It's the last day of 2025. What are you going to do with it? 2025, like all years, was a mixed bag, but the mix doesn't matter much now. What I do with these last hours may not register in the grand scheme of things either. Still, how I use the moments of this final day feels significant, especially in terms of the energy I carry forward into 2026.

I find the spirit in the lights during the holidays—Christmas tree lights, lights decorating homes and gardens. candlelight. Twinkling or still, they set a mood for me. When I still lived with my parents, and maybe even once or twice after I started college, I loved sleeping on the couch by the Christmas tree, bathing in the lights overnight. I never tire of parks with Christmas light displays, decorated yards, and candles arranged in wreaths.

Full circle? I'm changed, so, as I come back round the end of a year, I arrive with story, with a shift that warps my circle, makes my circle—our circle together—imperfect but better.

"Be present" is a good directive. But it should have been preceded with lessons in being still.

I appreciate this prompt, because, even as we face and take stands against the darkness of our days, it's important to be mindful of the things that give us hope. 

I'm working on a book of poetry I didn't know I had in me. But I'm happy to celebrate and embrace these forms that are emerging. Going through things. Learning new things. Creating new circles of community and connection. The shape and adventure of verse offer the perfect container for grief and joy, journey and stillness, building and releasing. This is a poem from yesterday, a reminder to myself to not rush through grief, to listen, to stay with it, in the discomfort, in the process, in the journey to releasing.

I'm not sure all ministers have the capacity to entrust their congregants with voice at the pulpit, to feel secure that other voices won't drown out their own. I appreciate that our ministers have the confidence and faith necessary to allow the air, light, and depth the Preacher Pack voices bring to the pulpit.

Maybe my words about my own sins of omission will make you feel a little lighter. Or maybe just a little less judgy—of others and of yourself.

Creativity never leaves us; it only waits for us to return to it.

This year is dead-set on driving home the lesson, how to let go. Today is the 300th day of the 2025. You exclaim, "Where did the year go?" I'm mumbling, "Sixty-five more days of this lesson?" Flying By Even though, since 2020, I've been more intentional about how I pass the hours of each day and more mindful of how I show up in my world, those first 300 days of 2025 were sometimes brutal.

I remember the light I carry and I choose joy.

Letting go of control and the fear of taking risks is crucial to the health of your inner artist. Release attachments and find freedom.

Every day, I write my morning pages… my version of them.

My passion is writing, and my daily writing routine has been instrumental in drawing me forward. If your passion is also writing, my 2000 days of morning pages show that a daily writing habit doesn't just fill notebooks, it builds a creative life.

When I was a wife and younger mom, I felt the pendulum of the years: one year fraught with financial and career challenges (It's been a year.), and the next a giant swing into ease, victories, and flow (It's been a year!), then back into the dimness and fear of surviving hurdles (What a year...

Covid writer's brain. I know this territory, lived here for years. When I sit down to work (not to write), my focus is fire. I can write emails, code, work spreadsheets for hours without needing to crack my knuckles. Clear-eyed, awake, efficient. But I open my notebook and face the page, and I glaze over. My eyes blur, my pulse slows, my mind drifts into resistance. 

However we label it, death is inevitable—promised from the moment we are born. But when it comes close, when it touches our own circle, we pause. We reflect. And often, we wonder: What do I say? How do I show up for the dying?  

Fiction versus nonfiction comes up often in writing groups. It’s rarely about which is better—it’s usually about truth. I’ve always found more truth in fiction. Fiction vs Nonfiction Isn’t About Better or Worse Writer conversations around fiction and nonfiction are rarely a better-vs.-worse conversation. Not good vs. bad. Most writers who could swing their pen in either direction might bring up this topic because they are considering how the "truth" of non-fiction might impact family or friends, not whether a novel is a lesser approach to the same truth.

I started using the readings as springboards for stories and poems, and for the persistent main character of my current novel in progress.

The greeting—How are you doing?—is common. This question is expected. Compulsory in some situations. And polite. Or is it? Is it even real?

With a breath, a deep leap of faith, I took a writing plunge with a handful of friends. 

A gospel sermon about holding out hope stirred memories of safe spaces and the power of being seen. From childhood sanctuaries to high-school mentors, this reflection explores the quiet encouragement that stays with us—and what it means to offer that same sanctuary to others.