Essence of Cynthia

10/31/2026

Good Morning ☀️

10/31/2026

A blessed Samhain/Halloween to you! 🎃

As the veil between worlds is thin around this time of year, I thought I’d share a little in ritual/ceremony

We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don’t have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down. We all need such places of ritual safekeeping.

And I do believe that if your culture or tradition doesn’t have the specific ritual you are craving, then you are absolutely permitted to make up a ceremony of your own devising, fixing your own broken-down emotional systems with all the do-it-yourself resourcefulness of a generous plumber/poet.”

Source:

10/28/2026

I suspect I have more than 3000 nature photos on my phone 🤷‍♀️

But yes. Today’s a day to get outside day for me. Like every other day until it hits -15

You’ve said it so many times it’s almost a reflex.

“I just need to get outside.”

You say it on Monday morning. You say it after a long day, after a bad week, after a conversation that left you feeling strange. Sometimes you say it for no reason at all, just a quiet pull in your chest, like something is calling you from far away.

Your friends have stopped asking why. They just nod now. “Another trip?” they say, half joking. You laugh, but you know it’s not really about the trip.

You know what this is, because you’ve lived it.

You open your weather app and you’re not checking if you need an umbrella. You’re checking if the weekend looks good enough to disappear into the hills.

You have 47 saved photos of mountains, trails, and campsites, and you’ve visited maybe six of them. But you look at them the way other people look at old photos of someone they miss.

You’ve sat in a meeting, nodding along, while your mind was somewhere on a ridge at sunrise. Your body was in the chair. The rest of you was already gone.

You feel a little off after too many days indoors. You can’t explain it. You’re not sad, exactly. Just dim. Like a phone at 3%, still working, but running on whatever’s left.

And then you step outside. The air hits your face. The noise in your head drops about 40 percent. Your shoulders come down from somewhere near your ears. And you think, there you are.

That moment. That’s the thing no one around you fully understands.

People think you love adventure. And maybe you do. But what you really love is how you feel when nothing is asking anything of you.

Indoors, everything wants a piece of you. Notifications. Expectations. A to-do list that follows you from room to room. You’re always a little bit on, even when you’re supposed to be resting.

Outside, nothing needs a reply. The mountain doesn’t care if you’re productive. The ocean doesn’t ask how your week went. The forest doesn’t need you to be anyone in particular. For the first time in days, your mind gets to just be, and it feels like exhaling after holding your breath all week.

Psychologists have a name for part of this: attention restoration. The idea is that natural spaces let your overworked mind rest, because nothing out there is fighting for your focus. Water moving. Leaves shifting. Clouds doing nothing in particular. It soothes you without trying.

You’ve probably felt this your whole life without having the words. You just knew that after an hour outside, your thoughts stopped feeling so tangled.

It’s also why you think better when you’re moving. You carry a lot inside. You overthink, you feel deeply, your head is rarely quiet. A trail gives all that noise somewhere to go. Problems that felt impossible in four walls shrink under an open sky. The answer doesn’t always arrive, but the weight lifts.

And let’s be honest about the other part.

You’re a little tired. Not the kind of tired a nap fixes. The kind that comes from living at a speed your body never agreed to. From too much screen, too much noise, too much pretending to be fine.

So the craving isn’t random. It’s your nervous system asking for slowness. For softness. For something real after too much that feels artificial.

That’s not weakness. That might be the wisest instinct you have.

Here’s what people get wrong about you. They think you’re running away from your life. But you’re not escaping anything. You’re returning. To a rhythm older than screens and schedules. To a version of yourself that feels grounded, curious, and quietly alive.

You’re not restless. You’re not difficult. You’re not “too much.”

You’re just someone whose soul has a different address than the one on your mail.

So go when the pull comes. Take the long way home. Sit on the grass without checking the time. Let the sky remind you how small your worries are, and how big your life can still be.

Because for some people, the outdoors isn’t a place to visit.

It’s where they finally remember who they are.

10/28/2026

10/28/2026

Which one are you opening?

10/28/2026

Scotland just turned 2,500 executions into a pattern you can wear.

It’s called the Witches of Scotland tartan, a living memorial to the people, mostly women, killed under the Witchcraft Act between 1563 and 1736.

Every thread is doing a job. Grey stands for the ashes. Red is the blood. Pink nods to the legal ribbons that bound the trial papers, and black holds the whole dark history together. Then there’s a tiny white check of three threads for what campaigners demanded: a pardon, an apology, a memorial.

Nicola Sturgeon delivered the apology in 2022.

The tartan makes sure nobody forgets why it was needed.

10/28/2026

Always in my heart this boy 💔