Self-Care Saturday

    

     Self-Care Saturday is more than a cute hashtag. It’s a gentle declaration that you are worthy of rest, intention, and renewal before the week asks anything of you. Saturdays hold a unique kind of permission. The rush eases, the clock loosens its grip, and your nervous system finally gets a chance to exhale. Self-care isn’t indulgence; it’s maintenance. It’s how we return to ourselves after pouring into work, family, purpose, and people. When we choose self-care, we are choosing ourselves.

    Self-Care Saturday can look beautifully different for everyone. For some, it’s a slow morning with tea, prayer, journaling, or a gratitude practice that recenters the heart. For others, it’s movement; walking, stretching, dancing, or heading to the gym to release stress stored in the body. 

    Creative care might mean reading, painting, writing, or tending to a passion project that feeds your spirit. 

    Social care could be brunch with a trusted friend, while sensory care might be a long bath, a skincare ritual, or simply sitting in silence. Each activity carries benefits: lowered stress, improved mood, clearer thinking, emotional regulation, and a deeper sense of connection to yourself.

    What makes Self-Care Saturday powerful is intention. When you pause to ask, What do I need today?—you begin practicing self-trust. Over time, these small, consistent choices build resilience, prevent burnout, and remind you that your well-being matters just as much as your productivity. Let Saturday be your weekly reset. Not to become more, but to remember who you already are. 💜

Self-care is not selfish.

Small Dignity Tasks

    

    There's a phrase I've been returning to lately. Small dignity task. It names something many of us do instinctively but rarely honor. A small dignity task is a simple, grounded action that restores a sense of self when life feels overwhelming, uncertain, or discouraging. It's not about productivity or progress in the traditional sense. It's about dignity. About reminding yourself, I still matter. I can care for myself even when things feel unstable. When big plans feel heavy and clarity feels far away, these small acts become anchors. They don't fix everything but they help you stay connected to who you are while you're waiting for things to shift.

    Small dignity tasks are especially important during seasons of discouragement, financial strain, grief, transition, or decision fatigue. When motivation is low and pressure is high. They're for the days when getting through feels like enough. When you're tired of pushing but not ready to give up. These tasks are not about "doing more"; they're about doing one kind thing for yourself that reestablishes self-respect and steadiness. They help regulate your nervous system, quiet the internal noise, and create just enough emotional traction to keep moving forward, without forcing answers or pretending everything is fine.

Because let's be honest, everything is not always fine.

    Here are a few examples of small dignity tasks—simple, accessible actions that gently restore balance:

• Making your bed or clearing one small surface
• Drinking a full glass of water before checking your phone
• Taking a shower with intention (music, silence, or deep breaths)
• Stepping outside for fresh air, even for two minutes
• Sending one honest email or message you've been avoiding
• Preparing a nourishing meal or snack instead of skipping food
• Writing one sentence in a journal: "Today feels ___."
• Changing into clean, comfortable clothes
• Lighting a candle or sitting quietly for a moment of stillness

    None of these are grand. And that's the point. Small dignity tasks are quiet declarations that you are worthy of care right now, not later. Before the breakthrough, before the stability, before everything makes sense. They are how we tend to ourselves while life is unfolding.

Which dignity tasks are you most likely to try when things are not fine?

Yvette Flunder (Orginal Vocalist) "Thank You Lord" By Walter Hawkins

Releasing the Pressure to Niche Down

    

    For a long time, I heard the same advice over and over again: niche down. Make it smaller. Make it clearer. Make it easier to explain. I thought my niche was simply self-publishing and writing. And while that's true, it was never the whole truth.

    What I didn't realize then was how much pressure that advice carried. It made me feel like I had to flatten my experience to fit inside a category. Like I had to choose one lane when my life had clearly taken many. Writing wasn't separate from healing. Publishing wasn't separate from grief. Coaching wasn't separate from lived experience. They were all informing each other at the same time.

    Now I see it differently. My niche isn't a single service or skill, it's the intersection of my story, my voice, and the season I'm willing to write from. It's creativity shaped by recovery. It's guidance rooted in lived experience. It's helping others give language to what they've survived and what they're still becoming.

    So no, I didn't niche down.

    I named the whole of who I am.

    And that's when everything began to make sense.

Book Name Change | From Sumthing Special To Infused

Creative Block - Epiphany - I Am The Niche

    I didn't sit down to create a series when I wrote Creative Block - Getting Back To Trying. I sat down to be honest. What started as one blog post became six, including this one. It's not because I planned it that way, but because something in me needed room to breathe. Somewhere between patience, honesty, trying, and tears, I had an epiphany: healing doesn't arrive all at once. It unfolds when we stay present with ourselves.

    Grief doesn't ask politely for space. It reshapes identity, disrupts rhythm, and forces you to move at a pace you didn't choose. Over the past couple of years, illness, recovery, and loss have all asked something different of me. Patience became an act of compassion. Honesty became a lifeline. Trying, on the days when motivation was gone, became enough. And crying stopped feeling like a setback and started feeling like release. These weren't separate lessons. They were connected. They were lived.

    For a long time, I believed creativity had to look a certain way, finished, polished, productive. But this season taught me something gentler and truer. Writing recently hasn't been for performance, but for peace. I didn't force clarity. I allowed truth. I stayed present with my grief and my creativity, without asking either one to disappear so the other could exist.

    Months ago, I saw a creator on TikTok say, "You are the niche." At the time, it sounded encouraging. Now it feels undeniable. This process magnified that truth for me. My lived experience, my pauses, my healing, my uncertainty, my persistence, is not something I need to package or overcome before it's valuable. It is the work. I am the niche.

    I draw where I am. I write where I am. I create from the place where my feet are planted, not from an imagined finish line. And in doing so, I've learned this: my voice didn't disappear during grief, it softened. My vision didn't blur, it widened. And my victory isn't loud or flashy. It's steady. It's real. It's choosing myself, again and again.

    I've also learned that while I have many things to cry about, I also have so much to look forward to.

In All Things Give Thanks,

Arlinda

Believers City | 11 AM Sunday Service | January 25, 2026

Fred Hammond & RFC - Just to Be Close to You

Same God | feat. Jonsal Barrientes & Brandon Lake | Elevation Worship

Creative Block - Cry When You Need To

 

    This season of my life has definitely had its share of tears. There are days when the tears are uncontrollable. There are days when I don't cry at all and then days later I'm in tears all over again. Especially after all that I've been through with my illness and thinking, okay... things are getting better right? And then my father passed unexpectedly and the tears returned. It felt like I never really got a break from sadness and heartache. 

Crying is not a setback. It’s a release. Holding everything in doesn’t make you stronger, it makes the weight heavier. Grief needs somewhere to go, and tears are often the safest place for it to land. They don’t mean you’re undone; they mean you’re processing. You're processing what was. You're processing letting go. 

When I was in the hospital people would come to visit almost daily.  Every time someone would walk into my room I thought, "Oh my God!" & I would immediately begin to cry. Visitors came daily. Some were such a surprise. I would simply cry at the sight of them because it was overwhelming. Knowing that people had thought enough about me to come and visit me at the hospital or hang out with me in the hospital made me reel so vulnerable. Little did I know that by Spring my tears would increase.

I remember the night that my son called me and told me that my father had passed. I remember freezing in that moment. Hearing him and processing the information caused me to freeze in that moment. Once we got to the house, to wait for the coroner to come and to remove my father's body from our childhood home, the tears began to fall. I recall standing on the sidewalk in front of the house as we were saying our goodbyes and gathering around him as a family. Those tears were continuous on all of our faces.

I’ve learned that letting myself cry clears space inside me. It doesn’t solve everything, but it softens the pressure. Sometimes after the tears, I can breathe a little easier. Sometimes I can think more clearly. And sometimes all it does is acknowledge the truth of what I’ve been carrying and that alone is enough for that day.

Creative Block - There Is Value In At Least Trying

 

    Each day has been a try for me. Each day.

    I remember when I came home from the hospital, well even going back to when I was in rehabilitation. It was hard to get up and try. I felt such defeat. How did I go from an ear infection to ICU? The impact that it had on my body was so overwhelming. Defeating. But there was a team at rehabilitation that had no "no" in them. So, I had to get up whether I wanted to or not. 

    Each day I had to attend strength class, practice walking with the bars or simply practice sitting down on a bed and getting off of a bed. It was so hard.

    When I came home I had ADA equipment to help maneuver around my home. I had therapy. I had doctor's appointments. And I was hurting. I was probably more hurt mentally than I was physically. Most days I was out of it. Fortunately, I had a little fight in me. Add to that my sons' persistence and my PT showing up with expectations, each day I began to try more.

    Trying doesn’t have to mean producing something impressive or finishing something big. Sometimes trying looks like opening a journal and writing one sentence. Sometimes it looks like sitting quietly and letting the thoughts pass without forcing them into order. Effort matters, even when the outcome feels small. 

    When I started PT, I'd be so exhausted. My therapist encouraged me to keep going or to take a break when I needed it. For me trying includes having accountability. If I had to complete PT on my own, I wouldn't have done it. My intrinsic motivation was in the negative. 📉

    There is value in choosing to engage with life in gentle ways, calling a friend, laughing when you can, returning to something you love even briefly. Kind of like me writing this blog series. These moments don’t erase grief, but they remind me that joy still exists alongside it. Trying is not about pushing through pain; it’s about staying connected to yourself while you heal.

"If at first you don't succeed dust yourself off and try again." - Aaliyah

Creative Block - Be Honest With Your Support System

The second point in Creative Block - Get Back To Trying is to be honest with your support system.

This has been hard for me to verbalize to others, friends and families included. There have been so many days that I just shutdown. It's not done on purpose. Some days are better than others and some days are just that, "a day". A day with no makeup and earrings, a litmus test for me is when I have them both on. A day when I may get dressed by sundown. Heck, it might even be a day where I have on what I had on the previous day because I slept in it. That's real talk.

One of the hardest things to do is admit that you’re not okay—especially when you’re used to being the strong one, the creative one, the dependable one. But pretending everything is fine takes energy you don’t have.  So, while I don't pretend, often I shut the world out. Grief already asks so much of you; masking your truth shouldn’t be one more burden.

Honesty creates room to breathe. It allows the people who love you to show up fully, instead of guessing or assuming. Saying, “Today is hard,” or “I don’t have words right now,” is not weakness. It’s clarity. And clarity invites connection, support, and sometimes relief—if only for a moment.

Between my sister and my three closest girlfriends, I can almost guarantee that one of them will pick up when I'm shutting the world out. In those moments I am grateful to have someone try to pull me out of that space of grief, depression and loneliness.

What's crazy to me is that I tend to be outgoing and pretty much happy go lucky. However, since Fall of 2024 my days have been so unpredictable. I honestly think that writing about it has been really helpful for me.

Creative Block - Be Patient With Yourself

    Patience is not something grief asks politely for, it demands it. Trauma and loss don’t move in straight lines, and neither does healing. Some days you wake up ready to try, ready to write, ready to think clearly. Other days, your mind feels foggy, your body feels heavy, and even the smallest task feels like too much. That isn’t failure. That’s grief doing what grief does.

    Grief will have you rethinking and reshaping your identity. As the clock was counting down to 2026, anxiety set in. I felt that my father's memory was slipping away along with 2025. I was leaving the year I lost him and entering a new era without him. That was hard. I've never known a year without my father. This is new territory for me. 

    Seeing Diana Ross perform on television reminded me of watching Mahogany and Lady Sings The Blues with my parents. Do you know where you're going to? Do you like the things that life is showing you? As of right now, I'm not so sure.

    I’ve had to learn that impatience with myself only adds another layer of pain. When you’ve been through illness, disruption, and loss back-to-back, your nervous system is still catching up. Yes, my nervous is still catching up, even nearly a year and a half later. Healing doesn’t follow a schedule, and creativity doesn’t respond well to pressure. Patience becomes an act of compassion—one that says, I’m allowed to move at the pace my life has set for me.

Check out my post Creative Block - Getting Back To Trying

Men's Basketball Highlights | Cincinnati 79, #2 Iowa State 70 | Peacock

Creative Block - Getting Back To Trying

   

    One day this week my mom asked me if I had been writing recently. I didn't know how to answer that question. What I've been trying to do, especially since December is to journal my days. I've been trying to post more on this blog site and to my social media pages. Like I have really been trying.

    But some days it's hard. It's hard to gather my thoughts, to organize my thoughts and then to put my thoughts on paper or to type them out or use dictation. Some days it's just hard. Over the past year and a half my life has had so many moments of grief that I find difficult to complete writings or to continue posting on my blog. It really depends on the day.

    Grief has a way of taking hold of you. Even as I try to fight for things to be normal, grief seems to hold me back and sometimes I can't move forward or I move very slowly. I liken it to a runner being prevented from continuing a race because someone is physically holding them back,

    I have learned that grief has shown up in several areas of my life. It's the ending of a career, it's the time loss because of illness and the passing of a relative. When you combine all of that happening in less than 2 years, I have to be honest and say most days are difficult. Well maybe not most days, how about some days are difficult.

    I love to write. I'm very creative. I am a creative who has dealt with hard things over the past couple of years. I have therapy and I have my support system. I make sure I get enough sleep and I do need to drink more water. If I could give advice to anybody who's in a similar situation I would tell them;

1. Be patient with yourself because going through trauma and grief has a way of spiraling in a way that sometimes you can't really control. 
2. Be honest with your support system. Don't try to go through life and make it seem like you're okay and everything is just fine. Because everything isn't just fine. 
3. There is value in at least trying. Make an attempt each day to do something that you love. Make an attempt each day to talk to your family and talk to your friends. Get a good laughing. 
4. Cry when you need to. It does you no good to hold everything in.

    Since Fall of 2024 I have gone from having a serious illness, to rehabilitation, to trying to heal at home and to losing my father less than a year later. There are days where I just sit & wonder & pray & believe that I'll get back on the pathway of writing and creating. But right now honestly I do have a creative block that I working through.

    It might not seem like it with this long blog. lol This is really a heart spill for me just to get it all out. 

    For that I'm grateful.

    Arlinda

James 3v2 - We All Stumble In Many Ways

 "We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check."

‭‭James‬ ‭3‬:‭2‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Recently someone shared with me that they felt another person acted "unChrist-like". I immediately told them, "Hold on, we all fall short daily."

Just as this scripture states we all stumble in many ways. You just never know if someone is having a bad day, struggling with finances or simply trying to manage time to care for others and themselves. Life right now is difficult for so many people. 

We have to learn to grant grace and to realize that none of are perfect. Rather, we're human with complexities as we navigate the same 24 hours as everyone else. 

(Originally posted on 8.17.2024)

Fred Hammond & RFC - Just to Be Close to You

It May Look Like I'm Surrounded

 

Surround means to enclose one all sides, to extend around the margin or edge of, encircle. Like when life's circumstances encases you and you don't know how you're going to get out. Or when anxiety and depression rears its ugly head and you can't seem to grab a hold of it. It feels like you're encircled and you're trapped and so you fall into a cycle of being stagnant and accepting  the status quo. 

Then you're stuck, just going around in circles. Making the same bad decisions. Attracting the same dormant relationships. But God!!! Behold, He makes all things new. He makes all things work together for good. Once you find the courage to break out of that cycle and that season of limited or no growth you can truly understand that it may look like I'm surrounded but I'm surrounded by you.

Sometimes all we can see is the enemy surrounding us, not realizing  that God has the enemy surrounded and defeated. Therefore we are blessed.

(Originally posted on 10.19.19)

 #lateinthemidnighthour #godsgoingtoturnitaround #itsgoingtoworkinmyfavor #yetwillitrusthim #thisishowifightmybattles #thisbattleaintyours #allthingswork #thinkingofamasterplan #jeremiah2911 #romans8v28 #iwokeuplikethis 🙇🏽‍♀️🥰🙌🏽👏🏾🤲🏽👑

And We Overcome - Joann Rosario

Serenity & Forgiveness - Learning From The Healing Runes

 (Originally posted 1.28.2009)

Forgiveness

In the 1990's I had a wonderful manager at the phone company. She was very centered in astrology and being holistic. She was also a dynamic cook. For the 4th of July one summer she invited the entire staff over to her home. There are two things that I remembered, one she kept the ice tea coming. While we were drinking ice tea she was boiling more in a pot. I thought how cool is that. Never thought it was that simply until I saw the process.

As I walked about her home I noticed a bag of stones and a book. I asked her about them and she told me they were ancient runes. She suggested I think of something that was going on in my life and pull a stone from the bag. I pulled the stone of Serenity. The book provided information about serenity and that was my first encounter with the serenity prayer.

For Christmas that year Bonnie gave me the exact same book and bag of runes, that I still use to this day. The past few weeks, actually the past year has been a test for me. So I decided to pull a rune to speak to those situations. I pulled the rune of Forgiveness tonight.

The passage in the book told me that I have to forgive myself as I heal and then I have to forgive others. You know you can be in a situation and place blame on others and not see what part you played in that situation. Tonight as I begin to heal from the failed marriage and the broken friendships I have to remember to be forgiving of myself for harm or pain I may have caused to others. Maybe when the marriage ended I didn't take that time to take care of me and so the wounds were still open causing more hurt to me and to others.

Remember to take out the time to see yourself in your situations. It isn't always the other person's fault entirely, you always have to look at the part you played also.

Be forgiving of yourself.

Arlinda

A Gratitude Exercise #inallthingsgivethanks

Tyler McKinley + Alex McGlothin // Episode 40 // CourtSide TakeOver

My favs!!!!! 

Lord You Are Good - Todd Galberth

Reasons To Practice Gratitude

It's A Thankful Thursday!!!

There are various reasons to practice gratitude.

• To see the goodness in your life.
• To show abundance.
• To show appreciation.

You practice gratitude by:

• Write out 3 things that you are grateful for.
• Send a note to a relative or friend to let them know that you appreciate them.
• Practice random of acts of kindness.

Tyler McKinley gets the bucket and the foul!

Tyler McKinley gets the bucket and the foul!

UC trails West Virginia 31-28 at halftime#GoBearcats

pic.twitter.com/uor5454nsk

— Chatterbox Sports (@CBoxSports) January 7, 2026

Pastor Karri Bryant Response to Critics of Her Viral Dress

8 Months - Grief & New Beginnings

    It was a night like tonight when we loss our father, grandfather and my mother's husband of over 50 years. For me it's been 8 months of trying to balance many aspects of my life, including grief, and honoring my father. Somedays it's hard to get up and be productive. Somedays, I lay in the bed most of the day and scroll, sleep or let my mind wander.

    Sometimes, I think I'm getting better one minute and the next minute, I'm curled up in a ball. The hardest part was that it was totally unexpected and we didn't get to say goodbye in the way that we thought we would. It's been rough thinking about how he passed. My dad fought prostate cancer for 20 years and yet that wasn't his cause of death.  As we read the coroner's report, it felt like the wind was taken out of us. He went to doctor faithfully and followed instructions thoroughly. In that moment it felt unfair or was it just us being selfish? Maybe a mixture of both.

    Today makes the 8th month since he's been gone. 8 means new beginnings. I guess I'm finding that new beginning can be hard and depressing, yet also an opportunity to implement what my father taught us and to carry on legacy.

Eight Months Later

It’s been eight months,

and we’ve learned how to carry the silence.

Not because it got easier—

but because we’ve grown around the ache.

There are days we laugh now.

There are days we move freely.

But there are also days, like today,

where we feel it all again—

as if no time has passed at all.

Eight months ago, the world lost you.

But we never did.

You are still ours

Still loved.

Still remembered.

Still here—in every breath we take through the pain.

Zentangle patterns for beginners | easy doodle patterns tutorial | Zenta...

SMILE - Vernon Byrd

Nia Allen - Lord I Love You - Official Lyric Video

I was on TikTok yesterday and this song showed up on my FYP. I have these moments sometimes where as soon as I hear a song I love it. This was one of those songs that just moved me immediately.

It's the first time I've heard of her and her Ministry. I'm super excited for Nia and what God has in store for her.

Happy New Year!!!!! 🎆