Life Lessons are like Tootsie Roll Pops
I’m so glad to have you as part of this circle where I share a little something each week or so! If you’re new here, welcome! How treating life lessons like Tootsie Roll Pops can help make your life a little sweeter: Life lessons are not items to be completed or crossed off a list. This is decidedly fortunate…
A New Kind of Joy
I don’t remember exactly what the instructor said on the phone. I believe it was something related to teaching because I found myself filled with such resentment for the way teaching, as a profession, is viewed that I hung up the phone and began to cry. I’m too young to be this cynical, I thought. I…
The Thing That Changes Everything
I woke up one morning feeling so special. Not in an arrogant, better-than-everyone-else sort of way in which this statement might normally be taken, but in a genuine awareness of how special we all are. You. Me. Everyone. And it is this deepening awareness that so strongly makes me feel the need to tell you so. You…
The Determined Little Bee
Much to Dino’s dismay, a bee flew into the living room today. I pulled the nearby door wide open, all but putting up flares for guidance, but it could not find its way out. It was fixated on getting through the window with a tree just on the other side. It slammed its tough little…
What is the Kindest Thing?
I start to feel the pressure in my forehead mount, as the pain in my neck expands, and the surge of dizziness becomes stronger. I’ve been on a roll washing some dishes in the kitchen sink but now my body calls out to me with a quiet intensity, asking me to allow it some rest….
Embrace the Extra{ordinary}
He walks out the front door every afternoon. His body is dignified in the way he moves. His dark, close set eyes are focused with determination, as he carefully makes each step down from the front door. He grips the black, cast iron railing, the way he used to hold his tennis racquet in preparation for a powerful…
Caitlin Sanders
Celebrating the extraordinary treasures found in life's ordinary moments.
@caitlinmsanders
Where it began…
In 2012 I took a summer writing course for educators that changed my life.
Our final project was to share a narrative we’d written on a topic of our choice. I felt a pull to write mine about my dad, who I’d lost to cancer a few years before. (You can read the piece here.)
The creative process provided me refuge. Emotions erupting like lava from a volcano combined with the action of writing turned out to have serious healing power.
On the last day of class, as I read my narrative aloud, I saw the way my words stirred emotion in each of my classmates, several of them with tears filling and falling from their eyes.
I felt empowered to have created something that could authentically express a sliver of my experience. And in the end, I realized that it didn’t matter if anyone ever read what I’d written not, that going through the writing process had been just for me.
A couple years later I left my job as a classroom teacher to recover from a perfect storm of illness and injury. It was during that time away that I discovered what my cousin called my “gift” — writing.
I started a blog and wrote whenever inspiration struck. I followed the flow of everyday miracles as well as the inspiration provided by nature and my cute little dog, Dino. Many of the posts you’ll find here are from those years I spent dealing with debilitating illness. That time was the source of some of my deepest challenges and greatest treasure.
Now I’m a fifth grade teacher, teaching online, and loving every minute of it. But the wind still whispers songs of reassurance in my ears, and the brightly lit clouds sing of the hope of a new tomorrow.
So while my journey of writing, and life, have had many twists and turns and ups and downs, I’d love to continue to share some of the bits of inspiration that find their way to me and the everyday wisdom that seems to appear when I least expect it.
Taking the time to slow down, nourish ourselves, notice the joy and beauty around us, is one of the greatest gifts we can give to ourselves and others. It is through this presence that we can share the love that we are, and find the grace that lives within every heartbeat and every cell of our bodies.
So I hope you’ll join me on this adventure, and we’ll see where life & love lead!
Caitlin Sanders
Create. Heal. Inspire.