Share Your World (September 29, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. When I saw today’s questions for Share Your World, I immediately felt like writing a response. Here are the questions and my answers.

1.  If you could be a flower or a plant, what would you be and why?
There are just so many I could choose from. I could choose lavender for its calming properties and because it’s purple, but someone else already chose that one. After some thought, I decided to go with the Cananga odorata tree (also known as ylang ylang). I absolutely love the scent of its essential oil, which is also calming. I also think it’d be cool to grow fast. The tree is also good for feeding many birds.

2.  Do you believe in magic?
I think so, yes. I’m quite spiritual even though I’m not religious and, besides, even without spirituality, there are the many wonders of nature.

3.   Do you believe in Karma?
Not in its fundamentalist form, because that would mean I somehow brought it onto myself that I’m disabled for something I did in a past life. I think in general, no, I don’t believe in it, but in some specific ways it’s common sense.

4.   Do you live in a community spirited neighbourhood?
I live in an institution, not a neighborhood, so not sure how to answer this question. I mean, yes, there are many institution-wide activities and, when residents and staff from different homes see each other out on grounds, we tend to chat. The staff also help each other out when in need, but I’m not sure that’s out of a sense of community.

Connecting to a Higher Power or Purpose

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m motivated to write but don’t know what about, so I looked through a collection of journaling prompts. For some reason, the section on spirituality and belief caught my eye. One of the prompt questions is how I connect to a higher power or purpose.

This, honestly, was a lot easier when I still thought of myself as a progressive Christian than it is now. Back in the day, it was relatively easy for me to find inspiration and spiritual guidance. Now, I still occasionally look at Christian-based sources, because I still have a ton of devotionals downloaded off Bookshare. Still, it feels off. It feels as though I’m not playing by the rules of the game that is religion. Not that religion is a game, but one of the reasons I left Christianity is the fact that it is too much tied to hate towards for example the LGBTQ+ community. I always knew, even when I had suppressed my queer identity, that I was an ally to the community. However, the truth remains that the Bible is horribly homophobic. One could say that it was written 2000 years ago, but then one would essentially abandon one of the core concepts of Christianity, ie. the idea that the Bible is God’s word. I could say that I don’t care, call myself a spiritual seeker and take what speaks to me and leave the rest. But I wouldn’t be a Christian. And, if I did still find inspiration in Christian devotionals, wouldn’t that be me essentially betraying my queer self and, furthermore, the entire queer community?

But I desire to find meaning in life. I’m still struggling with connecting to a higher power now that I no longer follow Jesus. I do believe there’s “something”, some kind of higher power, but I don’t know what it is and where and how to connect to it.

I keep trying to meditate on Insight Timer, but this feels as half-hearted as my prayers were when I still claimed to be a Jesus follower. I’m struggling to genuinely believe in and surrender to a higher power. Maybe this means I’m actually an atheist or secular humanist, but I do “feel” there’s more. I just don’t know how to align my thoughts and actions with this feeling.

There are other ways of finding a higher purpose in life. I tried acceptance and commitment therapy, which is highly based on the idea of living by your values. Then again, do I really know what my values are? No, I have no idea.

I actually often feel drawn to the fluffy side of spirituality. Affirmations, essential oils (when I still had a diffuser), that kind of stuff. There’s nothing wrong with this, really, except that it often leads to a “take what I like and leave the rest” kind of attitude. And I think there’s something wrong with that, but I can’t pinpoint what it is.

Enneagram: The Nine-Point Circle of Personality #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m late writing my letter E post in the #AtoZChallenge, because I didn’t have time to prewrite it. Yesterday, I was at my and my spouse’s house to say goodbye to our cat, who had to be put down today. When I came back to the institution, I didn’t feel well enough to write my post for today, hence why I’m writing it this evening. My letter E post is about the Enneagram.

What is the Enneagram? The Enneagram of personality is a system of nine different interconnected personality types. Its origin and history are disputed, with many people claiming it has ancient roots. Modern ideas about it, however, mostly come from Bolivian psycho-spiritual teacher Oscar Ichazo in the 1950s and Chilean psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo in the 1970s.

The basis of the idea are the nine points on a geometric figure called enneagram. There is some so-called “sacred geometry” behind the ways the points are connected. For example, the points 3, 6 and 9 are connected and so are the other six points. It has something to do with the fact that one divided by seven is a repetitive number sequence with no three, six or nine in it. I don’t know the details though.

For clarity’s sake, the Enneagram is not science-based, but that doesn’t keep people in the fields of leadership and spirituality from using it.

Like I said, there are nine types on the Enneagram. These can be divided into different categories. For example, there are the centers of intelligence, which are heart (types 2, 3 and 4), head (types 5, 6 and 7) and body (types 8, 9 and 1). There are also instinctual subtypes of each Enneagram type, namely social (SO), sexual/one-to-one (SX), and self-preserving (SP). Everyone uses all three instincts, but one is more dominant than the others.

The nine Enneagram types are mainly defined by a person’s core motivations, or what drives people to act in a certain way. The types are:


  • Type 1: the perfectionist/reformer. Their core desire is to be good/right and they strive to be correct, appropriate, virtuous and ethical.

  • Type 2: the helper/giver. Type Twos want to be appreciated and seen as helpful people.

  • Type 3: the performer/achiever. Type Threes want to be valued and successful.

  • Type 4: the romantic individualist. Fours’ main desire is to be authentic and to find their own place in the world.

  • Type 5: the observer/investigator. Fives mainly want to be competent and capable.

  • Type 6: the loyalist. Sixes mainly want to be secure, safe and supported.

  • Type 7: the enthusiast. Sevens mainly want to be happy, unrestrained and satisfied

  • Type 8: the protector/challenger. Eights’ main focus is on being independent and protecting themselves

  • Type 9: the peacemaker. Nines are mainly focused on being at peace and maintaining harmony.

Like I’ve often said, I’m most likely a type Four. More specifically, I’m probably an SX4.

I Am Myself (For Real This Time!)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I haven’t blogged in over a week and it’s not for lack of wanting to, but for lack of feeling like I belong anywhere within the blogosphere. I have myself to blame, having tried to fit in simultaneously with the traditional lifestyle blogger crowd, most of who are Christian, and the more open-minded if not secular community that is mostly on WordPress. I have always had to sacrifice part of myself in order to belong with the lifestyle crowd. That’s, of course, the essence of the Christian faith and one big reason I now seriously proclaim I’m no longer pretending to be a Christian. I’m not. I am spiritual, but I choose my own path.

I mean, I could of course quote Bobby Schuller, who is big on belonging before you “behave”. However, at the end of the day, he too condemns everyone who doesn’t ultimately “behave”. And I never “behaved”. For one thing, my first crush was a girl. For another, I didn’t live with my spouse for the first six years of our marriage and not ever since 2019 either. For yet another, we don’t have kids and that’s 100% by choice. In short, I refuse to be bound by the rigid standards of sexual and gender roles that traditional “family values” impose on me. I honestly don’t care about being a “good” woman in God’s eyes. I’m done with sacrificing part of me just so I belong. Maybe along the way I’ll discover who I “myself” even am.

Poem: Giving Up Is Forever

Posted on by Astrid

Pain is temporary, they say
Things will get better (eventually)
Give it some time…

Giving up is forever, they say
There’ll be no point of return
Be more resilient…

God has a plan, they say
He doesn’t give me more than I can handle
Surrender to His will…

But what if God’s will
Is to give up on me
Forever?

I wrote this poem for dVerse’s Poetics, for which the prompt today is to incorporate some form of the word “give” in your poem. As a spiritual wanderer, I find myself perpetually wrestling with the idea that life has meaning. I came across a comment on Reddit recently in which a chronic pain sufferer said more or less that the idea that one day they will be dead and no longer need to suffer, is comforting to them. The comment didn’t come from a position of “I’ll be in a better place then”, which made me think really. I am not in a space to ponder this topic further right now though.

Can’t Wait to Leave

Posted on by Astrid

Today’s prompt for Five Minute Friday is “leave”. I am pretty sure this or a similar prompt came up before when I was in the process of finding what turned out to be my current care home. Maybe not on Five Minute Friday but on Stream of Consciousness Saturday or the like. Well, now that it came up on FMF, even though I’m not an actual Christian like most of the participants, I thought I’d join in. So, here goes.

I can’t wait to leave this nightmare of a care home. Today, a fellow client was being severely out of control right in front of my room and my would-be one-on-one had to leave me to attend to him because her colleague was alone attending to “the group” (ie. everyone except another one-on-one client). I felt it was unfair, because that other client’s one-on-one is non-negotiable, while my staff keep claiming I need to cut back on my hours. Well, I could not do any activity at all with how long it took the staff to attend to this other client and then bluntly tell me, once melting down, to calm down, etc.

I can’t wait to leave this nightmare of unclear and mostly very harsh treatment that I receive here. I mean, I’m not aggressive, but I get treated like I am.

I am hoping to find out when I’ll be moving to my new care home real soon.

I sometimes feel left alone on this journey. I try to turn to God, even though I no longer subscribe to traditional Christian beliefs. I really do hope that, even if (which I’m pretty sure is a “when”) I’m left all alone in this world, there’s someone out there who cares.

Five Daily Actions for Wellbeing

Posted on by Astrid

A long time ago, I read somewhere that doing five small things for your health and happiness each day, will get you started on a journey towards the bigger goals. Today, I came across a journaling prompt that explained that not all goals have to be big and asked what small goals you’re working on right now. I’m pretty sure I listed my five daily actions already before, but cannot find it right now. In any case, if this is a repeat, I’ll no doubt have changed something from when I did this before. Here are five daily actions I can take, and in many cases am already taking, to improve my health and happiness. Most of these are focused primarily on my mental and spiritual wellbeing, but the mind, body and soul are interconnected. This means that, ultimately, I’ll hopefully feel more physically healthy too.

1. Read the Bible. I am currently on a 142-day streak in the YouVersion Bible app. It’s not always easy to commit to reading my Bible, but I am motivated by both a wish to please God as well as my stats. I have found that I don’t do well reading the Bible in order and I have no intention of reading the entire Bible in a year. Instead, I started with a Bible reading plan and, when I finished it, started another. That way, I am not just reading the Bible as if it were a novel, but truly paying attention to its meaning. I just completed my thirteenth plan on YouVersion today.

Bible reading helps me feel connected to God. I really want to connect to other people on the app too, so that we can study together. That’s my goal for the upcoming month: find people to fellowship with.

2. Pray. This is something I really need to get woven into my routine. My husband prays the Lord’s Prayer each morning as he gets up and maybe I should do the same. I do pray almost everyday, but not at set times.

3. Journal. I have the Day One journaling app and really like it. Even so, I struggle to write in it each day, even though I have two reminders on a day: one for the daily prompt and one just to write. Last week, I resolved to write at least a few sentences each day, but I didn’t really follow through. I am pretty sure though that, when the A to Z Challenge of April is over, I’ll want to continue writing everyday. Since I’m not requiring myself to blog everyday then, it’d really help if I wrote in Day One everyday.

4. Be more mindful. This is a less measurable goal, but I can include some simple breathing or body scan exercises into each day. Not doing this at the moment, as some of them feel contrary to the Christian faith. Scratch that and insert another excuse that isn’t holding God responsible. Breathing exercises and body scans aren’t anti-Christian. I guess I just feel like this, like prayer, is something I struggle to find the discipline for. It also feels kind of scary, I guess, but I trust that will get better with practice.

5. Gratitude. Another less measurable goal, but I really want to be more appreciative in life. Now that I’m going to use Day One each day anyway as I journal, I could just add a simple gratitude list (or one grateful if I can’t make a list) each day too.

In addition, I would really like to improve on my expressing kindness and gratitude towards others. I will get to thank my staff and others for what they do more.

What are some daily practices that will enhance your wellbeing?

Joining in with the Wonderful Wednesday Blog Hop and Let’s Have Coffee.

Jade

Posted on by Astrid

We don’t have an alter named Jade. We do have one named Jane, one named Janita and one named Jace (short for Jaclyn). But we have no Jade. Then again, we love jade.

Jade is a beautiful green gemstone. At least, that’s the color we know. There are also creamy white and blue jades. We had at least one, a green jade, in our gemstone collection, I believe.

It is supposed to be a protective stone, in terms of crystal healing. I’m not sure I believe in crystal healing, but to some extent, I guess I do. Jade is supposed to promote self-sufficiency. In that sense, I guess our alter named Jane would love it as her stone.

When I look at the supposed benefits of jade, I see it also promotes balance, harmony and moderation. To me, this signifies that it could be an especially useful stone for us.

It isn’t specifically suited to our Zodiac sign. That is, it is suited to Libra, which we are supposed to be if you take our due date as our birth date. Which I have no idea whether any astrologers even do. I guess not. Our regular Zodiac sign is Cancer.

Jade is connected to the heart chakra. The heart chakra’s color is green. At least, when I did a guided color meditation using the chakras, I was told to envision the heart chakra as green. I wonder whether there’s any connection between the main colors of gemstones and what chakras they’re most related to.

Synesthetically, the word “jade” is also green. Three out of the four letters are green and the overarching color of the word is an emerald green. I truly think it’s amazing!

Linking up with #JusJoJan, for which the prompt today is “jade”. I’m not sure I’m allowed to link up, since I didn’t previously participate this year, but oh well.

Something Between Me and God

Posted on by Astrid

So Christmas is over. My own family doesn’t care about it much. We didn’t visit my parents this year. My sister, brother-in-law and three-month-old niece saw our parents for a few days before Christmas. My husband had to work, so we didn’t have time to come over then. We could have come over today, but I personally don’t like visiting my parents if my sister and brother-in-law aren’t there too. All of us live in different corners of the country and my sister and husband both work irregular hours, so ideally we find a day when we can all be together. That doesn’t have to be at Christmas. It helps that my family aren’t religious. My parents are both atheists.

I am not an atheist, but I prefer not to subscribe to organized religion. Yes, I derive meaning from reading Christian devotionals and listening to Christian music. I also sometimes pray. I no longer attend church and never attended regularly. I take the Bible with a large bucket of salt. Yet I feel very touched by the nativity story.

Recently, when going through my Facebook profile and privacy settings, I chose to delete my religion off my profile altogether. It listed “progressive Christian” up to that point, but really I think it’s none of my 500+ friends’ business. My husband says religion is something between him and whatever higher power he believes in or not. It is not that I don’t want to share – I am doing that now -, but I don’t want to label my belief system. Maybe in some respects I’m still a seeker.

And yet, sometimes I wish I subscribed to an organized belief system. I mean, I love to connect to spiritual and religious bloggers, but it’s hard to find this connection without sharing their doctrine. Am I truly being honest when I tell a Christian blogger that I agree with their spiritual message even though on fundamental matters of doctrine, we most likely strongly disagree. I mean, my husband at one point read me the Nicene creed, on which all Christianity is based and I didn’t agree with some points.

Then again, it’s not up to the humans who wrote that creed to judge me at the end of times. They may kick me out of their blogging communities, but they won’t ultimately decide whether there’s an afterlife and if so, how I get to spend eternity in it.

I love to derive meaning from all sorts of spiritual sources. Most are either Christian or New Age-based. I don’t think believing in God and Jesus contradicts belief in one’s inner spiritual power. I don’t think I need to take the Bible literally or even semi-literally to consider myself religious. Like I said, my spirituality is something between me and God.

I’m joining in with RagTag Daily Prompt, for which the word today is Spiritual.

Fairy

Posted on by Astrid

Fairy. I have always identified with this word. Or elf. Or changeling. The mythology of fairies taking human children and replacing them with one of their own, a changeling, has always spoken to me. It is a common early explanation of autism in the centuries prior to Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger. Obviously, I don’t agree with this, but I do understand it.

When Elena, one of my most spiritual alters, first emerged, she didn’t see herself as entirely human. She was the first to claim a fairy, elf or changeling identity. ChangelingGirl is one of my most commonly-used nicknames on bulletin boards.

I still like the idea that I have some spiritual aspect to myself. I don’t fully believe in Indigo children or the like. Besides, the theory of Indigo children is rooted in racism, usually favoring White children over those of color. However, somehow, there is some appeal to it. I do believe everyone has some spiritual aspect to them though.

When the body was a teen and Elena was most prominent, we had these weird superstitious rituals. We would’ve been open to pendulums and the like if we’d known about them at the time. More recently, when we did know about alternative stuff like this, I’ve tried to explore the tarot. I have several tarot apps on my phone. Of course, they’re marketed as for entertainment only. I like to use them to inspire my self-reflection. I don’t care that there’s no scientific proof.

This stream-of-consciousness piece was inspired by today’s word of the day challenge.