Understanding The Damselfly Path

The Damselfly Path is an invitation for women to deepen their relationship with their own lives and with values that can enrich how they live. Through a growing collection of educational and creative experiences, I invite women to explore who they are, recognize the possibilities within their lives, and cultivate greater peace, compassion and love in relationship with themselves and others.

Daily life asks a great deal of our attention. We respond to needs, meet responsibilities and make decisions. We also need opportunities to step back and consider the life taking shape through those experiences. What matters to me? What do I want to give more room to? What can I bring into the world through the life that is mine?

Deepening your relationship with your life

The first strand of The Path involves a deepening relationship with your particular life. It invites you to attend to your body and needs, your temperament, your strengths and limitations, and the experiences and relationships that have shaped you. Your circumstances, interests, hopes and dreams belong within this exploration.

Knowing yourself includes considering how you understand your experiences. You might notice an assumption you have carried for years, recognize a capacity you rarely acknowledge, or become curious about something that brings you pleasure. Writing, creative exploration and reflection can help you see connections and consider what holds significance for you now.

This attention also invites appreciation. Wonder, beauty and enjoyment can deepen our connection with being alive. As you come to know your life more fully, you can begin to recognize possibilities for growth, expression and participation that are yours to explore.

Exploring peace, compassion and love

The second strand invites a deeper relationship with three core values: peace, compassion and love. Each woman brings her own experiences and understanding to these words. The invitation is to explore what they mean in her life and develop capacities for giving them expression.

Peace might involve learning to pause during conflict or communicate a boundary. Compassion might involve understanding another person’s suffering and considering a thoughtful response, while including your own needs in that care. Love might find expression through affection, appreciation, or respecting another person’s individuality and freedom.

Both strands involve learning and practice. You bring capacities you already possess, and you can choose where you want to develop them further. What you discover through your relationships can deepen your understanding of yourself; what you learn about yourself can enrich how you relate to others.

Where the two strands meet

The intersection is where your particular life and these values meet. Your relationships, interests, strengths and circumstances give peace, compassion and love concrete possibilities for expression. Your values help you consider how you want to use those possibilities.

A love of art might become a source of personal enjoyment and a way to connect with others. Recognizing your need for rest might lead to a boundary that supports greater peace at home. Learning to listen more carefully might help someone close to you feel understood. Your own well-being belongs within the contribution you make.

Through learning, practice and participation, possibilities can become tangible positive changes. Meaning can emerge through what you experience, what you cherish and what you contribute. A caring relationship, a creative activity or a thoughtful response can have significance within the lives it touches.

Practising self-leadership

This is where self-leadership has a place in The Damselfly Path. It involves bringing a growing understanding of yourself and what you value into how you participate in your life.

Sometimes that means attending closely to an everyday experience. Sometimes it means stepping back to see a broader pattern or consider a direction you want to pursue. That perspective can help you recognize what your daily choices are serving and decide where you want to place your attention and effort.

You can then practise what matters: respond with greater care, make room for an interest, develop a skill, or take a step toward a contribution you want to make. Experience gives you something further to reflect on, and the relationship continues to deepen.

Ways to explore The Damselfly Path

The Damselfly Path brings these explorations into guides, workshops and reflective practices. Writing, art, movement and meditation offer different ways to engage. The wider vision includes individual and group experiences and, over time, retreats. Each experience draws from the same connected body of work, with room for women to choose what speaks to them.

At its heart is an appreciation of the preciousness and potentiality of a particular life. The question I invite you to consider is: Given who I am, the life that is mine, and what I care about, how do I want to participate in what happens next?

Joanne 💗

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Looking at Our Lives from Different Perspectives

There are times when we have thought about a situation so often that it feels as though we have examined every part of it. Yet we keep returning to the same concern or explanation. What might we discover if we gave our attention to another aspect of the experience?

A painting offers a familiar way to think about this. Standing close, we can see individual brushstrokes and layers of colour. Stepping back, we notice how those details relate to the whole. The painting has remained the same, but our position has changed what we can see.

We can approach our lives with a similar curiosity. A feeling, an expectation, a practical constraint, and something we deeply value may all belong to the same situation. Giving each some attention can help us understand more of what we are living and recognize possibilities we had overlooked.

Imagine a woman who has been thinking about joining a weekly art class. Each time she considers registering, she tells herself that she does not have time. Her days are full, and the question seems settled.

But suppose she pauses to look more closely. She notices how much she misses making things. She also notices an expectation that she should remain available whenever someone needs her. When she looks at her actual commitments, she realizes that some are fixed, while others could be discussed. She still needs to consider the schedule and cost, but she now has a fuller understanding of what is involved.

The question has become more specific. How could she make room for something she values while honouring the commitments she wants to keep? She might begin by asking about a shorter course or talking with someone about sharing a responsibility. Exploring several aspects of the situation has helped her identify something concrete to investigate.

Psychological research offers useful insights into how a change in perspective can affect reflection. In a series of studies published in 2010, psychologists Özlem Ayduk and Ethan Kross examined self-distancing: looking at an experience from an observer’s perspective. Participants who naturally took more of this distance when reflecting on negative memories showed less emotional reactivity. In a study of couples, self-distancing was also associated with more problem-solving during conflict and less responding to negativity with further negativity. [1]

This research gives us a reason to pay attention to how we approach a familiar experience. Replaying an exchange and considering what was happening within it are different ways of reflecting. A little distance may help us notice a concern or response that was difficult to recognize in the moment.

We can also change our perspective by changing the question we ask. What am I feeling about this? What matters to me here? What would I like to understand better? Each question directs attention toward a different part of the experience. Taken together, our answers can give us more to work with.

One particularly useful place to look is at what we already believe or expect. We may carry ideas about what a good parent does, what starting over involves, or what we are capable of learning. Some are well grounded in experience. Others may reflect an expectation we have never quite put into words.

Researchers Charles Lord, Mark Lepper, and Elizabeth Preston explored one way of widening people’s thinking in two experiments published in 1984. They found that asking participants to consider the opposite possibility reduced particular biases in judgment more effectively than simply asking them to be fair and unbiased. [2]

There is an everyday invitation in that finding: give another possibility enough attention to consider it. Before we can do that, it helps to recognize the understanding we are starting from. “I expect this to happen” gives us something more specific to explore than a general feeling that the situation is already settled.

For the woman considering the art class, that might mean noticing, “I believe that making time for myself will disappoint someone.” Once she has named that expectation, she can decide whether she wants to explore it further. Perhaps someone has expressed disappointment before. Perhaps she has never asked what would happen if she were unavailable for two hours. Those are different circumstances, with different possibilities for a response.

This kind of attention can also deepen our understanding of what is going well. We might become curious about why a particular friendship feels nourishing, what we enjoy about a creative practice, or which parts of a new routine we want to preserve. Recognizing what supports us can help us give it a more deliberate place in our lives.

The value of looking from several perspectives is in what we can come to understand and do with that understanding. We may find words for a conversation we need to have, recognize a skill we want to develop, or make space for an interest that matters to us. We can also discover that something we had been questioning deserves to remain as it is.

I invite you to try one small exploration. Choose a situation in your own life that matters to you and feels comfortable to consider on your own. It could be a change you are contemplating, a relationship, or an experience you would like to understand more clearly.

In The Inquiry Framework: A Guided Exploration, I call this lens Held Assumptions. It invites you to notice what you currently believe, expect, or take as given about your situation. An assumption is something you are accepting in your present understanding; the word does not automatically mean you are mistaken.

Begin with this question from the guide:

What, if anything, do you believe or expect in relation to this situation?

Write in your own words. Keep phrases such as “I think,” “sometimes,” or “I’m not sure” when they express what you mean. For now, recording your understanding is enough. If you want to examine whether a particular belief or expectation is justified, you can note that as something to explore later.

Then consider the follow-up question:

Based on what you’ve gathered here, is there anything you might want to explore or follow up on later?

You might identify information to look for or a question to return to. You might simply recognize an expectation that you had not noticed before. Give yourself time to consider what, if anything, you want to do with what you have written.

If you would like to explore this on paper, the free three-page sample includes a short introduction, the Held Assumptions exercise, and a lined writing page.

Download the free Held Assumptions sample (PDF)

Held Assumptions is one of seven lenses in The Inquiry Framework: A Guided Exploration, the first of The Damselfly Path’s Guides for Exploration. The 26-page printable guide offers questions and writing space for considering one situation from several perspectives, bringing your notes together, and exploring what might come next.

You can explore the complete guide in my Etsy shop.

Sources

1. Ayduk, Ö., & Kross, E. (2010). From a distance: Implications of spontaneous self-distancing for adaptive self-reflection. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(5), 809–829. Read the study

2. Lord, C. G., Lepper, M. R., & Preston, E. (1984). Considering the opposite: A corrective strategy for social judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47(6), 1231–1243. Read the study

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The Damselfly Path and the Possibilities Within Your Life

 

The Damselfly Path begins with a conviction: your life is worthy of your attention. There is much to understand about the woman you are, much to appreciate in the life you are living, and potential you can continue to discover and develop.

The philosophy behind the path begins with wonder at being here at all. Our existence places us within a living world and gives us the extraordinary possibility of experiencing it consciously. That sense of wonder can draw us closer to ordinary life and awaken interest in what we might discover, cherish or bring into being.

That conviction has practical consequences. What you understand about yourself can shape how you spend your time, what you ask for in a relationship, and what you give yourself permission to explore. Learning to recognize a need can change what you agree to. Taking an interest seriously can open a part of life that has received little attention. Developing your capacity to listen can change the quality of a conversation.

I have developed The Damselfly Path around these possibilities. Its curriculum brings together two connected inquiries: a deeper relationship with your own particular life, and a growing relationship with three values—peace, compassion and love. Together, they provide a foundation for learning that can become meaningful in the ordinary places where life happens.

Becoming acquainted with your life involves giving attention to its particulars. You have a body with needs, a temperament, interests, sensitivities, abilities and limitations. You bring memories, relationships and hopes. You also live within circumstances that affect what is available to you. These particulars deserve consideration in how you understand yourself and how you choose to live.

A woman might discover, for example, that the activity she has treated as an occasional indulgence is one of the places where she feels most engaged. Painting, gardening, learning a language or spending time outdoors may reveal something about what she enjoys and wants to develop. Giving that discovery a place in her life can become an expression of knowing and valuing herself.

Other discoveries arise through looking at experience in context. A familiar description such as “I am shy” may leave out the situations in which she speaks freely, the subjects that animate her, or the conditions that help her feel comfortable. Revisiting that description can make her understanding more accurate and open possibilities for participation she had overlooked.

This first strand of the curriculum connects attention with self-knowledge, care and an understanding of how experience unfolds. It invites a woman to examine beliefs and expectations, recognize what matters to her, and consider how she wants to participate in her life. These inquiries inform one another. What she notices can change what she understands; what she understands can change what she chooses to explore.

The second strand gives focused attention to peace, compassion and love. I have given these values a dedicated place because of what they can make possible in our lives together. They speak to the quality of our relationship with ourselves and to the ways we meet other people.

Values become especially useful when we can connect them with capacities we can develop. If I want to cultivate more peace, what might I become better able to understand or do? If compassion matters to me, how can I respond more thoughtfully to suffering? If I want to love more fully, what would help me honour another person’s individuality while remaining present as myself?

The word capacity matters here. It speaks to something that can grow through learning, practice and experience. A woman brings capacities she already possesses, and she can expand them. She can become more able to express a concern, remain curious during a disagreement, recognize a limit, or welcome affection.

Peace, within The Damselfly Path, is a value that can guide participation even during difficulty. Cultivating it involves developing emotional understanding, communication, boundaries, responses to conflict, and discernment about possible next steps. A woman may learn to recognize a recurring reaction and give herself time to respond. She may become clearer about what she can offer and communicate that before resentment builds.

The purpose is to create greater room for living. More peace can mean more room to think clearly, enjoy an interest, connect with someone or give attention to something that matters. The circumstances of a woman’s life—including safety, health, resources and other people’s actions—also shape her access to peace. The educational focus is on capacities she can develop and draw on within that life.

Compassion brings attention to suffering and to how we respond. It includes noticing distress, considering context, listening to another perspective and discerning what would actually help. Toward herself, this might mean recognizing exhaustion and responding to a real need. Toward someone else, it might mean asking what support would be welcome and considering what she can sustainably offer.

Compassion also has room for honesty. A woman can understand the pressures surrounding an experience and still acknowledge the consequences of an action. She can respond with care while respecting her own limits and another person’s responsibility. Developing these capacities gives compassion practical substance in moments when caring is complicated.

Love invites us to know, cherish and delight in ourselves and other people. Loving and being loved can support us, uplift us and give us courage. Within this curriculum, love honours the dignity, individuality and autonomy of everyone involved. Each person has a life of their own, including needs, choices and responsibilities.

Capacities for love include expressing herself honestly, listening to understand, working with emotions, respecting boundaries and recognizing what helps someone feel valued. Love can take form in freely chosen closeness and mutual support. It can also coexist with distance. A woman can remain loving while allowing another person to follow their own path.

There is room here for affection and enjoyment, too: appreciating a friend’s particular humour, taking an interest in something that delights a partner, or receiving care that respects who she is. Listening to what matters to another person can inform authentic expressions of love. Her own preferences, dignity and limits remain part of that relationship.

In each of these values, learning develops in two connected directions: toward herself and toward others. These directions can grow together. Becoming more attentive to her own needs can help her understand the importance of asking about someone else’s. Listening closely to another person may reveal something about her own assumptions. Recognizing each person’s individuality can make space for a more honest connection.

Consider a woman whose adult child is making a choice she would not make. Understanding herself may help her recognize the concern beneath her urge to intervene. Peace may guide her in working with that reaction. Compassion can invite attention to both her own difficulty and her child’s experience. Love can help her remain interested and connected while respecting that the decision belongs to another person.

These capacities meet in a real conversation. She can express a concern clearly, ask a question, listen to the answer and decide what participation she can offer. The learning has a practical purpose: to make a more thoughtful, respectful and loving exchange possible.

This is where the two strands meet. Her particular life gives values somewhere to take form, and those values can inform how she participates in that life. The curriculum holds together self-understanding and the possibility of making a meaningful difference through what she learns and does.

That difference can be tangible. A need gets expressed. A boundary makes room for rest or an interest. A conversation allows two people to understand each other more clearly. An act of support responds to what someone actually needs. A creative project brings pleasure into a day. These changes matter to the people whose lives contain them.

Creativity belongs throughout this process. Writing, images, storytelling, movement, encounters with nature and conversation offer different ways to explore and express experience. Joy can arise through that participation. Hope is present in the belief that a life continues to hold possibilities for discovery, connection and contribution.

This curriculum is the foundation from which I develop The Damselfly Path’s guides, workshops and other learning experiences. Each offering can explore a particular part of it, at a depth and pace suited to its purpose. A woman might begin with wonder, a story from her life, a present question or a capacity she wants to develop. Those different beginnings belong within a continuing relationship with her life.

At its heart is the potentiality of a life: what can become possible through the meeting of a particular person, her circumstances and her participation. A woman’s contribution takes shape through the life that is hers—her relationships, interests, abilities and opportunities. Her own experience of living belongs within what she can enrich.

The Damselfly Path invites a woman to give that life her attention and to become more able to participate in what it can hold. Greater understanding, more room for what matters, and growing capacities for peace, compassion and love are worthwhile things to cultivate. They can change how a day is lived, how a relationship is experienced, and what becomes possible next.

An invitation to begin

If something in these pages speaks to you, I invite you to take a first step onto The Damselfly Path.

You can begin with Possibility, a guided meditation from my Awakening to Wonder guide. Give yourself some time to listen and notice what it invites you to consider about your own life.

Listen to Possibility

If you would enjoy continuing, Awakening to Wonder offers 30 invitations to explore through writing, creativity, movement, nature and guided meditation. You can follow them at your own pace and return to what speaks to you.

Explore Awakening to Wonder

You are welcome to begin from where you are.

Joanne 💗

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The Book That Changed Who I Wanted to Be: A reflection on personal leadership, a remarkable mentor, and the influence we each carry.

In my early thirties, I used to walk during my lunch breaks and listen to audiobooks. I was teaching at the time, and one of the books I listened to was Stephen Covey’s Principle-Centered Leadership.

More than thirty years later, I couldn’t give you a detailed account of that book. But I remember its impact. It changed how I thought about my life, how I taught, who I wanted to become, and the influence I wanted to have.

What reached me most deeply was the idea of personal leadership. I remember recognizing that what he was describing applied to me. It applied to everyone. We could bring leadership into our own lives, into our relationships, into the everyday ways we affected one another.

That recognition felt enormously important.

At the time, several things were coming together. I had always been interested in human behaviour, and I had already experienced very different forms of leadership. I had worked with principals whose approach was controlling or manipulative, or whose insecurity seemed to shape how they treated people. I also knew authoritarian control from my personal life.

I knew something about what it felt like to be on the receiving end.

But I also had a principal who became an incredible mentor to me. She was encouraging, humane, and inspirational. She saw potential in me during a time when I was deeply insecure.

I remember sitting in her office and telling her I was thinking about doing my master’s degree. Somewhere in that possibility was the thought that I might eventually become a principal myself, although I don’t remember whether I had the courage to say that aloud.

She told me, “Joanne, I’m going to be honest with you. You have to develop your self-confidence.”

I knew she was right.

What I remember, though, is that her words didn’t stop me. I thought, Well, I’ll start by doing my master’s, and we’ll see what happens.

Confidence was something I needed to develop, and I could take that next step while I was still developing it. About ten years later, I became a principal.

Looking back, I can see how her example and my reading were speaking to one another. I was encountering ideas about leadership while working with someone who helped me experience their possibilities. She could recognize something I needed to work on and still encourage my aspirations. Her honesty existed within a relationship in which I felt she believed in me.

That mattered.

Over time, leadership became a powerful word for me because it brought together questions I cared deeply about: What guides how I live? How do I treat people? What do I do with the influence I have? What kind of impact am I working toward?

Influence itself can take many forms. Someone can be charismatic, persuasive, and very effective at getting others to follow them. My interest was always in the values guiding that influence. I wanted to lead in ways that were humane, compassionate, and encouraging. I wanted my actions to reflect what I believed mattered.

That aspiration extended into my life as a parent, a teacher, a principal, and as a woman—in all my roles. My understanding of what it meant continued to develop through those experiences.

It was also a work in progress. Understanding the value of compassion doesn’t automatically teach us how to respond compassionately during conflict. Wanting to encourage others doesn’t mean we have already learned how to do so. Our histories, habits, fears, and insecurities come with us. There were things I needed to understand about myself and skills I needed to learn.

Personal leadership meant becoming accountable for that learning and for how I participated in my own life.

I can see this thread running through The Damselfly Path today: entering into a deeper relationship with our lives and exploring our relationship with qualities such as compassion, love, peace, and courage.

What do these qualities mean to us? What place do they actually have in how we live? How might we come to understand and practise them more deeply within our particular circumstances and relationships?

For me, this is the seed of possibility. As we become more intimately acquainted with our lives and with the values we profess, we begin to recognize what we might cultivate, what we might change, and what we might contribute. Here are seeds of purpose and meaning, with possibilities we can bring to life through how we participate in the world.

These qualities can change what happens between people. They can shape how a child experiences a classroom, how someone receives difficult feedback, or whether a person feels encouraged enough to take a next step.

My mentor did that for me.

And somewhere on those lunchtime walks, listening to Covey, I began to recognize that I could develop that capacity too.

Perhaps that is why the word leadership still holds so much meaning for me. It asks me to consider who I am becoming, what guides my actions, and what becomes possible through the way I live.

Joanne 💗

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The Wonder of Being Here

 

You are standing at the kitchen sink, rinsing an apple. Water runs over its skin. You turn it in your hand, set it on the cutting board, and reach for a knife. Your thoughts are already elsewhere: an appointment, a conversation, something you meant to finish yesterday.

Then you cut through the centre and notice the seeds.

You have seen apple seeds hundreds of times. But for a moment, you consider what one of them contains: the possibility of a tree, given the conditions and time it needs to grow. You look again at the apple in your hand. This, too, grew from a living tree. Something you were about to eat without much thought has become interesting.

The apple has not changed. You have paused long enough to see something you already knew.

I think this happens with our own existence. We become so accustomed to being alive that we seldom stop to consider it. Life is the setting for everything else. We attend to what needs doing, what is troubling us, what we hope will happen next. The fact that we are here at all becomes almost invisible beneath the business of being here.

Familiarity can give us the impression that we have finished discovering something. We know this room. We know this morning routine. We know the woman whose face looks back from the mirror. Yet there is so much within that familiarity that we have barely considered.

Think of the history that has reached this ordinary morning. Before you could be here, there were generations of people whose lives made yours possible. Most of their names are probably unknown to you. They lived in places you may never visit, met people, had children, and continued a history that eventually included you. From your own small beginning, a living body developed. Now you are here, with a lifetime of experiences that belong to you.

And you can experience being here. You can taste the apple. A flavour can bring back a memory. You can remember someone who once sat across the table from you and feel affection, sadness, or both. You can consider your own existence and find it astonishing.

That capacity moves me. We are alive within a world we can encounter, care about, and respond to. Through us, love can become something another person feels. An idea can take form in a painting, a garden, or a conversation that helps someone understand herself. There are possibilities within being alive that familiarity can hide as easily as it hides the seed inside the apple.

Of course, the morning may be difficult. You may be worried about someone, disappointed by something you worked hard for, or tired of carrying a situation that has gone on too long. Those experiences belong in this reflection, too. Wonder can sit beside them. There can be a moment of pleasure in the light coming through the window while the worry remains. There can be affection for your life alongside a wish that parts of it were different. Some days, even that small opening may feel far away. We can leave room for those days without making wonder another thing we are supposed to accomplish.

What interests me is what might happen when that opening does come. Recognizing the extraordinary within our existence may awaken a desire to know our lives more closely. What have I grown so used to that I barely notice it? What still draws my curiosity? What would I like to give more room to in the life I am living?

These questions can reach into quite practical places. We might make time for an interest we keep postponing, or tell someone something loving we have assumed they already know. We might begin to notice how much a particular friendship means to us, then give it more attention. Wonder can become care for what is here and participation in what could grow.

This is where The Damselfly Path begins for me: with interest in the life that has become ours. Through reflection, stories, and shared exploration, it invites women into a deeper relationship with their own particular lives and with qualities such as love, compassion, and peace. As we learn how to give these qualities expression, we can enrich our experience of living and make a meaningful difference in the lives we touch.

We can begin in the middle of an ordinary morning, with a little more interest in the woman standing at the sink and the life that is still unfolding through her.

Joanne 💗

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Understanding What Working Less Could Mean for You

Imagine a woman mentioning over lunch that she is thinking about working fewer hours.

In this fictional conversation, a friend asks, “What would you do with yourself all day?”

She had been imagining a little more room in her week. Now she finds herself trying to account for how she would use it. She begins listing things she could do, although she had not been looking for a new schedule.

The question may have been asked with simple curiosity. Yet her response gives her something to explore. What happened between imagining more time and feeling that she needed to explain how she would fill it?

Earlier this week, we considered what appeals to us about working less, what concerns us, when the wish appears and what we expect would change. We can take that exploration further by looking closely at a moment like this one.

The Damselfly Path organizes carefully selected questions around different perspectives on an experience. A question about a feeling brings something different into view from a question about an assumption or a value. Looking at these together can help us understand what we are responding to.

Notice what the question brings up

Our fictional woman might begin by asking herself, “What did I notice in myself when my friend asked that?”

Perhaps she felt uncertain because she genuinely does not know how she would spend the time. Perhaps she felt irritated that an open possibility had become something she needed to justify. She might also have felt interested: she had imagined fewer working hours without picturing an ordinary day.

Those responses would lead to different questions. If you recognize this situation, your own response matters. You do not have to select one of these possibilities or decide what your friend intended.

A question about feelings gives you a starting point for understanding your experience. It leaves room to ask what else is involved.

Look at the expectation behind your response

Suppose the woman notices that she felt a need to justify the time. She could ask, “What am I assuming I would need to do with those hours?”

She might find an expectation that free time should be filled with something useful. In that case, listing hobbies would leave another question unexplored: what counts as a worthwhile use of time to her? Reading, walking, seeing a friend or having an afternoon without plans might each carry a different meaning.

Another woman might discover a different expectation: “If I work less, the extra time will be mine to use.” Looking at her current days off could add context. Perhaps appointments and family responsibilities already occupy much of that space. Fewer working hours could change her availability while leaving those demands in place.

This is how two perspectives can work together within the Path. Noticing what happens on existing days off brings a pattern into view. Considering what you expect from a shorter working week lets you examine an assumption alongside that experience.

An expectation may be well founded, partly true or still uncertain. Examining it helps you distinguish what you anticipate from what you already know.

Consider what makes the time matter to you

Once an expectation becomes visible, a question about values can deepen the exploration: “What matters to me about having this time?”

For one woman, an unscheduled morning might mean being able to move through the day at her own pace. For another, it might mean having enough attention left for a relationship or an interest. Someone else may realize that the companionship and contribution she finds at work are important parts of what she wants to retain.

These distinctions give “more time” a more personal meaning. You can begin to describe the experience you hope for, including what you appreciate about your life as it is.

Your circumstances belong in this exploration too. Questions about what you value can sit alongside questions about money, health, responsibilities and available support. Some answers require practical information, such as whether fewer hours are available in your role. Reflection can help you identify that unknown; the workplace details still need checking.

A book to continue the exploration

If you would like to read further, consider Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. He examines our limited time and the pressure to keep doing more, questioning the idea that we can eventually fit everything in through greater efficiency.

This perspective connects with the assumptions and values we are exploring here. It offers something to consider when we find ourselves treating every available hour as something that must be accounted for. A question we might bring to our own situation is, “How do I decide whether I have spent my time well?”

Read about Four Thousand Weeks on Oliver Burkeman’s website

Let your understanding become more specific

The Path brings different kinds of questions together so you can consider an experience from more than one perspective. In this example, noticing a feeling led to an expectation, which opened a question about what mattered. Your exploration may begin elsewhere and follow a different direction.

Our fictional woman may still be undecided about working less when she next meets her friends. But she might now be able to say, “I have noticed that I keep trying to justify wanting more time. I want to understand what would make that time meaningful to me.”

That gives her something more specific to explore. If this situation speaks to you, you might return to one moment in a recent conversation and ask: “What did that exchange bring up that I would like to understand better?”

Joanne 💗

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When Everyone Has Advice About Working Less

 

Imagine a woman mentioning, over lunch, that she has been thinking about working a little less. This is a fictional example, but the conversation may sound familiar.

One friend tells her that retirement was the best decision she ever made. Another suggests staying as long as she can: the income matters, and so does having somewhere to go. Someone asks what she would do with herself all day.

She had said she was considering fewer hours. Somehow, the conversation has arrived at the rest of her life.

She appreciates their interest. There may be something useful in each response. Yet she leaves with more suggestions and no clearer way to explain what she was trying to say.

Perhaps you have had a conversation like that. You mention a possibility while you are still trying to understand it, and people begin helping you decide. Meanwhile, you are wondering what, exactly, you want to be different.

What is the advice responding to

The friend who loves retirement is speaking from her own experience. The person who emphasizes income is raising a practical concern. The question about filling the day introduces another possibility: that work provides structure or companionship worth considering.

Each response brings a different part of the situation into view. You can listen for what is useful while asking which part relates to your own experience.

You may enjoy your colleagues and want more time outside work. You may take pride in what you do and feel less willing to devote so much of your week to it. You may welcome the thought of an unscheduled morning while feeling uneasy about a smaller paycheque.

Those responses deserve more attention than a quick vote for staying or leaving. What do you want less of? What would you want to retain? What are you hoping might become possible?

What research can help us notice

A June 2023 Statistics Canada survey supplement asked Canadians aged 55 to 80 about retirement. Among those who were not completely retired but planned to retire, 55.1% said they would work longer if part-time work were available. Read Statistics Canada’s findings.

That finding describes reported preferences in that surveyed group, which included women and men. It does not tell us whether reducing hours improved anyone’s life or whether a particular employer could offer the arrangement.

For our fictional woman, it opens a useful distinction to consider: how does she feel about the work itself, and how does she feel about the amount of time it occupies? She may discover that her question concerns the shape of her working week. Or she may find that something else matters more.

Research gives us something to consider. Its usefulness here lies in the question it helps us examine in our own circumstances.

Finding information that fits your question

Once you begin separating the questions, you can see more clearly what kind of information each one needs.

“Would fewer hours be available in my role?” calls for information about your actual workplace. “What would that mean for my income, benefits or pension?” requires details about your own arrangements. A friend’s experience may suggest what to ask, but those details still need checking.

For Canadian readers thinking about retirement, the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada’s Planning and saving for retirement guide offers a starting point for comparing current and expected spending and links to a retirement income calculator. It can help you identify financial questions to explore; details about reducing hours may also need checking with your employer or pension administrator.

Alongside those practical questions, there may be a more personal one: “What am I hoping that extra time would make room for?” You might be thinking about rest, a relationship, an interest you keep postponing, or simply a week with fewer commitments. The answer may still be taking shape.

Practical information and personal understanding can develop alongside each other. You might learn that an arrangement is unavailable, or that it carries a cost you had not considered. That information becomes part of understanding the possibility. It does not make your wish for something different unworthy of attention.

A little more language for your experience

Returning to our fictional woman, she might eventually find words closer to what she meant at lunch: “I still enjoy my work. I want to understand why I am wishing it took up less of my week, and what a different arrangement would involve.”

That leaves several things open. She has not chosen a retirement date. She may still have questions about money, connection and how she wants to spend her time. But she has a more precise starting point for considering the information and suggestions available.

This is the kind of examination I am developing through The Damselfly Path: looking at one meaningful experience from different perspectives, with useful knowledge and the circumstances of a woman’s life kept in view. The understanding remains hers.

If this situation speaks to you, you might privately consider one question:

What am I trying to understand that the advice I have received has not yet addressed?

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Being the One Everyone Can Count On

“I told them you’d help.”

Perhaps you know the feeling that follows that sentence. You might have been happy to help. You might even have offered. But someone has already made the decision, and you find yourself wondering when your time became theirs to arrange.

There can be real pleasure in being someone others rely on. You enjoy making a meal, listening to a friend, or helping a colleague work something out. It feels good to contribute. That part of you is sincere.

And sometimes, you are tired of being the obvious person to ask. Or the person no one quite remembers to ask.

In a family, perhaps you enjoy bringing everyone together, but the planning and cleaning have gradually become your permanent assignment. Among friends, you may love a good conversation and still feel worn out when every phone call becomes an hour of listening, with little room for how you are doing. At work, being capable and helpful can mean another task lands on your desk before anyone checks what is already there.

Apparently, being good at something can come with a lifetime appointment. The paperwork is surprisingly informal.

Then one day, a request that would usually feel manageable irritates you. You don’t want to host. You don’t want to sort it out. You would like someone else to notice what needs doing and take it from there.

And almost immediately, you begin questioning yourself. Why am I being like this? I thought I liked helping. Have I become selfish?

I think this is where we can make an already complicated experience harder. We take one feeling, on one day, and ask it to explain our entire character.

Enjoying helping and feeling frustrated can both be true. The frustration doesn’t erase the warmth you bring to your relationships. It gives you something else to understand about what is happening within them.

Perhaps you need rest. Perhaps the work has become unevenly shared. Perhaps you would feel quite differently if someone asked, gave you notice, or accepted that this time you might say no. And sometimes you simply don’t want to do that particular thing. You don’t have to reach exhaustion before that preference deserves a place in the conversation.

Melody Beattie makes a related point in her short reflection “Being Nurturing”: caring for others can coexist with limits on what we give. She includes caring for ourselves in that understanding of what it means to nurture.

That leaves us with a more useful question than whether we are still a nice person: what, exactly, is becoming difficult here?

You might notice that you enjoy helping when you have chosen it, but feel tense when it is assumed. Or that you are comfortable doing your share, yet increasingly frustrated by being responsible for remembering everyone else’s. You may be happy to listen to a friend and also wish she would occasionally ask how you are, and stay long enough to hear the answer.

These differences matter. They help us understand why the same act of helping can feel satisfying in one situation and heavy in another. We can look at what keeps happening, when our response differs, and what we still cannot quite explain.

There may be something about being dependable that we are reluctant to loosen our hold on, too. If you have spent years being appreciated for being easygoing and helpful, disappointing someone can feel surprisingly uncomfortable. You may worry about who you will be in the relationship if you are less available.

Being honest about that doesn’t make your generosity less real. It helps you see how much can be involved in a seemingly simple yes.

Brené Brown explores the value of honest conversations in “Clear Is Kind. Unclear Is Unkind.”, an excerpt from Dare to Lead. She describes how avoiding difficult conversations leaves expectations unclear. Although the article begins with leadership, I find that question of clarity useful in everyday relationships, too.

With family, that might sound like, “I enjoy having everyone over. This time, I need us to share the food and cleanup.” With a friend, it could be, “I want to hear about this, but I haven’t got the energy for a long conversation tonight.” At work, you might ask, “If I take this on, which of my current tasks should move?”

Sometimes the most useful sentence is simply, “Please check with me before making plans that include my help.”

Those conversations can take practice. Someone may be surprised, or disappointed, especially if they have become used to your availability. You may feel guilty even when you have spoken with care. We can acknowledge those feelings while allowing the conversation to continue.

There are also situations where responsibilities cannot easily be reduced. Caring for someone who depends on you, or working with little control over your workload, can leave very limited options. The tension deserves attention there, too. Sometimes the next conversation concerns what support is missing and who else could share the responsibility.

This week on The Damselfly Path, we are exploring the experiences that resist an either/or explanation. Loving your people does not settle every question about what you can offer them. Enjoying your work does not give you endless energy. We keep learning how to live with both the care and the limits, sometimes awkwardly, one conversation at a time.

If you would like to explore further, Brené Brown’s The Gifts of Imperfection considers authenticity and worthiness. It may be a useful companion if being helpful has become closely tied to how you see your value. Her Gifts Hub also offers related conversations and resources.

For shorter readings, Melody Beattie’s The Language of Letting Go offers daily meditations drawn from her work on recovery and caring for ourselves. You can also begin with the brief reflection linked earlier, and see whether her approach speaks to you.

You can remain a woman who enjoys helping and be a woman who sometimes says, “I can’t this time.” Both belong in an honest account of who you are.

Where in your life would being asked, rather than assumed available, make a difference?

Joanne 💗

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When Gratitude and Restlessness Coexist

 

When I was in my late twenties and early thirties, I often had the feeling that something wasn’t quite right. I couldn’t always explain it. There was a restlessness, a sense that something was off, even though I could look around my life and see plenty to be grateful for.

That was part of what made it so confusing. If I had so much, what exactly was my problem?

There is a story I have shared before that stayed with me for years. In Russell Conwell’s Acres of Diamonds, a man sells his farm and goes searching for diamonds. The person who buys the property later discovers diamonds on the land the man has left behind. Read the story.

The story haunted me. I wondered whether I was doing the same thing: looking for something elsewhere when everything I needed was already right in front of me. Perhaps my restlessness meant that I simply didn’t appreciate what I had.

I had somehow managed to turn a story about diamonds into another reason to question myself.

There is value in noticing what is already good in our lives. I still believe that. But the conclusion I drew about myself made it difficult to consider anything else. Once I decided I might be ungrateful, the feeling became something I needed to correct before I had really understood it.

Looking back, I can see how much I was asking gratitude to explain. It could help me recognize what I valued. It couldn’t tell me why something continued to feel unsettled.

What eventually helped was allowing the restlessness to be there and continuing to explore it, even when I questioned whether I should. I experimented. I tried things. I began asking whether there was something I wanted to do, or whether some of what I was feeling had to do with boundaries. There were several things to understand, and they became clearer over time.

I wish I could tell you that I worked it all out promptly. It took me a while.

There were still times when I wondered whether I was being ungrateful. But as I kept exploring, I came to recognize that my restlessness had reasons. Appreciating my life and wanting to understand what felt off could exist together.

Sue Monk Kidd describes a related experience in When the Heart Waits. Writing about a period of spiritual discontent in midlife, she recalls becoming aware of parts of herself that had not found expression. Her account offers a way to consider the questions that can arise within a familiar life, before we know what they will mean. Read Kidd’s excerpt.

For me, that distinction matters. A feeling can deserve attention while its meaning is still unclear. We can take it seriously without assuming we already know what it is asking of us.

Perhaps you recognize something of this in your own life. You love your family and want more time that belongs to you. You value the work you do and wonder about an interest you have barely explored. You appreciate being someone others rely on and feel uncomfortable with how readily your availability is assumed.

The gratitude is real. So is the question that keeps returning.

Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart offers another useful companion to this conversation. Brown emphasizes how finding more accurate words for our emotions and experiences can help us understand and communicate them. Explore the book’s reading resources.

That gives me a useful question to bring to restlessness: what am I actually feeling? “Something is off” may be the best description available at first. With time, we might recognize longing, frustration, uncertainty, or a mixture that changes with the circumstances. “I’m ungrateful” can close that exploration before it has much chance to begin.

My own experience taught me to be more curious about the feelings that seemed to contradict the life I thought I should be satisfied with. Sometimes I discovered something I wanted to explore. Sometimes I had questions about how I was living or relating to others. Understanding one part did not immediately explain everything else.

This week on The Damselfly Path, we’re exploring tension and contradiction: the parts of an experience that don’t fit easily together. Gratitude and restlessness are one example. We can appreciate what is here and still acknowledge what feels missing, difficult, or unfinished.

If this feels familiar, perhaps there is a question worth spending a little time with:

What have I been dismissing as ingratitude that I haven’t yet given myself room to understand?

Joanne 💗

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Reflection or Rumination? When Thinking More Doesn’t Widen the View

 

Our first understanding may be honest—and still not be the whole story.

Most of us have had an experience that followed us around long after the actual moment had passed.

Perhaps it was a conversation that ended strangely, a decision we began to question, or a message from someone whose tone felt different. We replayed what happened, considered what we should have said, and tried to work out what it all meant.

We may have called this reflection. Sometimes it was. At other times, we were circling the same information from the same position and hoping that one more trip around the loop would finally produce clarity.

Reflection and rumination can look remarkably similar from the outside. Both involve returning to an experience. Both may include strong feelings, repeated questions, and the desire to understand.

The difference is not simply how much time we spend thinking. A more useful question may be:

Is my understanding becoming broader, or am I continuing to view the experience from the same position?

A familiar kind of loop

Consider this composite example, created from an experience many women may recognize.

A woman receives a short message from a close friend:

I can’t talk about this right now. I’ll get back to you.

She immediately feels uneasy. The message seems unusually abrupt, and she begins to wonder whether her friend is upset with her.

She rereads their previous conversation and looks for something she might have said wrong. She remembers another occasion when the friend became distant after a disagreement. Before long, one interpretation begins to dominate:

She is pulling away from me.

The woman replays the situation throughout the day. She thinks about what she could say, imagines the friendship ending, and considers sending another message to explain herself.

She asks someone else for advice and is told, “Don’t worry about it. She’s probably just busy.”

It is a reasonable possibility, but it doesn’t settle anything. The advice comes from another person’s experience of relationships, communication, and uncertainty. It cannot tell this woman what the message means or what she should feel about it.

Now she has two competing interpretations:

My friend is rejecting me.

My friend is simply busy.

Neither one feels complete, and the thinking continues.

When one interpretation becomes the whole story

The woman’s original response is not foolish or wrong. The message affected her, and her concern may connect with something real in the relationship.

Her first interpretation may contain important information. But when it becomes the only position from which she examines the experience, every detail can begin to support the same conclusion.

This is one way rumination can keep us caught. We may be working very hard to understand, but we continue to organize the experience around one central meaning.

Even advice may leave us in the same loop. It can give us a different conclusion without helping us explore how we formed our own.

What broader reflection might make room for

Broader reflection does not require the woman to dismiss her original response or replace it with a more positive interpretation. Instead, it allows her to notice more of what belongs to the experience.

She might begin by acknowledging:

• The message felt abrupt to her.

• She is afraid of losing an important friendship.

• A previous experience of distance is shaping how she reads this moment.

• She does not yet know what is happening for her friend.

• Her friend’s circumstances may be relevant, even though she does not have that information.

• She may want reassurance, clarity, or an opportunity to talk.

• More than one interpretation remains possible.

None of these observations tells her what the message ultimately means. They do something different: they widen the field of understanding.

Her fear is still present, but it no longer has to carry the entire story. Her friend’s circumstances become part of the inquiry. So do the history of the relationship, the limits of what she knows, and her own need for clarity.

She may eventually decide to wait. She may choose to send a simple, caring response. She may recognize a recurring pattern in the friendship that deserves attention. Broader inquiry does not determine which response she should choose.

It helps her understand more of what she is responding to.

Reflection does not always produce certainty

We sometimes approach reflection as though its purpose is to find the correct explanation. But some experiences contain ambiguity that cannot be resolved immediately.

A broader understanding may include conflicting truths:

I care about this relationship, and I feel unsettled by what happened.

My reaction matters, and I do not yet know the other person’s reality.

Something from my past may be influencing me, and something in the present may also need attention.

Holding these truths together can feel less satisfying than arriving at one confident answer. Yet it may offer a more faithful understanding of the experience as it currently exists.

A different relationship with understanding

The Damselfly Path does not ask us to distrust our first interpretation. It invites us to remain curious about what that interpretation reveals—and what it may not yet include.

When we notice ourselves circling, we can gently ask:

What do I already understand?

From what position am I viewing this?

What else may belong to the experience?

What remains unknown or uncertain?

These questions do not guarantee a tidy answer. They create room for a broader one.

Our first understanding may be honest. It may carry emotion, history, intuition, and meaningful information. It simply may not be the whole story.

If this speaks to you, the path is here.

Joanne 💗

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