Karilyn Owens
Six Month Check-up: Cultivate

For the last week, Caterpillars kept showing up in or outside my apartment. This conspicuous sign arrived around the time I got the sense my soul required cocooning. My word of the year had seemingly sent my system into a shocking need for inner cultivation—especially after I fell backward into old habits for comfort and consolation to my painful grief and depression.

Six Month Check-up: Cultivate
Karilyn Owens
Word of the Year: Cultivate

In the past, I have had words find me — in a serendipitous manner with a lace of intuition. This year was no exception as my favorite poet and artist, Morgan Harper Nichols, created an Instagram Reel of suggested words for the year. A screenshot determined my word this year, but I am certain it was meant for me (even if it were a millisecond between my word and another.)

Word of the Year: Cultivate
Karilyn Owens
Fear of Future

I was clouded with so many fearful thoughts of the future, the what-ifs and I can’ts and worry-mixed-with-doubt. It was hard to gain clarity and even find out the truth in God’s sight: what is the best decision and next-right-thing? If only I could see through the fear, I pondered; what would that feel like? A sigh of relief, a breath of fresh air, and peace? Likely all of the above.

Fear of Future
Karilyn Owens
The Discernment Process

Discernment is a tool in our spiritual arsenal – one of the Holy Spirit gifts to us. It guides us to the will of God, which is to say the best possible outcome for us.

The Discernment Process
open heart, love
Karilyn Owens
Word of the Year: Blossom

This year I choose blossom as my Word because it represents my intention to grow from the roots I planted as a new creation in Christ (2 Corinthians 5) and build back what was broken through the vehicle of relationship.

Word of the Year: Blossom
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Self Worth is An Inside Job

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When our self worth is staggeringly lower than it should be, we will go out of our way to prove our worthiness by trying to please others, help them, care for them or worse yet, try to fix their problems. Anything to get validation will suffice. But our true worth will never be filled up in soul satisfying ways until we begin to glean our validation from within.

The only validation we will ever truly succeed in garnering is our own. And we will not feel worthy of any such validation until we turn to the true source, God.

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Give Yourself the Gift of Forgiveness

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Never underestimate the power of forgiveness to transform your life. In fact, it's one of the things that most often keeps us from moving forward in life and creating harmony in our bodies and minds.

Somehow it seems difficult for me to ascertain how much I need to forgive myself until an emotion within my body unfurls itself from my insides and releases itself in the form of a tear.

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Following a Ridiculous Path of Faith

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I stumbled upon a woman of sincere faith in the elevator of a nursing home this week; it wasn't so much a stumble as it was a nudge. The elevator was going up; I was going down. I got on without the slightest clue that I was riding in the wrong direction. But God was only nudging me in the right direction.

GeorgeAnn had a red rose pin on her lapel; I knew she was someone I needed to meet. Along with pointing me toward a monastery in Littleton, CO and sharing endless facts about certain saints and sisters, she laid a wisdom nugget on me which I'm sharing with you.

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Love in Action

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It has been one year since I had the blessed opportunity to discover the true meaning of Christmas. I have always been aware of the "reason for the season," yet it wasn't until I stepped away from the truth that I truly realized the deeper meaning of the "spirit" of Christmas: the kind that dwells within all of us, every single minute of the day.

On my search last year to rediscover my spirituality, it occurred to me that no amount of seeking outside of myself would ever uncover the connection I craved. I had been studying Judaism for the better part of the year, and in doing so got further away from my own truth. It was as if I listened to everyone's truth but my own. I have always studied religion and been involved in a variety of experiences outside of my own faith tradition; it was my way of understanding who I am by gathering a plethora of wisdom from throughout the ages.