Blooming in Real Life

Last week, I shared a post, Standing at the Threshold, that is about what happens when the life you’ve been trying to build no longer feels aligned and you are standing at the threshold—letting go of old ways that drain you and trusting the quiet emergence of something new. I shared how I am now going to spend more time outside and moving my body rather than sitting and being in this digital world.

Today’s piece is about what can bloom in our real life when we get off screens and drop into the body and soul leading us.

I wanted to give you an experience of dropping into either the written or audio expression of this post. You can read or you can listen to the audio here - which i only did one recording of and made no edits to take out pauses or the aliveness and realness of my breath so as to encourage a future of not losing “the human” - less curated and more human.

Listen to this post here:

Immersed in Real Life  

These days, I am spending more
time outside with my hands in the
earth, muscles engaged, face 
sweaty, and dirt caked under my
nails than scrolling online. 

I am spending more days holding
hope in the palm of my hand and
pressing each seed gently into the
earth than I am sitting at my desk
pouring my precious, vivacious
soul into writing for the masses.

I am spending more of my energy
dreaming of how I will share my
flowers and veggies and fruit with
neighbors in just a few months
than I am sitting and wondering if
my poetry will reach far in the
online world.

I am experiencing more creativity
flowing through me as my feet sink
into the mud, the birds sing 
alongside me and flowers begin to 
slowly send shoots up through the 
spring earth than I do when I am 
inside, alone, forcing words to 
form into lines of poetry. 

Spring is here and offering you 
anopportunity to consider: 
what is your body longing for?
How is your soul calling you to
awaken from the slumber of
discontent and step into 
a new life?

Lisa McCrohan © 2026

There is a shift happening deep in my bones, prompted by my soul.

Maybe you feel something happening like this, too:

There is an undeniable desire to stop being on screens so much and inhabit life - real life. The life we can touch, taste, smell, hear, and see.

Life is happening right here through our bodies.

For me, it’s happening with my hands in the soil, standing, bending, and moving my body...feeling my muscles flex and engage and grow...as I dig and as I plant seeds.

Real life is happening off screen.

Oh my goodness how something wants to bloom in our lives - in real life. In the life we can taste, touch, smell, see, and hear.

What wants to bloom in your life?

Maybe it’s a garden like me - growing daisies or watermelons or carrots that you’ll risk sharing with neighbors your don’t know yet but will knock on their door and offer them a small bouquet of homegrown and recently picked flowers.

Maybe it’s asking a friend to linger in a long conversation on a hike or over coffee where phones are put aside - and you make it happen on a regular basis.

Maybe it’s listening to your body and noticing how it doesn’t want to be sitting all day staring at an overstimulating device. How it wants to move and be nourished by taking your time biting into an apple, how it wants to stretch arms out like a bear waking up, how it wants to sigh loudly like a lion ready for sleep, how it wants to stretch out like a cat in a sunbeam. My god, we are more an animal than we are a machine!

For too many years, many of us as creators, artists, writers, poets, and small business owners have poured copious amounts of creative energy into the digital world - writing, posting, sharing, curating, creating, offering...hoping our words or art or message travel far, hoping something meaningful lands.

And sometimes it has.

Sometimes we have reached across the world, or across a divide in this digital landscape and we have soothed, we have helped, we have nourished with our words, with our poems, with our music, with our art, and we have felt full and like it’s worth it.

But we have also lost something.

Tech neck they call it. Our head jets forward to look at our device, our shoulders round forward as we hold our phones, leaving the space on the upper back between the shoulder blades too stretched and under toned, while the muscles in our chests get too tight and the tops of our shoulders - the space connected to our necks - gets overly used as the over compensate for the lack of muscle in our upper back. Not to mention then the problems we have with a weaker core and lower back. And we sit and we sit. Like smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Our eyes burn, headaches happen more frequently. And don’t get me started on the epidemic of loneliness - choosing to “connect” online or just scroll on our devices instead of putting in the awkward effort to know our neighbors.

I get it. Real life is messy and imperfect. It’s awkward. We might get rejected. We might feel discomfort. We might finally feel what sadness or grief or longing lingers here - inside our bodies.

But the more I am immersing myself in real life - the messy, embodied reality of bodies and emotions and nature and sky and earth and hearts that break and longings that could erupt from our hearts, the more aliveness I feel. Whether that aliveness is the salt of my tears or the stillness of peace settling in me. The more truth I feel. Whether that truth be tender or tenacious. The more clarity I feel. Whether that be a clear head or a clear heart. The more focused I feel. Whether that be centering my pleasure or lingering in a conversation. The more creativity arises. Whether that be a poem forming or a path appearing led by my soul.

This doesn’t happen with me sitting on my device or staring at my computer.

It happens outside with my hands in the dirt. As I’m planting seeds, my minds gets clearer and Poetry comes to me. Poetry that might never be spoken out loud or never be written down, but it swims across my heart and it changes me, it nourishes me, It invites me into a deep sense of pleasure and satisfaction with my life instead of trying, reaching, pulling, grasping for something different, believing in this capitalistic life that we are broken, that we need something else, that we’re not complete...that keeps us navel gazing at our insecurities our imperfections.

Creativity, clarity, and peace do not come from staring endlessly at a screen and working harder. They rise up from within us by living in our lives, in real life.

Spring is here, and I would imagine that you too feel this call, this deeper invitation. To lay our bodies in the grass, arms and legs spread out, with our faces toward the sun, our hearts open and resting and yet also supported by the earth, breathing fully.

What wants to bloom in real life?

Not online. Not someday. Not when you have it all perfectly figured out. But right now, in the actual texture of your days - in the touch, smell, taste, sights, and sounds of your day.

Maybe it’s getting your hands in the soil and planting a garden.

Maybe it’s leafing through a cookbook and choosing a recipe that sounds scrumptious to you.

Maybe it’s just making the decision to spend more evenings outside, on your porch, talking to a neighbor., walking your dog, smiling at a stranger who passes by.

Maybe it’s making art just for the sake of somatically experiencing your body moving in rhythm with a paintbrush or with clay.

Maybe it’s in making the choice - the messy, hard, difficult, vulnerable choice to deepen your relationships, to tell someone that you’d like to know them better, that you’d like to spend time with them, that you enjoy their company, that you’d like to get to know them better.

Maybe it’s investing in the people who live right around you, that maybe you have... dismissed, maybe because they appear different than you or that you don’t have anything in common with them. But maybe here, right here, right around you, there’s an opportunity to knock on your neighbor’s door. and just say, “Hey, I live next door and thought I’d say hi.” Maybe it’s to bring them a small plant. Maybe it’s to bring them a bagel or a kombucha, or a poem.

I know, for me, that it also is about reclaiming parts of myself, my life, my energy, my soul - that slowly drifted into the digital world. And I knew it, and I felt that it was depleting me. And I continued with it far too long than when my body knew I was done.

Spring has a way of waking up our desires... of inviting us to plant seeds that want to bloom.

Let’s start with the body

Your body wants sunlight.

It wants movement.

It wants fresh air, conversation, good friends, hugs, and connection.

And when we listen to those longings of our bodies, something in us begins to stir, begins to come alive again, begins to be clear, calm, soothed, and feel safe again.

What wants to bloom in real life?

Right here, in the soil of your everyday life - in the dirty, messy, incomplete, imperfect, sometimes disappointing, real life.

It might surprise you just how glorious it can be to give your mind a reprieve, to give your eyes a reprieve, to make the shapes that your body wants to make, to give into the desire to be outside, connecting to the natural world, connecting again to people.

It might just surprise you that life... real life... is beautiful, and that you need very little.

You might begin to feel your breath again, to feel the aliveness in the cells of your body.

You might discover that new ideas and creative ways of being nourished, and nourishing the world, begin to emerge.

So I will not perfect these words and sharings. I will not commit to any rhythm other than listening to my soul. And I will offer you what gems arise in the raw and real of my life. I won’t over extend my energies and override when my body says, “This is good enough. Now go outside.”

Blessings,

Lisa