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When Things Fall Apart

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By Kristi Cruise I’ve been thinking a lot lately about lessons. Not the kind you learn in a tidy, inspirational way, but the kind you learn while something is actively unraveling. The kind that don’t announce themselves as lessons until long after the dust settles. There was a season in my life when everything felt like it was falling apart at once. Trust shifted. Things I had built with care suddenly felt fragile, then volatile. I was trying my best, working hard, fighting for what mattered, and still it felt like it was slipping through my fingers. For a long time, I carried a lot of shame about that period. I replayed moments. I wondered what I should have done differently. I told myself I should have been stronger, calmer, more strategic, more composed. But with time, and a lot of reflection, I’ve come to see that season differently. I don’t think it was punishment. I don’t think it was a failure. I think it was an instruction. Here are some of the lessons I can see now, in hindsig...
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The Ripple Reached Wisconsin

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By: Kristi Cruise How One Bedside Book Reminded Me It’s Working...Even When I Can’t See It The other night, I was in a vulnerable place. I had just spent a good amount of time questioning everything—my work, my impact, my vision. I had sat in conversation with someone I deeply respect, someone who had supported my literacy programs, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe it hadn’t landed. Maybe her child hadn’t connected with The LiLi Key or my new genre-bending series as I had hoped. Maybe it was all just too much. Too ambitious, too imaginative, too… different. Like me... And then, as if the universe was listening, I got a text message. “Nat just found the pre-LiLi book by Kristi and is sleeping with it under her pillow. 😊 Do you have a LiLi book you can bring?” She is a little girl in Wisconsin. I’ve never met her. She’s the niece of my friend, and she discovered The PreLi Key,  one of my earliest books, without me there to guide her. No reading circle or li...
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Winter

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By Kristi Cruise Winter keeps asking us to slow down, and most of us keep telling it no. We live in a world that treats winter like an inconvenience. Like something to push through. Like a season you survive so you can get back to your real life in spring. But our bodies do not agree with that story. They never have. Long before deadlines and calendars and artificial light, humans evolved inside seasons that told the body exactly what to do. Winter meant less light, less food, less movement, and more stillness. That rhythm shaped our biology. It shaped our nervous systems. It shaped how we repair, restore, and make meaning. Even now, when we pretend we are above it, our bodies still respond.   In winter, the light changes, and that matters. Shorter days affect the brain directly. Sleep hormones shift. Energy turns inward. Focus softens. The body is not failing when this happens. It is conserving. It is protecting. It is doing what it was designed to do. Winter naturally favors...
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Where I've Been

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Where I’ve Been By Kristi Cruise I’ve been quiet here for a few weeks, not because there was nothing to say, but because I was living inside some things that needed to be felt before they could be written. Sometimes life pulls us inward, not as a retreat, but as a necessary recalibration. The last month has been one of pressure and clarity arriving at the same time. Of learning what happens when the nervous system has been carrying more than it should, for longer than it should. Of noticing how quickly the body tells the truth when the mind quiets yet still tries to keep functioning as usual.   I’ve been quietly reflecting a lot about erosion. How it doesn’t come from one dramatic event, but from small, repeated moments that go unacknowledged. How strength can quietly turn into overextension. How capable people can still find themselves depleted when repair never quite happens. I’ve also been reminded that rest isn’t always sleep, and healing isn’t always visible. Sometime...
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My Voice Was Never the Problem

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By Kristi Cruise There are moments in life when something buried for decades suddenly rises to the surface with clarity you can’t un-see it. You can’t unknow it. You can’t go back to the version of yourself who didn’t understand. I had one of those moments recently. This revelation cracked open a lifelong pattern and illuminated the truth underneath it: My voice was never the danger. The adults around me just couldn’t hold it. For most of my life, I believed the opposite. I thought I caused the chaos. I thought my words were too sharp, too honest, too destabilizing. But now I see: I wasn’t unsafe because I spoke. I was unsafe because the people I spoke to weren’t regulated enough to receive it. This single truth is reshaping everything. Two moments in my life — separated by decades — mirrored each other in a way I can’t ignore. In both moments:     •    I spoke an (unpopular) truth I felt obligated to say.     •    The adult on the receiving end r...
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The Things I Can Do (But Really Don’t Want To)

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By Kristi Cruise I can do a lot of things. I can color-code a spreadsheet, write a grant proposal, build a website, manage a board meeting, and respond to seventy-two emails before breakfast. I can even fake enthusiasm while updating an Excel tab called “Pending Follow-Ups.” But let me be clear: I loathe operations. Like, deep-soul, energy-vacuum, “please let this be over soon” loathe. It’s funny, really, because somehow I do more of it now than ever. My days are an endless carousel of calendars, approvals, and tasks that multiply when I look away. Somewhere in the middle of all this productivity, my inner artist is waving a little white flag. I remember my high school swim coach, Mrs. Cullen, once told me I was a “jack of all trades, master of none.” She wasn’t wrong. I can survive in almost any situation — smile through chaos, fill in for anyone, and duct-tape broken systems together until they look like modern art. But thriving? That’s another story. Operations are like chlo...
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A New Definition of Love

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  A New Definition of Love By Kristi Cruise Love is not the ache of wanting to be chosen. It’s the calm of remembering you already are — by yourself, by life, by something steady that has never left you. Love isn’t the spark that burns hot and fast. It’s the flame that hums in rhythm with your breath, asking nothing but truth. It’s not the drama of leaving and returning, the high of chaos followed by the relief of apology. It’s the gentle consistency that makes time feel soft again. Love does not demand proof or perfection. It asks only for presence. It says, " You are safe here. You don’t have to earn peace." It’s not about rescuing or being rescued.  It’s about walking side by side, both whole, both free, both curious enough to keep learning from each other. Love is an exhale. A place to land. A laughter that lingers because there’s nothing left to hide. The old kind of love taught me endurance. The new kind teaches me ease. And I will no longer confuse longi...
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Surrender

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Surrender By Kristi Cruise There was once a yoga class I taught called Surrender. It was always the quietest on the schedule, tucked between the more popular power flows and sculpt sessions. People used to skip it, assuming they’d get more out of something harder, sweatier, faster. I get that now—how surrender can look like giving up when it’s really the beginning of freedom. I used to think surrender meant letting go of control. Now I think it’s more like letting go of the illusion of control— the exhausting upstream paddling that keeps us busy but rarely gets us anywhere new. Sometimes I can almost hear the river whisper, “You could rest now, you know. I can carry you farther than you think.” I’m starting to believe it. Lately, life has been reminding me that my oars are optional. The more tightly I grip them and paddle, the more tired I become. And yet when I finally release, when I let the current take me—the world rearranges itself with an ease I could never have plan...
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Quiet October

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By Kristi Cruise October has been quiet. Not the kind of quiet that feels empty—just the kind that doesn’t buzz on the surface. All the humming has been inside, beneath the hood, in closed circles and private spaces. I find myself—and my swirling head of endless ideas—in a state of incubation. I feel deep healing. I sleep hard, dream hard, and have started keeping a journal of every dream, each one more revealing than the last. It’s quite possible I’ve cracked a code for sleep self-therapy. I used to go to bed to reset; now most nights feel like an eight-hour existential therapy session… in the best way. Since my birthday, I haven’t gone silent so much as inward. I’ve been polishing, refining, tending to the ideas already in flight. It’s a different kind of motion—slower, steadier—like the mind sanding down the edges of something that’s finally starting to shine. And I’m tired. But it’s a good tired. The kind that follows deep work. The extrovert in me feels guilty that the labor is i...
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It Just Was (A Birthday Reflection)

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  It Just Was (A Birthday Reflection)  A birthday reflection on peace, presence, and the quiet miracle of enoughness By Kristi Cruise Usually, my birthday feels fragile — the kind of day where any tiny thing can send me into tears, and considering how clunky life is, that means tears on my birthday most years.  There’s always been this quiet pressure underneath it all: to feel celebrated, to feel seen, to make the day special without having to plan too much myself and without crying . But this year was different. It wasn’t perfect, obviously. There was a 4-hour stretch of morning chaos where nothing went right, and I was definitely NOT sleeping in. There were last-minute cancellations to my birthday happy hour, mix-ups, and all the usual things that could’ve thrown me. But I didn’t flinch. I felt calm, grounded, and steady — as if all of my healing work from the last 30 years had finally integrated. And best of all, I felt all the birthday love. All day long. I felt al...
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Charlottesville-- A (Write) of Passage

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 By Kristi Cruise I’ve just returned from three beautiful days in Charlottesville, and I can’t quite explain why, but it feels like something important shifted in me. It wasn’t just the stunning fall weather or the familiar Downtown Mall. It was the people. Friends I hadn’t seen in 5+ years — faces that felt like home the moment I was with them. We picked up as if no time had passed. I felt so loved, so seen, and so deeply grateful. Being back in the place where I spent four formative years as a news anchor reminded me of something: true friendships don’t disappear. They wait. They hold. And they welcome us back in. This trip was more than a reunion. It felt like a rite of passage. I stepped into the past for a moment, carried my present self with me, and left with a new sense of the future. The younger me who once walked those roads would hardly believe the risks I’ve taken, the obstacles I’ve overcome, and the dreams I’ve followed. And yet, surrounded by old friends (and familiar...
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The Gift of Time

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By Kristi Cruise For the past month, I’ve been in a season of nonstop motion. The kind where the days blur and the work keeps pouring out of me in waves—sometimes gentle, sometimes tidal, but always forward. Just when I think this project has reached its highest point, another idea lands, another refinement flows, and suddenly it’s even stronger. It’s humbling, exhilarating, and honestly feels like some of the best work of my life is being born right here, right now. Honestly, it all feels like a dream, like a dejavu, a dream I think I've had before.  I had braced myself for the big meeting to come quickly as was originally. Every ounce of me was prepared to hand it over, ready or not. But life handed me something else today: because of travel schedules, it’s been pushed back two whole weeks! Yea! Two whole weeks for me to breathe and take care of the million and one things I haven't even touched in the last 4 weeks due to this unexpected awesomeness.  I feel… relief. A glor...
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