Tag: forward is a pace

Stillness

Kristine Binder

As a 60th birthday gift to myself, I joined a gym. This may not sound like a particularly profound milestone, but for me it felt like a quiet act of defiance against a year that had taken more out of me than I expected. I told myself that no matter what else life threw my way, this would be something I did for me. And somewhat to my own surprise, I have not missed a single day since I started. Every. Single. Day. Some days I work out harder than others. Some days it’s cardio, some days it’s weights, and some days the workout is generous enough to be described as “movement.” But I show up. Consistency, it turns out, is sometimes more important than intensity.
The one part of the routine I never skip is the sauna. Fifteen to twenty minutes in that heat feels like something is leaving my body that has been stuck there for too long. I’m sure there are impressive physiological explanations for why this is good for me, and I’m happy to claim all the health benefits experts talk about. But what I notice most are the mental ones. Sitting in that heat, sweating out the day, feels like a release valve for the parts of grief and stress that quietly accumulate in the body. Apparently grief is not only emotional, it is also very committed to setting up residence in my shoulders.
Most of my days are anything but quiet. Teaching means I am “on” from the moment I walk into the building. Decisions, conversations, explanations, encouragement, redirection…lather, rinse and repeat. My brain rarely gets a break. After school there are more conversations, more responsibilities, and the drive home is usually spent catching up with friends or returning calls that have been waiting patiently for my attention. My life is full of people, which is a blessing I do not take lightly, but it also means that stillness is not something that naturally appears in my day.
Then I get to the gym and something shifts.
No one there knows me. No one knows my story or the things I am carrying. No one knows about my grief, my pride, my resilience, or the complicated chapters that have brought me to this moment. To them I am simply another person on a treadmill or lifting a weight or quietly existing in the corner of the sauna. I am just taking up space, which turns out to be incredibly freeing.
It is the same now when I walk or run. I put my phone on do not disturb and go. No one is asking questions, no one needs answers, and no one expects anything from me. It was never that way before until now. I do not have to explain myself or justify my emotions or revisit demons I am not particularly interested in entertaining that day. It is just me and my thoughts. The ones I choose to engage with and the ones that show up uninvited, which…if we are being honest… is how most thoughts operate anyway.
Recently I have also attended a few meditation sessions, which has been an interesting development for someone whose mind has historically operated like a browser with 47 tabs open at once. I learned about the “monkey mind,” the restless mental chatter that hops from one thought to another without ever fully settling. Sitting in stillness does not come naturally to me. In fact, the first time I tried it, my brain seemed determined to remind me of everything from my grocery list I forgot to buy in 2007.
But something interesting happened afterward. When the meditation ended, I felt an immense sense of peace, followed by a kind of exhaustion that feels strangely familiar. It is the same tiredness you feel after running a long race. Apparently, sitting still with your thoughts can be just as demanding as running a marathon—who knew?
Grief has changed the rhythm of my life in ways I am still learning to understand. There is a natural tension in being human between belonging and solitude. We need connection, community, laughter, and the comfort of knowing someone else is walking beside us. But we also need solitude. We need quiet spaces where we can sit with our thoughts and make sense of the emotions that don’t always behave politely enough to appear on a convenient schedule.
When grief enters your life, that rhythm becomes exaggerated. Some days you crave the presence of other people because being alone feels like standing in an echo chamber of sadness. Other days even the smallest interaction feels overwhelming, and what you want most is silence. The pendulum swings back and forth between connection and solitude, and learning to follow that rhythm becomes part of the work of healing.
The truth is that much of grief is experienced alone. In those quiet hours, when the world is not asking anything of us, we sit with loss and slowly begin the difficult work of understanding it. In that stillness, sorrow begins to transform. It becomes deeper, more complex, and eventually…. if we allow it…. something that can expand our capacity for compassion.
My therapist and others who have gently guided me through this season keep telling me the same thing: the answers I am searching for will come in the stillness.
This is mildly inconvenient advice for someone who was raised to believe that movement equals progress and productivity equals worth. I was conditioned to stay busy, stay useful, and stay in motion. Rest was seen as weakness and sitting still was NEVER an option. If you were tired, you probably just needed to work harder. If you were struggling, the solution was to keep going in order to outrun it.
Stillness was never presented or accepted as an option.
So learning to sit quietly with my thoughts has become its own kind of practice. I am learning that movement does not always have to be loud or fast to count. Sometimes movement is subtle. Sometimes it is simply the act of allowing yourself to feel something instead of outrunning it.
Either way, I am worthy.
Either way, I am doing enough.
So these days I find myself gravitating toward the quiet places more often. The sauna. The treadmill. A long walk where no one knows my name and no one needs anything from me. No music, no books, no phone calls—just the noise of my own brain, which, depending on the day, can be the loudest sound in the world.
Learning to listen to that noise…. and eventually quiet it…. is a skill I am still developing.
Slowly.
And I am beginning to suspect that slowly might be exactly the pace that grief requires.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Becoming

Kristine Binder

There is a stage of life that no one really prepares you for, and lately I have realized that I am standing right in the middle of it.
We spend so much of our lives planning the obvious milestones. College. Careers. Marriage. Babies. Houses. Retirement accounts. The whole thing gets mapped out like a timeline we are supposed to follow. There are books, podcasts, experts, and entire industries devoted to helping people navigate those stages. But this stage? The one where the roles that once defined your life quietly shift or even disappear? That part seems to get skipped entirely.
And yet here I am.
For years I was the director of my children’s lives. I scheduled things, organized things, advised on things, and occasionally insisted on things. Now I have moved into a role that no one warned me about: audience member. I am in the stands cheering them on as they build their own lives, trying very hard not to yell unsolicited advice from the sidelines like a slightly overenthusiastic sports/stage mom clapping as loud as I possibly can at every chance I get. It is a beautiful transition, but it is still a transition.
At the same time, another role in my life quietly ended. For the past few years I was a caretaker for my parents, and when they passed away that responsibility ended in a way that left a space I had never really anticipated. When you have been responsible for others for so long, it is a strange realization to wake up one day and understand that the person you are now responsible for caring for is… you.
Caretaker of myself.
That is a role I never really planned for, and it turns out there is no instruction manual for it. No one sits you down and says, “Here’s what happens when your children are grown, your parents are gone, and you suddenly have to figure out who you are outside of the roles that filled your life for decades.”
Maybe that is why this season feels a little unsteady. Not wrong. Not sad or happy all the time. Just unfamiliar. Although, to be fair, the unsteady feeling could also be my joints reminding me that I am sixty. It is hard to say which is which some days.
Sixty is an interesting number because it sounds enormous when you say it out loud, yet somehow my brain did not get the memo. In my head I feel much younger than that. My body occasionally disagrees, but overall it is still cooperating well enough. There are a few more aches than there used to be, but nothing a little stretching, movement, and mild denial cannot handle.
And despite the uncertainty, life actually feels pretty full. I pay my own bills. I make my own decisions. If I want cheese and crackers for dinner, I have cheese and crackers for dinner and no one questions my life choices. If I want to stay up late reading, writing, or going down a rabbit hole of ideas for something new I want to build, I do that too. Some nights the house is quiet and peaceful, and other nights I am talking to the dog like he is a full participant in the conversation, which, based on the look he gives me, he clearly believes he is helping with the decision making process.
There is a certain freedom that comes with running your own life. I decide how I spend my time. I decide where my energy goes. If I want to sign up for something new, start a project, change direction, or sit with a cup of coffee and think about life for an hour, I can. There is no committee meeting required to approve the plan. There is also something deeply satisfying about realizing that the life around me is one I built myself over time, piece by piece.
And yes, I still sleep diagonally across the bed when I feel like it… unless the dog has claimed most of the mattress, which happens more often than I care to admit.
People sometimes assume that at this stage a woman must be looking for a partner, as though being single automatically means something is missing. As if there is a box on the life checklist that still needs to be filled in. But the truth is that I am perfectly content with my life as it is. I have built a life that feels full, meaningful, and mine.
If a partner ever enters the picture, they will need to be a one hundred percent value add to my life. Not a fixer-upper project. Not someone who needs to be managed, motivated, or mothered. I am long past the stage of my life where I am interested in taking on another full-time emotional renovation project. At this point, anyone who joins my life should arrive with their own life already intact.
Someone who brings joy, laughter, and partnership to the table. Someone who makes the good parts of life even better, not someone who complicates the peace I have worked hard to create. Otherwise, I am quite happy running my own life, making my own decisions, and yes… sleeping diagonally across the bed.
What I do find myself wondering about, though, is how many other women are standing in this same space.
How many of us are just a bit past the midpoint of life and realizing that there is still so much living left to do, while also recognizing that the structure of our lives has shifted in ways we never really planned for? We are no longer raising small children. Many of us are navigating the loss of parents or other loved ones. The roles that once defined us are evolving, and we are discovering who we are when we are no longer primarily responsible for everyone else.
The loss of my parents is still very raw, and grief has a way of rearranging the furniture in your life whether you are ready for it or not. Some days I feel strong and clear about what comes next, and other days I feel like I am simply doing my best to put one thoughtful foot in front of the other. But somewhere inside all of that is the quiet understanding that this is now my time to discover what my life looks like in this new space.
It is a space that many women never really get the chance to explore. Sometimes that is because they have a partner whose life direction becomes intertwined with their own. Sometimes it is because life moves so quickly that there is never time to stop and ask, What do I want now? And sometimes, if we are honest, it is simply fear. Fear of stepping outside the roles we have known for decades. Fear of the unknown. Fear of standing in a place where there is no clear guidebook.
Because there really isn’t one.
This era of life does not come with instructions. There is no neatly packaged plan for what to do when your children are grown, your parents are gone, and you suddenly realize that the next chapter of your life is largely yours to design.
That realization is both terrifying and incredibly liberating.
So for now, I am doing what I have always done when life feels uncertain. I am moving forward, learning as I go, and paying attention to what feels meaningful. I am allowing myself the space to grieve, the space to grow, and the space to imagine what this next era might hold.
And I suspect I am not the only woman standing in this place.
Which is why I find myself thinking more and more about community. About women walking alongside one another through this stage of life instead of quietly trying to figure it all out alone. Women who are still very much in their prime, still curious, still capable, still full of life, but also honest about the fact that this chapter comes with questions.
Maybe together we can help create the path that none of us were given. We can support one another as we figure out what this next era looks like, share what we are learning along the way, and build something that not only helps us move forward but also creates space for the women who will come after us.
Because while there may not be a guidebook for this part of life, there is something powerful about realizing that we have the ability to write it ourselves.
And for now, I will keep doing the one thing I know how to do.
Moving forward.
Because forward is a pace.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Undercurrent

Kristine Binder

Earlier this week, grief knocked the wind out of me. Literally took me down and out.
I’m only writing about it now because I needed time to process what happened. It took sitting with it for a few days and talking it through in therapy before I could really understand it enough to put words to it.
It started in the most ordinary way. I drove to work like I always do…. same streets, same turns, same parking spot. I pulled in, turned off the car, and then just sat there. And I couldn’t get out. The building was right in front of me. My bag was on the seat. Nothing was different, and yet everything felt impossibly heavy.
The strangest part was that I don’t even know what caused it. There wasn’t a specific memory or moment. It was like a wave came out of nowhere, took me under, and I couldn’t seem to come up for air. I was completely consumed by my own sadness. Nothing made it feel better, and that part scared me. It felt like I was in a spiral of sadness with no clear reason why.
I texted a friend who knows me well enough to give me exactly what I needed…. a little empathy and a little tough love. Eventually I took a breath, opened the car door, and went inside.
From the outside, the day probably looked normal. Work went on. Conversations happened. The usual rhythm of the day moved forward. But all day I was holding back tears. The smallest things would make my eyes well up….. a kind word, a quiet moment, a passing thought. Nothing dramatic, just the weight of grief sitting right under the surface.
There are moments lately where I almost wish I could just wear a sign so people would understand. Something that says “Caution: grieving.” Or maybe “Hey… be nice. My parents died this year.” Or even the blunt truth: “Hey… my parents are dead.” Not because I want sympathy, but because grief makes you realize how many people are walking around carrying things no one else can see.
In the past, I probably would have suffered through something like that in silence. I would have pushed it down, smiled, and pretended everything was fine. But not anymore. I told my coworkers I was having a hard day and tried to explain how I was feeling. I could not accurately put it into words. They may not have fully understood, but they were kind. They checked on me throughout the day, offered support, and gave me space when I needed it. That mattered more than they probably realized.
One of the things I talked about in therapy later that week is how little space our society really gives to grief. In some cultures, people wear black and are openly in mourning for a year. The loss is visible. The grief is acknowledged. It is understood that healing takes time.
Here, we get a few days off. Then we’re expected to return to life as usual, even though nothing inside of us feels usual anymore.
So when grief shows up months later, or on a random weekday morning in a parking lot, it can hit hard. It can feel like a wave that knocks you down before you even see it coming.
Earlier this week it took me down and tried to pull me under. But the thing I keep coming back to is this: I didn’t drown.
I reached out to a friend. I told the truth about how I was feeling. I let the people around me see that I was struggling instead of pretending I was fine. And somehow, that felt like progress.
Grief is still there. It will probably always be there in some form. But I’m learning that letting people see it, letting them sit beside me in it, is not weakness. It’s part of healing.
And maybe that’s the quiet lesson grief is teaching me now.
The waves may still come, but I am stronger than the ones that try to pull me under. I am learning to swim and surf.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Character

Kristine Binder
People always show you who they are.

There are seasons in life when we are barely holding ourselves together. Grief, illness, loss, divorce, heartbreak…. those moments when simply getting through the day feels like an accomplishment. They are the most fragile seasons of our lives. And in those moments, something becomes very clear: people reveal exactly who they are.
Just because people process grief differently does not give anyone permission to be cruel. Cruelty during someone’s most vulnerable moment isn’t a misunderstanding or a mistake. It’s a choice. And that choice tells you everything you will ever need to know about a person.
We are often told to be kind because we never know what someone else is going through. That is good advice. Kindness matters. Compassion matters. In life we are also often encouraged to assume positive intent, to start from a place of believing that people mean well.
And I do believe in starting there.
But life also teaches you that there are moments when positive intent becomes impossible to assume. There are people who take advantage of kindness, who see someone grieving or struggling and instead of protecting that fragile moment, they exploit it. They take advantage of your diminished capacity, your vulnerability, your exhaustion, your heartbreak. Not because they misunderstood, but because they could.
There are some things in life that should be sacred. Untouchable. Off limits. Someone’s darkest season should be one of them. When a person is sick, grieving, broken, or simply trying to keep their head above water, that is when the people around them are supposed to step closer. That is when compassion should show up. That is when kindness matters most.
But sometimes the opposite happens.
Sometimes people see vulnerability and they don’t feel empathy…. they see opportunity. They see someone who is too exhausted to fight back, too overwhelmed to defend themselves, too heartbroken to protect themselves. And they take advantage of that moment. They say things they would never say if you were strong. They behave in ways they would never dare if you were standing firmly on your feet.
That is not simply poor character. That is the absence of humanity.
The wounds from that kind of cruelty run deep because they happen at the exact moment you needed support the most. You were already drowning, and instead of throwing you a lifeline, they pushed your head further under. You were already shattered, and instead of helping you gather the pieces, they stepped on them, crushing them even smaller.
I know this not just in theory, but in lived experience. I saw it during my divorce, and I have seen it again in other seasons of loss. Something about grief and hardship has a way of revealing people. When life cracks open and everything feels fragile, the masks fall away. In those moments, people show you exactly who they are.
And over time, you learn that people are not judged by a single sentence they say or one moment they regret. People are known by their patterns. By their behavior over and over again. By how they treat others when things are going well, and when everything is falling apart. By how they treat people when there is nothing to gain and no audience watching. And by how they behave when they do have something to gain. I have seen the worst of humanity in people who were once very close to me. The kind of cruelty that shocks you because you never imagined it could come from them. But I have also seen the absolute best in people, those who quietly step closer when life gets hard, who show compassion without needing credit, who protect others when they are at their weakest. They sit with you and, often saying nothing, help you feel safe.
In loss, people reveal themselves.
And that is how you learn who to trust. I am not a vengeful person, but I do believe in karma. Not the dramatic kind people talk about, but the quieter kind. I know that karma may simply be that some people have to live with the person they chose to be. They have to sit with the choices they made and the way they treated someone who was already hurting. And in the end, that may be consequence enough.
I know that through those seasons I stayed in my lane. I did the best I could with the strength and clarity I had at the time. When I made mistakes, I owned them. I apologized. I worked to correct them.
But cruelty? That is different.
Cruelty is intentional. And when someone chooses cruelty toward a person who is already wounded, it is not something you forget—not because you are holding onto anger, but because you learned something important.
People always show you who they are.
And if you are paying attention, those moments help you see more clearly. They show you who is safe, who is kind, who will stand beside you when life gets hard. In the end, those lessons don’t just protect your heart….
they guide you toward the people who truly deserve a place in your life.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Notice

Kristine Binder

Every year when Fat Tuesday rolls around, I decide I’m going to do Lent right. There’s always a brief window — usually while holding a paczki — where I become extremely optimistic about my future holiness. I am going to give up something that will make me a better person after 40 days is over…
I’ve given up soda (Dr. Pepper is my fave and still a treat!). I’ve given up chocolates and dessert. I’ve given up coffee (the Lord and I both know that one was never sustainable). I once gave up buying clothes and gave something away every day. I’ve tried the rosary. I’ve tried daily Bible reading. I’ve tried structure and discipline and holy intentions.
And some years it stuck. Most years it… didn’t. Turns out self-improvement and I have a complicated relationship.
Those who know me also know I’m not really a “church” or organized-religion person in the traditional sense. But my faith runs deep. My belief in God and Jesus is steady and personal, and I pray every day. The Memorare is one that is more like a mantra and has become the prayer I fall back on when I don’t have words of my own – especially on the days when my prayers sound less like poetry and more like, “Okay… now what?”
This year I’m not feeling any call to heroic deprivation. Honestly, I could use all the desserts…. eating my feelings has been my go-to lately, and at this point the desserts and I are in a committed relationship.
So this Lent I’m not giving up small pleasures in hopes that suffering will magically reorder my soul. This year I’m giving up the things that are actually stealing my peace.
I’m giving up pretending I am a person who can successfully give up something like food or shopping for 40 days. Growth starts with honesty. I’m giving up rehearsing old resentments….. the ones I polish and revisit like they’re part of my personality. The stories I tell myself about other people, and the even harsher ones I tell myself.
I’m giving up the voice in my head that still thinks I should be a past version of me if I just try hard enough. I am giving up the lies I have told myself for years about who and what I deserve. I’m giving up expecting immediate text responses from my kids (this may be the holiest sacrifice of all… and also the least successful). I’m giving up believing the internet is an accurate representation of the world. It isn’t. It’s an algorithm, not reality – and definitely not a spiritual director.
Mostly, I’m giving up control – the exhausting illusion that if I monitor everything closely enough, worry hard enough, and plan carefully enough, I can keep life neat, predictable, and according to my own plans. Life, as it turns out, has never once agreed to that arrangement, no matter how convincing my spreadsheets were.
So instead of subtraction or even addition, this year I’m choosing attention.
For over a year I posted every single week…… seven moments of joy from the previous week. One photo for each day. One small moment of beauty at a time. And then life got heavy. Grief, responsibility, noise, fear, logistics. Noticing got replaced with surviving…… and surviving doesn’t leave much room for wonder.
So I’m going back.
From Ash Wednesday forward, I’m keeping a daily practice of deliberately looking for what is still good. Each day I’ll share one small thing – a photo of something I find beautiful, a kind interaction with a stranger, a sentence someone said that mattered, or one honest gratitude from the day.
Nothing curated. Nothing inspirational or poster perfect. Just real evidence that goodness still exists right here, right now.
Because social media….. and honestly the world lately …. trains our brains to scan for danger. For outrage. For proof everything is broken. But God is rarely found in the shouting. God shows up in the ordinary. Jesus himself saw straight through the ugliness of humanity to the beautiful parts. He sat with the outcasts, forgave the mess, loved people anyway. I mean… the man literally died for us and for the sins of the world. That kind of love isn’t loud. It’s steady, present, and usually happening in small moments we almost miss because of the chaos around us.
Sunrise peaking through the buildings. Someone holding a door. A laugh you didn’t expect. The dog excitedly waiting for you to arrive home. The moment your mind finally goes quiet and you just smile…..usually when you weren’t even trying.
I’m not pretending life is easy. I’m not ignoring the steady stream of news. I am still grieving. I’m just refusing to miss beauty while pain and ugliness exist. Holiness, at least for me this year, might look less like discipline and more like paying attention.
This Lent I’m giving up the constant analysis, the doom-scrolling, the need to fix every outcome. And instead, I’m going to look for the goodness and presence of God.
One ordinary day at a time. One ordinary moment at a time.
If you need that too, I would love it if you would join me. It would genuinely bring me joy to see what brings you joy – what goodness you notice in the world, because most of us have no trouble agreeing on what makes us angry or frustrated. Maybe we can practice agreeing on the good, too.
Maybe none of us will emerge dramatically transformed but maybe we’ll notice more goodness, carry a little more peace, and arrive at Easter ready to celebrate with real joy when He is risen…
the kind of joy that feels earned because we actually learned to see it.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace