Pressing Pause, With Intention

Since January, I’ve been in more conversations and written communication than I ever imagined possible. Connecting with so many of you: lived experience advocates, survivors, parents, social workers, researchers, and fellow authors. It’s been inspiring, emotional, and deeply moving.

As the conversations deepen and expand, heading into places I can’t always predict and don’t need to, they’re asking something of me too. Like many who attend the conversations, I’m a survivor. I’m feeling called to cut out some space for me, to let the insights settle.

I feel the conversations are a beautiful combination of compassion and vulnerability, of trust and no judgment. The messages shared in those sessions and with participants privately via email afterward are inspiring and thought-provoking: raw and relatable words being spoken for the first time. What a gift they are – thank you.

I want to absorb the truth that none of us are alone now. Find stillness in the spaces in between. Honour what I’m learning through your beautiful shares. Be fully present and listen more deeply rather than spiral off into busyness, operating on autopilot.

My life until I chose to write Resolve was one lived on adrenaline, distracted with busyness and being on autopilot. I can’t fall back into patterns that no longer serve me.

So, I have pressed pause on the scheduled weekly mail-out for now. I will be participating in the conversations until June. They are near capacity already, with special panel events in the planner beyond that. You’re warmly invited to register and be there with the four featured authors in conversation.

In tandem with those conversations, I’ll get back into the practice of writing privately in my personal journal and bring more creativity back into my weekly routine.

I’d stopped mosaicing before Christmas with a daughter moving back home from LA into our little house. I replaced mosaicing with filling her up with nourishing food made with love! She’s headed off now to Melbourne to complete her architectural degree. So it’s time for me to give myself space for reflection, recalibration and therapeutic art.

My ‘paused’ mosaic project is five small round pieces (12 inches / 30 cm across). Each picture reminds me of our travels across Turkiye in 2017. Just thinking about it makes me take a deep breath. Knowing how much I appreciate losing myself in creativity, choosing the colours and cutting up foil glass again – it’s what I need right now.

My first blog post will be like a private viewing of a mini art gallery! It includes Whirling Dervishes, Fairy Chimneys in Cappadocia, Hot Air Balloons and more. All of them are going to sparkle in the light. The image is the last project I finished. I used up all my blue tiles and so many round mirrors. I see the mirrors as oxygen bubbles – you might see them as something else.

When the blog returns to your inbox, it will come with fresh clarity and renewed purpose. I’ll be sure to let you know via email when that time is coming.

Thank you, truly, for being here. I value you so much.

With appreciation,
Alice