Developing Community: Moving Towards a Space of Vulnerability, Intentionality, and Diversity

My parents moved me in and helped me explore this new city for a few days, but eventually this new place had to become my own. I tried out the coffeeshops (which didn’t compare to the ones back home) and became acquainted with people at my seminary. I found interest in what I was learning and “plugged in” wherever I could.

Quickly, however, I began to realize a need in myself for deeper community. I longed to be around people with similar mindsets. Mindsets that didn’t just recognize but acted on vulnerability, intentionality, and diversity. These types of mindsets had been prevalent in the community I was around at my undergrad, so I was puzzled as to why I was overlooking them here.

Relationships, LifeSavannah GreenAugust 11, 2020FeaturedComment

How One Writer is Learning to Navigate Her New Normal

2020: a new year but NOT a normal year. The world really took a turn when it was late winter. The news and social media were giving a lot of updates on the virus that took over the world. At the time, I didn’t know if I should take a break from social media and avoid the news.

Everywhere was closing and shutting down; it felt like 2020 was canceled.

Health, LifeCasey RevmanAugust 4, 2020Comment

It's Time to Tell Your Story: Action Steps for Getting Your Story on the Page

And it echoed on our wedding day, as our pastor described our commitment to our family and friends, and as Chris wrote his own vows to me. We promised to help each other stay vulnerable and share our stories. It still brings tears to my eyes.

As I’ve come to terms with telling my own story over the past few months, he has been there every step of the way. Listening to ideas, designing helpful tools, and encouraging me endlessly.

Consider this post as me reaching out to each of you reading, perhaps wrestling with your own story to tell, to be a listening ear, offering tools, and encouraging you that it’s time to tell your story, too.

LifeKatie RouseJune 11, 2020FeaturedComment

There is Opportunity Here: Life Lessons from a First Time Harry Potter Reader

And as I’ve read through the first three books, I've found myself lamenting. Lamenting because this bullheadedness feels indicative of the anxieties that have kept me reserved and prevented me from experiencing simple joys, like the laughter that comes from Ron's slug charm backfiring and Dumbledore eating an earwax-flavored Bernie Bott's Every Flavor Bean. Lamenting because life doesn't seem to send the purpose like a Hogwarts letter to 4 Privet Drive - one that finds you even when the mail slot is nailed shut and your Uncle Vernon drags you out to an island in the middle of a storm.

Lamenting because all too often we are in our own way.

But there is opportunity here.

LifeKathleen RoarkJune 2, 2020FeaturedComment

This is Your Problem Now: A Reflection on Avoiding Hard Things

In January, I took up rock climbing.

If you know me personally, this is just as much a surprise to myself as it may be to you. For one, I have a deep fear of heights. Just ask my friend who had to ride a ski lift with me last fall. Precariously dangling my legs fifty feet above a mountain slope offers me the always-welcome thrill of a panic attack.

Secondly, I have the upper body strength of a boiled gluten-free noodle. I’m told that correct climbing actually involves more leg strength than arms, but tell my aching arms that after a climbing session—the ache lasts for days. I also don’t claim to be climbing correctly, but cut this novice indoor rock climbing girl some slack, plz and thx.

While I have no plans to scale El Capitan, I somehow find myself with a climbing gym membership to my name.

Life, DreamsAlly WillisMay 15, 2020Comment

No Man Is An Island: An Ode to Our Neediness

The last few years of my life—so basically my Full Grown Adult Years—have been a reinforced lesson in this one simple yet slightly-jarring fact: we need each other. I mean, need-NEED each other.

“No man is an island,” says Thomas Merton, and my bae C.S. Lewis backs this up further by writing, “We need others physically, emotionally, intellectually; we need them if we are to know anything, even ourselves.”

We’re meant to be needy, but why is it so hard to acknowledge and accept this?

Relationships, Health, LifeAlly WillisSeptember 14, 2019Featured Comment

New Things, Better Things (A Reprise): Words for When You're Stuck in the Past

But while I’ve tried to convince myself that I am looking forward, staring straight at the wide open interstate ahead, I spent so many months still sneaking peeks into the rearview mirror every few seconds, not quite accepting that the road behind me is, in fact, behind me.

But this story isn’t the whole of my story, only a minor plotline amongst the greater. Even so, ignoring it won’t erase it like the stroke of the delete key. It may be a minor plotline, but it is a plotline woven tight around the greater story of my life for several years now.

I can’t ignore it.

Life, Relationships, DreamsAlly WillisJuly 3, 2019FeaturedComment

A Beginner's Guide to the Enneagram

Maybe you, like me, have become curious about the Enneagram because it is popping up everywhere in conversations and on your social media timeline. Maybe you know everything there is to know and have become quite fluent in Ennea-lingo (you even know that there are sub-types!).

Maybe this is the first time you’re ever hearing about this weird test and you’ve spent the last four paragraphs trying to figure out how to even pronounce the word “Enneagram” (In-ee-a-gram, for the record).

No matter where you’re at, we can all use some guidelines when it comes to personality tests, because none of us are immune to over-identifying, self-shaming, and becoming a walking personality-test-fulfilling prophesy. So, without further ado, here are my dos and don’ts of Enneagram-ing.

Health, Life, RelationshipsChelsey SatterleeJune 27, 2019FeaturedComment

The Battle to Overcome Your Rejection

Rejection is an issue I’ve had to wrestle hard with over the last three years. Every time Rejection and I had to face off in the boxing arena, I would always end up slammed and pinned down. In boxing, you have ten seconds to get yourself up before the game is over. For me, it took months before I could even peel my head off the floor.

Life, Health, RelationshipsAshley ChowMarch 31, 2019FeaturedComment

So Lonely I Could Die: What I Have Learned About Loneliness

The night it happens I’m alone. Afternoon slides into darkness, a day gone without notice. I put on a rom-com. I paint my nails. I wait.

I’m jonesing for junk food, so I walk up over the hill and get fries and a shake at the Park Street McDonald’s. On my way home through the Common, it starts to pour. My sandals take on water like a sponge. I squelch up to the third floor and towel off. The fries are cold and the milkshake is cloyingly sweet. I regret ever wanting them. I am still alone.

Health, Life, RelationshipsKate LewisMarch 2, 2019FeaturedComment

Just Show Up: The Empowering Act of Trying New Things

Life, Relationships, DreamsCasey RevmanFebruary 17, 2019Comment

Wild and Brave: What A Solo Hike Taught Me About Smallness

Despite the map’s ominous warning, for the first few hours I was connecting to the correct trails and trail posts easily. At each post, I paused dramatically in a power stance, looked around, and waited expectantly for the big moment to happen. It kept not happening and I was starting to get impatient, but then I got distracted by the fact that I could not see the next trail post.

I thought that was weird, but figured I’d come across it pretty quickly. I mean, I’d come across all the other trail posts pretty quickly, right? I also told myself I could always turn around at any point. I knew I wouldn’t though, because that would mean admitting failure, which I have always had an unhealthy fundamental issue with.

Life, TravelAlexis SwensonFebruary 9, 2019FeaturedComment

Modernity Has Failed Us

Don’t paint me as a “let’s just go live off the grid among the wolves and chipmunks” advocate just yet. Systems are important for order; this isn’t a rally cry to take up pitchforks and torches and proclaim anarchy. We should still get our “I Voted” stickers; we should still call our senators; we should still work actively within our institutions to demand justice. These are good, important, necessary things that we are called to do. But if we seek absolute safety in our systems, we will be disappointed.

Systems are not strong enough to hold our hope.

Politics, Life, RelationshipsAlly WillisJanuary 16, 2019FeaturedComment

Keep Going: Thoughts on Celebrating Four Years of Windrose

I have given up on so many things.

Keep going isn’t exactly my life motto. I’m an instant-results girl, which is why cooking and 5-o’clock traffic bring me such mental anguish.

But today Windrose is celebrating four years of existing in this li’l Internet space—four years of stories told of navigating the challenges and triumphs of life in your twenties.

Life, Dreams, Career, RelationshipsAlly WillisDecember 18, 2018FeaturedComment

Lessons of Winter: Learning How to Heal

Amy sat across the table from me in her little studio apartment. A bowl of tortilla chips and jalapenos slabbed between us. Hot tea on either side. Head between my hands, red eyes and a soaked face full of salty tear streams, trying to catch my breath as I heard myself, for the first time in my life, admit a feeling of loneliness and failure that I had yet to experience.

Health, LifeShale HeidingerDecember 16, 2018FeaturedComment

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