Sometimes it’s a small shelter, a familiar view, and knowing you’re safe enough to watch the world instead of run from it—learning that not every battle has to be fought.
-Mandy Ricks
Inspired by Willow, (my cat), Chief of Security, Keeper of the Coffee Table Fortress, and Watcher of All Things.
Time arrives uninvited, bringing fear and too many questions. It feels as if the love in your heart is cracking, splintering.
But before you crumble, look up one more time.
There are still things reaching for you: hope, strength, small impossible moments that refuse to die quietly.
Grab onto them. Clutch them like a lifeline.
Because fear is loud, but it is not always right.
And sometimes love carries us through one more night than we thought we could survive.
-Mandy Ricks
This poem is for my daughter Samantha and her precious cat Pebbles. She has had Pebbles for sixteen years, since she was a child, and sadly today he is very sick.
We’re all hoping for the best and clutching onto all the love and hope we can.
Life is hard, cruel. Scars never stop aching. But a point in time comes where survival hardens into something dangerous — something that gets back up-bleeding, smoke in its lungs, determined to set fire to anything that tries to bury it again.
For the first time in decades I sit in my house, empty, alone. It feels okay. No distracting chatter, or thoughts. Just quiet. Who’d have known this peace would finally arrive today of all days.
You don’t have to feel ready to take the next step, a big step, or even a small step. You just have to be willing, for a moment, not to step away from yourself. -Mandy Ricks
Are you grasping for some joy, perhaps some inspiration? But the dark keeps marching, twisting your thoughts into a spider web. Each tentacle sticking to a thought creating darkness and doom. But fight it , fight it. Because you are much stronger than doom and so much stronger than. One. Single. Thought. -Mandy Ricks
I was having a chat with ChatGPT about a quote by Albert Einstein on the need to be intelligent to accept change. But we both agreed that it doesn’t really take intelligence to accept change sometimes it just takes guts; raw, messy, heart wrenching guts. And getting back up, always getting back up.
So, here is our quote on change and intelligence.
🌿 “Intelligence isn’t loving change — it’s finding your footing when change finds you.”
Mandy Ricks 