wellbeing – Page 3 – Katie Kearns

Guest post: Collaging as Creative Exploration and Academic Production

cut outs of fruit pictures from the grocery mail insert - lime, orange, grapefruit. Cut outs of words from magazines: I had kimchi dreams, becoming, almost everything, something, a little, fortified, torn torn, don't, break, sleek metal, neat strips, No it won't be too much, leftover husks and small pebbles, light infusion, light sweetness, Let US Take You

Maggie: “I think a big part of why learning to view myself as creative was so difficult was that it required so much unlearning…I had to unlearn what I thought it meant to be good at creating and to be more intuitive and fun with my work. Creative work, just like scholarship, is iterative, collaborative, reflective, and never really finished. ”

Cherishing wild things

Three banners go across a bundle of wild flowers; each banner has one word of the phrase "cherish wild things." The wildflowers are different colors, and there are animals among them: snake, turtle, bird, butterfly, squirrel

I should have made a plan for returning to work, both in August 2021 and again in June 2022. Guess what? The work culture hadn’t co-evolved during my leave to align with these lessons. While I had found new values and ways of being during my leave that were important to me, productivity mindsets were still the dominant force. The work detritus tried to bury me again.

Reminders during a Revolution

I’m offering this kindling in solidarity with our collective liberation from human supremacy, imperialism, white supremacy, ableism, capitalism, resource and labor extraction, patriarchy, and power over.

The parenting manual didn’t include a chapter on pandemics

A yellow flower in the foreground held between two fingers. There's dark purple nailpolish on the thumb. In the background are two shadows: on the left a woman with shoulder-length hair and a dress, on the right a slightly shorter shadow

What aspect of pandemic parenting should we be talking more about? The hard stuff: the reality of human cruelty, Bandaid solutions to bleeding out situations, and relationships that got developmentally frozen in 2020. And also the human capacity for love, acceptance, truth, communication, interdependence, liberation, rest, reciprocity, stewardship, and emergent abundance.

Follow the Bubbles

A photo from underwater. At the bottom, the water is dark and at the very top center is brightest. There are bubbles in the center.

What if, instead of drowning in everyday life of productivity and competition, we did what lights our spirits, brings us meaning and purpose, and puts our gifts in service to others?

Spread sunshine

A complex, tessellated, radiating outward pattern of dots on a square black background. The dots are white, yellow, orange, and red. In each corner is a flame pattern pointing inward to the middle

For much of my professional life, I have maintained an impossible, “I will enjoy myself and life when…” fantasy. But I was denying myself the rich life I was trying to offer and protect for others.

Journey back to integrity: Therapeutic relationships

A black and yellow striped butterfly with long tails, perched on a long green stem. There's leaf litter and green woods in the background

My current role in a graduate school doesn’t automatically have direct, community-building work in it (which opens up lots of questions for me). As I went on my leave of absence in April, I knew that when I came back I would need to deliberately engage in work that is in integrity with my heart and spirit: community-building with graduate students.

My return from leave

A woman seated below a wall mural that says, Peace Love Tybee. ." T

I took a leave of absence because I was burned out and exhausted from working and parenting during the pandemic. When I’m being honest with myself, however, a misguided, naive goal I had for my mental health leave was to “cure” and “get rid of” my mental health challenges.

Rebirth

You know how, when a crayfish molts, It’s new skin is kind of translucent white? A little soft. Squishy. Glistening. Like all those Brood X, Larvae hanging off the oak tree bark, White wings unfurling from a pale yellow body. Now feels like that. Vulnerable. Pluripotent. Inevitable. Dear reader: These words sprinted from my brainContinue reading “Rebirth”

Making Meaning (Part 2): Why focus on grad students?

It is possible for graduate students to check the boxes and to zombie-walk through the initiations and benchmarks of graduate school. Graduate students need and deserve mentoring that is intentional and cognizant of their meaning making process.