october: intention
october: coping Charlotte Friend october: coping Charlotte Friend

october: intention

To cope is to do the best with what we have. Coping is never perfect and it certainly isn’t a science. After months of obsessive reading and writing, I still felt empty. And to this day there is still a void within me to which no amount of long walks, meditating, skateboarding, painting, or the like could fill.

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september: forgiveness
september: community Charlotte Friend september: community Charlotte Friend

september: forgiveness

We feel entitled to our resentments often because there is a personal wound that they’re trying so desperately to keep hidden. Our culture makes a habit out of keeping us in the entitlement rather than encouraging us to work through the emotions until we weep for our own pain that we keep enacting onto others. It is a much more heartbreaking process to traverse our wounds and take responsibility rather than doubling down on our initial defensiveness. We must allow this process to split us open, revealing all of the instances in which we have lived through examples of the harm we now unintentionally inflict on our communities.

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september: work
september: community Charlotte Friend september: community Charlotte Friend

september: work

What did you learn from your childhood about being a member of a community? Not in words, but in actions. How did you see people being treated? The written rules and lived experiences gave me contradicting ideals as I sat in pews, hearing moms critique the way that other families dressed for church. It is now my work to tap into my instincts and trust myself enough to build communities that function differently than the hypocrisy of the most readily available communal-model I had: a white-washed Catholic school running on oil money.

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september: notice
september: community Charlotte Friend september: community Charlotte Friend

september: notice

No matter what creed, country, or disability, each of us has been born into this carbon-based existence. We all rely on plants to take our exhales and turn them into inhales. Each human being has lived under the same decaying ozone layer. This realization of dependence on shared resources makes me wonder how anyone could be indifferent to the survival and quality of life of anyone else...and yet that is not the reality I see when I stare into the void of a screen.

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september: intention
september: community Charlotte Friend september: community Charlotte Friend

september: intention

Realizing all of me could never be completely known by all of someone else (and vice versa), I mourned this idealized sense of connection and community I once yearned for. And where else could I go from this grief other than further into my study of self, excavating parts of me that I misunderstood because I’d chosen to take someone else’s word for it and instead of speaking what I knew, my truth.

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july forgiveness
july: process Charlotte Friend july: process Charlotte Friend

july forgiveness

It unfortunately (and also, thankfully) never ends--you get to keep exploring the world and understanding who you are and how you react. You are not fixed in your habits and patterns. The process of processing your emotions is proof that change is the only constant.

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july work
july: process Charlotte Friend july: process Charlotte Friend

july work

The process is the work. There’s no way around it except to do it, to spiral into it. The work is to not only let it unfold in front of you, but also to step into the flow with it, building a relationship with the processes of your life.

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july notice
july: process Charlotte Friend july: process Charlotte Friend

july notice

Knowing which tools you have and when you usually reach for them seems like such a simple and subconscious process, but when you shed light onto it, gaining intimate knowledge of yourself, more tools (and breathing room) reveal themselves to you. Tumultuous times lose their once-loud message of, “this is the end of the world,” so you can hear yourself respond to the more potent questions of, “what can I do in this moment?” and, “what do I actually need?”

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july intention
july: process Charlotte Friend july: process Charlotte Friend

july intention

We can process our intentions and set intentions for our processes. It’s about tuning into what’s in front of us and gauging the effectiveness of our reactions.

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june forgiveness
june: isolation Charlotte Friend june: isolation Charlotte Friend

june forgiveness

Forgive yourself for setting grandiose expectations during quarantine and let yourself mourn the time alone if you need to slowly peel yourself out of the cocoon you had to build to survive this past year. Let any ideas of how any of this was “supposed to be” simply fade away, because there was no rule book for 2020. And there is no rule book for how to come out of it, only human beings with basic needs.

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june intention
june: isolation Charlotte Friend june: isolation Charlotte Friend

june intention

Nothing happens out of context, on its own in a vacuum, it is all connected, but disconnecting from our routines and the physical presence of loved ones brought us to something bigger, even if it was simply grief.

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may forgiveness
may: control Charlotte Friend may: control Charlotte Friend

may forgiveness

It’s never actually the “wrong” decision or experience, I don’t believe that exists. Especially with control. Sure, you might feel like something’s wrong, but that’s just learning what you’d rather try next time. 

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may work
may: control Charlotte Friend may: control Charlotte Friend

may work

What I’m finding with control is that after we can accept how little of it we actually have, the work is ultimately discovering when to push and when to pull or when to relax and float along with the ebb and flow of it all.

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may intention
may: control Charlotte Friend may: control Charlotte Friend

may intention

Even if we can’t agree on what’s “really going on,” we can all agree to take a look at how our conclusions affect our emotions. And how our emotions affect our actions. And how our actions affect those around us.

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