Did you know that opportunities for mindfulness are all around you? You just need to practice looking more carefully.

And hopefully you’re reading this on your phone because you’ll need to get outside for this practice.

If you’re not outside yet, go do that. C’mon now.

Take your shoes off if you can, and step onto the ground. Grass, soil, wood, stone. Anything natural.

Then feel the texture.

Notice the support.

Feel your feet remembering something your mind forgets all the time: that you are part of the world, not separate from it.

This is simple grounding, but it works. Standing on the Earth has a way of settling and calming your nervous system for you. I dunno why it works. It just does.

Simple practice: Notice how your breath changes as your feet soften into the ground.

This practice was built for the ordinary moment — the one you already have. If you want more of them, The Reading Room in the Village Square is free for everyone: answer two questions about where you are and what kind of medicine would help, and it finds something that meets you there. Fifteen pathways, each one written for a specific kind of day. And when you need something quieter still, the Breathe Bubble in Village Hearth is waiting for paid Villagers — 5.5 seconds, coherence breathing, made for exactly the moments when the essay isn’t enough.

Free for every Villager — quizzes, apps, guides, and a few wanders worth taking. The whole collection lives here: → Explore the village (and the Ko-fi shop if you’re browsing.)

For paid Villagers ($5/month): The 121-page Wonder Kit. Village Hearth (your private sanctuary — living campfire, Hearth Ledger, Breathe Bubble). Friction to Flow (a journaling app for the deeper daily work). Monthly Emberlight community gathering.

This isn’t a content subscription. It’s a threshold. The hearth is lit, the seat is yours, and the Kit arrives the moment you step in.

Claim your seat at the Hearth →Subscribe

I’ve talked well, written about this before: that heavy sensation that you’re behind. Behind in your work, behind in your healing, or just lagging in the general race of being a person.

The grinding sensation of being ‘behind’ in your life or healing often comes from comparing your messy middle chapters to someone else’s polished final pages. This awkward murky part of your journey isn’t a failure, it’s the main story where the real work of shaping your life actually happens.

It’s almost impossible not to compare. We see the announcements—the new job, the published book, the “transformational” retreat, and we feel like we don’t measure up. But most of us are comparing our unfinished, in-progress status to a curated highlight reel. We’re comparing our rough draft to their final chapter; our Chapter 7 to their polished epilogue.

It feels unfair because it is. You don’t know what their Chapter 7 looked like. You didn’t see the pages they ripped out or how close they came to quitting.

I need constant reminders myself: unclench your jaw. Take a breath. So here’s one for you: You aren’t behind. You’re exactly where you need to be—you’re just not done.

We love beginnings and endings. The fresh start and the big reveal. But the middle is the awkward, murky bit where everything actually gets shaped. It’s the part where the “I have no idea what I’m doing” feeling becomes a permanent resident. We overlook it, yet the middle is the main storyline.

These middle chapters are where things get interesting. It’s the tension and the unraveling. It’s where the character doubts everything and still doesn’t know how the story ends. (And a reminder: none of us truly know the ending until our very last breath.)

Think about the stories you love. It’s always in the middle where the protagonist starts to shift. The stakes get higher, the choices get messier, and they become who they’re meant to be through a hundred imperfect steps. We don’t talk about it because it’s not glamorous. These liminal spaces of identity and purpose don’t come with a map or a medal—only the dailiness of transformation.

So, zoom out. This is not the end. Your plot is still unfolding, and the best stories don’t move in a straight line. They’re full of obstacles and rests. Sometimes a new chapter starts on a random day (not just New Years Eve!) and shifts the whole book (or, if you’re like me, you write a zombie novel that starts on an ordinary Tuesday (literally - and I wrote it years before AI was even a thing! So take that Tuesday AI trope and throw it out here!).

You aren’t late. You’re just living your story, so deep in the middle that you can’t see the edges yet. You’re in the thick of it—and that’s where everything happens.

That’s what gives us something to write about, doesn’t it?

If this gave you something to chew on, take it to The Curiosity Cabinet in the Village Square — it’s free, no login needed, and built for exactly the kind of brain that wants to keep pulling threads. Nine drawers of strange, true facts about the world, each one paired with a prompt that turns it back toward your own life. And if you want the deeper dive on how to not feel behind the 121-page Wonder Kit is waiting for paid Villagers.

Free for every Villager — quizzes, apps, guides, and a few wanders worth taking. The whole collection lives here: → Explore the village (and the Ko-fi shop if you’re browsing.)

For paid Villagers ($5/month): The 121-page Wonder Kit. Village Hearth (your private sanctuary — living campfire, Hearth Ledger, Breathe Bubble). Friction to Flow (a journaling app for the deeper daily work). Monthly Emberlight community gathering.

This isn’t a content subscription. It’s a threshold. The hearth is lit, the seat is yours, and the Kit arrives the moment you step in.

Claim your seat at the Hearth →Subscribe

For months I’ve wanted and tried (and failed!) to find the perfect community platform for paid subscribers to chat about a monthly theme/promp, which is my Emberlight Community.

So I created a Section on here, and was hoping that the comments section on each monthly post would act like a sort of room, a gathering around a hearth. But it wasn’t one. It didn’t feel like one. It was a comments section of an article, just like any other, and I felt like something was still missing. I used to do it in the Substack Chat too (before it became a paid villagers only thing) hoping that would feel more like a room, and that didn’t really work either (Substack chat doesn’t really cut it (in my opinion). Plus, you can’t edit your replies/posts in there or add pictures, which is frustrating!

So, I decided to build my own space since I couldn't find exactly what I wanted or was looking for.

And in my new Emberlight Community space on Lovable you can do the things that Substack chat and comments can't. You can edit your post (well you can do that in post comments), add images, and even add headlines to your posts! (and you also don’t have to just reply to the monthly prompt either. You can make your own posts too, if you want (but they wouldn’t be spammy link drop stuff like all the Subscriber Chats turn into — like cluttered community notice boards).

So…. here’s the thing: a good question deserves more than just a reply box underneath an article. It deserves a place where people can pull up a chair, see who else showed up, and actually talk to each other, not just to me.

That’s why the Emberlight has a room now.

The monthly Emberlight post isn’t going anywhere. Once a month, I’ll still show up here with something from my own month and a question with some grit to it (not just “how’s everyone doing?” more like “what are you pretending is fine right now?”). That part stays the same. But that question will also live in the new Emberlight space, like above. And the 'who's in the room' section at the top shows I'm currently in the space, with a custom message ('Hello everyone!') that's totally optional — you can change it whenever you want, or leave it blank entirely.

And this is where the talking-back-and-forth happens. Instead of leaving it in the comments underneath the post, that's why I built Emberlight, a standalone space just for that. It’s its own little corner of the internet, made for exactly one thing: hearth-tenders sitting around that month’s question together, for as long as they want, without it getting buried under whatever else Substack decides to show them that day.

This isn’t just about dropping a thought and hoping for the best. You can reply directly to each other’s posts too with those threads neatly collapsing into little ‘murmurs’ until you’re ready to expand them and listen in. It’s a real, living back-and-forth between hearth-tenders (aka paid subscribers) built for actual dialogue instead of just parallel comments bouncing off my main post.

If you’re already a paid subscriber, you’ll see the link button to the new Emberlight conversation space further down. If you’re not yet and you become one at some point, you’ll find the link in your Welcome Email (and it’s also available on the paid subscriber Clubhouse platform too).

And to my paid subscribers if I could get your feedback on the platform once you check it out, I’d be grateful! Let me know what you think, or what features you’d like to see that aren’t there already. Right now it's still one room (rather than separate ones for different topics) where everyone can post/share — either in response to the monthly prompt or whatever you would like to! But maybe down the line, if people think it might be useful, I could create separate ‘rooms’ for different topics (like grief, mindfulness, growth…whatever else you think) or…well, whatever you might like to see on the platform! Any kind of feedback is helpful.

And a few things have already landed. There’s a warming button now: not a like or heart button like standard social media, more like lighting a little ember on someone’s post, so they know it landed without it turning into a popularity contest. Nobody sees a count, you just see ‘Caitlin warmed this’ (or whoever hit the button).

There’s a kept shelf too, a private little corner just for you, where you can tuck away a post you want to find again later — a recipe someone shared, a line that stuck with you, whatever.

And I just hooked up a monthly digest feature that gathers what was shared each month, so nothing gets lost in the scroll, and I can pin it as a post once it's ready. There's also a “looking back” search function too.

When you log in, there’s a welcome-back banner that tells you right away how many new voices have joined or who’s replied to you since you last pulled up a chair. You don’t have to hunt for the thread or worry about getting buried under whatever else Substack decides to show your feed that day. And if you wonder if anyone’s actually in the house right now, there’s a live presence pill at the top of the room showing who’s currently sitting by the fire. It feels less like an empty message board and more like walking into a room where people are already talking. At least that's the plan.

Nothing’s promised on a timeline. I just wanted you to know I’m listening, and still building.

And if you’re not a paid subscriber, this is me being upfront that this is one of the things your $5 a month actually buys. Not a newsletter perk or a bonus PDF, but an actual (digital) room with actual people in it, who show up for the same fire month after month.

I built Dose of Wonder on the idea that the village doesn’t need more experts, it needs more witnesses — and it turns out witnessing works a lot better when there’s a place to do it together instead of in a generic comments area.

So if you’ve been reading along as a free Villager and wondering what the hearth-tenders actually get for their five bucks: this is a big part of it. A room, with a question worth answering, and people who’ll actually respond when you do.

So come join us by the fire, fam!

With wonder, Caitlin

Free for every Villager — quizzes, apps, guides, and a few wanders worth taking. The whole collection lives here: → Explore the village (and the Ko-fi shop if you’re browsing.)

For paid Villagers ($5/month): The 121-page Wonder Kit. Village Hearth (your private sanctuary — living campfire, Hearth Ledger, Breathe Bubble). Friction to Flow (a journaling app for the deeper daily work). Monthly Emberlight community gathering.

This isn’t a content subscription. It’s a threshold. The hearth is lit, the seat is yours, and the Kit arrives the moment you step in.

Claim your seat at the Hearth →Subscribe

Have you noticed? It seems like we’re beige-ing the world to death. From the “sad beige toys” trend of a few years ago (see: minimalist wooden shapes and muted plastic) to coffee shops that are all brilliant white with a few artfully placed chairs that feel like a Nordic showroom, we’ve traded personality for a “clutter-free” serenity that is, quite frankly, a morgue. The lights are too harsh, and the humanity has been leached away, replaced by something that might look more at home in The Jetsons.

Maximalism and the ‘clutter’ of memory act as psychological anchors that protect us from the sterile unpredictability of the world. Resisting ‘beige-ing’ our homes and digital lives allows us to maintain a sort of presence, proving that our lives are vibrant, growing and uniquely ours.

I enjoy wandering IKEA for the novelty (and the cheap breakfast!) like everyone else, but I always leave feeling weirdly out of place. It’s as if I’m too human for such a sterile environment, no matter how many faux-fur rugs or artfully draped throws are used to mask the rigid discomfort of the furniture. I say this while looking down at my own cream-and-grey-and-black speckled rug (IKEA, naturally). There’s a distinct sense of relief when I re-emerge into the real world—back into the noise, the un-curated colour, and the movement of a reality that hasn’t been flat-packed.

Our current societal obsession with curating our homes and social media feeds is, at its root, a fear of the unpredictability of being alive. I totally get it. I don’t like losing my grip on the wheel, either. We assume that if things are neat, orderly, and minimalist, we’ve reduced the mental load. If things are just so, the chaos of the world can’t reach us.

But years of mindfulness practice have taught me that control is an illusion. We can’t dictate how the outside world will impact us, no matter how many white walls we build. So why not give ourselves something to grab onto instead of sleek blandness?

This is a plea for maximalist souls. This is where the wonder comes in—in the psychological benefit of the “clutter” that carries memory. Wonder is found in the jagged rock from a specific beach, the brittle beauty of a dried flower, or the uniqueness of a mismatched mug. These aren’t just objects; they’re anchors.

I often see those modern homes that look like large, white boxes with a contrasting wooden cube sticking out like a strange cedar parasite. They are eye-catching and futuristic, but they stand out like a sore thumb because they lack a pulse. Where is the soul? Where is the character? When we leach the lived-in presence out of a place, we leach the lived-in presence out of ourselves, too.

We don’t live in showrooms, and we aren’t designed to fit into a predictable box. When we strip away the evidence of our lives to achieve an aesthetic, we risk stripping away the proof that we were ever there at all. So, keep the mismatched mug. Let the books pile up. Leave the special rock on the windowsill. A life that is “just so” is a life that has stopped growing. I’d rather live in a kaleidoscope of my own making than in a beige-tinted grave.

If this gave you something to chew on, take it to The Curiosity Cabinet in the Village Square — it’s free, no login needed, and built for exactly the kind of brain that wants to keep pulling threads. Nine drawers of strange, true facts about the world, each one paired with a prompt that turns it back toward your own life. And if you want the deeper dive on how to not beige-out, the 121-page Wonder Kit is waiting for paid Villagers.

Free for every Villager — quizzes, apps, guides, and a few wanders worth taking. The whole collection lives here: → Explore the village (and the Ko-fi shop if you’re browsing.)

For paid Villagers ($5/month): The 121-page Wonder Kit. Village Hearth (your private sanctuary — living campfire, Hearth Ledger, Breathe Bubble). Friction to Flow (a journaling app for the deeper daily work). Monthly Emberlight community gathering.

This isn’t a content subscription. It’s a threshold. The hearth is lit, the seat is yours, and the Kit arrives the moment you step in.

Claim your seat at the Hearth →Subscribe

The Emberlight is a monthly gathering for paid Villagers — a question by the fire, a month to sit with it, and a room where the same people keep showing up. You don’t need a tidy answer. You just need to pull up a chair.

Not a paid Villager yet? The door is here:

Read more

I built a thing. It involves Stoics and Buddhists and an AI. Bear with me.

Do you ever go through something hard and find yourself doing that thing where you read the same three wellness quotes on repeat, hoping one of them will finally stick? Not because you believe in quotes exactly, but because you’re holding something heavy and you’d really like someone who has already figured out existence to weigh in?

I do this constantly. I’m doing it right now, actually, with a cold brew and a dog who is deeply unimpressed with my emotional state (Annie sends her regards, and also would like you to know that she has given up waiting for her walk and gone back to her spot on the couch).

Here’s the thing: I’ve been writing about Stoicism and Buddhism for a while now — I mention it every so often in my articles and podcasts here. Not in a deep, academic way (my criminology degree prepared me for approximately none of this) but in a these two traditions have something to say about the kind of stuff I’m carrying way. The Stoics keep reminding me to figure out what’s actually in my control with concepts like Memento Mori and Amor Fati. The Buddhists keep reminding me to release my grip on things that were never mine to hold in the first place, with their concept of impermanence. And somewhere in the middle of those two perspectives, there’s usually something true enough to sit with.

So I built a tool around that.

It’s called Still & Steadfast, and it lives at still-and-steadfast.lovable.app, and the idea is this: you tell it what you’re carrying right now (whether you type it in or just tap the chip that’s closest to true), and it responds with three things. What the Stoics might say. What the Buddhists might say. And then a Bridge — a third voice that tries to find what both traditions are actually pointing at underneath all the philosophy, and gives you one thing to sit with. A question, or a practice. Specific to what you said, not a generic “breathe deeply and notice your feelings” offering.

I tested it on “I’m catastrophizing” and the Bridge landed so well I had to put my phone down for a minute. So…that’s promising.

A few things I want to say about this:

I built it because I think there’s something genuinely useful in having two different traditions respond to the same human situation. The Stoics are not warm and fuzzy. They’ll tell you what’s in your control and what isn’t, and they won’t apologize for the directness (good ‘ol Marcus Aurelius saying it like it is!). The Buddhists are softer, but not in a bypassing way (at least not the way I’ve tried to build the voice) — they’re more interested in the nature of suffering and how you relate to it than in making you feel better in the short term. Both are useful. Neither is sufficient on its own. The Bridge is where I tried to write in a voice that feels like, y’know, this space — warm and grounded and a little bit irreverent.

I also want to say that the AI here is doing what I actually think AI is good for: synthesizing across a body of knowledge (two enormous philosophical traditions) and personalizing the output to what you specifically said. It’s not replacing anything. It’s not giving you therapy. It’s giving you a perspective, the way a well-read friend who has been through some things might give you a perspective. You take what lands, you leave what doesn’t.

Anyway. Go poke at it. Tell it something real. And let me know in the comments what the Bridge said to you, because I am genuinely curious.

And don’t forget to live with a dose of wonder.

Still & Steadfast started as a conversation Claude and I had about the Stoics and Buddhists showing up in DoW writing, and it turned into something I actually reach for on hard days. If you’ve been reading here for a while, hopefully you’ll recognize the voice in the Bridge section — it’s trying to do what this space always tries to do: hold something without fixing it.

Free for every Villager — quizzes, apps, guides, and a few wanders worth taking. The whole collection lives here: → Explore the village (and the Ko-fi shop if you’re browsing.)

For paid Villagers ($5/month): The 121-page Wonder Kit. Village Hearth (your private sanctuary — living campfire, Hearth Ledger, Breathe Bubble). Friction to Flow (a journaling app for the deeper daily work). Monthly Emberlight community gathering.

This isn’t a content subscription. It’s a threshold. The hearth is lit, the seat is yours, and the Kit arrives the moment you step in.

Claim your seat at the Hearth →Subscribe

We’re often told to focus on the big wins and the looming deadlines, but I’ve found that the real shift happens in the corners of my to-do list. In this episode, I’m talking about why clearing a few emails or finally folding the laundry feels less like a chore and more like an act of rescue. For anyone navigating a heavy season (where even the smallest task feels like a mountain), we’re exploring how these minor completions provide the grounded relief we actually need to stay human.

Loved this episode? You can find extra goodies, gentle tools, and printable doses of wonder over in my Ko-fi shop. You can also buy me a coffee to help support me. Every purchase supports this quiet corner of the internet and helps keep the podcast going. Thank you for being here. 💛

The podcast is always free — that won’t change. But if today’s episode stirred something and you want somewhere to put it, The Well in the Village Square is open to everyone: drop a worry, a question, a half-formed thought into the water and receive something back. Not advice. A witness. Free, no login, one tap away. And if you’ve been listening a while and want the deeper room, paid Villagers have Village Hearth, the Wonder Kit, and Friction to Flow waiting.

Subscribe now

References:

https://medium.com/mindful-mental-health/how-ticking-off-your-to-do-list-can-help-you-feel-on-top-of-the-world-e75609ae18ec by caitlin McColl

When the mind starts to “loop”—spinning on a worry that hasn’t happened yet (and I’m super guilty of that, I’m sure many of us are, spending time worrying about something that might not even happen). It’s a frustrating side effect of being human. But when our minds spiral like this, we need a physical interrupt. This is the Somatosensory Anchor.

Find an object that feels “real” and has some weight to it. Like, for example, the iron key that features in all my Substack images. It’s there as a little reminder of an anchor. When I do this practice, I often grab my heavy cork yoga block (there’s something about the weight of it that feels comforting). Maybe it’s just your phone. Or a favourite mug. Or maybe it is a set of house keys. Hold it in your hand. Close your eyes and describe the texture to yourself. Is it pitted? Is it smooth? Is it heavier than it looks?

This is a Grounding Technique that forces the brain to shift from the “Default Mode Network” (the part of the brain that ruminates and worries about the future) to the “Task-Positive Network” which is a group of brain regions that activate during attention demanding tasks where you’re really focused on something. You can’t fully describe the texture of an object and worry about your filing your tax return at the same exact second. (Side note: this is also why I love my daily yoga practice. It switches my brain to this mode where I’m focused on breathing, and moving my body in specific shapes or poses, and not on…whatever I might have been worrying or ruminating about.)

It’s something heavy and real to hold onto when the day feels a bit too intangible and flighty and you need something to bring you back to reality. And here’s a thought, if your object is a heavy set of keys, you can think of them as not opening doors but opening a moment of stillness. It’s an anchor in the storm of “what-ifs.”

This practice was built for the ordinary moment — the one you already have. If you want more of them, The Reading Room in the Village Square is free for everyone: answer two questions about where you are and what kind of medicine would help, and it finds something that meets you there. Fifteen pathways, each one written for a specific kind of day. And when you need something quieter still, the Breathe Bubble in Village Hearth is waiting for paid Villagers — 5.5 seconds, coherence breathing, made for exactly the moments when the essay isn’t enough.

Free for every Villager — quizzes, apps, guides, and a few wanders worth taking. The whole collection lives here: → Explore the village (and the Ko-fi shop if you’re browsing.)

For paid Villagers ($5/month): The 121-page Wonder Kit. Village Hearth (your private sanctuary — living campfire, Hearth Ledger, Breathe Bubble). Friction to Flow (a journaling app for the deeper daily work). Monthly Emberlight community gathering.

This isn’t a content subscription. It’s a threshold. The hearth is lit, the seat is yours, and the Kit arrives the moment you step in.

Claim your seat at the Hearth →Subscribe

I want to talk about something that’s been making me genuinely, properly ragey lately.

(And before I do — I want to be clear that I’m going to say some spicy things about the productivity and AI space, and I’m aware that I use AI tools in my own creative process and write about it openly. I’m not a hypocrite, or at least I’m trying not to be. I’m someone who is in this thing and also deeply uncomfortable with parts of how it’s moving…Both of those can be true. Okay. Moving on.)

Here’s what’s bothering me: There is no off switch.

I mean it practically not metaphorically. Functionally, in the literal sense of: the infrastructure of modern productivity culture and the current AI moment has been specifically designed without one. Every tool has a notification. Every platform has a feed. Every app has a streak to maintain and a reminder to send and a gentle nudge that you haven’t shown up today, have you, what’s wrong with you, don’t you want to be your best self?

And now AI has joined the party. Which means the acceleration doesn’t just happen to you anymore — it happens for you, faster, with suggestions and automations and optimized workflows that mean you could technically be doing more, always, at every hour, with fewer excuses than ever before.

I’m exhausted just writing that sentence.

Neuroscience research on cognitive load consistently finds that the human nervous system has a finite capacity for sustained attention and decision-making. There’s a limit that modern productivity culture and always-on technology routinely exceeds. The result is a state researchers call “directed attention fatigue” (kinda like decision fatigue) which is: the inability to focus, a sense of numbness, and the paradox of feeling both exhausted and unable to rest. This is a predictable biological response (not a failure) to an environment that was not designed with human limits in mind.

Here’s what I think nobody adequately prepared us for when we all enthusiastically adopted the smartphone and the always-on work culture and the side hustle and the personal brand: we are not built for this pace.

I don’t mean that as a criticism of you specifically. I mean it neurologically, physiologically, as a plain biological fact. The human nervous system was not designed for the quantity of information we’re currently processing, the number of decisions we’re making, the constant low-level vigilance required to exist in a world where your attention is being pulled this way and that every second of the day.

There’s a reason so many people are walking around feeling like they’re running a program rather than living a life. There’s a reason “I don’t know who I am anymore” has become a common refrain. That people are trying to ‘find’ themselves again. There’s a reason you can feel completely exhausted and also somehow guilty that you’re not doing more.

You’re not broken. You’re overstimulated and under-rested in a system that profits from you being in that state.

That’s the part that makes me Hulk-ragey, if I’m being completely real with you.

And then there are the gurus.

Oh, don’t get me started the gurus.

The ones who have figured out The System, who have cracked the code, who will teach you (for a very reasonable investment) how to use AI to 10x your output and automate your morning routine and reclaim four hours a day and build the life you’ve always wanted, and they say all of this with the serene confidence of someone who has never sat with a complicated feeling for longer than thirty seconds because they immediately turned it into content.

I cannot.

I genuinely cannot.

Because what they’re selling is more speed, more output, more optimization, just dressed up in the language of freedom. And I think a lot of people are buying it because they’re tired, and someone offering a system feels like someone offering relief. But it’s not. It’s just faster treadmill.

Here’s what I believe, after years of teaching mindfulness and also being a person who uses technology and also being a person who has had to learn the hard way that more is not always more: The most radical thing you can do right now is stop.

Not forever. And not in a way that requires a lifestyle overhaul or a linen wardrobe or a carefully curated slow morning aesthetic that you then post on socials.

Just. Stop. For a minute. An actual sixty seconds where nothing is being produced, optimized, or tracked.

Sit somewhere without your phone. Look at something that isn’t a screen. Let your thoughts do whatever they’re going to do without immediately turning them into a task or a post or a productivity opportunity.

This is what the wellness industrial complex has somehow made feel radical: being a person who occasionally just exists without performing the existence.

I use AI. I will continue to use AI. I think there are genuinely interesting and useful things happening in that space and I want to engage with them thoughtfully and honestly.

But I’m also deeply aware that the current AI moment has the same no-off-switch problem as everything else before it, only faster and louder. And I think it’s worth saying from inside it all: you are allowed to not keep up. You are allowed to let the acceleration happen without you, at least for today, or maybe for this hour.

Wonder doesn’t require you to be optimized. Presence doesn’t require an app. The village I’m trying to build here is specifically for people who are tired of the speed. And the door is always open, and there is no notification, and you can stay as long as you need to.

The off switch exists. It’s just not installed by default.

You have to choose it, deliberately, every single day. And that act of choosing is the most countercultural and defiant act available to you right now.

Whimsy as defiance. Slowness as resistance. Presence as the thing they can’t monetize.

Mic drop.

The rest of this essay is for paid Villagers — including the neuroscience of why your brain can’t find the off switch on its own (the Zeigarnik Effect, variable reward schedules, and attention residue), five specific strategies for installing your own off switch (the Hard Stop, the Dumb Phone Hour, the Boredom Protocol, the Sunday Shutdown, and the Notification Funeral), and the deeper framework on why “just disconnect” doesn’t work without structural support.

Become a paid Villager →

Subscribe now

If you’re not ready to upgrade, that’s okay. The free village is still here. But if you’re exhausted from being always-on and you want the actual tools to reclaim your attention, the door’s open.

Have you ever seen someone in trouble and felt a strange, heavy hesitation to step in? You aren’t a “bad person”—you’re likely caught in a psychological short-circuit known as the Bystander Effect.

In this episode, I’m building on my recent studies in Social Psychology to unpack why crowds actually make us less likely to help. From the tragic story of Kitty Genovese to a personal encounter with a man in a local park, we explore the mechanics of “diffusion of responsibility” and why we often look to others to tell us how to feel.

In this episode, we talk about:

• The Three Hurdles: Why we fail to notice, fail to interpret, and fail to act.

• Pluralistic Ignorance: Why a group of worried people will collectively act like everything is fine.

• The “Red Shorts” Strategy: How to get help when you’re the one in crisis (it’s all about singling out the individual).

• Breaking the Spell: How mere awareness of this effect can turn you from an onlooker into a “villager” who acts.

Understanding our own “brain glitches” is the first step toward living with more intention and compassion. Let’s talk about how to be the one who breaks the silence.

Loved this episode? You can find extra goodies, gentle tools, and printable doses of wonder over in my Ko-fi shop. You can also buy me a coffee to help support me. Every purchase supports this quiet corner of the internet and helps keep the podcast going. Thank you for being here. 💛

The podcast is always free — that won’t change. But if today’s episode stirred something and you want somewhere to put it, The Well in the Village Square is open to everyone: drop a worry, a question, a half-formed thought into the water and receive something back. Not advice. A witness. Free, no login, one tap away. And if you’ve been listening a while and want the deeper room, paid Villagers have Village Hearth, the Wonder Kit, and Friction to Flow waiting.

Subscribe now

References:

Would You Help In an Emergency (the bystander effect) by Caitlin McColl https://medium.com/mindful-mental-health/would-you-help-in-an-emergency-74ae18774d41

Myers, D. G. (2012). Exploring social psychology (6th ed.)

Brown, K. The bystander effect is complicated — here’s why

YouTube.

A few years ago I learned a fabulous word, that was made up fairly recently by the person who thought it up, and which I mention in this other piece of mine about words in other languages. It’s Sonder, which is this specific wonder in realizing and recognizing that every person you see is the protagonist of a story as complex as your own – the people that you interact with, or walk past, or are surrounded by on the streets. But it’s also what psychologists call Mindsight—the ability to perceive the mental life of others.

So here’s the practice for today.

When you’re sitting at a red light or looking out your front window at night, watch a single pair of tail-lights disappear around the corner. Instead of seeing a “car,” try to imagine the “world” inside it. Maybe they’re headed home to a cold dinner, or perhaps they’ve just finished a shift at the hospital. Maybe they’re heading to meet friends or family, or maybe they’re on a road trip from out of town.

This practice expands your Empathic Concern. It’s hard to feel cynical or “us-versus-them” when you’ve spent a moment acknowledging the reality of a stranger’s existence and what might be going on for them that we have no idea about.

So, this is a reminder that every window is a story we’ll never read, but it’s nice to know the book is open. It turns a commute into a silent procession of human lives, all moving toward their own version of “home.”

This practice was built for the ordinary moment — the one you already have. If you want more of them, The Reading Room in the Village Square is free for everyone: answer two questions about where you are and what kind of medicine would help, and it finds something that meets you there. Fifteen pathways, each one written for a specific kind of day. And when you need something quieter still, the Breathe Bubble in Village Hearth is waiting for paid Villagers — 5.5 seconds, coherence breathing, made for exactly the moments when the essay isn’t enough.

Free for every Villager — quizzes, apps, guides, and a few wanders worth taking. The whole collection lives here: → Explore the village (and the Ko-fi shop if you’re browsing.)

For paid Villagers ($5/month): The 121-page Wonder Kit. Village Hearth (your private sanctuary — living campfire, Hearth Ledger, Breathe Bubble). Friction to Flow (a journaling app for the deeper daily work). Monthly Emberlight community gathering.

This isn’t a content subscription. It’s a threshold. The hearth is lit, the seat is yours, and the Kit arrives the moment you step in.

Claim your seat at the Hearth →Subscribe

June started with a question I keep coming back to:

what happens when we turn our pain into content, our healing into a brand, our whole personalities into the worst thing that ever happened to us?

We talked about that. Then we talked about staying soft in a world that keeps yelling at you, without numbing out to do it. Then I wrote about how months ago I unsubscribed from every growth-hack Substack I followed (there were a lot, I’m not proud) and built a clarity tool instead of a bigger audience. I took my own Slow Living Audit and did not love everything it told me. And somewhere in the middle of all that, I looked up and realized this whole thing has an ecosystem now. 1,700 of you, just existing here as part of my world, my village and it still doesn’t feel like a real number.

June was a month about doing less performing and more existing. Less optimizing, more just brushing your teeth without also doing calf raises. And it ends, as these things sometimes do, back at grief, which is where most of the real stuff in this newsletter started anyway.

Here’s what unfolded in June.

Articles & Reflections

The “Curation” of Trauma On turning our deepest pains into content for an algorithm, and what we lose when our wounds become our whole personality instead of something we survived.

Softening Without Numbing Out: How to Stay Gentle in a World That Keeps Yelling at You (with a deeper dive for paid subscribers) Grounded, vagal-tone-level practices for staying receptive instead of choosing between armouring up and checking out completely.

You Don’t Have a Growth Problem. You Have a Clarity Problem. Why I unsubscribed from every growth-hack Substack I could find, and built The Resonance Map instead, a free tool for figuring out what you’re actually doing here before you worry about getting bigger.

I Took My Own Slow Living Audit and Learned Some Things I Didn’t Love I built a tool about slow living while working at roughly 900 miles an hour. Then I took it myself. It did not go entirely the way I expected.

I Didn’t Mean to Build an Ecosystem (And Yet, Here We Are) 1,700 of you are here now, somehow. A full tour of every tool, quiz, and app that grew up around this newsletter without me fully clocking it until recently.

The “Optimized” Life is a Small Life On biohacking, habit-stacking, and the slightly defiant act of just brushing your teeth without also doing calf raises at the same time.

I’ve Lost More People Than I Know What to Do With (so I built something) The grief list that got long enough to feel like a lot, and The Grief Companion, the free tool that came out of carrying it.

🎙️ Podcasts

Podcast 83: Wanna Live Longer? Ease Off On Ranting On why your favourite cathartic vent session might be doing more harm than good. Your heart, and your followers, will thank you for trying something else.

Podcast 84: The Importance of Interconnectedness A Dalai Lama-inspired look at why asking for help isn’t a burden. It’s biology doing exactly what it was built to do.

Podcast 85: The Platitude Paradox An honest look at “just breathe” and the rest of the slogans filling our feeds. Lifeline or empty platitude? Possibly both, depending on the day.

Podcast 86: The Courage to Act Despite Fear On why waiting for the nervousness to settle into confidence might be the trap, not the solution.

Guest Posts

The Small Pause That Helps Us Come Back to Ourselves — A guest post from Yang of PotalaStore: a gentle reflection on small objects, attention, and the practice of returning to yourself one breath at a time.

Community & Closing Light

The Emberlight — June 2026: The Long Exhale (for paid subscribers) Our gathering by the fire this month. One question, the same people showing up, no tidy answer required.

If you only read one thing from June:

Start here → I’ve Lost More People Than I Know What to Do With (so I built something) — because it’s the most honest thing I wrote this month, and because The Grief Companion came out of it.

Wonder of the Month:

A reader DM’d me this month to say The Grief Companion landed right when they needed it, for a kind of grief that doesn’t come from a death but that totally winds you all the same. They described days where they go from okay to feeling like putty, no structure, and back again, more intense as a particular date on the calendar gets closer, but said they’re stronger this year than they were last. That’s the whole thing really. Not fixing the putty days. Just having something solid enough to land on when they happen. And that’s what I hope with my free tools.

See you in July, when the light stays long enough that staying up too late feels like something that’s acceptable and allowed.

Stay soft. Stay curious. Stay human.

With wonder, Caitlin

Free for every Villager — quizzes, apps, guides, and a few wanders worth taking. The whole collection lives here: → Explore the village (and the Ko-fi shop if you’re browsing.)

For paid Villagers ($5/month): The 121-page Wonder Kit. Village Hearth (your private sanctuary — living campfire, Hearth Ledger, Breathe Bubble). Friction to Flow (a journaling app for the deeper daily work). Monthly Emberlight community gathering.

This isn’t a content subscription. It’s a threshold. The hearth is lit, the seat is yours, and the Kit arrives the moment you step in.

Claim your seat at the Hearth →Subscribe

There's an…indescribable feeling that comes with being a person who has lost a lot of people (and animals).

Like you become aware at some point, your realize your grief list is getting long enough that it starts to sound like a bit much. Like you're making it up, or competing, or asking for something. And so you learn to mention it carefully, or not at all, or with a kind of pre-emptive apology in your voice. I know, I know. It's a lot.

It is a lot. And I've never quite known what to do with that.

My grandpa Jack (real name Robert John but he went by Jack, or John) my mom's dad, the grandfather I was actually close to, died a few years before my mom. I missed his passing because my parents told me not to come visit because he was doing okay (spoiler: he was not and then he died). And I wasn't even told about his celebration of life or whatever ‘til after the fact! I only actually found out years later. Like WTF…?! Families, am I right?!

Then my mom died, December 2015. And that, as they say, was that.

That's when I started doing yoga every single day: January 1st, 2016, because I needed somewhere to put my body when my body didn't know what to do with itself. I've written about this before. The yoga mat as the only place I could be fully present and fully falling apart at the same time. (Both things. Somehow, both things.)

My grandma, my mom's mom — went in 2020. Right in the middle of everything else going on in the world and because it was peak Covid, I wasn't able to say goodbye in person, which meant the grief was sort of folded into the general ambient horror of that particular year. It’s kinda like she didn’t really die…she just…disappeared. Because there was no closure whatsoever. Which is its own strange thing. Your personal losses blurring into the collective ones until you can barely find the seams.

Then 2021 happened.

My aunt and my uncle — both within six months of each other. I'm not going to dress that up. Six months. Two people who'd been woven into the fabric of my whole life, gone inside half a year. I remember thinking: how is this allowed? Who approved this? Surely there are rules. My aunt I couldn't visit because, again, still peak Covid. So no real closure with my Grandpa, Grandma or Aunt, that I wasn't able to say goodbye to in person before they died. My uncle lived on the other side of the country and had a heart attack, so no goodbyes there, obviously.

And somewhere in there, between all of it — Bailey my dog in 2019, my first dog as an adult. And then Penny in 2021 (we called her our Pendemic dog…get it?). And I know some people do the thing where they say "oh, she's just talking about dogs", but those people have clearly never lost a dog, and I have nothing to say to them. Bailey and Penny were family. Full stop. They are/were our furbabies.

So. That's my grief list. Oh wait. And there’s my other Aunt who passed away in October last year. One of my dad’s sisters. So there’s that too.

I'm not sharing it to make you sad, or to win something, or because I think my losses are more significant than yours. I'm sharing it because I think a lot of us are walking around with lists like this, and we've gotten very good at carrying them quietly.. quietly isn't quite the right word, because grief is rarely quiet; it just learns to be private).

And so, I've built The Grief Companion because of all of it. Because of every time I've reached for something and found nothing quite right.

Here's what I've noticed, across all the different flavours of loss on my list:

Grief is not one thing.

It's not even a few things.

It's a whole range of things that don't always have names, and that change not just over time but over the course of a single afternoon. You can be okay at 2pm and absolutely not okay at 4pm and then sort of okay again by dinner, and this is not a malfunction. This is just what grief does.

And the other thing I've noticed is that what I've needed most, in most of those moments, wasn't advice. Wasn't steps. Wasn't even comfort, exactly.

It was to feel like someone saw what I was carrying.

That's it. Just — I see it. I see you holding that.

That's what The Grief Companion is trying to do.

It's a free tool, built for everyone. No sign-up, no paywall, no wellness-speak. You answer two questions — where you are in your grief (early, long, complicated, anticipatory), and how you're carrying it today (heavy, numb, angry, tender, okay-ish-and-guilty-about-it, somewhere in between). And then it gives you three things: a witnessed reflection, some language for what you might be feeling, and one gentle practice.

That's the whole thing.

I wrote all 24 results (outputs?) myself. Because I wanted it to sound like a person, not a program. I wanted it to sound like someone who has actually been in the bathroom crying and then choking on hot tea (not in the bathroom).

There's a response in there for anticipatory grief too - for the people who are grieving something that hasn't happened yet, which is one of the loneliest positions a person can be in, and one that almost nobody talks about. (I think about that now. The weeks before my mom died. And when we knew we had to say bye to Bailey our Border Collie at 15 years old. The grief that was already happening before the loss was real.)

There's a response for the okay-ish days. The ones where you feel almost fine and then feel terrible about feeling almost fine. Which…yeah. Those days exist. They're allowed.

There's a response for the people who are angry. Because grief anger is real and valid and so often gets shamed out of people before it's had a chance to do anything useful.

And there are links, at the end of each response, to essays and podcast episodes from The Lantern Path — my full grief and loss archive here on Dose of Wonder — in case you want to go deeper. Or just want to know someone's been thinking about these things for a while.

I've been carrying grief for a long time now. I'm not done with it and I probably never will be. I've just gotten, maybe, a little better at not requiring it to look a particular way or happen on a particular schedule.

Bailey taught me that grief is grief, whatever the shape of what you've lost.

My mom taught me that grief can become a doorway, if you let it. That's not toxic positivity. It took years, and a yoga mat, and a lot of self compassion. But it's true.

My grandpa John/Jack taught me that being funny right up until the end is a perfectly good approach to life, and that the people who love you will cry in the bathroom.

Go check out The Grief Companion. It's free. It's for you. It'll take about two minutes and ask nothing of you except honesty about where you are today.

You don't have to perform fine here.

And don't forget to live with a dose of wonder.

Free for every Villager — quizzes, apps, guides, and a few wanders worth taking. The whole collection lives here: → Explore the village (and the Ko-fi shop if you’re browsing.)

For paid Villagers ($5/month): The 121-page Wonder Kit. Village Hearth (your private sanctuary — living campfire, Hearth Ledger, Breathe Bubble). Friction to Flow (a journaling app for the deeper daily work). Monthly Emberlight community gathering.

This isn’t a content subscription. It’s a threshold. The hearth is lit, the seat is yours, and the Kit arrives the moment you step in.

Claim your seat at the Hearth →Subscribe

A while ago I attended (if you can call it that) an online wellbeing summit where a speaker shared a mantra that has been rattling around in my head ever since: the art of acting despite the fear. We often wait for the “right” time to make a move—waiting for the anxiety to fade or the nervousness to settle into something that feels like confidence. But what if that’s a trap? In this episode, I’m sharing my reflections on why nervousness and anxiety aren’t stop signs, but universal human experiences that even the most “successful” professionals carry with them.

In this episode, we’re talking about:

• The Universality of the Shiver: Recognizing that your internal struggle isn’t a flaw; it’s a shared human condition.

• Pushing Through the Discomfort: Why growth only happens when we stop waiting for the fear to leave the room.

• The Pride on the Other Side: How taking action in the face of uncertainty leads to a sense of accomplishment that “playing it safe” never can.

It’s an inspirational reminder—for you and for me—that facing your fears isn’t about being fearless; it’s about being brave enough to live a fulfilling life anyway.

Loved this episode? You can find extra goodies, gentle tools, and printable doses of wonder over in my Ko-fi shop. You can also buy me a coffee to help support me. Every purchase supports this quiet corner of the internet and helps keep the podcast going. Thank you for being here. 💛

The podcast is always free — that won’t change. But if today’s episode stirred something and you want somewhere to put it, The Well in the Village Square is open to everyone: drop a worry, a question, a half-formed thought into the water and receive something back. Not advice. A witness. Free, no login, one tap away. And if you’ve been listening a while and want the deeper room, paid Villagers have Village Hearth, the Wonder Kit, and Friction to Flow waiting.

Subscribe now

References:

Feel The Fear and Do It Anyway by Caitlin McColl https://medium.com/mindful-mental-health/feel-the-fear-and-do-it-anyway-8fa6e2b6ccaa

There’s one word that, in the last few months, or I guess that I’ve really noticed since the beginning of the year, or at least it’s when it really jumped into my consciousness and started grating on me (besides ‘quiet/quietly’), and that is optimize (or optimization). It seems like everyone is trying to optimize every single part of their lives: their days, their relationships, their jobs, their time, their…everything.

Reclaiming the wonder of being ‘unproductive’ is a necessary shield against the burnout caused by the productivity-industrial complex. By rejecting the pressure to ‘habit stack’ or ‘biohack’ every waking moment, we allow ourselves to exist as finite humans who can simply stare at the steam from a coffee cup without a goal (like trying to figure out when the best (or most optimal) time is to drink said coffee).

In the running podcasts I listen to, even they are talking about stuff like ‘habit stacking’ – doing something ‘good for us’ at the same time as doing something else. Like doing calf raises while we brush our teeth. Or doing lunges while you’re making your Nespresso coffee. Trying to cram multiple things into one as much as we can.

We can’t just brush our teeth anymore. We have to be doing yoga poses at the same time apparently.

Or we’re trying to ‘biohack’ (what?) our way into being the perfect human being.

I keep seeing the word biohack everywhere lately, usually said with the same confidence someone might use to describe repairing a spaceship engine. I looked it up, thinking it must be something complicated or vaguely sci fi, but it really just means: tinkering with your body or mind in hopes of becoming a more “optimized” human being. Things like adjusting your sleep schedule, wearing a gadget that tattles on your heart rate, cycling through cold plunges and saunas to rejuvenate your system, or taking supplements with names that sound like they were pulled from a comic book.

In its gentlest form, biohacking is basically:

“What little habit could I try today that might make me feel marginally better?”

Which is fine. It sounds doable. And good, even.

But somewhere along the way, it drifted into this Silicon Valley flavoured idea that our bodies are malfunctioning apps in need of constant updates and patches. That if we’re not tracking, measuring, stacking, or optimizing something at all times, we’re somehow falling behind, we’re doing life wrong. It’s wellness disguised as a software upgrade, and… just seeing the word now makes me tired.

But wonder doesn’t live in a spreadsheet; it lives in the inefficient, the unplanned, and the slow. The real. We’re not all Arnold Swarzennegger in The Terminator. Maybe we will be in 100 years, but not now (thank you very much!).

So I’m calling out the so-called “productivity-industrial complex” that makes us feel guilty for a morning where we just stare at the steam rising from a coffee cup as we look out our windows without a “goal.” I want to just brush my teeth, thank you very much, not practice standing in tree pose at the same time.

We need to reclaim the wonder of being so-called ‘unproductive’ (or, even just normally productive). Just doing one thing at a time. We’re not circus performers. We don’t need to juggle balls and flame throwers while riding on the back of elephants and doing backflips at the same time.

We need to just get back to one thing and a time and not trying to change everything about us all at once. It’s fine to have goals, and want to change an improve. But we don’t need to change ourselves into super humans. Unless we want to be cast in the next Marvel movie.

What do you say? Optimization of ourselves and our lives is probably just a fast track to Burnout Town. Let’s take a breath, take a step back and try to un-optimize (de-optimize?) ourselves as best we can.

And take things a step at a time.

Free for every Villager — quizzes, apps, guides, and a few wanders worth taking. The whole collection lives here: → Explore the village (and the Ko-fi shop if you’re browsing.)

For paid Villagers ($5/month): The 121-page Wonder Kit. Village Hearth (your private sanctuary — living campfire, Hearth Ledger, Breathe Bubble). Friction to Flow (a journaling app for the deeper daily work). Monthly Emberlight community gathering.

This isn’t a content subscription. It’s a threshold. The hearth is lit, the seat is yours, and the Kit arrives the moment you step in.

Claim your seat at the Hearth →Subscribe

There is a particular kind of tiredness that does not always look dramatic from the outside.

You answer the emails. You make the tea. You move through the day with enough steadiness that no one would necessarily stop and ask if you are all right. But inside, something has become thin. Your attention is scattered across too many tabs, too many small obligations, too many unfinished thoughts.

On days like that, I have learned to appreciate very small pauses.

Not grand retreats. Not a full reset. Not the kind of transformation that asks you to become a different person by Monday morning.

Just a pause small enough to fit inside an ordinary day.

For me, that pause often begins with touch. A bead between the fingers. The rim of a mug. A smooth stone kept near a desk. A small object that does not solve anything, but quietly interrupts the rush.

It says: here.

It says: this moment is still here too.

The Mercy of Something Simple

When life feels full, simplicity can feel like mercy.

The mind wants to explain everything. It wants to review, rehearse, predict, defend, improve, compare. It moves with such confidence that we can begin to mistake its movement for truth. If the mind says the day is ruined, we believe the day is ruined. If it says we are behind, we believe we are behind. If it says there is no room to breathe, we forget the body is already breathing.

A small object gives the mind something humbler to meet.

Not an answer. Not a philosophy. Just texture, temperature, weight, shape.

There is something quietly generous about this. The object does not ask us to be profound. It does not ask us to calm down on command. It offers no performance to succeed or fail at. It simply gives the nervous system one clear place to land.

Sometimes I think this is one of the kindest things a practice can do: make returning feel possible.

Returning Is the Practice

We often imagine mindfulness as a state we are supposed to achieve. Peaceful. Spacious. Slightly luminous. Preferably with excellent posture.

But most of my real-life mindfulness has been less graceful.

It has looked like noticing that my shoulders are up around my ears while I am reading the same sentence for the fourth time. It has looked like realizing I have been holding my breath while waiting for a reply. It has looked like placing both feet on the floor and admitting, with some tenderness, that I am not actually present for the life I am trying so hard to manage.

Then, if I am lucky, something small brings me back.

A breath.

A sound outside the window.

The warmth of a cup.

The pressure of an object in my hand.

The object is not important because it is special. It is important because it is available. It gives attention a doorway back into the body.

And the body, patient as ever, has been here the whole time.

A Practice for Overfull Days

This is a practice I return to when the day feels too full:

Choose one small object nearby. It can be anything comfortable to hold. A stone, a ring, a bead, a key, a shell, a bracelet, a coin, a button from a drawer.

Hold it without squeezing.

Notice one thing about it.

The coolness.

The smooth place.

The uneven edge.

The weight resting in your palm.

Take one breath.

Let the exhale be a little longer than the inhale, if that feels natural.

Then ask, without forcing an answer:

Maybe the problem is still here. The deadline, the grief, the awkward conversation, the unpaid bill, the ache in the chest. The practice is not to pretend otherwise.

The practice is to widen the frame.

The problem is here, and the hand is here.

The worry is here, and the breath is here.

The uncertainty is here, and the small object is resting against the skin.

This is not denial. It is companionship. It is the quiet refusal to let one difficult thing become the only thing.

The Ordinary Can Hold Us

I love practices that do not require perfect conditions.

There is a place for silence, candles, bells, cushions, incense, long walks, and all the beautiful forms that help us remember. But there is also a place for the tiny practice that happens in a kitchen, at a desk, in a parked car, at the edge of a bed before sleep.

The ordinary can hold us too.

This may be why small objects become meaningful over time. We do not simply use them once. We return to them. The hand finds them again and again until they gather a kind of quiet association. They become linked with the decision to soften, to pause, to begin again.

There is nothing supernatural required. Repetition itself is powerful.

Every time we return, we teach the body that return is possible.

Every time we pause, we make a little more room between the world and our reaction to it.

Every time we choose gentleness over acceleration, we remember that we are allowed to meet our own lives with care.

Noticing the Wonder That Remains

The word wonder can sound large, as if it belongs only to mountains, miracles, births, stars, and moments that rearrange us completely.

But there is another kind of wonder that is much quieter.

The fact that breath continues without our supervision.

The fact that a hand can close around something small and feel less alone.

The fact that attention, no matter how many times it wanders, can come back.

The fact that the present moment is not a reward for people who have mastered their lives. It is available, clumsily and generously, even in the middle of an ordinary Thursday.

Some days, that is enough wonder for me.

Not the kind that lifts me out of my life, but the kind that returns me to it.

A Small Invitation

Sometime today, choose one object near you and hold it for one breath.

Do not make it symbolic unless symbolism arrives naturally. Do not demand calm. Do not turn the pause into another assignment.

Just feel what is here.

Let the object be simple.

Let the breath be enough.

Let the moment be allowed to exist without being improved.

Then continue.

Not fixed, perhaps.

But a little more accompanied.

And sometimes, that is the beginning of coming back to ourselves.

Thanks to Yang for writing this great and beautiful reminder of things we can do to bring us back to ourselves, for Dose of Wonder! Don’t forget to check out PotalaStore for Buddhist-inspired objects, mindful living, and everyday rituals. Learn more at https://www.potalastore.com/.

Free for every Villager — quizzes, apps, guides, and a few wanders worth taking. The whole collection lives here: → Explore the village (and the Ko-fi shop if you’re browsing.)

For paid Villagers ($5/month): The 121-page Wonder Kit. Village Hearth (your private sanctuary — living campfire, Hearth Ledger, Breathe Bubble). Friction to Flow (a journaling app for the deeper daily work). Monthly Emberlight community gathering.

This isn’t a content subscription. It’s a threshold. The hearth is lit, the seat is yours, and the Kit arrives the moment you step in.

Claim your seat at the Hearth →Subscribe

Do you ever look up from something you've been doing and think: wait, when did this happen?

That's kinda where I am right now.

I've been writing Dose of Wonder (on Substack anyway) since September 2024. I started it the way I start most things: with a feeling and a vague plan and absolutely no idea what I was doing.

The feeling was: I want to write about wonder and grief and mindfulness and the weird beauty of being a person. The plan was: publish something every week and see what happens.

What has happened is that 1,700 of you are now here.

I mean… SEVENTEEN HUNDRED. That number just looks fake and yet here it is, just sitting there staring me in the face.

And somewhere in between "I have a Substack" and "I have 1,700 subscribers," something else happened that I didn't fully clock until I looked at it all at once recently.

DoW grew a whole ecosystem. Tools and apps and quizzes and a shop and a community, oh my! None of it was part of the original plan (I'm not sure there was an original plan, if I'm honest), and all of it came from the same impulse: what would actually help?

So. In honour of hitting 1,700 Villagers — and because I realized a lot of you probably don't know half of this exists — let me give you the tour.

Where it started (and what it actually is)

DoW began as a grief practice, technically. My daily yoga practice started on January 1st 2016, two weeks after my mom died, because I needed something to do with my body while my heart figured out what to do. Writing again came later (5 years later! after stopping writing when my mom died. Sigh. Not recommended to stop doing things you love, but it’s what happened). But from the same place: I had this need to make sense of being alive by putting words to it, and the hope that someone else would read it and think oh, me too.

That's still what this is. It's just that "this" has gotten…uh, bigger.

The Substack, the weekly essays (well, multiple a week), the mindfulness practices, the Wonder Wrap-Ups, the Emberlight community for paid subscribers, that's the hearth.

That's where I write and you read and sometimes we have an actual conversation in the comments that makes me feel like the internet isn't entirely a disaster zone.

But around the hearth, there's now a whole village square of things I built because I kept thinking I wish there was a tool for this.

The tools (yes, there are several lots, I know)

The Wonder Picker (wonderpicker.pages.dev)

This is probably the one I'm most proud of, and also the one that took me longest to create. It’s simple: you tell it how you're feeling (there are nine emotional categories — things like grief, anxiety, burnout, loneliness, illness, big change), and it recommends a wonder practice from a library of 27. No pressure. No optimization. Just: here's something that might help right now if you’re struggling in some way. It's free and always will be.

The Grief Companion (grief-companion.pages.dev)

Grief is one of DoW's core territories, and I wanted something that could hold space for people in a moment when they need it and don't necessarily want to dig through articles. The Grief Companion is a gentle presence: not a therapist, not a chatbot, just a place to land when you need to feel less alone in it. Again, free.

The Slow Living Audit (slow-living-audit.pages.dev)

Because "slow living" is one of those phrases that can start to feel like aesthetic wallpaper (like: ooh, a linen tablecloth! pastel colours! social media filters! TikTok reels!) and I wanted to give it something grounded. The Slow Living Audit helps you look honestly at where your life is moving at a pace that actually suits you, and where it's quietly moving at someone else's pace. No shame at whatever yours is, just some clarity around it.

Still & Steadfast (still-and-steadfast.lovable.app)

A Stoic and Buddhist wisdom tool. I know, I know — that sounds very serious, and, well, stoic, but I promise it isn't heavy. You come with a question or a situation, and it offers you something to hold from both traditions. Sometimes Seneca or Epictetus or Aurelius Sometimes the Buddha. Well, actually, both, looking at each other across the centuries going yep, same. The article about it launches July 14 — but you can go play with it now if you want.

The Resonance Map (resonancemap.pages.dev)

This one's a bit different — it's built specifically for Substack writers who want to get clearer on their editorial identity and what actually resonates with their audience. Three modes, fully self-guided, no sign-in required. If you're a creator yourself, this one's for you.

The DoW Quizzes

Two of them: Is DoW For You? (is-dow-for-you.pages.dev) — which is exactly what it sounds like, a gentle litmus test for new readers. And the Slow Living Quiz (which is actually the first of these tools I built, which is a shorter, lighter companion to the Audit.

And the home base

All of this: the tools, the shop, various apps lives at doseofwonder.pages.dev. It's the Village map. If you're ever lost or confused about where everything is (and given the above, I would completely understand if you are), that's where to go.

What I want to say about all of this

I didn't plan an ecosystem. I don’t want this to come across as some sort of bragging article, like ‘look at everything I’ve made!’ because that's not what it is.

What it is, is: wonder kept pointing at things.

Every tool, every quiz, every ebook came from the same question: what does this community actually need? (which really came from me asking myself what do I need?).

Not what would scale, not what would monetize well, just: what would help? And then I'd build the thing, usually at some slightly crazy hour of night, and put it out, and some of you would find it and use it and occasionally send me a comment about it, and that would spur me on to start creating the next thing (so thank you!).

1,700 of you have found your way here. Some of you have been here from the beginning, which I still kinda can’t really wrap my head around, it’s just mindboggling to me! Some of you arrived last week. Some of you are reading this right now having never clicked on a single tool which is completely fine, the essays are the main thing really.

But if you've been vaguely aware that DoW is "more than just a newsletter" and never quite known what that means… now you know. It's a lot. And to be honest, I’m kind of amazed it exists.

Thank you for being here while it was becoming itself (and forever still becoming).

And don't forget to live with a dose of wonder.

P.S. As I said, the full map is at doseofwonder.pages.dev. Bookmark it. Share it with someone who might need a gentle place to land.

If you’ve been meaning to explore beyond the newsletter, this is a good moment to start.

Free for every Villager — quizzes, apps, guides, and a few wanders worth taking. The whole collection lives here: → Explore the village (and the Ko-fi shop if you’re browsing.)

For paid Villagers ($5/month): The 121-page Wonder Kit. Village Hearth (your private sanctuary — living campfire, Hearth Ledger, Breathe Bubble). Friction to Flow (a journaling app for the deeper daily work). Monthly Emberlight community gathering.

This isn’t a content subscription. It’s a threshold. The hearth is lit, the seat is yours, and the Kit arrives the moment you step in.

Claim your seat at the Hearth →Subscribe

Have you ever scrolled past a quote like “just breathe” and felt both seen and slightly annoyed at the same time? In this episode, I’m digging into my own internal debate about the motivational slogans and mental health memes that fill our feeds.

I’ll be honest: I love a pithy saying as much as anyone, and I often find them deeply validating. But I can’t help but wonder—are these slogans genuinely helpful advice, or are we just drowning in a sea of empty platitudes?

We’ll explore:

• Why “just breathe” is a lifeline for some and a meaningless repetition for others.

• The thin line between a soulful reminder and an oversimplified observation.

• How to navigate the subjective nature of self-care in a high-gloss digital culture.

I’m not here to tell you to throw away your favorite quotes, but I am inviting you to look at them through a different lens. Let’s talk about how we can find true emotional support without settling for the “instant expert” versions of healing.

Loved this episode? You can find extra goodies, gentle tools, and printable doses of wonder over in my Ko-fi shop. You can also buy me a coffee to help support me. Every purchase supports this quiet corner of the internet and helps keep the podcast going. Thank you for being here. 💛

The podcast is always free — that won’t change. But if today’s episode stirred something and you want somewhere to put it, The Well in the Village Square is open to everyone: drop a worry, a question, a half-formed thought into the water and receive something back. Not advice. A witness. Free, no login, one tap away. And if you’ve been listening a while and want the deeper room, paid Villagers have Village Hearth, the Wonder Kit, and Friction to Flow waiting.

Subscribe now

References:

It’s Ok to Not Be Ok by Caitlin McColl https://medium.com/inkslinger-magazine/its-ok-to-not-be-ok-empty-platitude-or-helpful-advice-bd0c36512be4

The Emberlight is a monthly gathering for paid Villagers — a question by the fire, a month to sit with it, and a room where the same people keep showing up. You don’t need a tidy answer. You just need to pull up a chair.*

Not a paid Villager yet? The door is here:

Read more