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Elisabeth Fuchs

@elisabeth_fuchs_

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Writes, walks, learns, teaches, surrenders, changes. Enjoys. Looks forward. Contemplates.

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by @elisabeth_fuchs_

31

4

9 months ago

May the New Year bring us new ways to relate to ourselves, our health and spiritual wellbeing!
May we be happy, lucky, plucky and fast!
May we find joy in unexpected places, and love everywhere!
May we understand that silence, pause, stillness, disengagement, sabbath, holy time, nothing-much-happening and boredom are necessary ingredients for our creative life!
May we be good friends, good neighbours, good partners, good acquaintances and good chance encounters to humans, animals and plants alike!
May we love and adore and cherish our one wild and precious life with courage, joy and heartbreaking abundance!

Onwards with defiant hope and stubborn joy!

Happy New Year!

#newyear #defiant_joy #auguri #stubborn_hope #HappyNewYear by @elisabeth_fuchs_

42

10

10 months ago

It's as if there was a very short moment when the sun appeared between moving clouds and lit up a leftover small yellow blossom.
We are moving towards the winter solstice agonisingly slow in these last days before we turn around and swing onto the opposite trajectory towards summer.
Holding on to hope, stubbornly. Defiantly. Lightheartedly...

"All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well."
Julian of Norwich

#winter_solstice
#2025 by @elisabeth_fuchs_

43

8

10 months ago

A friend of mine recently got into one of those situations where your life crumbles around you, and the future suddenly feels less than foreseeable.

It happened to me a few years ago. And so I found myself being asked for... anything that might help, and I said:

🩷 You can't do everything right. Expect to make mistakes.

💚 You won't get through this unscathed. Allow for change.

🩵 You won't be able to hold onto everything. Define your non-negotiables.

💝 You might not find enough time and space to grieve in real-time. Build time capsules of grief for yourself, to be opened and tended to later.

Make of that what you will... Those are just notes en route.

#notesenroute #solicited_advice #mindfulpersonalwriting #bestwishesforyou❤️ #wheninpain #timecapsules #grief #diagnosis #cancerjourney #loss #resilience by @elisabeth_fuchs_

30

7

a year ago

On unscripted writing:

I really write to find out where my writing takes me. Like the famous quote by Joan Didion states, I start to write when I feel I need to find out what I'm thinking. Or feeling or intuiting.

I know when the time is right to write in this way, and I have a Leuchtturm blank book just for those moments. I write by hand because this engages more brain capacity, and because I am very used to writing by hand.

Lately, my handwriting became more illegible, as if it was trying to make me trust even more in the act of creation.

Because writing does more than allow you to find out what you're thinking.

WRITING CREATES thoughts, insights, epiphanies, knowledge. Writing is the activity of exploring, of bringing forth new things. That's what ‘epistemic’ means, and that is what, ideally, children and other people grasp at some point during their first years of learning how to write.

Writing by hand on a blank piece of paper takes courage and trust, and it will, if you let it, take you closer to yourself. It will make you appreciate yourself more, make you appreciate your world more. It will, unfailingly, empower you to flourish.

Dare to write unscriptedly.

#mindful_personal_writing #creativewriting
#unscripted
#daretowrite by @elisabeth_fuchs_

41

13

a year ago

Notes en route:

Sometimes, I find I need to give myself permission.

Permission to sit beside the lavender and the rosemary, doing nothing much, really.

Permission to be bored. Permission to feel the sun in my face.

Permission to delight in the intensity of lavender's colours.

Permission to be with, and be without agenda, without urgency, without rage or grief (or both: grage). Because, these days, I feel a lot of grage.

But lavender says: stay a while. I have enough lavender for both of us. Let me share my essence with you.
Because that's what lavender is: intensely, quietly, peacefully gracious.

And I am grateful.

#notesenroute #lavender #graciousness #notes #enroute by @elisabeth_fuchs_

33

4

a year ago

Notes en route:

The brightest and most lovely summer blossoms are in full bloom now: cistus rose and lavender, giving life and exuberance, vigorous energy and heartbreaking fragility, sturdy calm and serene balance. It's all there in these exquisite colours and fragrances.

I need to sit with them daily, breathe, and open up to what is about and within me. I treat them like friends and companions. We live eye-to-eye. They are friends with the rosemary, the chickpeas, the sage, and the thyme. I even put a pot of parsley out for the old song's sake...

This is not optional. It's not quaint, nor is it idiosyncratic (read: personally silly...). It is absobloodylutely necessary that I give myself this time, absorb these vibes, rejoice in the unscrupulous lightness and unselfconscious dance of the rose with the wind and sun and rain...

Cistus roses live for one day. They open up at sunrise and fall in the evening or during the night. Next day: different blossoms open. This goes on for 14 days in June, and then it's over.

What a gracious, elegant, graceful, and amiable companion the cistus rose is! To think that she chose to be my teacher! What a blessing. by @elisabeth_fuchs_

35

7

a year ago

Notes en route:

Sometimes, the only thing that helps is slowing down time.

I sit, I don't read or write or scroll. I look, I listen. I don't move (much). I accept that I am here, now. I breathe.

It's rather more than acceptance, actually.
It's a conscious decision to privilege everything that is going on within and around me, one to one. You could call it a state of being utterly analogue.

I see wasps delecting themselves on the sage blossoms. Microscopically small spiders have woven intense webs the size of my palm, using some of the leaves of Billy Bob the blueberry. I never would have noticed them if they didn't sparkle as they swing in the breeze.

It's a holiday here, and on the river, hidden from my sight by the leaves of the trees on the riverbank, people are rowing in the boats they rented a few hundred meters upstream. It's 'Father's Day', and young men traditionally are having booze-fuelled outings on this day. The ones rowing by right now have brought music, and I hear 'Sunny' ...

I am a being made up of attention. And attention is a child of time, my life's time, to be precise. As I connect with my most precious belonging, time, I can feel my time's connection to the infinite and deep source.

You could call it eternity.
For a moment there, I'm really paying attention, and I catch a glimpse of it in the short outburst of sparkle on a gossamer thread of the miniature spider's web.

That's the remedy of time.
That's why I'm here.

#notesenroute

#time #slowing_down_time #hereandnow #remedy_of_time #awareness #mindful_living #mindfulpersonalwriting by @elisabeth_fuchs_

27

6

a year ago

Notes en route:

There's something interesting about full circle moments. Every now and then, life will serve you a full circle moment: you have been here before, but this time, it is different. It feels better, like you're better equipped to deal with this, maybe like you have somehow won a victory or mastered a challenge. You feel, and you know, you have grown. Graduated, maybe, from this task. It's a milestone, maybe even a goal reached.

And next, an interesting thing happens.
You realise you are pathless. Having followed this path to its end, you find yourself without a path. You can stay here for a while and celebrate, for sure, but you know one thing: that you don’t know what your next step is.

This is a precious and sobering moment, and you have worked hard to get here. Congrats, you are now without orientation.

We shun that. We try to avoid getting lost. We don't want to not know what to do or where to go or where the signposts are. We hate feeling clueless.

And yet, like every heroine from the beginnings of storytelling, we are lost the moment we reach what we have been striving for.

A full circle moment is a pathless moment.
I guess there's only one thing to do: unscrupulously enjoy our pathlessness like a heroine.
Sit on the meadow. Look around in wonder. Listen to the bees. Watch the moving clouds. See how the spider weaves her web... Do nothing. Celebrate the moment while it lasts...

#notesenroute #HeroinesJourney #pathlesspath #fullcircle #courageous_heroine #pathless by @elisabeth_fuchs_

26

4

a year ago

Notes en route:
I'm writing a Smart Cookbook (😂working title) for myself, with Chat GPT for English language support.

I need to tailor my diet to support my heart health, my needs as a breastcancer survivor and a person living without a thyroid, and a pre-diabetic with elevated blood pressure. I take Wegovy (Ozempic) for weight control, and this has certain side effects I need to deal with.
I have been a vegetarian for the last 25 years, with forays into vegan and keto eating. Nowadays, I'm on a pescatarian diet.

I take medicine and supplements galore, and they need to be taken at certain times and not all of them go well together...

What I'm saying is that lately, things got complicated.
I need new ways to cooperate with the reality of my body's needs if I want a long and healthy and slow ageing process...

This is why I started creating my own cookbook. I couldn't find one that catered to the complexity of my situation in a holistic, vegetarian way. I'm actually having fun figuring things out, and I love cooking and creating dishes.

For instance, we abstain from carbohydrates and privilege good fats and vegetarian proteins. To help us with the carb cravings, we now use a homemade drizzle combining tahin, dark miso paste and algae flakes with avocado and lots of greens. Blended with warm water and a drop of lemon juice, it goes well with baked or grilled fish and vegetables. It gives a satisfying, creamy and filling finish to these low-carb delights.

Creating the cookbook is culinary fun, and it gives me a welcome feeling of agency and positive, delicious action in a potentially complex, overwhelming, and fearful situation.

I could only get this far because I did not waste my energy on ignoring, suppressing, or fighting comprehensive knowledge of the full impact of my health situation on my life.
I also did not try to outsource things I could actually do for myself. I placed my overall mental, physical, and future health on top of my list. It took some unscrupulousness...
I know that complexity is where I thrive. I find it motivates me and sustains my energy.
Much like a good lunch...
#notesenroute #smart_eating #breast_cancer_survivor by @elisabeth_fuchs_

28

9

a year ago

Notes en route:

Lately, I have been thinking about relaxing into unsatisfactory circumstances.

I know it's not an option when things get fast & furious. But, interestingly, things sometimes are not as fast & furious as they feel. Not everything is solved quickly, and not everything cries for decisive action. Not everything asks for my swift response.

After the storm has hit, after the damage has been done, after the first responders have left the scene, there seems to be a natural still point.

It occurs to me that I have a tendency to run over that still point in search for more action... And I know that action suppresses anxiety and other uncomfortable feelings.

It seems to me that in every process, there are multiple points of stillness; easy to ignore, of course, but yielding high returns if you choose to honour them.

Relax into it.

That's what came to me today in my morning writing.

Relax into it.

We know things are not ideal. They are riveting, in fact. Relaxing seems like the least best thing to do right now. And yet, in the middle of everything, in the face of everything, I (or we) might find the unscrupulousness to turn around, check in with ourselves, and take a break. Settle down. Relax into it for a precious moment or two. Catch our breath...

There is such a thing as crisis competence. It is only learned the hard way: by surviving several crises. If you did, you know what I'm talking about.

Accept, abide. Settle into difficult / painful / unacceptable circumstances. It's counterintuitive for sure.

It's also an integral part of the process.

It's smart.
Do you know where the word 'smart' comes from? Evolving from 'smeortan'', an old English verb for 'to sting, to cause sharp pain', over centuries it morphed into meaning the result of having been stung: you get 'smart': sharp minded, quick witted. It now implies intelligence, responsiveness, and automation.

Crisis competence = experiencing pain plus learning from it. In other words, getting smart.

Sometimes, relaxing into it is the smart thing to do.

#notesenroute #smart_thing_to_do #settle_into_it #crisis #crisis_competence by @elisabeth_fuchs_

22

9

a year ago

Notes en route:
Journalling on the balcony, breeze in the air, clouds moving, peppermint doing its thing, which is: growing like mad and with joyful and distinctly hegemonial resilience.
Also you just touch lightly on one leaf, and you can smell the green minty power.

A while ago, I stumbled upon a phrase that stuck with me: moral distress.
It's what people experience when things happen in their vicinity that they find ethically objectionable but are unable to change. And I thought: I am heavily morally distressed. And this wasn't always the case in my life. People are being hurt, and I find myself helpless to bring relief, change their conditions, and see to it that this won't happen again. Taking in world news, I realise that much of my overwhelm is due to moral distress.
Musing about this in my morning writing, I realised: my distress informs me quite clearly about my values, and these originate in the heart as well as the brain.
In essence, what triggers moral distress in me is perceiving people being hurt when there is no need, no valid ethical reason, and when their pain would be completely avoidable. Preferably by designing better systems.

The value behind this distress is common humanity, and the emotions this value rides on are empathy and compassion.
The action aligned with those emotions is observing, witnessing, interpreting, analysing, and my favourite: get active to bring positive change.
And here's where I get stuck. And then I drive into overwhelm, and, in time, probably exhaustion, because I'm not a peppermint plant.
Thankfully, there's an antidote.
It's 'moral elevation'. That's what you experience when you watch, or read about, or hear stories about people doing the right thing. Better still, you can experience this elevation first hand by committing morally approvable acts yourself.

So I say, to myself and to you:
go forth and witness kind acts of shared goodness in life. And then go forth and unscrupulously commit them yourself.
These are not the times to hold back on simple loveliness, green graciousness, and sharing powerful and uplifting words, deeds, and fragrances!
#notesenroute #moraldistress #moral_elevation #journal by @elisabeth_fuchs_

20

9

a year ago