Hi, I’m Carie. I write daily posts about navigating these times.
Promise, kept
Keeping promises to others is easy. Keeping promises you make to yourself — well, I’m learning and growing and doing a much better job of it. But today it made me grumpy. ;)
Carie B Was Here
I’m not afraid of failure. The proof? I still try to take pics of the moon.
I already wrote today
I wrote this morning but have no energy to share it. So here are some moments I noticed during the last few months of the year.
Choices
2025 showed us, again, just how much the world needs our best selves to show up. The world is counting on us to do so. We express our best selves when we find harmony in our own experiences. When we are constantly acting out life from an extreme stress response, we create more chaos.
Some thoughts on ways we might choose to show up, a little differently.
How do you catch an elephant?
I told a crass joke at Grandma’s memorial. My family put me up to doing it right after she died. I thought it would be hilarious so I agreed. I didn’t think too much about it. Until, of course, I ascended the steps and stood behind the pulpit of a church where I spent my formative years and had second thoughts.
Tribute to my grandmama
My grandma died on Nov. 26, 2025. Today, our family is celebrating her life. Here’s something I wrote about her a few years ago, about Why I Write. It’s largely becaue of her!
Still here
To keep a promise you make to yourself is so healing. And, so hard. I’ve spent a lot of life toggling between holding myself with kid’s gloves and dishing out tough love.
I’m (still) learning.
To Do
Today my creative energy went toward a video I created for my friend, to confess how I shipped her Christmas gift to my own address. She said I get to be a Kentucky fan now because the blue suits me (but I can’t get a paw print tramp stamp until they win the national championship DANG IT).
So I’m sharing a To Do list I wrote on this day in 2023.
A Planet to Remember (a Santa story)
Behold! My first published story circa 1986. I was in 5th grade. Funny how aliens & Care Bears remain super on brand for me as an adult.
Favorite Blonde
There, in the middle of an end cap display of room temperature prebiotic sodas was a single can of beer:
The moral of the story? What you seek you shall find. But you might find it where you least expect it.
It takes all kinds
One afternoon, I walked out of a trampoline park with a friend.
We both walked out and exclaimed some variation on the themes of Oh My Gawd.
I was surprised to learn that she’d exclaimed due to a pile of trash in the middle of the parking lot. My eyes were distracted by a beautiful sunset.
Without her, I’d have for sure stepped in someone’s leftover McDonald’s.
Without me, she’d have missed a glorious Colorado sunset.
We need each other. Don’t forget that.
TL/DR: You’re exactly where you’re supposed to be
Life can be so funny. You can feel so far out of alignment from where your ego mind believes you ought to be. Things can be so quiet in life, for days, months, even years. You can be on the brink of losing faith, of believing you’ve taken far too many wrong turns to even consider that you’re still on your highest and best path, then WHAM.
You find yourself at a Starbucks, far from home, and the universe reminds you that you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.
I don’t golf
I don’t golf. But I’ve long been obsessed with the idea of a mulligan. I feel like in the game of life, we should all take mulligans. At will. I’m gonna take a mulligan on this blog. No promises, but I’m guessing I’ll be back.
‘Trusting the science’ in an age of misinformation
I was sick and scared. And stubborn. So I did what any sick, scared, and stubborn person does: I began to do my own research. I found things that helped and many things that didn't. And I uncovered an entire worldview shaped by pseudoscience and misinformation, courtesy of Dr. Google.
It felt like a full circle moment to be able to sit down with two scientists, Aimee Pugh Bernard, PhD and Laura D Scherer, to take an honest look at what's happening in the world around science and misinformation. Grateful to my boss Chris Casey for letting me join him as co-host for this chat on Health Science Radio where we tackle the question:
How Do We ‘Trust the Science’ in an Age of Misinformation?
It's a great listen for anyone who has ever googled a symptom, and a must listen for scientists and science communicators (like me) who serve on the front line for communicating health-related information. You can find the Health Science Radio Podcast wherever you listen.
Who are we without our stories?
It got me thinking today about this: Who are we without our stories? They are fundamental to our experience as humans. The stories we’re told, the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we tell others. The sum of our human experience. The stories we tell run the gamut of truth. They entertain us. They ground us. They connect us to those we love and those we do not know. They can also mislead us, deceive us, hurt us. And others. It reminds me that we must be mindful of the stories we tell.
You are divinely made to endure yourself
Racquel Garcia’s journey of recovery reveals a powerful truth: we are divinely made to endure ourselves. For years, she heard “Poor Racquel,” but taking accountability helped her reclaim her strength. Her words hit me hard, reminding me that healing means sitting with discomfort instead of numbing it. As my meditation teacher says, “We all have addictions, from Netflix to heroin.” If you’ve ever doubted your resilience, read on—you already have everything within you to get through this.