Some places feel like a geographical exhale: when you enter, your entire being sighes and releases tension. These places are safe spaces for imagination and creativity and a slowness that is, strangely enough, very conducive to being in a state of flow. I love a good coffeeshop, especially when it isn’t very crowded or bustling. This particular photo is a throwback to my 2025-2026 review/planning “self-care date,” at the end of December. I sat there (with a delightfully refreshing iced coffee á la millennial, naturally), my journal and my new planner, reviewed 2025 and dreamed of what I wanted to accomplish based on the version of myself I want to become in 2026. One of the intentions I set for myself was, of course, more coffeeshop self-care dates. I dream of more moments of calm productivity, dreaming and creativity, flow, and of course, delicious coffee in a cute, comfortable environment.
At what point does one decide that one has “become,” or that “becoming” has been successfully completed? I think that is possible to say that I’ve become more *insert trait/quality here* but there’s always room for growth. That’s why this Monday’s motivation post is a gentle reminder that, while we often talk about the “best version of ourselves,” that version is not just a destination to be arrived at (and then we are on vacation). We go through seasons of life that ask for different iterations of “the best version of ourselves.” I don’t think we should wait until we reach a specific version of ourselves to celebrate how far we have come.
How would we even determine exactly what that destination looks like? I mean, we could certainly say that we like who we are becoming, or we’ve improved, but for anyone to stop and say definitively: I’ve become my best self and there’s nothing more for me to work on? That seems wild to me.
My point here is this: the journey of becoming is one that we should be intentional about celebrating. Every step in the right direction is a victory. We can’t wait until we have supposedly “become” everything to be happy and proud of ourselves.
In last week’s post, I reflected on the challenges I had when my overwhelm forced me to abandon a lot of the more rigid structure in my life, and how I began the journey to reintroduce structure in a gentler form. This week, I’ll describe what gentlestructure looked like initially and what it looks like now. If you’ve found yourself looking to add some structure to your life, hopefully you’ll get some ideas from this post.
The First Iteration.
As I mentioned in my previous post: The Empty Planner, last year, I barely used my oh-so-perfect planner, not because I disliked it, but because I simply lacked the capacity. So when I first decided that my life needed some concrete routines and habits again, instead of attempting to jump right back in, I eased myself in. The inspiration came, unexpectedly, from a daily planning notepad. Of course, the fact that it was cute also added to my motivation to use it (because why not use things that are both pretty and practical?). Unfortunately I have neither pictures nor the used pages to show y’all. But, some of the planning categories included:
🩷 Focus:
🩷 Gratitude
🩷 Tasks/To-Do
🩷 Self-Care/Exercise
🩷 Meal Plan (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack)
There was also a tracker for water intake.
My main takeaway from this iteration of reintroducing structure (in a gentler form), was to take it one day at a time, and begin with small daily habits that benefit physical and mental health. For example, daily gratitude practice has been proven to have a positive effect on mental health. I don’t think I need to discuss the myriad benefits of joyful movement (ie exercise), but the key point here was that I didn’t pressure myself to do long, intense workouts.
I also held space for substitutions: if I couldn’t handle the workout I planned, I gave myself the freedom to substitute something shorter or lower-impact. The idea is that the structure you’re introducing should support your life as it is, while sustainably helping you build the life you want. Also, I had to learn that showing up imperfectly was better than not showing up at all, especially when trying to build consistency.
The Second Iteration: Weekly Intentions.
When I used up the planning pad, I didn’t feel quite ready to get back into more intense planning yet. A mental review of the whole experience of using the pad gave me insight into which categories were the most useful, and which weren’t. I had also started trying to implement the ideas that appealed to me from my favourite organizational content creators, like the idea of a daily “Win List,” from Amy Landino. It’s essentially three things, that, if you accomplish even one, you’ve “won” the day, regardless of whether you’ve completed your entire to-do list.
My journal became an unofficial planner; the categories I wanted to include were my headings (written in pink of course), and I drew in little checkboxes where needed. I also noted which habits had now been firmly cemented into my routine, and added in another new one.
One of the less-talked about benefits of planning is that it gives the million tasks and events that we need to remember somewhere to land, so they aren’t constantly swirling around our minds. As I continued to add structure on a daily level, I eventually felt the need to also dump some of the goals I wanted to accomplish weekly somewhere. It gave me a broader view of what I wanted to accomplish, helped me track my daily habits, and be more intentional about anything that needed to happen often, but not necessarily on a daily basis.
I’d like to reiterate here that gentle structure is meant to serve us, not the other way around. The intentions and goals set on a daily and weekly basis should help us to show up as more of ourselves. We also meant to approach planning with a degree of compassion; this is gentle structure because while we hold it securely, we aren’t gripping onto it for dear life. To-do lists should be manageable and realistic. Self-care and healthy habits (sleep, regularly nourishing our bodies, joyful movement, prayer/meditation, connecting with loved ones etc) should be scheduled in and treated as priorities.
We also need to hold space for days when we can’t function as we planned, for whatever reason. We could also leave space for spontaneity and schedule fun and relaxation, otherwise we might get so caught up in responsiblity that we don’t connect, have fun, or relax. There’s a high degree of self-awareness involved; at every step, we have to evaluate how well our lives are being served by the structure we have added, and be willing to adjust the structure accordingly.
The Current Iteration.
Eventually I felt the desire to plan on a monthly basis again. I can now say that I’m back into my planning girl era albeit with more gentleness and flexibility than ever before. By the time I was looking to purchase a 2026 planner, I had already tried setting intentions for the month of December, to experiment with reintroducing monthly resets. I’ve found that having overarching intentions and goals that I intentionally plan to work on incrementally on a daily/weekly basis is key in ensuring that I’m building a better version of myself and taking my life in the direction that I (and hopefully God) want.
As I write this post, I’ve been using my planner consistently since the last week of December/first week of January. Have I been accomplishing everything on my daily to-do list? Nope. Have I been as consistent as I’d like to be with all of my habits? Also no. However, I have been far more productive and intentional than I could have imagined last year when I was completely structure-less.
The gentle organization has also decreased my anxiety somewhat; tasks and commitments are scheduled in so I don’t have to try to remember or fit them in. I scramble less because I can intentionally fit in not just tasks and habits, but preparation and maintenance for those tasks, habits and even future projects. Larger projects feel less daunting with a new gentle approach; they are broken down into smaller steps which are scheduled somewhere feasible.
I have also learned to differentiate between time-sensitive tasks and ones that can be shifted. I don’t plan every hour of every day; I simply decide the tasks that should get done on a particular day, the ones that it would be nice if I did them. When a particular task doesn’t happen on one day, I can look at the rest of my schedule to see if/where I can fit it in instead.
But I think that what I appreciate the most, is how much adding gentle structure has helped me to be more intentional about bigger picture goals and projects. I’m slowly finding time to work on online courses that fell to the wayside, walk virtual 5Ks, work on my blog, and improve my musicianship.
Final Takeaways.
If I had to distill the key things I learned along this journey of introducing gentle structure to my life into helpful suggestions for y’all (my readers), I’d say:
🩷 Start small. Don’t try to go from functioning on vibes only to scheduling every hour of every day.
🩷 Any structure you add should serve you, not the other way around. Don’t add structure for its own sake.
🩷 Flexibility and compassion are key. I keep referring to it as gentle structure for a reason. I do believe in discipline, but I also have been learning the importance of paying attention to, and adjusting for the way capacity varies. Leave space for spontaneous fun things. Leave space for non-urgent tasks to get shifted around.
🩷 Schedule habits and routines for self-care. I might sound like a broken record, but none of us can pour from an empty cup.
🩷 Pay attention to how the structure is working out for you at each step. Be willing to make adjustments if you realize that some part of it isn’t serving you. Acknowledge amd celebrate when you find something that actually does work for you.
I hope that whatever forms of gentle structure we put in place this year help us find the time and energy to become more of ourselves and walk in alignment with our purpose. If you have any tips, please feel free to share them in the comments.
Hey y’all. Does anyone else think that January somehow disobeys the laws of physics, because how is this only the third week, but I feel as if I’ve lived through two months? Anyway, regardless of the apparent time-warp, happy Monday!
This is especially for anyone who, like me, has had their personality described as “sunshine,” because they seem happy/bubbly and smile often. But then, when we display anger or call someone out for crossing a boundary or doing something wrong/hurtful, others act as if that’s completely out of character. However we know that is actually well within our personality.
As we say in Trinidad, “doh take chain up.” The sun provides both light and heat. It is an unfair expectation to only benefit from our cheerfulness and never receive any sass. We are allowed to bring the heat too, when it is needed, and we are not responsible for when our light unwittingly shows up the negative things others would rather remain hidden; things that need to be fixed/improved. May we not allow others to weaponize the sunshiny-ness of our personalities and put us into a narrow box of the “only-always-cheerful.”
The question mark at the beginning of this post isn’t simply a grammatical choice, it’s a symbolic one. Who’d have thought that structure could be gentle? Yet, here I am, writing a blog post and putting the two words together in cozy proximity, as if they had always belonged to each other.
The word structure conjures thoughts of rigidity; I’d imagine steel beams in the shell of a building under construction, hard containers to sort things into, or, in terms of time, alarms that scream “You have to begin/end NOW!” Structure gives us boundaries; this thing has to stay within a certain clearly-defined space. As a (mostly) type-A girlie, I love structure and organization. December is an exciting month for me mainly because of Christmas, but also because it’s new planner season. I love to watch, be inspired by, and get ideas from, reset videos, cleaning videos, routine videos, and plan-with-me content.
When Struggle Throws Structure Out of the Window.
However, in seasons of extreme struggle, especially when I was adjusting to new, sad realities, structure felt impossible. During times of intense, prolonged stress, overwhelm, and certainly during depressive states, as we say in Trinidad: Structure? What name that? I definitely did not have the capacity to plan with all of the uncertainty, stress and diminished energy, motivation and overall bandwidth. Survival mode was brutal and messy.
But having absolutely no structure did not serve me well either. It became difficult to show up for myself, because I didn’t allocate space in my life for it. I scrambled to keep commitments because, again, I hadn’t allocated time to preparing for them. Ironically that increased my stress, because not only was I always scrambling, my mind and body were operating far below their capabilities, and I was sick often.
Structure, Meet Gentleness.
Eventually I began to reintroduce structure…gently (are y’all fed up of seeing that word yet?). Instead of planning my whole day, I set a couple intentions; what were the minimum things that, if I did them, would be the most beneficial? How could I find time to balance doing some minimal self-care while showing up for others?
Gentle structure also involves more flexibility than I used to have. The accompanying mindset is along the lines of: sure, I planned a more intense workout today, but physically and mentally I’m not up to it; maybe I can switch this one with a less intense one from a different day. I learned to compromise, show compassion, and reintroduce discipline gently under strain.
After a few months, I reaped the benefits, and began to add more structure. However, I held it loosely; I had to learn to be okay with not accomplishing everything. Deadlines were, for the most part, earlier, and softer. Goals were smaller, and quite a few them involved learning to take care of my physical, mental and emotional health with greater intention and consistency.
What’s Going on Now.
The journey of introducing gentlestructure into how I plan my life is one that continues into 2026; at the moment, my focus is on my evenings after work. While it is still a learning experience, I can safely say that I have been able to be more consistent, and accomplish things I didn’t think possible, while under more stress than I’ve ever had. I may not be blazing a bright trail of mega-success, but I’m functional and even creative under tremendous strain, and that, to me, is a big win.
The focus of this week’s post was more reflective: I wanted to share my experience with the hope that it would bring some encouragement to anyone who may want to be more organized, but is struggling to, especially in a difficult season. Next week’s post will be more practical: I will go into detail about what gentle structure looks like for me, so if you’re looking for ideas, that’ll be the post for you. Feel free to share your own experiences in the comments.
This is definitely one of those Mondays where “Happy Monday” feels aspirational in a “nearly impossible” way, so I won’t say it. But the wish and prayer for us to have a good week remains. Whether you’re in the new year, new me, or new year, better me mode, the temptation to be wildly and almost forcefully productive has probably been ever-present since January 1st. Naturally we are determined to stick to our resolutions (discipline and all that jazz). I almost fell into that trap several times last week, because I want to implement all the healthy habits and routines and work on all my dreams and see progress right now.
But overloading ourselves is counter-productive. We can’t start every new good thing at the same time. So this week, I’m choosing to deliberately be gentle about my growth, instead of rigidly productive. Becoming is a process; it is an ongoing journey, and it cannot be rushed. Gradual improvements, building self-trust and consistency, with a dash of self-awareness and compassion are essential parts of becoming, especially if we want true growth and healing.
In 2025, I found it: the perfect planner, in all its pink, productive glory. As I examined the various spreads, trackers, and feminine imagery, I felt it…hope. This planner had spaces and spreads for dreaming and bucket lists and…possibility. The blank spreads were a sign of untapped potential in 2025; the promise of dreams-come-true, goals accomplished, resolutions achieved, intentions actualized…I was cautiously excited.
The Fall into Despair.
But then, 2025 hit me mercilessly. Life ran me over like a relentless series of speeding trains, especially in the first half of the year. I barely had a chance to pick myself up before another train came barreling through. Any functionality I had was reduced to the barest form of survival. Many of my habits and routines eventually fell by the wayside, including planning. Dreams, intentions and goals…what were those? I struggled to keep my head above water. That planner whose empty pages were initially symbols of promise? I barely touched it. The empty spreads became a reproach, a testament to my decreased functionality.
However the issue wasn’t the planner itself; part of me still wanted to use it. I knew it was great and I deeply missed the organization and intentionality that planning brought to my life. The issue was that I was in survival mode and barely taking care of myself. All the activities that helped me to be more intentional, organized and focused all felt like impossible tasks. Actually sometimes even basic tasks, like eating regularly, cooking etc, felt Herculean at times. Depression, anxiety, stress and grief (including anticipatory and ambiguous grief) were close and constant, but unwelcome companions. I was buffeted by waves of physical illness, exhaustion, disappointment, chaos and mental health struggles.
The perfect planner sat on my desk, mostly empty.
The Slow Ascent into Hope.
However, all was not lost. Halfway through the year, I bought a daily planning pad (a cute one, naturally). Slowly, I eased myself back into planning, but on a daily basis, and with few activities. Then I moved on to setting a few weekly intentions in my journal. While the planner still sat empty, I was gently working my way back to myself, but a stronger (and somehow gentler) version.
Closer to the end of 2025, I felt a planning itch that said: planning on a daily basis and setting general weekly intentions is not enough anymore. In other words, I was ready for…the full planning experience. But this time, I was equipped with knowledge of myself and experience that I can do difficult things, but gently. So I excitedly bought a new planner for 2026, from the same company, with a similar layout, and a few customizations.
Hope Rekindled for 2026.
Now, those empty spreads in my new planner are a sign of hope, of time to grow, to love, to learn, to work and sometimes, to just be. 2025 taught me that I actually cannot pour from an empty cup, so I am more intentional about carving out time for things like nourishing my body and mind, resting, joyful movement, prayer, creativity etc. I am learning to guard these habits with firm boundaries. I am battling the urge to go all out. Instead, I try (emphasis on try) to aim for productivity that is gentle, compassionate and intentional, instead of perfect (and sometimes rushed). Now I can look back at those empty spreads from 2025 and see beyond the blank spaces, to the lessons I learned that will help me to fill the spaces of 2026 well.
Maybe you also have had a year of deferred dreams, illness, grief, stress, mental health struggles, and you’ve had to face plans and goals that never materialized. I urge us not to view our empty planners and unchecked boxes as failures though. We are here. We survived. We learned, and we grew. Now we have the skills, experience and knowledge to start again, in a new empty planner, and fill the spaces with intentionality, love and gentle, purpose-driven productivity.
May we fill the blank spaces of 2026 well. May this year be one of answered prayers, dreams-come-true, love, joy, healing, and becoming even more ourselves.
Happy January y’all! As we step (carefully) into 2026, I know first-hand how tempting it is to rush full steam ahead into fixing your whole life. But allow me to offer an alternative: gentle, yet intentional, becoming. Those three words are my “theme” for this month, which may seem unusual for a type-A girlie, but I ask you to hear me out.
As we set our resolutions/goals/intentions, maybe our focus should be not simply on doing, but who we are becoming. The new habits and goals (or reformed ones) should align with who we want to blossom into (better versions of ourselves, not completely different people). Naturally we should be intentional about them as well; let’s not choose goals simply because others chose them. Self-compassion, gentleness should be key elements of the process: growth, change, and healing, take time, positivity and patience with our own imperfections, shortcomings and even fluctuations in our capacity. None of us are robots.
May January truly be a month of gentle becoming for us…the start of a season of blossoming into our uniquely gifted selves.
If you, like me, experience a complicated mixture of anxiety and excitement when the empty spaces of a new planner and a new year stretch ahead of you, I hope this post tips the balance towards excitement (or at least, calmness). Even as I make gentle (prepare to see me use this word a lot in 2026) plans, I feel the fear of what if it all goes wrong and I accomplish…NOTHING?
My 2025 was a maelstrom of various struggles. Yet, I am reminded that God carried me through it, and while I didn’t accomplish everything, I have grown in many ways and accomplished things I never thought possible, given my circumstances.
So while I actually do not have any clue what 2026 holds (hopefully oodles of awesomeness), I know that God is already there. He knows what will happen, and if I continue to surrender to Him (which is easier said than done for a type-A girlie like me), He will take care of me. I want to remind y’all of this too: maybe your 2025 was rough and you’re stepping into 2026 anxiously. You don’t have to walk alone. Walk with the One who, not only knows the future, but knows you intimately, and let His loving hands guide you.
I began to write this post several years ago, but I never posted it. Oddly enough, it fits even better into my current experience though, in a way that seems almost…prophetic. I’ve been seeing quite a few Christmas posts on social media surrounding the idea of Christ coming to be with us in our imperfection and messiness. This is my take on it (and no, I’m not late…for Catholics the Christmas season begins on Christmas day).
Mere imagination was simply not enough; this scene required my complete immersion: my own slow, hesitant, but reverent steps into that stable, on the first Christmas. A young carpenter, from whom emanated a calm, gentle strength, was there, with a young mother. They both gazed with love and wonder at a newborn baby boy, who was carefully, lovingly swaddled and resting in a manger. Although the scent of their animal companions was present, the air was filled with peace, love and even glory. Glory? In a stable? Yes, indeed. The scene was bathed in the warm light from a miraculous star; the sign to lead men to God-with-us, the Word-made-flesh, Emmanuel.
Yet, in a sharp contrast, the words that have stubbornly stayed in my mind post-reflection are not “peace” or “glory.” No, my mental burrs are: “messy” and “hope.” Obviously “hope” would stubbornly stick. It is not only a recurring theme throughout Advent and Christmas: the hope for a Messiah, for God’s salvation, for answered prayers, but we are closing off the great Jubilee year of, you guessed it, HOPE (in all capitals, because I’ve heard that word too many times in 2025).
We need hope desperately, both collectively and individually. There are too many global and national difficulties and tragedies which are wreaking havoc with our physical and mental health, our safety, our jobs, and our finances. Then, many of us have also experienced (and continue to experience) private difficulties that have left a tragic trail of lost loved ones and deferred dreams. Sometimes our hold on hope is a precarious grip.
But what about “messy?” Why won’t this word leave me alone as I sit with the Holy Family in contemplation? Therein lies the answer: a stable. Jesus left the triumphant, unimaginable glory of Heaven and was born in a stable. He walked the earth and befriended people who were far from perfect. Jesus left the glory of Heaven to sit with us in our mess. God didn’t decide to leave us with the mess of our sins and our pain caused by our bad decisions and the bad decisions of those around us. He didn’t wait for us to clean up the mess before He came. Bethlehem was not emptied to make room for Him. He came quietly and humbly and walked with us. He saved us in and from our mess, and if we ask Him, He will do it over and over, in our lives, even now.
I know we all have various kinds of reactions to our messiness: we ignore it, hide it, are overwhelmed by it, deny its existence, and make gargantuan (and sometimes misguided) efforts to clean it up. But I think this Christmas season is a call for us to try something different: invite God into the mess. I know I struggle with wanting to clean it up myself, hiding it and doubting God’s presence in it. But the mess-age of Christmas remains: Emmanuel, God-with-us.
So here, on this Christmas that may not feel as joyful as past celebrations, I want us to remember two things. God is here, with us, in our mess. He is close to the broken-hearted. In the messiness of a stable lay perfect Love in the most vulnerable human form: a baby. It is such a wild thought that Jesus, the Saviour, chose to enter our human messiness in the humblest, most vulnerable way, instead of charging onto earth like a conquering hero on a throne.
Maybe, just maybe, then, we can have the courage to approach Him, even with our messiness; to let Him see the corners and crevices where our pain and ugliness lurk and to let Him sit with us in our grief. Then, then, we will be able to fully accept His redeeming love, and then too, we will be better able to love Him, our neighbours, and ourselves. Then, we can truly live in hope.
Peace 🌺, love 💖, and sparkles ✨️, (and Merry Christmas too)
Shespeaksandwrites 