i see you

i’m sitting here running my fingers across a handmade leather case, filled with 211 questions pulled from my own process, reflecting on how just a couple of days ago, i made this officially official. on the back, the art that somehow found its way into existence so perfectly that i still don’t understand how it came together.

and i’m two things at once: so proud of myself, and spiraling that maybe the thing i made won’t live up to the version i’ve created in my mind.

it’s funny how we do that.

not for one moment have i really let myself sit with the fact that i birthed this through my own healing, and that once it leaves my hands, it gets to find its own way.

isn’t that what art is?

i made it for myself…and yet here i am, offering it to the world, having to loosen my grip on what happens next.

i think that might be the harder part.

for a lot of years, i hid behind the needs of others. i showed up to do the things i knew how to do, but what i struggled with then (and still do) is letting myself receive what i so freely give.

i got swallowed up in the lives and stories of others because i’d convinced myself that’s where my worth lived. when i could solve, or really, carry, something someone needed to move through themselves, it was enough to keep me going.

even when it robbed them of the lesson.
even when it meant abandoning myself in the name of helping.

somewhere along the way, i confused proving my worth with how much of myself i gave away.

i’ve always felt a bit behind. there’s a naivety that’s always been with me, and i don’t know if it’s because little sarah needed more time to find her voice, or because i genuinely didn’t know how to exist in this world as my full self.

i’ve struggled with the idea that life is supposed to look a certain way at a certain age, but i’ve never gone the traditional route. i gravitate towards reinvention, towards caring and carrying, towards loving people so deeply that i sometimes forget to leave enough room for myself.

i’ve spent a long time believing challenge was where i earned my place. i just never had the language for what i kept returning to.

liminal.

the space in-between.
the threshold.
the doorway you’re standing in but haven’t walked through.
between who you were and who you’re becoming — where nothing is certain and everything is still possible.

i’ve lived most of my life in that doorway, and i’m guessing a lot of us have.

it’s wild to stand inside your own metamorphosis while it’s happening. it’s uncomfortable, messy, deeply layered, and strangely beautiful.

when i was 18, i lost 3 grandparents in the span of a year. a few years ago, i sat through 6 more funerals in a short stretch. it’s always struck me that a funeral is one of the only rooms where small talk tends to take a backseat. everyone finally says the true thing. we talk about love and regret and who someone really was and how they made us feel. it takes a death to give us permission to talk the way i wish we talked all along.

maybe that’s part of why i’ve always been drawn to what lives underneath.

i’ve often felt like conversations barely scratch the surface, and the ones that don’t, i lean all the way in. i want to know what stirs your soul, what’s moving through you, what lives underneath the response of “good” when someone asks how you are.

have you ever buried something, hoping no one would ask, only to be talking about something completely unrelated when the floodgates open anyway?

yah, that’s me.

i’m usually the one who asks the question, and i know that’s not always welcome, and i’m not trying to stir anything up.

it’s just who i am.

i wrote this recently —

if you spend too much time with me, we might go deep.
if you spend too much time with me, you might talk about your feelings you’ve never said out loud.
if you spend too much time with me, you will feel held even in the dark parts.
if you spend too much time with me, i won’t abandon you there.
if you spend too much time with me, we might journey through lifetimes in a single conversation.
if you spend too much time with me, you might start standing up for yourself and mean it.
if you spend too much time with me, you might remember how to play, how to create, how to get curious again.
if you spend too much time with me, you won’t be able to unsee what you’ve seen.

i wrote that as if it were a silly warning. but turns out, i was also describing what i’d always needed someone to be, and what i was finally learning to become for myself.

i’m built to feel all the way down.

for a long time, i’ve wrestled with the idea that to share something i have to have mastered it.

master.

even the word feels strange to me…like an ending, a summit, a place beyond which there’s nothing left to learn…but i don’t believe in that. i’m not trying to master life. i’m trying to stay a student of my own so that whatever i make comes from lived experience instead of borrowed expertise.

that’s the kind of knowing i trust most: what i’ve lived, what i’m still living, and what i can feel before i know how to name it.

i don’t always know how to carry what moves through me. i still catch myself wondering if i’m too sensitive, or reading something wrong as if i need permission just to trust what i already know.

but i am also fun.
and weird.
i’m like your stoner friend who doesn’t smoke.
i’ll talk to you about the stars until 3 in the morning.
i’ll dream out loud trying to make sense of this whole human experience.
i’ll dare you to hug a tree.
to howl at the moon.
to ask permission before cutting a flower or using the earth as medicine.
to notice the bird that keeps returning.
to find gratitude even in the smallest of things.
to experience wonder in something so ordinary you’d forgotten to look at it.

depth and delight were never opposites. they’ve always lived in the same house for me.

i know what it feels like to be reflected back to myself without being asked to become anything different first. there was no performance, no proving, no editing…just the experience of being witnessed exactly as i was.

it surprised me how magnetic that felt. partly because i hadn’t fully seen myself that way and partly because i realized how much energy i’d spent trying to become someone easier to understand.

but here’s the interesting thing about being seen: being seen doesn’t always mean someone is meant to stay, and that may feel like abandonment…except it isn’t, not really, i don’t think. it wasn’t someone leaving me. it was the version of myself i finally got to see through someone else’s eyes, before i’d learned to hold her on my own.

that changed everything.

over the past few years, life has gently, and often not so gently, unearthed everything i’d tucked safely away. i’ve mourned relationships, old identities, versions of myself that survived by shrinking.

i’m learning i don’t need to be understood by everyone, but if i can make one person feel less alone in their story, then every uncomfortable lesson was worth it.

so here’s what i want you to know, especially if you’ve read this far and felt something flicker.

you’re safe here.

safe to feel.
safe to fall apart a little.
safe to be seen in the parts you were taught to keep quiet.
you don’t have to be pretty about it.
you don’t even need the words yet.

if some part of you is already cringing — good. i’m especially glad you’re here. that flinch is almost always guarding something tender. i won’t make you look at it. just know there’s no wrong way in.

to some, this will simply be a question deck, and that’s ok. every question was written because i needed it first.

211 doors i continue to walk through myself.

people might call this a tool, and maybe it is, but i don’t think we’re lacking tools…i think we’re lacking space. space to sit with ourselves without immediately trying to make something better, but rather to notice without naming, to ask without needing an answer, to be curious about what is here before deciding what it should be.

these questions aren’t here to change you…but i’m also not saying they won’t.

i’ve been thinking about the difference because when we finally give ourselves the space to pay attention to what has always been there, something may shift simply because we made room for it.

maybe that looks like change, or transformation, or acceptance, or recognition, or maybe nothing happens at all. maybe you pull a card and put it back. maybe the question finds you again three days later while you’re driving, or maybe you ask it to someone you’ve loved for decades and hear something you never knew. maybe you just notice something you’ve walked past a hundred times. perhaps the practice is simply the attention, and whatever comes after belongs to you.

i’ll be honest about the fear i named at the beginning — that maybe this wouldn’t become the version i’d built in my head. but somewhere along the way, i realized that putting something into the world also means releasing your claim on what it has to become.

i made it without fully understanding every choice as i was making it. i followed what flowed and sat with what didn’t. the meaning revealed itself later. i’m offering it with intention, and leaving the rest open.

but i don’t get to control what happens after that.

maybe that’s part of the vulnerability too.
not just being seen, but letting what you’ve made exist beyond you.

so what’s left isn’t whether i’ll be brave enough. i already was.

what’s left is simply letting it find the people it was meant to find.

this deck is the first door.
not the last.

it starts here. with a wondering. with you.

so come back…
to your curiosity.
to this space.
to yourself.

you won’t arrive the same way twice.
and neither will i.

that’s the invitation.

i’ll leave the light on.