Tonight I have: • discussed #2, vomit and satellites 🛰️ • planned a possible trip to Virginia within the next 7 days • scarfed down cold pork chop straight off the bone • walked outside and almost met a skunk face-to-face • retreated to the porch • and just heard a gunshot somewhere down the road • fed Oklahoma Kenny 🐖 [pictured here, completely oblivious to his surroundings] We live in Logan County, so naturally my first two thoughts were: Did someone see a wild 🐗 ? or Something worse occur 😬 Both feel equally plausible out here. And just to make this evening more exciting, it is also apparently my nightly job to go turn off the water well—not a nice little spigot attached to the house. The well. About 50 feet out into the dark abyss pictured here. So that’s fun. Also, I should not have said “wild boar” out loud because apparently every animal I mention eventually shows up at my house. So for the record: NO BEARS. NO COYOTES. NO SNAKES. NOTHING WITH TUSKS. Thank you. Meanwhile with Catina. 😂

[link to audio below] I’ve been thinking about the people we call “strong.” The dependable ones. The capable ones. The people everybody assumes are fine because, historically, they usually figure it out. And I wonder if sometimes being capable actually works against us. Because when somebody is visibly falling apart, people notice. When the capable person is overwhelmed, they often still answer the text, make the appointment, pick up the groceries, remember the birthday, help somebody else solve their problem and say, “I’m fine.” And technically… they might be. They’re functioning. But functioning and having plenty of capacity are not the same thing. I also don’t think this is only about traditional “caregiving.” Sometimes you’re carrying somebody else’s illness, addiction, grief, divorce, financial problem, family crisis, aging parent, struggling child—or simply the emotional weight of loving someone who is going through something you cannot fix. That stuff comes home with you. And then, weirdly, regular life just keeps happening. Somebody still needs to know what’s for dinner. There’s laundry in the dryer. The dog needs out. Someone can’t find a shoe. You have an email you forgot to answer. And somehow the world does not issue you a little sign that says: PLEASE EXCUSE THIS PERSON FROM NORMAL LIFE. THEY CURRENTLY HAVE TOO MUCH SH*T GOING ON. You can be having one of the hardest weeks of your life and still have to buy toilet paper. Which is both ridiculous and probably a little bit merciful. Maybe the ordinary stuff keeps us grounded. But maybe we also need to get better at noticing the people who look like they’re handling everything beautifully. Sometimes the person who needs someone to say, “What can I take off your plate?” is the person who appears to have the firmest grip on it. So, I’m curious… 🙋🏽‍♀️ Are you usually the person people consider “the strong one”? And when you’re overwhelmed, do you actually tell anybody—or do you just keep functioning until it passes?

Tonight I walked outside and started taking pictures of the moon. No profound reason other than it was pretty — which, if you know me, is actually a pretty normal occurrence. If you ever looked through my camera roll, you’d probably wonder why approximately half of it is the sky. 😂 Sunsets, clouds, the moon, weird light, birds, flowers, stars… apparently I document the atmosphere and nature like it’s part of my job. Then I started seeing lights moving across the sky — satellites, apparently — and at one point three of them were moving in what looked like a triangle. So naturally I’m standing in the yard with my phone pointed at the sky like I’ve just been personally assigned to NASA. 😂 Eventually I came back inside, opened my CHANI app and saw something about the Moon in Sagittarius. Now, before anybody panics, this is not becoming an astrology lesson. 😂 But one little phrase caught my attention: Joie de vivre. I didn’t know exactly what it meant, so of course I Googled it. “Joy of living.” Not everything is wonderful. Not ignore the hard stuff. More like a genuine enjoyment of being alive — noticing good food, people you love, nature, laughter, ordinary moments… all the little things we have a terrible habit of walking right past while handling everything else. And I thought: Well, hell. Maybe that’s tonight’s conversation. Because life lately has included some really heavy things around here. Waiting. Worrying. Parenting. Caregiving. Family stuff. Work. Responsibilities. All of it. And yet tonight there was also a beautiful moon. Satellites moving across the sky. Me standing outside trying to figure out what the hell I was looking at. And for a few minutes, I was simply enjoying being there. Maybe joie de vivre doesn’t require some big exciting life. Maybe sometimes it’s just remembering to look up. 🙋🏽‍♀️ So, tell me: What is one completely ordinary thing that has given you a little “joy of living” lately? Mine tonight was apparently the moon, satellites and an accidental French vocabulary lesson. 🌙😂✨

I’ve been thinking a lot about anger lately. Not the quick kind—the irritation that comes and goes. I mean the anger we carry. The betrayal from years ago. The person we still can’t forgive. The thing that happened that never should have happened. The apology we never received. The injustice that was never made right. And sometimes we hold onto it because letting go feels almost like saying it didn’t matter. Or worse—it feels like they won. Maybe that’s especially easy to understand this time of year. From Friday Night Lights to Saturday college football, Sunday NFL games and Monday Night Football, we spend practically the whole weekend watching a scoreboard. Somebody gets the W. Somebody gets the L. And somewhere along the way, I think we started keeping score in our relationships that way too. If I forgive them, they win. If I stop being angry, they got away with it. If I let this go, somehow I lose. But maybe we’ve been defining the W wrong. Because forgiveness isn’t saying what happened was okay. It doesn’t mean reconciliation. It doesn’t mean removing boundaries, forgetting what happened, or allowing someone access to you again. Sometimes forgiveness simply means: I am no longer willing to let what you did continue living inside of me. I’ve been reading a lot lately about the connection between our emotional and physical lives. And while I would never say one emotion causes one particular illness, I do believe our bodies carry more of our stories than we sometimes realize. Stress has a cost. Bitterness has a cost. Living every day in fight-or-flight has a cost. And recently I heard a woman who had experienced unimaginable loss explain something that stopped me. The grief couldn’t be fixed. She had to feel it. Walk through it. Live with the fact that something precious had been taken from her. But the anger? Eventually, she realized she could do something with that. She reached a point where she prayed, essentially, God, I can’t do this by myself. If I’m ever going to forgive these people, You’re going to have to help me.

💭 I realized something today. Some of the people who might enjoy these conversations the most are also the people who are absolutely, positively not downloading another app. 😂 Maybe it’s your mom. Your grandma. A friend. Your sister. Someone going through something that made you think, Ohhhh…they needs to hear this one. So I’m working on making Conversations with Catina easier to share outside of Skool too. When possible, I’ll have a simple version you can text or send to someone so they can read the conversation or listen to the audio without needing to join anything first. And if they eventually want to come hang out with us here? Even better. ❤️ Because sometimes the whole point of a conversation is simply getting it to the person who needs to hear it. So if something I post ever makes you think of somebody… ⏩ Send it to them. That’s how conversations grow. ❤️ And since I apparently cannot make a post without ending it with a question 😂… 🙋🏽‍♀️ Is there another simple way you’d like to be able to share or receive these conversations? Text link? Audio? Written version? Something else I’m not thinking of? No promises I’m starting a newsletter, podcast or twelve new platforms. 😂 I’m just curious what would actually be useful.