Grounded Spirituality, Unfolding No. 1

Finding Freedom Beyond Interpretation

A Tidbit to Thread with an invitation to discover alongside me.

I’ll begin by continuing from my last Tidbit to Thread, where the idea of Grounded Spirituality first began to take shape.

In that reflection I wrote about my slower mornings on the deck, watching the mama bird who had built her nest in one of my planters. I wondered if she was a first-time mama. I’ll never know. What I do know is that she laid four eggs, all four hatched, and for a while we had front-row seats watching both parents taking turns feeding their babies.

Then one morning, I noticed mama bird wasn’t there.

I tiptoed over to the planter, expecting to see the fuzzy heads of growing chicks. Instead, I found fuzzy mounds of stillness. We confirmed that all four had died. I asked Andrew to help me give them a burial, back to the earth seemed the kindest.

I told myself I wasn’t going to let my mind run away with meaning-making, after all It has been a sinkhole in my past. And, for the most part, I didn’t.

But as the week unfolded a few more opportunities for meaning making took place, a window that suddenly cracked, a skylight began to leak, and my sudden hip pain returned without notice. As I continued reading the other memoirs I had purchased at the conference I still noticed how each book centered around its own interpretation of spirituality. By weeks end, I slowly realized just how much energy I was spending trying, especially around trying not to think about what It (meaning making) was. Eventually, all that effort caught up with me as my body continued to carry what my mind was trying so hard to avoid. It showed up as an unshakable sadness, It presented somatically as a heaviness in my chest and in tears that were always right there just beneath the surface for what felt like no apparent reason, and finally It presented as an exhaustion that even afternoon naps couldn’t fix. The looping in my brain was speaking in other parts of my body.

Why?

Because I was working so hard to avoid “going there.” I’ll use the baby birds as an example. My brain was unconsciously trying to untangle what the birds passing meant, what their new life and failure to thrive might be saying to me, about life, or whether I needed to be paying attention to something I was somehow missing. It was that familiar pull toward hypervigilance, where every unexpected event feels as though it deserves closer scrutiny, as though it might be carrying a message that I couldn’t afford to ignore.

No amount of reading, shopping, or cups of tea could distract me for long. The thoughts kept circling underneath everything.

Have you ever experienced that?

Perhaps not with a bird’s nest, but with life’s ordinary moments that suddenly become loaded with extraordinary significance.

When a persons mind has been well trained for years, like mine was, to interpret everyday events as signs, warnings, confirmations, or divine messages, it becomes almost automatic. Coincidences feels like they need decoding, disappointments seem to require a spiritual explanation and every unanswered question feels like a puzzle needing to be solved through mental effort alone.

For me, this way of relating to the world isn’t grounding anymore. It was exhausting then and it’s exhausting getting caught in it last week. But now I know more…

I’ve learnt that when my nervous system feels unsettled, my brain becomes even more determined to find certainty. It wants an explanation because explanations feel safer than uncertainty.

But I’ve also learned that not every thought deserves my trust or attention just because it arrives with urgency. I’m learning that sometimes, in this life, what I need most isn’t an answer at all.

What I need is regulation. Rest and foods that nourish me. And a long compassionate pause before I allow my mind to assign meaning. This, I think, is one of the invitations of Grounded Spirituality.

Not to stop the questions or wondering, but to question and wonder from a place of steadiness or love rather than fear. From that safe enough place that allows for both exploration and openness, curiosity and discernment, meaning and mystery. A place where I can remain open to life’s invitations without feeling responsible for interpreting every single one of them. This becomes a place where I can live with unanswered questions, trusting that clarity will come when it needs to, or perhaps that some things are simply meant to remain a mystery.

So, as I continue to discover what Grounded Spirituality looks like for me, I’m discovering a few non-negotiables.

• It must be rooted in self-compassion and goodwill.

• It must be viewed and processed through the lens of love.

• It must honour, as Maya Angelou reminds us, that I did the best I could with what I knew at the time.

• It must leave room for curiosity instead of demanding certainty.

• It must be grounded in reality before interpretation.

• It must increase my capacity to love: first myself more gently, then others more generously, and to hold life with greater openness.

  
  

Notice how It become - IT.

IT must be viewed and processed through the lens of love. If an interpretation leaves me feeling afraid, ashamed, or fundamentally “less than,” then I need to question the interpretation before I question myself.

IT must be rooted in self-compassion and goodwill. The voice guiding me forward should sound more like kindness than condemnation. And if it doesn’t, I will retrace my steps until I find that kindness speaking in my narrative.

IT must honour that I did the best I could with what I knew at the time. I can reflect honestly on my choices without rewriting my story through the lens of shame. Learning asks different questions than self-punishment ever could. And I will choose, over and over again, to speak kindly to the younger version of myself. She survived a lot. She was doing the best she could with the understanding and resources she had. She deserves my compassion, not my condemnation.

IT must leave room for curiosity instead of demanding certainty. I don’t need every experience to have a hidden message. Sometimes life is simply life. Sometimes a bird’s nest is just a bird’s nest, and sometimes mystery is meant to remain a mystery.

IT must be grounded in reality before interpretation. I’ve learned that my mind can rush to connect dots that may not belong together, especially when uncertainty stirs old patterns of hypervigilance. So I pause and ask: What do I actually know? What am I assuming? What story am I creating to make uncertainty feel more manageable? These questions invite me back to reality before I reach for meaning.

IT must increase my capacity to love: To love myself more gently. To love others more generously. To hold life with greater openness. If my spirituality consistently narrows my world through fear or an all-or-nothing lens, then it may not be leading me where I want to go. I’m learning to treat this as a kind of felt-sense compass, one where I pay attention to what expands me and what contracts me. When love, openness, and flexibility are present, I feel more grounded and more myself. When fear and rigidity take over, I take it as information that something in how I’m relating to life needs to be gently re-examined, not with judgment, but with curiosity.

These non-negotiables are now the anchors I return to as I hold every event, experience, and meaning-making moment. Rather than looking outside myself for certainty or answers, these are now my newly adopted guideposts that will help shape my thoughts and gently help settle my body into what I’m choosing to call Grounded Spirituality.

These are the anchors I’m choosing to carry forward as they create a safe enough way back to myself when life, and the meaning I make of it, feels uncertain. They will help root me in reality, love, and presence. Not always immediately, but far sooner than the days of wondering, spiraling, and searching for certainty that once defined so much of my life.

Because I believe Grounded Spirituality is worth building, I want it to help me become more present, more compassionate, and more resilient. I want to be oriented toward love, toward reality, toward curiosity, and especially toward compassion when things feel unclear.

Not everything needs to be interpreted.

In this safe enough place and through Grounded Spirituality may we be grounded in presence rather than certainty. May we allow life to be experienced without always needing to turn it into meaning or decode every moment. And may we discover a trust that roots us more deeply in ourselves.

Will you join me? I’d love the company.

Thank you for reading Tidbits to Threads: where small moments, insights and deep threads become a return to self-trust, reflection and healing.

Small moments. Deep threads. A return to self-trust.

Author of Velcro Kisses: prophecy, trauma bonds and Reclaiming narrative.