#YearOfKindness
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laurenjane.bsky.social
This is the essay at the heart of my #YearOfKindness everything grows from this, this collection of experiences was like a coming age, formative. Informative, transformative. We never here how anyone goes through this. This is how I did it.
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www.laurenjanek.com/post/and-i-a...
And I always think something beautiful is about to happen…
Content warning:  This essay discusses BDSM consent violations, harm and abuse, assault, pregnancy loss, alt-right hate & harassment campaigns, death and sexual assault threats, trauma and trauma reco...
www.laurenjanek.com
December 12, 2025 at 1:29 PM
laurenjane.bsky.social
Got tags running on my site, finally, so all my #YearOfKindness essays are in one place. I don't know if there will be more of them. I am writing a book of poems about it, though, I think.
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www.laurenjanek.com/blog/tags/ye...
year of kindness | lauren jane k
www.laurenjanek.com
December 9, 2025 at 2:14 AM
laurenjane.bsky.social
Late dinner somewhere beautiful. Skin care done. Teeth brushed. Bed turned down. Heat on a bit for the cat who is snoozing near the mini split. smoking a joint out the window as it gently snows. What wasn't beautiful about this evening
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#YearOfKindness
A living pantry of black marble, studded studded with an array of jars in different sizes. Clothes with metal lids or bits of cheesecloth their contents. Amber red orange, black silver gleaming all of them liquids mosses fungus and seaweed pickling, the vertebrae of whales. A strange wall of artifacts and living ingredients for a restaurant, each object cast in strange shape and silhouette, soaked in amber light.
December 7, 2025 at 4:33 AM
laurenjane.bsky.social
My current #YearOfKindness read is Dying Well by Ira Byock it's not about coping. Instead, with prose and observation and wisdom the book places the reality of our inherent dignity a true center of death and asks us you to behold it in all its painful beauty.
The book title is Dying Well. The cover is a black and white photo of blurred hands holding a white porcelain cup. The cup is mirrored in the cup on the table, because the book is being read in a cafe. A hand holds the book, the book and marble table top and scattering of pen and highlighter and cappuccino all arrange in an organic scatter. The photo taken quickly, crisp in sunlight sharp angled winter shadows - a vivid living day to read about death. (The parts where people actually die always make me tear up).
November 21, 2025 at 8:54 PM
laurenjane.bsky.social
A beautiful thing about today was giving my neighbor some homemade bread and receiving lemon balm for tea in return
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#YearOfKindness
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The kitchen light is a little cool, positioned over the sink shining directly down on the windowsill. The lace curtain has a slightly vintage floral pattern, the kind of thing you would buy at yard sale on a road trip from a grandmother standing in her massive front lawn. underneath the curtain's scalloped edge stands out brilliantly against the black of night that seems to come far too fucking early, ade the velvety crisp green leaves of lemon balm somehow still blooming in the frosted middle of November. The lemon balm is bursting out of a large coffee bowl, also studded with a scalloped pattern, a green leaf of lemon balm tenderly dips down mirroring the curve of the cup's handle.
November 14, 2025 at 11:36 PM
laurenjane.bsky.social
A beautiful thing about yesterday was spending the day with friends celebrating the season and all things dark and scary, and inventing "Reverse Trick Or Treating" where we wandered around and handed out all the left over candy
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#YearOfKindness
The photos is dark and taken at night with a low resolution camera so its full of noise and grain, you almsot can't see anything except the slice of houses front porch corner, one well let right angle visible in the blue light of a lit up Halloween ghost, a white smear like a crumpled tissue glowing white and bright in the dark, a haunting little spot of light.
November 1, 2025 at 1:38 PM
laurenjane.bsky.social
A beautiful thing about today was making bread and sharing it with friends and chosen family
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#YearOfKindness
Two loves of Amish bread baked with white flour tops dark and crispy, one loaf is still cooling on a wire rack. Board the other half sliced thinly rests on a floral blue saucer I stole from the wall of graveyard last summer. A stack of sliced Amish bread on a little blue saucer, some softened butter and a glass cup. A marble bowl of rough salt. A little yellow dish full of sliced pickles and a gold trimmed plate covered in a ladybug print. Holding a few sliced up chicken sausages because someone had been doing yard work needed the protein. A little snack laid out haphazardly on a pale tea towel with thin red and blue stripes. a few small seasonal pumpkins rest to the right, one is named Boocifer, and looks a bit like a ghost.
October 28, 2025 at 10:54 PM
laurenjane.bsky.social
A beautiful thing about today was spending time with my dearest friends, visiting the immigration museum and this fucking stunning sky
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#YearOfKindness
The sky is the color of air filled ice, layers of clouds flowing thick and billowing, narrowing into tight banners full of detail. But the horizon line is high, and most of the orange is flooded with water, focus falling off so the water nearest you is rippled softly and blurred. Everything is touched with hazy pastel colours in the cozy golden light of an autumn afternoon. The sky is cool mint blue and stacks of clouds billow in narrowing banners, tight and full of detail, casting their light and shadow against the water. Golden autumn light touches everything, water and sky, the clouds blush almsot pink.
October 26, 2025 at 11:57 PM
laurenjane.bsky.social
My current #YearOfKindness read is 'Tuesdays With Morrie : an old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson" by Mitch Albom, for my Death Doula Training
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A small hardcover book called "Tuesdays with Morrie an old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson by Mitch Albom" sits on a white desk surrounded by fall flowers in pale yellow and pinks.
October 13, 2025 at 12:28 PM
laurenjane.bsky.social
I didn't need or deserve any of it - it was completely unnecessary and cruel and better ways forward existed the whole entire time.

Things are so much better now but oh my God the rage.

#YearOfKindness
October 5, 2025 at 12:09 PM
laurenjane.bsky.social
My current #YearOfKindness read is "Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those you'd Rather Cancel" by Loretta j Ross. She was one of the first people who helped change my mind away from punishment and into restorative practices years ago with an NYT article about her work in prisons
A bright orange hardcover book sitting on a rumpled bed of gray bed sheets and a knitted gray blanket. The book is called. Calling in how to start making change with those you'd rather cancel by Loretta j Ross. The cover of the book has calling in in large white letters, a red arrow in circles them.
October 4, 2025 at 12:19 PM
laurenjane.bsky.social
A beautiful thing about today is ... I'm doing the first shoot for my year long project: the #FogetMeNot gallery of the Local HRM Queers
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And this afternoon I have my first Restorative Justice Facilitator seminar
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What a day!
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#YearOfKindness
laurenjane.bsky.social Ruin Jane @laurenjane.bsky.social · Aug 30
The Forget-Me-Not Gallery is a portrait series I'm starting to capture and remember the queer community in HRM as it survives and thrives this political moment.
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Sign up at the link booking for the end of September / all of October
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laurenjanek.com/forget-me-not
forget-me-not | lauren jane k
Queering Memory in HFX
www.laurenjanek.com
October 4, 2025 at 12:03 PM
laurenjane.bsky.social
A beautiful thing about this week was coming home after traveling to see people I love, to hug my cat and sleep in my bed and enjoy the the last few days of summer
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What was a beautiful thing about your week?
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#YearOfKindness
The most Toronto reflections. I think this is a bank, with windows as a grid of glass behind a wall of more glass, all smeared with reflections of an evening sky and a telephone pole lit up orange, street lights blurry. The vague suggestion of a street car stop. In the foreground of the reflection, an elderly woman looks up the street, across the way small and lit up orange in sunset light casting down the street, people wait at a crosswalk. Perhaps the most famous diner in Toronto, but just a scrap of of the lakeview's windows so maybe it won't be recognized but the neon lights are just starting to glow in sunset. The photo was taken from across the street providing context of streetcar tracks and little brick walk-up apartments. Two women stand outside with a takeout bag. One is dressed in black, an outfit made of layers and structure and bright white sneakers - The other is wearing red. Perhaps a cocktail dress and high heels? Sandwiched as they are between street and walk-ups, cast in front of the building windows, they look small but animated, like they are having an active conversation.
September 27, 2025 at 1:46 PM
laurenjane.bsky.social
A beautiful thing about the last few days was arriving in Toronto for surgery and then not needing surgery so I got to wander parkdale at sunset before seeing some wonderful friends.
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#YearOfKindness
A store window at sunset, dark glass reflecting silhouettes of trees and power lines in rows like music paper cutting across a pale blue sky. The reflection is interrupted by a geometric splash of sunlight alighting on a rack of summer dresses in pale ivory tones. A sunset sky in deep rosy pink floods the view, suppressing a silhouetted house into the bottom left corner, a double line of power lines slices along the view, the top line holding a single small dove.
September 18, 2025 at 12:41 PM
laurenjane.bsky.social
This essay covers consent violations, harm & abuse, sexual assault, pregnancy loss, cancel culture, alt-right hate, death & sexual assault threats, trauma & trauma recovery
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This is my year of harm
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#YearOfKindness
laurenjanek.com/post/and-i-always-think-something-beautiful-is-about-to-happen
And I always think something beautiful is about to happen…
Content warning:  This essay discusses BDSM consent violations, harm and abuse, assault, pregnancy loss, alt-right hate & harassment campaigns, death and sexual assault threats, trauma and trauma reco...
laurenjanek.com
September 7, 2025 at 10:55 PM
laurenjane.bsky.social
A beautiful thing about today is going home to a place you love to see people you love and have been apart from for too long
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#YearOfKindness
Taken through a plane window, horizon sharp as light and layered with clouds, deep texture reaching off into forever, a gentle gradient of blue. The sky and the sea and the steep reality of a land made from cliffs and rock that used to be the bottom of the ocean. Everything cast in soft green and blue, the gentle hum of late summer colours.
September 6, 2025 at 9:19 PM
laurenjane.bsky.social
My current #YearOfKindness read is "Gender, power and restorative justice : a feminist critique" by Jodie Hodgson. This really brings me back to my politics of reality reading in feminist philosophy I.e it's dry
September 5, 2025 at 11:06 AM
laurenjane.bsky.social
A beautiful thing about today's is making a second cup of coffee and my kitchen plants absolutely thriving
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#YearOfKindness
A marbled enamel kitchen counter in a dated 1950 marble pattern, cast with crisp shadows of leaves in noonday sun. On the counter in the mess of reflections off a glass coffee and shadows from plants is a pink coffee mug holding black coffee gently steaming, submerging an elegantly patterned spoon. The mug is coiled in a long vine of leaves that have escaped the windowsill. This photo is so sharply and evenly lit it looks rendered, almsot too flat to be real but isn't and was taken with my phone.
September 2, 2025 at 3:48 PM
laurenjane.bsky.social
Current #YearOfKindness read is my restorative Justice facilitator materials, mostly PDFs - I'm also reading "The Unreal And The Real vol. 2 Outer Space Inner Lands" By Ursula K Le Guin
The photo of a library book the real and the unreal selected stories of Ursula K. Le Guin volume 2 outer space inner lands. The book rests near a stack of other books and notebooks. It is a hardcover in a sun bleached off white. The bottom half of the cover is a gold foil print of a tree bursting with leaves and ripe fruit. The book rests on a very heavy knit weighted blanket The same creamy color as the book.
September 1, 2025 at 11:54 AM
laurenjane.bsky.social
A beautiful thing about yesterday was @summerlee.xyz gifting me a beautiful plant by dropping it at my front door - we named them Wednesday. A really beautiful gesture that made me feel wonderful, I'm so grateful <3
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#YearOfKindness
a dark leafed prayer plant on a small desk amid other house plants. The plant leaves are open and flat, variegated with dark spots. Summer told me they will close up in the evening, like praying hands.
August 27, 2025 at 2:27 PM
laurenjane.bsky.social
I'm so behind on my beautiful things because I have been living so much beauty. A beautiful thing about the last few days was an evening ride on the ferry to go and see @babiamajora.bsky.social perform (also, finally found a cafe in HFX that's open after 9:00 p.m. ).
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#YearOfKindness
The Halifax harbor taken from the ferry in the evening as the sun dips below the horizon creating through the center of the image searing red and orange, casting the bridge in hot silhouette. Everything else in the image is green. the water, heavy with texture and the sky almost free of clouds, glowing emerald. Ocean water in the evening dark. Ocean the color of steel, rough with motion blur and churn near the bottom of the image where the water meets the boat. in the distance image pulls into focus with hints of orange and red on the surface of the water as it reflects the evening sunset.
August 19, 2025 at 11:26 AM
laurenjane.bsky.social
My current #YearOfKindness read is 'Healing Justice Lineages And Safety' By Cara Page & Erica Woodland

I have learned the most about restorative justice from Black women - The amount of work Black women have done to show us better futures is immeasurable.
The cover of the book healing, Justice, lineages and safety, which is a bright red book with large bold black lettering, because it's a big bold book with big bold ideas, sitting on a black bedsheets.
August 11, 2025 at 10:59 AM
laurenjane.bsky.social
A beautiful thing about the last few days was more time spent at the beach with my love, taking photos of wildflowers, and letting my feet go numb in the ocean
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#YearOfKindness
The beach income pastel summer colors. The sky is a thin strip of white over a blue green ocean that ripples towards the shore where it breaks in white foam along gold and sand. Along the water's edge. A seagull flies close to the surface Wings spread. Everything Beach and ocean foam and sky are filled with sunlight. Warm and orange and full of lazy heat. Wildflowers and tall sea grasses crowds the foreground, green stalks cutting thin vertical lines through the image. Interrupting the scattering of wildflowers that reach down a hill towards the ocean. The ocean is almost beer bottle green, reflecting the clear blue sky, and it touches the land with lines of white sand claiming it all gently.
August 2, 2025 at 1:05 AM
laurenjane.bsky.social
A beautiful thing about the last few days was a walk in the public garden - everything thriving green and blooming. It's been so hot the flowers look like they are panting
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#YearOfKindness
The ocean in the Halifax harbor, green with heat. The sky yellow with whipped sunlight. In the distance is the Halifax waterline, the photo taken from the ferry, about half way across. The pond in the public garden, suffused with water plants, willows and dogwoods reaching into the green surface, almost touching their reflections. A tangled mess of purple hostas, purple bell flowers wilting, petals all over green leaving lolling in the heat.
July 29, 2025 at 12:54 AM
laurenjane.bsky.social
I'm so behind on my beautiful things, happily it's b/c there have been so many! Summer guests & day trips & house work ( I wish I could show you my house, she's looking so cute). Today's beautiful thing is my raspberry thicket thriving - about to invite the neighbors to a harvest
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#YearOfKindness
A bright sunny raspberry thicket, branches of crisp ragged green leaves heavy with clusters of berries in every phase of growth - some so red and juicy they look about to burst.
July 23, 2025 at 4:28 PM