We gathered this morning with watercolor and questions, stencils and uncertainty, rainbow backgrounds and half-formed thoughts we didn’t know how to finish.
I created four faces across two pages while we talked. One stencil, one stamp, completely different outcomes depending on how much water hit the paper, how long I pressed down and with how much pressure, what I was feeling in that moment. By the end, they looked like one person evolving through seasons—appearing from fog, blending into background, becoming more vivid, fading again.
That’s what the conversation felt like too.
This was my journal page half an hour after ending the Ripple Room
One person asked how to navigate the uncertainty of just being, day to day. We didn’t have any definitive answers…
We talked about giving yourself permission for a “yuck day”—one day to go down every sad tunnel, and then the next morning asking, “Okay, now what am I focusing on?”
We talked about rewiring communication patterns with people we’ve loved for decades. About discovering that what felt like rejection might just be different wiring. About the relief of realizing there’s nothing wrong with wither person for wanting more or not having the ability to give it.
We sat with a question that had no answer: “How do you reconcile doing everything ‘right[ and still receiving a terminal diagnosis that changes everything?”
We didn’t try to fix any of it. We just acknowledged how crappy it feels.
I recorded just a little bit of my play/exploration after the call ended.
I shared what it was like to give myself permission to leave my daughter’s volleyball game when I was overstimulated—to walk away for 15 minutes because my nervous system needed regulation more than I needed to prove I’m being a good parent. To discover later that my daughter didn’t even notice I was gone.
I shared what it cost me to stop hustling this year. I earned $69 instead of thousands because I refused to send reminder emails, countdown timers, coupon codes for One Badass Art Journal.
The cost of not hustling is real money. It’s opportunities I likely won’t be invited back to. But what I’m learning is that I’m ok with it.
Self-kindness has also meant giving myself permission to not launch the painting collection in January like I’d announced. To give myself the space I need without apology. To let doors stay closed without needing new ones to open just to prove momentum.
This work feel disorienting. It’s depleting in many ways. I’m not filled up by it—I’m being emptied out, so something truer can take shape.
When people tell me “You’re so sorted” or “You have it all figured out,” there’s often subtext: Good for you, but don’t ask us to cross that fence.
A participant in the room named why this matters: you don’t always get to see the ripple effect. You might plant something in someone’s life, and years later they take a step you never witness. You’re showing another pathway, but you rarely get confirmation it landed.
Naming that became its own ripple—because it explained the loneliness. Not superiority. Not certainty. Just the absence of visible echoes.
The final page after I’d journaled over it. “Unmasked” felt appropriate.
There were long stretches where no one spoke. Where we just sat with our own thoughts while being held by the presence of others doing the same.
There were moments where someone said exactly what I’d been feeling but couldn’t articulate, and I realized: Oh. I’m not the only one.
There was the quiet acknowledgment that sometimes self-kindness looks like admitting “I don't know what this season is. I don't know if it's a funk or a deeper level of being. I don't know how to answer ‘How are you doing?’ anymore.”
And that being okay.
Self-kindness looks like making art with your fingers because brushes feel like performance. It looks like breathing in what serves and breathing out what doesn’t. It looks like showing up for quiet acts of care—not because they’ll turn into anything, but because they matter.
For Those Who Weren’t There
The Ripple Room isn’t about having answers. It’s about being willing to sit with questions. It's about showing up in pain, in confusion, in transition—and discovering you’re not alone in that.
It’s about making something with your hands while you talk, because sometimes the words follow the art. It’s about smaller groups where you can actually be seen, where silence is allowed, and where “I don't know” is a complete sentence.
Next month we’ll gather again. I don’t know what I’ll make or what questions will surface. But I know there will be space for you exactly as you are.
Because everybody’s sense of enoughness is different.
And you are enough just as you are.
માનસી
