lyrics, and phrases that that caught the attention of my head and heart as I lived in the “sunshine”:

• A radiant, glitter-covered menace of joy
• But a holy thing to love what death can touch
• Grief dares us to love one more
• An ongoing exchange with the great body of life
• We are most alive at the threshold between loss and revelation
• We are designed to encounter this life with amazement and wonder, not resignation and endurance
• Everything is a gift, and nothing lasts
• Grief is akin to praise
• I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just to the length of it; I want to have lived the width as well
• Finally on my way to yes
• Worth and welcome
• Holy ground of sorrow
• Soul activism
• Embrace the amazing chance we have to be alive
• I consider eternity as another possibility
• I want to step through the door full of curiosity wondering

August, as it always does, brought relaxation with our annual family beach vacation. Sunshine fully present around me.

I welcomed the daybreak of sunshine a few mornings on the beach, standing with others like the angels each day in the movie “City of Angels.” Cool blues and lavenders snuck across the morning sky as the gold slowly merged. I protected against sun’s fierceness slathered in SPF under a tent and in the ocean. Bold yellow at noon-day peak. I honored its spirit at day’s end. Oranges and pinks as the bold ball sank at sunset.

The stillness in the sun’s presence soothed me… and illuminated just how depleted I was.

There was no single cause, more like depletion from a thousand paper cuts.

So many in my community unsettled, vulnerable, broken, and in need.

But the sunshine persisted, as she always does.

I soaked it all up.

No, the sunshine didn’t change the factors that weighted down my bone and being. But her rays bore in and bolstered me. Filling up the marrow of optimism in my bones.

My time in the sun’s cocoon reoriented me… rather, reminded me that rest is restorative. And essential. Our nervous systems (brain, body, soul) require time to calibrate, process, and renew—to be still in the frenzy. Staying in hyperdrive or constantly being hypervigilant is not sustainable.

The sun has the moon.

And… with the new day comes new possibilities.

As I set up my calendar for the month, I select a quote I’ve found that speaks to me. I write it in my planner and leave space below it to capture phrases I hear or read that speak to me and relate to the quote. I found this practice centers me throughout the month, and helps me be more present in my conversations, meetings, and readings. For March 2024 my quote was: “Every great and difficult thing has required a strong sense of optimism.”

I was present in March, and yet it’s a blur. When I think about it, it’s like my memories were captured in watercolor, and someone poured water over them. The memories seem muted rather than crisp and define. Everything has a soft edge and is fuzzy – blurred. But I do have the clarity of quotes, lyrics, and phrases that that caught my attention throughout the month to anchor me:

• The rules of the road are to begin and to continue
• The real gift of being a daughter of fire is that you remember always the world can be remade in an instant, if you have will enough
• There are seasons for all things and there will come a time when the pieces that are not you will fall away easily, when you stop holding so tightly
• Awe enables us to perceive in the world imitations of the divine—to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple
• You are changing the world whether you like it or not
• Only when fully in each moment can we draw strength from the oneness of things
• The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks
• One thing happened then another, and another
• She was a supernova of joy
• Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the weather is clear?
• Not solving for, just being with
• Each soul is a gust of God’s breath (unfolding in the great energy that surrounds us like an ever moving stream)
• What we carry deep within, if we live honestly, with inevitably be worn outwardly
• But what is grief, if not love persevering?
• When the morning stars sang together
• Where is your tender touch required?
• It’s good to be in community with you
• There is no end of things in the heart
• Unwilling to be smaller than she is
• Step into a soul-led path
• I believe in kindness; also in mischief
• Bet on your blaze
• It is what it is, so let is be is
• Anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is to small for you
• Now all your questions about heaven end, and all mine begin

I think March was a testament that life goes on and simply by being present – showing up – you get swept forward and move on too. After months living at my parents, supporting mom as dad’s caregiver, and then his death, I returned to “my life.” As if returning would be a reset, the pause button lifted.

I sought to re-establish routines, but they felt like they belonged to someone else. I sought stillness to try to feel, hear, and honor the emotions that churned, and cried every day as my body worked to released all that flooded me. I sought to rest, but the franticness of months of adrenaline surges had short circuited my wiring – full restorative sleep never came. I sought reflection and attended a mindfulness art class in which yellow emerged for me, along with the words: snub winter, vibrant renewal, energetic hope. I sought connection and found conversations of hope, comfort, joy, and understanding. I sought identity … how to be a daddy’s girl and preacher’s kid when the person who made me both was gone. I sought solid ground, to step off the wobbly Jello on which I stood, and feel planted, rooted again.

Seeking moved me forward with sunrise walks with a friend; new restaurants with mom; a different take on Easter in Fort Lauderdale; a soul-filling half-day with an out-of-town friend here for work; an alumni event with my college; a good strong bourbon; a boat ride soaking up sun; Sunday morning chapel; watering my plants, sharing memes with work friends; mailing fun cards to my besties; fresh oysters and a locally made cider; a new pair of boots; donating to good causes; and hugs from my sweetie.

Searching showed me that delight and devastation can go exists; that I can savor the past and dream for the future; and that the next will come.

My exploration – while not done – confirmed that life, specifically living it, heals.