Making Space for Stillness

As the year draws to a close on this December 24, 2025,

preparing for 2026,

I’m reminded of the quiet power in making space.

Not just physically—but energetically.

And, perhaps most importantly, mentally.

We only have so much to give.

What we hold onto shapes what can enter.

This past year, I let go of what no longer aligned.

Physically, during our move,

I released old furniture—

pieces that once filled rooms but no longer inspired.

Throwing them away wasn’t easy.

But it created room

for what feels meaningful now.

More importantly, energetically.

I released relationships and friendships

that had run their course—

not with drama,

but with honest recognition

that they no longer served.

Space opened.

New connections arrived, subtler, steadier.

The deepest release was in my work.

I let go of bartending—

lucrative, easy, enjoyable on the surface,

but draining beneath.

It started with subtle signs:

discontent, boredom, restlessness

that lingered for months.

I caught myself feeling uninspired, drained—

despite working part-time, just four days a week.

I didn’t have the energy then to create,

to let my passions manifest. It wasn’t aligned.

It didn’t call on my strengths, my service, my potential.

Leaving meant no secured income,

trusting the next step would come.

That was scary.

It took courage—to follow the nudge,

to honor the intuition whispering through the unrest.

Since then, creative energy flows without limit.

Starting this blog.

Building my craft business.

Launching a marketing agency.

Pursuing commercial real estate.

I work from morning to night, yet I don’t feel depleted.

Ideas keep coming. Burnout stays distant.

It’s what happens when you have the courage

to make space.

To let go of the familiar for what’s true.

And now, as the year ends,

I’m called to create stillness—

space in my thoughts, in my head.

To quiet the noise so I can truly listen.

Intuition speaks subtly.

It nudges through boredom, through discontent—

signs that change is needed.

But they’re easy to miss amid numbing,

distraction, the rush of daily life.

True stillness reveals them.

It opens the door to what excites, to passion,

to the quiet call of alignment.

In these next couple of days,

I’ll sit in that stillness. Dig deeper into intuition.

Shape a 2026 that’s intentional, aligned,

rooted in what’s real.

I invite you to do the same.

As 2025 fades, declutter your life—

especially energetically, mentally.

What can you release?

A habit that numbs.

A commitment that tightens.

A thought pattern that distracts.

Make room.

For clarity.

For flow.

For intuition’s whisper.

The rhythm will carry you into the new year.

With quiet gratitude for this shared space.

The Quiet After Leaving

There’s a common idea that once you leave what hurt you, clarity arrives like light through a opened door.

That wasn’t my experience.

The shift came quietly— through space, through consistency, through small decisions repeated long enough to become trustworthy.

After leaving, nothing healed overnight. But something essential opened: room.

I didn’t fill that room with reinvention. I used it to stabilize.

Healing, in the beginning, looked less like awakening and more like responsibility.

Buddhism found me then. What resonated wasn’t escape or transcendence— it was cause and effect.

The quiet understanding that patterns don’t vanish when named. They dissolve when you stop feeding them. Not through force, but through seeing clearly enough to choose differently.

That lens let me hold my past without blame— toward others or myself. It offered a path that felt grounded, not performative.

The first place stability took root was my body.

I didn’t move toward health from ambition or discipline. I moved toward it because my nervous system needed safety again.

Movement became return. Strength became anchor. Consistency became the one thing I could rely on when everything else still trembled.

As my body settled, perception sharpened.

I began to notice dissonance before it grew loud. I learned to trust discomfort instead of overriding it. I stopped mistaking intensity for depth.

Intuition didn’t arrive as a gift. It grew from listening to my body long enough to hear it.

I also spent long stretches alone. Not isolated— recovering.

I walked. I lingered in nature. I let silence stretch further than comfort allowed. I stopped rushing to fill the quiet with noise, with explanation, with performance.

That solitude wasn’t retreat. It was recalibration.

In it, I learned the difference between fear and intuition, between habit and true desire, between attachment and love.

I learned how to be with myself without managing anyone else’s storm.

That alone shifted everything.

My spirituality didn’t crystallize around one practice. It formed around rhythm.

Reading. Prayer. Meditation. Reflection. Silence. Journaling.

Small rituals that returned me to the present.

I wasn’t trying to become more spiritual. I was learning how to stay.

Over time, intuition became practical. Decisions grew quieter. Less reactive. Less urgent.

I stopped asking, What should I do? I began asking, What’s true right now?

As I changed, my relationships changed— without force, without announcement.

I stopped making myself available for chaos. I stopped over-explaining. I stopped lingering where my body tightened and my voice shrank.

Friendships simplified. Became mutual. Became honest.

Romantic connection softened. It no longer required intensity to feel real. Love didn’t grow louder— it grew safer.

Ten years later, the differences are subtle if you’re looking only for milestones.

My home feels calm. My relationships feel steady. My days feel chosen.

I build from alignment now, not urgency.

I trust intuition more than fear. I leave room for silence. I listen before I move.

Spirituality lives in the ordinary— how I tend my body, how I choose my work, how I respond instead of react.

Not as identity. As practice.

Lotus Rhythm exists because the journey didn’t end when the crisis passed.

It deepened.

This is where the rhythm continues.

With gratitude for your presence here.

Love,

Karla

From Survival to Rhythm

There’s a version of the spiritual journey people like to tell—the polished one. The one that begins with yoga classes, candlelight, and “finding yourself.”

That’s not my story.

Mine began in survival. And in the moment I stopped calling it normal.

This is the beginning of Lotus Rhythm—not as a brand, but as a quiet record. A place to trace what it actually takes to move from survival into alignment, one intentional day at a time.

It didn’t start as spirituality. It started as survival.

My parents divorced, and the emotional instability that followed shaped everything—how I learned to love, to cope, to endure.

There was no consistent guidance, no steady emotional safety. Love felt conditional: present one day, withheld the next. I learned early that being “easy” was safer than voicing what I truly needed.

I became a caretaker long before I was ready. I parented my mother in ways no child should have to. I carried my siblings. I managed moods and crises that were never mine to hold.

I learned to read a room before I learned how to rest. From the outside, it looked like maturity. Inside, it felt like never fully exhaling.

At twelve, I entered an abusive relationship. It wasn’t just a memory—it became a blueprint, etched into my nervous system before I had language for it.

It taught me the wrong shape of love: intensity as connection, fear as attachment, staying as safety.

I didn’t love myself, not because I was broken, but because I had never been shown what steady love feels like. I had never been held emotionally, chosen without condition, protected without cost.

So I searched for it outside—in being needed, in enduring, in staying longer than I should.

That pattern carried into adulthood. I struggled to end what was harmful. I never saw my mother choose herself, so staying became loyalty, endurance became love, suffering became familiar.

It led to a nine-year relationship that began toxic and grew abusive. Chronic lying that eroded reality. Sex addiction. No true intimacy.

I left and returned more than once. I hoped. I minimized. I waited for change that never arrived.

Not because I couldn’t see the truth— but because choosing myself felt like abandonment.

The shift didn’t come dramatically. It came through grief.

When I lost my first dog, something quiet cracked open. The layers of denial fell away. I saw the pattern clearly—not just in that relationship, but in the deeper wound it echoed.

And I understood: No one was coming to save me. If I wanted a different life, I had to love myself enough to leave.

Leaving wasn’t empowering in the glossy sense. It was lonely. Destabilizing. Disorienting.

But it was honest.

And honesty became the ground I stood on.

From there, everything began to shift—slowly, steadily.

I turned toward my body. Toward solitude. Toward nature. Toward teachings—Buddhism, spiritual texts—that spoke of awareness and responsibility, not escape.

I began listening. To my intuition. To the quiet rhythm beneath the noise.

This space is a reflection of what has followed that choice.

Not one grand awakening, but the daily practice of rising— rooted in the real, blooming through clarity, discipline, and quiet devotion.

This is where the rhythm continues.

Thank you for being here.